De Imperatoribus Galacticis: Chapter the Twenty-Sixth.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

De Imperatoribus Galacticis

"On the Galactic Emperors"

Chapter the Twenty-Sixth.

(As continued from Chapter the Twenty-Fifth.)


The Grand Fleet
Coruscant Approaches


Two great forces met in space over storied Coruscant. There was nothing barbaric about this match of arms; the two sides were nearly identical. Both of them had a core from the same organized government, and they had a leadership which was related by marriage. Both of them had a great number of ad-hoc contingents. This, then, was the face of a civil war. Two cavaliers faced each other across a black plain, to fight for control of a fiefdom. It was not greatly different than any other field on which two Emperors had met. Certainly, it would be bloodier than any such clash in some time, but the men were willing to fight, and so that became scarcely more than another detail of the whole affair.

Now did the fighters strike. The first wave was the focus of the heaviest of the defensive fire, and it was savaged for it. The number of fighters lost moving in to attack, and executing their attacks on the defensive lines, was very stiff. They salvoed off their warheads at maximum range—literally millions of them—and then beat a quick retreat. This first wave was just to soften up the lines in particular areas, and from whence the fighters would return to rearm whilst the Grand Fleet stayed safely at missile range.

By that time, of course, fire had shifted to the more numerous second wave that followed them in. Warheads were striking all around amidst the outer defences. Platforms and pickets were blasted apart in many areas. Heavy focused beams of nuclear energy from the detonating proton torpedoes sliced through armour and released bursts of heat and radiation deep into the centre of habitable sectors, frying the crew alive through the superheating of the atmosphere therein before it was vented to space. Weapons were disabled on other platforms and pickets, and shields battered. Some of them held, but the nasty fact of these screening forces was that they were not really meant to hold.

Clusters of heavier defensive platforms and torpedo spheres were stationed a bit further back from the picket lines, though. They provided simultaneously a covering fire for the picket lines, and heavy weapons to defend the minefields. These were what inflicted the heaviest toll on the starfighters, even as the two attack waves stripped away great swathes of the outer defences. Swarms of missiles and rapid-fire flak bursts pounded the great strafing swarms of fighters in each wave as they passed. They had but a minute, perhaps two, in which to inflict their damage, but in that time they killed tens of thousands of starfighters with their concentrated fire.

As the fighters fled in their masses back out of range, back to the protective bulk of the heavy artillery platforms of the Starfleet, missile firing was checked against them. Hamner Davion was preparing for a battle of extended duration. His opponents, however, were not inclined to oblige him. They had no intention of letting up, and their plan was focused on a maximum tempo to their offensive operations. Here Elise and Pellaeon agreed absolutely; though the later Admiral was by nature more cautious, he had learned by Thrawn's tutelage the importance of keeping an enemy off balance. It was, after all, how the old Chiss Grand Admiral had kept the Republic reeling and in full retreat despite having the advantage in numbers and firepower in all sectors.

So far the fighters of the defending allies had not been deployed in strength to directly engage Sule's own squadrons. Due to the larger number of ships Hamner had, and his ground stations, he had slightly more fighters than Sule's fleet, even with the large numbers that had jumped in independently. Furthermore, his rearmament times were better, since the hangar facilities on Coruscant were capable of, even with the great damage they had suffered in the past year, easily cycling through millions of starfighters. This allowed his starfighter forces to be effectively independent of his capital ships, and for the moment they were thus used only as a reserve fighting force. The pickets would suffer, but that sort of striking arm would not be dispersed, and this Leia had certainly agreed to.

The fighters returned to the hangars, being recovered from the very start in the first wave. These would have to be cycled through and then launched again as the second wave was in turn picked up, cycled through the rearming process, and likewise sent out, before the full strength of the fleet's fighter forces could be properly mustered for the main assault. Further delays would be caused by the fact that the fighters which had arrived via hyperspace would also have to be refueled, causing further delays in turn. In the meanwhile, only the armed freighters and patrol ships would be available for deployment around the fleet in picket formation, but the second wave, while the first was refueling and rearming, would be available for emergency deployment if necessary.

Even as these recovery and rearming operations were taking place, the fleet scout lines were racing ahead of the main body. They would have a dangerous, even fatal job, in probing the enemy's lines with gunfire and with sensors, and receiving counterfire in return. At least, though, they would have help with the minefields, and as the fleet slowed down to a relative stop at maximum torpedo range, that help was only minutes away. All ships were at general quarters, ready for action, though they had not suffered any fire against themselves yet, and they did not expect any significant opposition for a while. None of which was an excuse for laxness, and there was none in the fleet.

Minefields were a particular difficulty because of their nature. The standard mass-produced mine that Hamner had sewn the area with was a Class-C mine, meaning that in addition to a simple laser cannon and thruster-based manoeuvring acquisition system, it carried a large matter/anti-matter warhead and three concussion missiles bolted to it. It would automatically engage enemy targets in range of its laser cannon, and fire its missiles on command, or when it detected an incoming energy surge. The matter/anti-matter nature of the warhead guaranteed that it would explode if the mine was cleared through turbolaser fire, forcing the mines to be destroyed only at range, as the warhead was of sufficient power to cause damage to many small ships, or in great numbers a larger one. Within the limits of its small thruster banks, the mine itself could also attempt to close with an enemy ship before detonating. Each mine had a simple droid brain aboard to control these functions, and literally billions of them could be mass-produced in a month or so by the resources of an industrial world.

Of course, there was a second use that had been easily conceived of for the laser warheads built to destroy the Yuuzhan Vong. They were also excellent for clearing dense minefields, and that was exactly Pellaeon's intention in closing to this range. As he looked on now at the plot of the advancing picket ships, the fleet formed up and came to a relative halt at maximum range. Good order was maintained, and the fleet's anti-missile defences presented an imposing target even to the massed batteries of the torpedo spheres that were facing them.

“All fleet taskforces report readiness, Admiral. They're standing by for orders. Screening forces continue to advance.”

“Very good,” Pellaeon replied, looking neutrally out over the holographic plot for a long moment, judging the range before the screening/scouting forces would come under fire, the time it would take to clear the minefield.

“Signals to all Line Taskforces: 'Commence missile barrage against minefields in sector K-14 of the enemy defensive sphere.' Signal to special Frigate Taskforces: 'Commence torpedo attack on enemy defence concentrations in sector K-14'. That is all; transmit immediately.”

“Yessir!” The officer turned down to the sunken comms bank on the flagbridge and relayed the orders crisply.

“TFL-5, communications orders 'Commence missile barrage against minefields in sector K-14 of enemy defensive sphere,' relayed,” the comms tech replied crisply. Then, from another: “'TFF-5, communications orders 'Commence torpedo attack on enemy defence concentrations in sector K-14' relayed.”

Moments later, the officer heard what he needed to hear, and turned back to Grand Admiral Pellaeon. “Sir! Confirmation receipt from all Taskforces in Line and Frigate groups about their respective orders.”

Pellaeon nodded once, his attention focused on the holoprojector before him. Already the receipt of the orders was followed with their execution as the Taskforce Admirals transformed his general directives into battle operative plans. Immediately after that, general firing commenced.

Millions of missiles were sent sweeping out against the enemy defences in a matter of seconds. These all had laser heads, of course, and when they struck home in the minefields, they cleared away great swathes of the defensive mines, the spears of laser energy lancing out from them striking in every place, sometimes destroying many mines at once. They were attriting their missile stocks, of course, but it couldn't be helped, and very quickly there were huge rents torn into the defensive sphere of Coruscant.

At any rate, the effect from the firing of the superlight torpedoes was infinitely more drastic. There were only thousands of these, a few thousand at most, indeed, but their effect was very great. They collided with hammer-blows against the defensive platforms, washes of superheated gas and matter, of hard radiation and thermal energy, bombarding the shields of the platforms and the scarcely more mobile Torpedo Spheres with the most severe of intensity. And they kept coming, no limited salvoes here but a full-out offensive bombardment which reached a crescendo of intensity and then stayed there, relentlessly plowing its way through the defensive works which had taken a week to build up, and in some cases longer, and now were suffering the destruction of hours and hours of labour in mere seconds.

Death in space was the rule. When starships met in combat, the soft flesh shell of the human body was a frail and trivial thing again. Energy was exchanged at tremendous rates, and it carried death that the human body would be vapourized before, vanishing without trace into the intensity of the energy directed upon it. There was nothing more to be said; nothing to be done. When direct hits, of plasma or of directed radiation, touched crew compartments, the crew in those compartments died. The exception, of course, was from the near miss. The internals of the ships were subdivided extensively, and armoured bulkheads, as thick as the outer hull armour of the ship themselves, were strewn throughout those durasteel titans. Where the energy of the impact was dispersed sufficiently by the armour or by the internal transverse and longitudinal bulkheads, there would be survivors.

Some not for long. Vacuum killed as easily as anything else in this harsh environment, and indeed death from it was more painful than from the directed energy fire. The life and development of a human being might end in a minute of agonizing breathlessness. For the survivors, it was an issue of negotiating through sectors leaking air to those which were secure, when everywhere there were bulkheads sealing and airtight doors slamming closed. Many might have burns, or would be wounded by pieces of the hull and machinery torn loss by the shock of a nearby impact, against all possible effort to restrain it. Sometimes silently, sometimes shouting and desperate, under the direction of viciously swearing Chiefs, they made their way to escape, and then immediately to regroup and fling themselves into damage control efforts.

Others, of course, stayed where they were on worked on damage control. Corpsmen were always available to tend to the wounded, to perform triage, each and every person becoming in an essence a mere cell within the body of the ship. And tens of thousands of those cells, aboard the largest ships, might perish without harming the performance of the vessel in the slightest bit. Damage control was the first order, and for Hamner's men, there was a lot of it to be done. Marines joined in the damage control parties and thus aided in the continued ability of the ship to fight despite the lack of any conceivably boarding action (at least until, as it was hoped, ships of Sule's might forced to strike). In these moments they were worth their salt; the navy men who made a point of disparaging them were always glad to have them help with the dirty work of containment and control of fires, poison gas leaks, dismounted machinery and holes venting atmosphere to space.

Under the cover of this great and deadly barrage, tearing gaps through the defensive sphere of the Coruscating Gem, Sule's lights advanced. They were by far the most aggressive ships of the fleet; the second-ranking officer was one of their own, and most of the frigateers and corvette commanders remembered well that one of their own was now on the top. Elise Kalar-Leben had gone right from commanding a frigate flotilla to commanding all forces in the Gamma Quadrant without ever stepping foot on the bridge of a Star Destroyer, and it was remembered. As the senior of the surviving Commodores she had naturally succeeded to this position and proven able at it, but it carried with her a reputation for dash and for the elan of the light forces, perhaps to recklessness.

Certainly, she'd never deigned to try and reign in the lights under her command, and as most of these men who commanded the light forces of Sule's fleet were from the Milky Way Empire, they hewed to her example. The moment Pellaeon had loosed their leash, they charged in with their ordered ranks, racing to find the gaps, to elude the enemy fire, to penetrate deeply and forge a path with their ships for the fleet to follow. They were bourne in through a hail of their own side's missiles, great waves of them passing closely to the lights as they raced on in against the enemy. They had done splendidly at Dantooine and most of their comrades in the light forces had in fact died for that—but these men were of the highest calibur. They were like Pappenheim's Cuirassiers, willing to charge headlong into the Swedish guns not less than seven days; if a splendid failure was demanded of them, it would be delivered, and of success? So much the better.

Here they desired success. They lusted after it, and they directed their heartiest efforts into making good of their chance. Here, though, was not the hot of a horse's breath mingling with the desperate cries of men, the thunder of cannonade and musketry, the hammering of hooves upon the ground. Here the romanticism was in the quiet things, in the tight looks of the officers, fierce and determined, in the calm wisdom of the NCOs, in the silence and the quick, clear orders that were barked in crisp tones of surety. They were no less brave, however, and it would count, for at last Hamner Davion had been prevailed upon by his admirals to unleash his missileers.

There could not be a more awesome thing than to see those torpedo spheres open up. One moment they were like little planets, almost invisible in the black of space, as dots against the fullness of the globe of Coruscant. The next moment they were emitting torches, a blaze of rocketry in the night, each one firing a thousand torpedoes a second, blue lances of fire through the darkness. They came from many points around the planet, and converged on the incoming light from many angles at once. This was of course intended from the start; Rano Inaras had carefully laid out the firing plots to allow for the maximum concentration of fire with a simple thruster-shift on the part of the missile equipped ships and platforms. It created the ideal situation for overwhelming the excellent point-defence systems of the Imperial Starships of Sule's light, for the maximum number of converging angles would tax the defensive computers to the utmost.

Time was on the side of the attackers, but that advantage was steadily bleeding away as their closed with the utmost speed and acceleration. They would be, of course, in the deadliest range for only moments, but they would suffer badly while they were, and it was swiftly approaching. The defences tracked the incoming, and at maximum range the sheets of fire from the light guns commenced. Tractor fields were established around the ships, at wide dispersing, to create sheer fields which could break up the missiles before they hit. Soon a rippling of brilliant bursts of light and radiation shot through space. Countless thousands of missiles were destroyed.

But thousands carried on to strike home. They were dispersed across thousands of ships in turn, and a few impacts against the shields of many did altogether very little damage. Some burst through unscathed. And some unlucky ships suffered to be the concentration points of many of the homing warheads, and these were ravaged. Lances of nuclear energy thrust their way deep into steel hulls, puncturing bulkheads and dealing fatal damage to a whole series of deep internal compartments before at last a longitudinal, or transverse armoured bulkhead somewhere would hold, and stop the devastation. For a few unlucky ships, good hits after their shields had failed penetrated straight to their reactor compartments.

A few of those even survived, after a fashion, others held together long enough for some of the crew to escape. The others died in the same way that their enemies had been dying a moment before by the missile fire of the Strike-class frigates and of the great ships of the fleet. War was cruel, and even the victors must mourn their dead. Here, the victor was scarcely foretold, and at any rate even the charge of the light was uncertain. But they had soon passed beyond the point where the suffering of the light ships would be at its most intense; they rapidly closed to the point where the missiles of many of the outlying defensive posts could not bear against them any longer, and a small number of platforms and ships were firing against them. These, in turn, were under the fire of Sule's main body, and not holding up so well.

In close, the light ships manoeuvred to exploit the gaps being torn in the mindfields, even as those gaps were widened by the missiles with their laser heads detonating around, even as the FTL torpedoes raced passed them with dangerous closeness to ram home against their targets in the defensive concentration points. These gradually forced the slacking of fire against the lights by the level of damage they had inflicted on the platforms which could still bear their warheads upon the close-in and fragile enemies. Great craters from the impacts of these heaviest of warheads could be discerned on the large platforms and the torpedo spheres, rents of twisted metal which vented plasma and debris and the atomized remnants of living people into the orbital space around Coruscant, to a grave of vacuum and radiation.

Some of them had even been destroyed, but these were heavy, well-armoured platforms and ships for the most part, just slow to nonexistant in their ability to maneouvre. The smaller platforms were almost all gone from the concentration of fire against them; these heavier ones would persist for some time, grimly returning fire, everyone wishing for support but the officers knowing better: The reserves would not be released until they would be fighting the main body at close range. That was what the officers, of course, knew, and that was what the officers must live with even as they died and waited to die. But officers who knew this and could live with it stood their ground and in doing so inspired those among their men who's spirits were weak, and in so doing maintained a splendid resistance even though they were badly outnumbered in the strength of their firepower and the number of their vessels alike.

The minefields were, of course, silent, and fought to their own best as their robotic brains allowed. Their lasers were fired continuously at the incoming warheads, and they destroyed many. But they did not enough lasers to destroy enough to halt the incoming from detonating at lethal ranges. Their lasers served to attrite, but could not defend, and so steadily the minefields were being destroyed. As the droid brains detected their incoming death—if they were able to in time—they fired off a brace of torpedoes at the enemy. These were mostly aimed at the distant capital ships, as a matter of course, but the salvoes were ragged and the defences of those vessels were powerful, and redoubled in power when fighting in concentration. None of those warheads made it through, save a few by random chance, which did nothing.

These minefields were still, however, treacherous, and so it was with some care, despite their rush to come to grips with the enemy, that the light ships picked their way through, cannons firing with the maximum rapidity to clear as much of the fields as they could at close range, to knock out any incoming torpedoes and any stray mines not destroyed by the missile salvoes which were now opening up paths of attack for them in turn. Flagships led the charge, commodores emulating the example of 'our own' Grand Admiral and forging the paths for their flotillas to follow. This of course brought about the loss of several to the mines, or to massed torpedo salvoes from mines passed to closely in number; others were damaged and forced to drop out of formation, the commodores hastily changing their flags to the unfortunate receiving ships, which would at once accelerate to take the lead as soon as the beacon of the broad pennant was flashed out to the rest of the squadron.

Yet by this murderous loss to the unthinking mines, the penetration of the enemy defences was ultimately guaranteed, and the cost was in truth not so severe, if painful among those who had already lost more than eighty percent of their number less than two weeks before. Of the light forces, few would live through this battle, and worse, they had comrades on the other side. But what could be done, save to fight loyally, and trust that to the best would go victory. For this they persevered, and neither side could doubt the courage of those who forced open a path for the fleet.

Brother against brother, sister against sister, father and son divided in loyalties; this was the worst sort of conflict, where cousins fought cousins and friendships were torn asunder. It was the nature of all civil wars, and perhaps the sadness that came with civil war lent it such an air of savagery, of a general embrace of dispair and hopelessness that became universal with the commencement of such a conflict. Yet there was also honour in such a war, for both sides, holding such a common ground, could recognize the bravery of the other. There was no fear of one's deeds being lost; the courage of both sides would be universally respected, and here perhaps was the other aspect of ferocity in civil wars, the ferocity upon the battlefield, the intensity of the general combat. There was no fear of dying a forgotten death. If the Plain of Mars ever promised immortality for all those who came, victors or vanquished, it was on the field of civil conflict, and this just added to the strange madness of an action in which great numbers of millions of people would die in the name of a single man, so as to achieve his aspiration toward absolute power.

Yet it was something so common throughout history as to scarcely bear mention, even when it was in the process of happening on a level perhaps deadly than any before, unless one counts the first Seperatist conflict, which was really just the result of the aspirations of one man, and not two contestants. Before that, the Sith Wars would try this contest; Xim's great battles would surely come out higher. But that, of course, merely made this civil conflict one for millennia. The only question was if another century of strife would come from the end of it, or if one or the other of the contestants would succeed, now, in establishing another thousand years of peace over the galaxy. This was how the game of power had always been, and always would be.

Onset! Doubts had long been cast aside; certainly they had never even really been present among the brave frigateers. Now they passed through the minefields and at once they were hotly engaged with the defensive clusters of Hamner's lines. They took advantage of the weaknesses that had been created by the missile barrage, which was even now continuing, and they struck hard through them to inflict the maximum damage with their medium weapons and with their own warheads at point-blank range. The later in particular had a good effect, for coming from so close, with different acceleration patterns and different angles of attack, they often penetrated the CIWS of the defending platforms on account of their over-concentration on the heavy FTL torpedoes and the great computing power required for course prediction to allow sublight weapons to make successful intercepts.

The platforms of course still had many operational weapons with which to engage in counterbattery fire, and thus they did. The torpedo spheres swung around their big pole-mounted ion cannon and opened up on the light ships; a single hit from those massive, ominous weapons which had been designed for planetary surface mounting could knock out the systems of a small frigate for fifteen minutes. Both sides were thus well-emplaced to slaughter each other. The numerous lights were largely undamaged, but their battered foes were far, far more powerful, and even a crippled bear can rip through a pack of wolves, perchance they should meet and fight.

Battle having been hotly joined, the heavies now diverted their attention to support of the lights, the path having been forged forward. Grand Admiral Pellaeon at once ordered the shifting of the missile fire to regular warheads, firing against the platforms in support of the light ships. This order was obeyed immediately, and within a half-minute the fire-shift was almost entirely completed. For the moment, however, he did not issue orders for the fleet to advance along the trail that had been blazed. For the moment; for here, Elise showed her heritage as a frigateer and rallied to the support of the light ships with her typical elan. For Pellaeon, the message came only a heartbeat, it seemed, after the fire-shift had been completed, when the missiles were still racing in against their new targets, which braced themselves for further death among their ranks, including their own. Pellaeon received it, and in the quiet and clinical atmosphere of flagbridges, Elise made her appeal.

The hologram resolved itself, uncertain through interference and the poor quality of efficient battlefield transmissions visually, as they were focused strictly on numerical data wherever possible, that is to say, what was really needed. But it was still a formalism between high officers conferring, and the two Grand Admirals certainly rated it with each other. Thus, the one-fourth scale image of Elise, standing, not sitting, hands folded behind her back, held a certain degree of ceremony to it despite the impetuous look that she conveyed even with the rather dumpy look the heavy uniform gave her, to heavy on epaluattes for its own good.

“Elise, what may I do for you?” Pellaeon asked simply.

“I wish to go forward with my division immediately, Sir,” she replied. “We are ready for it; the orders have been issued and the preparations have been made. Let me go forward, and you shall advance in turn behind me, so that when I penetrate the perimeter, if the enemy causes any problems, you can come up to our relief. Once we are safely through, and have shattered the perimeter decisively, then we may form up into a joint battle order once again.”

There was some fear on Pellaeon's part about separating the two halves of the fleet for any reason, despite the great preponderence of heavy firepower that these elements maintained over the thinly dispersed enemy. Still, they would not really be seperate, just advancing in two waves, held close together, and only just far enough apart to make a trap... Not impossible, but most difficult. On the other hand.. There was the issue that Sule and the Despot were in Elise's formation. That made him nearly decline the offer, but he knew better about what Sule himself would want in this situation.

A sigh. Four or five seconds given to the final reflection. “Very well, Elise. Proceed ahead with the Taskforces under your command, and then I shall follow at a supporting interval of my own discretion. Follow the scouts through as quickly as you came—don't worry about getting strung out, we'll collect your stragglers if we must on the way up.”

“Of course, Sir!” She replied, dangerously cheery. “We shall commence the advance at once.” The holographic projection cut out, leaving Pellaeon on the Hand of Thrawn to turn his attention into forming his Taskforces into the supporting half of the fleet. There was both opportunity and danger from the act, but Pellaeon knew how to use them; he also knew that Elise herself was probably motivated by her desire to come up and support the lights of the fleet which had already suffered so heavily in their victory at Dantooine.

He finished issuing the orders, and turned his attention to Elise's squadrons. Something, however, did occur to him at the last moment. “Order Admiral Kalar-Leben to launch her starfighters and have them placed under the command of the overall fleet Starfighter forces,” he said. “I want them concentrated with those from our own fleet elements to bolster the striking power of this force in the event that a relief operation becomes necessary.”

“Of course, Sir—but it will reduce the staying power of the starfighters as a reserve,” his Chief of Staff reminded him politely.

“That's already limited by the need to shift squadron to squadron due to our excessive numbers, and at any rate, if we succeed in establishing ourselves beyond the perimeter, an offensive use of the starfighter reserve becomes acceptable, and that would scarcely entail a longer wait than their employment in a relief effort for the lead elements,” Pellaeon noted.

“Understood,” his Chief of Staff answered, and turned to issue the necessary orders for this as well. It only took a heartbeat to get back Elise's response, dutifully read off by the comms officer:

“'You can have the starfighters—I'm launching now—But I'm not slowing down to do it.'”

“Good enough,” Pellaeon chuckled silently, and looked on as the lead ships led by the Conquerant raced ahead to join the general engagement.

On the bridge of the Conquerant, Elise had given the order, and the fleet elements under her command had surged ahead at once. Flank acceleration had been ordered, and this meant that the huge battlecruisers at the core of the group actually essentially led the formation in, which was exactly how Elise had intended it. Their shields and armour could hold against far greater energies, for longer, and in passing through the fields of defensive fire Elise decided to see them soak up as much of it as they could to let the whole of her fleet elements enter the field intact; the battlecruisers could then fall back to the center and recharge their shields.

She did, indeed, keenly desire to see the light squadrons relieved. It came, perhaps, from her memories of her abandonment of Harlann—a strategic necessity at the time, she granted now, but still galling—and the betrayal that had ultimately led to. These men ahead had suffered quite heavily, and they did not deserve to be left alone under the guns of the enemy, even as they performed their valiant task. Thus it was that the great charge of her fleet elements, taskforce after taskforce, loomed up ominously and abruptly to the allies around Coruscant, heading for the weakest points and also, coincidentally, to her own light. It would only take a few minutes...


The Allied Fleet
In Coruscant Orbit


“I should have considered Pellaeon's caution,” Harlann Quir mused. “Elise doing that is rather predictable, particularly now, but with Pellaeon about she is rather more dangerous.” Of course it made her betrayal of him hurt all the more, that she affected such loyalty to those under her command but notto him, who had served her faithfully as an XO and then Chief of Staff for so long. Now, though..

“This may be more of an advantage than we think it looks like, Your Majesty,” he said quietly, stepping forward to address Hamner Davion. “It looks as though Pellaeon's disposition makes a successful ambush impossible, but if we are able to delay Pellaeon, even briefly, we could hit Elise's exposed ships and deliver a decisive blow to tilt the battle in our favour.”

Hamner Davion was not stupid. “The Milky Way ships and the torpedo frigates?” He asked.

“Yes, absolutely,” Harlann answered. “Let us put Pellaeon between two fires; we send the Milky Way ships in a single concentration between the two fleet elements of Sule's forces, and have the torpedo frigates engage from his stern. Elise will not turn back at that, nor would any of the officers with Milky Way experience—but Pellaeon will take the threat more seriously, out of unfamiliarity. That will create the gap that we need.”

“As for the ambush elements, then?”

“Once we've got it set up, leave the details to Admiral Ackbar; he concluded the arrangements on the details of the ambush and we don't need to countermand him now, or worse, have one person's plans executed by another with a different style and way of understanding things. Inaras will complain, but he'll also execute the orders he needs to.”

“Of course,” Davion chuckled. “Draw them up for me and I'll send them on as a formal Imperial order immediately.”

“Done,” Harlann replied essentially at once, as he dumped the text of the order into a storage padd and put in a format command to put it in proper general-dispatch format. Then he handed it to Hamner, and the Imperial Claimant used the stylus on it to scrawl in his signature. At once it was taken away to be transmitted, and then the two men, leaving the tactics of the individual areas of the battlefield to others, concentrated their attention on the issues of grand strategy, and the developments on the battlefield ahead of them which were being shown.

Already, Elise's ships had pushed their way through the heaviest field of fire, the Executors drawn up in line-abrest formation serving to shield the myriad of smaller ships behind them. The former had held up perfectly to the missile fire of the defenders, already attrited as it was, and the later had been scarcely touched on account of the fleet disposition. As they passed through the rents in the minefields, a few ships were damaged and dropped out, and nothing more than that.

From that moment on, a slaughter began. The minefields were opened completely in that sector by the massed batteries of Elise's fleet. Then they shifted fire, and the embattled light squadrons abruptly had the pressure relieved as the heavy batteries of the main fleet force, the Executors and the Shockwaves, poured down their fire on the scarred and pitted defensive platforms and torpedo spheres. These bolts were heavy enough to kill them, with enough shots, and the number of sufficient shots quickly piled up in numbers as the guns fired enmasse every half-second, with the warheads following. Armour-piercing, directed energy, the torpedo fire of the proton torpedoes delivered lances of radiation deep into the hulls of the ships, hundreds of times over, whilst great chunks were torn from them by the fire of the turbolasers in turn.

Within a minute, the light ships had been relieved, and tens of Hamner's defensive posts and torpedo sphers were being destroyed by the massed fire of Elise's squadron. It looked altogether very bad for Hamner... But then the first half of the trap was sprung. Massed batteries of FTL torpedoes were salvoed from the cloaked frigates. The fire salvo came as a surprise and many got through to Pellaeon's ships. Their heavy impacts destroyed several lighter destroyers on the outer wings of his formation; but only the first salvo. The defensive computers were laid in for the second and the CIWS fire concentrated, even as the order was quickly given to orient stern-quarter batteries on the projected location of the frigates and commence to fire with flak bursts.

As this reaction was taking place, however, the Milky Way ships jumped in-- a motley collection from every power, a few big ones from the Dominion as the best, then a mix of Klingon, Romulan, Federation, Ferengi (large numbers there, in particular, as the Ferengi had not fought), Breen, and other such ships from countless minor nations. They had not even been counted in the lists of Hamner's fleet, so weak were they, but they had been modified extensively so that they at least had a chance here.

No, not really a chance, just a duty, Harlann sighed. He had ordered their position, but it was still unfortunate. These ships, which brought immediate alarm to the Imperial officers of Pellaeon's elements of Sule's fleet, could not stand up to such massed firepower even with all the modifications in the world. But they could provide precious minutes for Admiral Ackbar to decisively turn the tables, and if that meant they would all die, then they would all have to die, a speedbump to enable the greater plan of victory for the allies. Even as Pellaeon moved to meet both threats at once, Elise continued her attack—all the more aggressively, really, prefering to clear what was ahead of her as a response to the new threat behind. The crews of the Milky Way ships, for their part, pressed home their attack aggressively, for in getting close and striking hard and fast they felt they had their only chance of survival, however slim it was. Harlann glanced down to his chrono... Just about now..


The Conquérant
Irregular Coruscant Orbit


Behind them the Milky Way ships were rushing in to attack Pellaeon. They darted in close, striking as hard as they could. Loads of proton torpedoes were salvoed off at point-blank range, aided by the fire of a few light turbolasers. For defensive weapons they mostly just had their old beam cannon, some modified to fire multiple beams, one from each emitter, for CIWS work. Against this they forced the massed frontal fire of Pellaeon's main battle divisions, and they were paying for it rapidly. Even at point-blank range, where the squadrons could manoeuvre against targets which could not, and they could avoid the heaviest of the fire due to the danger of large friendly fire incidents from misses, they were still being chopped to shreds by the second, a hundred ships destroyed inside of one minute.

But that was one minute of delay for Pellaeon, and it paid now, in sudden and ugly surprise to Elise's taskforces, just after they had finished successfully clearing out the perimeter defensive concentrations. While their fire was still dialed in on the platforms that they were finishing off, and pounding the few retreating torpedo spheres into rubble, the big Star Cruisers of the rebel fleet arrived in two halves, like a shell slamming closed on Elise's fleet. Each one was led by the impressive bulk of an Executor-class battlecruiser, the Republic's two operational ships of that type, and that, of course, meant a general fleet action, for between those Star Cruisers and the Executors, Elise was actually outgunned, and it only grew worse from there—for several defensive batteries on the surface of the planet had been fully activated in this region by a great effort on the part of the troops and the engineers of Hamner's forces, and now also commenced fire upon Elise's force.

The general action was thus commmenced.

At once Elise's fleet came under intense fire. From every direction the heaviest of turbolaser batteries and ion cannons were directed at her main force, and immense jamming made everything except for direct-beam laser comms impossible the transferrence of orders. The six Executors in her force became, at once, the greatest targets of the enemy firepower; the Shockwave-class ships second. Fire was concentrated from thousands of ships against those few ships, less than twenty. None, of course, were destroyed outright, for the power of their shields, even weakened, was sufficient to repulse the fire of hundreds of destroyer-rate ships for at least a few minutes.

Elise was on her feet. Alone, and in direct command of this segment of the fleet for all intents and purposes, she knew that an instant reaction was required; particularly since the Emperor's ship was also under some of the heaviest fire. “We'll close with the starboard force of the Separatists,” she said, thinking even as she spoke and studying the holoprojector, hands folded behind her back, gloves to hide the cold sweat that sheened them. “Executor and Shockwave-class ships only.”

“We're going in unsupported, Admiral? Their starfighters are surely waiting for just this chance, and our own are concentrated aft with Admiral Pellaeon.”

“That's right, we're going in unsupported. We don't have a choice; not under this sort of fire.” The Conquérant shuddered slightly as if to emphasize the point as the inertial compensators were forced to deal with the kinetic impact of thousands of missiles and heavy turbolaser bolts all at once from a brace of large Mon Cal Star Cruisers which had concentrated their salvoes upon her. “Send immediately to Grand Admiral Pellaeon: 'Request Starfighter support most urgently; they should advance to the starboard axis of the fleet and be prepared to support the heavy units in close combat. Have them traverse the enemy blocking force and disregard same.'”

“Transmitting, Admiral,” Hallsburg replied tightly, teeth clenched. The atmosphere on the bridge was very clinical but it was clear that they couldn't stand this for long.

“Very well. Signals—exclude for Line Squadrons: 'All ships execute eighty-five degree thrust shift relative to port, and close with the enemy.' Line squadrons only: 'Follow me.'” She flung her hands forward, clapped them hollowly through the gloves once, and tapped up the comms link to the conning bridge. “Captain, put us alongside that enemy Executor in the starboard formation, and keep us there until we blow up or she does.”

“How close, Admiral?”

“So I can spit on her.”

“Understood,” her flagcaptain replied simply, and cut the channel.

She stepped away, just in time to catch Hallsburg declaring “All messages transmitted. Receipt confirmations coming in via laser relay comms.” A nod was offered, at that, and she moved to sit back down, taking a few long breaths to steady herself.

The plot before her, from the moment she turned back to look at it, had already changed rapidly. The Conquérant was pressing in against the enemy with great rapidity, and already the change could be felt in the hull; it was a change for the worst, as even with half of the enemy fleet cut off, the rest concentrated on her flagship in turn. But it was not for long. Despot, under Sule's urging, led up the second battle division, and covered her advance, flanking her ship as the great Super Star Destroyers of the fleet pressed down to take on the enemy.

“Watch yourself, Your Majesty,” Elise paged over the laser comms, “For an Admiral ought lead a fleet,” and there was agonizing silence before the reply came back:

“Don't worry about it, Elise. An Emperor should lead his men.”

Oh, well. There was no time to worry about that. “All line squadrons: 'Concentrate fire on enemy Executor,'” Elise grated out. “Take it out for us now and we'll reverse the course of this blasted action yet!”

One of the Shockwaves blew up. The atmosphere on the bridge became all the tenser, though Elise did not think it so bad; they had lost a Superiour at Dantooine, after all, and yet.. Well, the fire was very heavy. This was the whole of the remnant of the Republican Fleet, and months worth of construction at the Mon Cal yards, and many of the heaviest ships they had left behind in the Milky Way besides; and half that firepower was concentrated on a preciously small group of vessels which were now closing in, dangerously close with the enemy. So close that now they were deaccelerating, lest they past through... Deaccelerating toward their inexorably saught target.

“It's the Guardian, Admiral!”

“Oh well,” Elise answered. “We've killed ships dearer to us than that tonight.” It was really just breathed. Now all the ships were aligned, and the maximum firepower was being directed against the Guardian, only hundreds of kilometers off, thousands at most, and they'd be gone soon as the ships bore in close... Abruptly, there was a brilliant flash to the left. Elise's head snapped around. The viewscreen/projectors around the flagbridge showed the shattered remembers of a Mon Cal Star Cruiser, torn in two by a collision with the particle shields of the Indomptable, then flung around so that her bow was incinerated on them likewise. The short-range cannon of the Indomptable tore into the shattered hulk with an unnecessary and vengeful glee, with the excuse that they had no other target upon which to fire until it drifted passed them, and then again their gunnery was directed upon the living and not the dead.

Now, of course, Elise was worried about the Indomptable's shields. But the danger came not to that ship, but to another. The Pluton's Captain—with his Executor in the Despot's BatDiv—had been constantly exposing his ship to the maximum possible fire to divert concentrations on the Emperor's vessel. Unfortunately it had given away a bit of the formation to the enemy; now they were really pouring in the fire on both the Pluton and the Despot. And with those ships, along with the Conquérant, in the front rank, were now also the obvious targets for the very close Guardian, Admiral Ackbar's flagship, which was now under the most intense barrage of fire from ships combining to twelve times its strength in gunnery.

In rapid succession two events took place. First the Pluton lost her shields, and then the Guardian also suffered a temporary shield failure. Temporary it may have been, but the result that followed was astounding. Thousands of turbolaser bolts struck all over the hull of the Guardian, pounding at the twenty-one metre armour of the huge Executor-class ship. The same happened to the Pluton, and as the Conquérant nosed up in turn recklessly under Elise's command, her guns, briefly masked by the Indomptable, were at once freed to commence a vicious fire upon the underhull of the Guardian, collapsing the shields of her hangar bays as well and tearing into them with heat, plasma, and radiation before they could be sealed. Of the guns which were masked upon the Executors, independent fire was of course authorized, and Elise paid it no heed, each Gunnery Officer maximizing the capabilities of his batteries within the context of the orders; even on the Conquérant the guns of the starboard sternquarter were now engaged in a vigorous mini-duel with a Viscount-class Star Cruiser six kilometers off in that direction.

Then the starfighters struck. They had been hoarded, and now Hamner unleashed them. Thousands, no, tens of thousands, were sent against less than twenty heavy ships, and in those numbers they made their presence felt. Heavy attack rockets and proton torpedoes began to pound at their hulls by the hundreds of thousands. Wave after wave seemed to come in, firing as many of their warheads as they could before passing clear and seeking shelter from the admittedly murderous CIWS fire of the heavy ships operating in concentration as they were now. Thousands of starfighters were destroyed in a heartbeat. But the greatest damage was done to the Pluton; with her shields still down, the specific bridge defence shields had also now been knocked out by the starfighter salvoes, which had been directed against said. Like the old Executor at Endor, her bridge was destroyed and command of the systems lost for a few seconds, during which every Separatist ship in the area, smelling blood, poored the maximum firepower into her.

It was a credit to her executive officer that he reacted as quickly as he did. Control was regained, but by the time it was the upper superstructure and the docking bays were flaming wrecks, three engines were disabled, and a fifty meter tip of the bow blown off—and the fire wasn't slacking, but if anything, intensifying. Bolts and warhead shots were now penetrating deep into the hull, and many more starfighters were focusing on the ship, firing off tens of thousands of proton torpedoes at it at close range. These massed salvoes punched through the battered armour or plunged through superstructure areas; guns were knocked out, and finally great areas of the ship's exoskeleton were blasted away. Using their pinpoint targeting systems, the heavy ships now became to pour fire down on the internal bulkheads of the Pluton which guarded her primary reactor.

They were breached. This automatically triggered a reactor SCRAM. The ship lost most of its power, but from the countless secondary reactors enough power was found to continue to fight. There was no question of escape from this situation. The Pluton was doomed, but she held her position and continued to engage with every battery that had power, even as secondary explosions marked the destruction of magazines and secondary reactors and caused further damage, power loss, and general destruction to the interior of the great Battlecruiser.

Guardian, though, was in worse shape by now. During the minutes when the Pluton was dying her shields had been briefly reestablished, only to collapse again under such a massed fire as was inflicted upon her. When Pluton doggedly resumed to fire with her remaining operational batteries, it seemed like a moral last straw, to which the physical effects were shown just a minute, perhaps two, later. As the armour was overtaxed in the central sectors and the superstructure entirely destroyed, heavy bolts plowed deep into the hull and disabled several of the Guardian's engines. She continued to fight back; but soon her reactor's integrity had been compromised as well, and the pounding on the ship under its secondary power became to much. It seemed like the whole center of the ship had been destroyed, yet it clearly was not, even as explosion after explosion took place there, for there was still counterbattery fire somehow taking place. The engines were now dark, though, and the hull torn in every place. The Guardian, venting plasma and lifeless bodies and shattered bulkheads and armour fragments, spun out of formation, engines dark, only a half-dozen turbolasers still firing in lonely defiance.

Pluton received only a momentary respite. As the Separatist fleet milled about for a moment, in confusion at the loss of their flagship, she survived. But Rano Inaras quickly enough gained control of this portion of the fleet, leaving General Antilles and the pretender Hamner Davion with the other portion, engaged in hot but steadily victorious combat with the rest of Elise's fleet. Order was restored. New firing arcs were opened by the shifting of the fleet and its re-concentration, and the fire on the Pluton immediately reached the old levels of intensity. She did not last a half minute more before her hull was rent asunder in many places and the spinning, collapsing remnants of the great ship were blasted up to fragments, many larger than Star Destroyers themselves, joining the Guardian in her dark tomb.

“Clear out those Viscounts,” Elise ordered grimly, still sitting. “We'll cut our way through to meet the starfighters.” A pause, a moment: “Captain, take us out again—engage the enemy enpassant.” This was the most primitive of warfare, close-quarters fighting, 'follow the flagship' tactics; the level of jamming, and the nature of the trap, demanded nothing less. Conquérant shuddered around Admiral Kalar-Leben, shields dangerously on the verge of collapse, but she sat steadily and continued the series of orders: “All ships, follow me. Engage most closely!”

A ring of fire was formed around the Imperial starships. Starfighters were coming in from every direction. The squadron line forces under Elise's direct command charged into a group of nine Viscount-class Star Cruisers. Space was a blur of exchanged turbolaser shots. Shields collapsed and hulls were rent, as the great Executors tore through dozens of lighter ships, destroying every one of them, as they closed with their next most important enemies. Here they were held back, the Viscounts engaged closely with the aide of many lesser ships, and the starfighters continued to come on in waves—Hamner Davion had more than two million of them, after all, and he was sending all of them he could at the main force of Elise's that was now cut off.

But they had other things to worry about by this moment. Sule's fleet's own starfighters had been dispatched, after a delay on Pellaeon's part, but, granted, not a bad one. Then Pellaeon had pressed home his own fight. The great firepower of the fleet section under his command had dispersed the frigates by salvo-firing flak bursts across a vast areas to drive them back, and destroy many. The modified Milky Way ships had been crushed in the heaviest of fighting. There were only a dozen or so of them left, and they presented no hindrance as Pellaeon's fleet pushed through them to the scattered harassment of the remnants of the torpedo frigates to their aft quarter, not sufficient to matter any longer. Ahead, the fighters raced in to relieve Elise.

“Where are those fighters!?” Elise nearly screamed. The situation was impossibly bad; the shields of the Conquérant were down to less than 5% all over the hull, except for the special secondary shields of course, and the Despot was nearly as bad off. Indomptable had lost her shields entirely, and the only flicker of hope was when one of the Viscount-class ships before them had exploded from a lucky strike deep through shattered armour. A flare obscured the screen before anyone could answer her; a second of the Shockwave-class Star Cruisers had just exploded from this engagement.

The big eight-kilometer Mon Cals in front of them were fighting hard, two of them facing the concentration of the majority of the firepower of the fleet and suffering the hardest for it even as the rest were nearly untouched. The concentration of fire was showing in how rapidly those two ships were deteoriating, as fast as the Guardian had nearly, but in the meanwhile the Indomptable was being shattered...

“Six thousand more starfighters coming in!”

Elise looked to starboard and saw a great wave of rebel E-wings and K-wing bombers, the first salvoing a dozen or more proton torpedoes each—all of them directly at the Conquérant, as the K-wings followed them in with heavy shipkilling torpedoes of the design the Rebellion, with their fetish for starfighters, had developed and against which the Empire had never before faced. She simply waited. On the conning bridge below, her Flagcaptain ordered shields concentrated to starboard, as a thousand or more starfighters were swept away by the defensive fire of the Conquérant, vapourized outright by a sheet of flak bursts as the CIWS tore into the incoming warheads.

Enough hit to throw the Conquérant about in a wave of fire, Elise half-flung from her chair as the ship shuddered and shook about below her. The thrums continued through the hull, however, the guns continued to fire just as fast as before.

“Shields down!” Some officer who's name she could not then recall shouted.

Elise jabbed a finger down on the button to the conning bridge intercom hard enough to make it hurt. “Captain, get us closer! Another salvo like that will tear through our critical externals, I'd rather face the guns of those Star Cruisers.”

Grimly the Conquérant thrust forward. Despot was right alongside her, nearly as bad off, and indeed Sule drove the captain of the Despot on with an equal black fury, pounding through the shattered division of Viscounts ahead of them. The two Battlecruisers concentrated fire on one as a matter of course, and here they loosed their last missiles. Despot tore in dangerously close to the stricken Star Cruiser, firing the whole while even as the counterbattery fire from her mostly operational turbolasers struck back. Then a great spate of bolts ripped through the Viscount, and it too exploded in violence, the Despot so close that her remaining shields were collapsed by the fury of the blast against them.

Sule's voice crackled through to Elise. “Let's get out of here, we've opened a path,” he growled through the static. “Despot's sensors can detect the starfighters coming in ahead—definitely our's!”

“Captain, take us through the breach,” Elise ordered with another jab upon the intercom switch. All the ships of the squadrons had already been given the orders to follow the flagship; now the flagship had found the gap. At last, and to Elise's relief, the Despot went first and the Conquérant followed, their guns pounding at the remaining Viscounts from every direction.

Ahead was the awesome sight of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of starfighters attacking a brace of old MC-90s which had stubbornly stood between them and the Viscounts. The Star Cruisers were torn asunder by massed proton torpedo and heavy attack rocket fire. Through the plasma of the debris field came tens of thousands of Imperial starfighters in ragged, already rent-through formations, but there were tens of thousands more of those following in turn.

“Another Viscount!” Hallsburg shouted, ripping off his headphones as a wash of radiation feedback signaled the death to him before it even had to the sensor operators, one of whom shouted the same thing a heartbeat later. On the faces of the flagbridge crew was a mixture of hysterical glee and awe and dread all at once; but most of all, hope...

Then a brilliant flash, a second, a third, who knew, obscured the tumbling hull of the shattered and rent Viscount off to their port. A wave of radiation washed into the unshielded hull of the Conquérant, but of course the armour was more than capable of dealing with that as well, and it did, even as in the forward sectors of the dorsal hull there were melted sections of superstructure everywhere and venting plasma, possibly even fires being fed by the oxygen escaping from shattered sectors of the hull. But none of it, yet, had compromised their ability to fight..

Nobody was worried about that right now. “We've lost the Indomptable,” Elise's chief of staff said, glumly, grimly, shocked perhaps at the violent detonation of the ship, before its core could be shut down safely.

“Despot is under an intense fire forward!”

“Achille coming up in support!”

“Good for them!” Elise struck a fist upon her leg violently, and eyes wild with fire, watched the converging plot as the incoming starfighters reached point-blank range and unleashed a mass salvo on the second rank of Star Cruisers unleashing their own firepower into the Despot, at the exact same moment that the Achille commenced main battery fire against them.

Ten of the small Mon Cals seemed to be wiped away by that concentration of two fires against them, all at once, and then the path was clear, saving for the superheated cloud of irradiated plasma and debris. Through this raced the Despot, now free and clear, in an area where the ships of the Separatist fleet had been annihilated by the charge of Pellaeon's starfighters, Achille at her side. Conquérant followed, then Inexorable and the surviving Shockwaves.

With the jamming fields around them now partially cleared, Pellaeon appeared on the bridge of the Conquérant courtesy of holoprojection. “Elise,” he said grimly. “We've got to extract the rest of the fleet. They've taken down two Strident-class Star Cruisers but we've lost more than three thousand ships.”

“Of course. We'll form up on you as you come through. We'll swing through and take up a port-forward position on your forces to give us a few minutes to try and bring the shields up to some reasonable levels—both Conquérant and Despot have local area shields only at the moment, and those are scarcely holding.” Elise felt no particularly good feelings toward Pellaeon at the moment, in allowing himself to be distracted by relatively minor forces, but now was not the time for that. They had to get the fleet back into a cohesive formation and see if the battle could be sustained. Their losses were, well.. shaping up to be atrocious, but we've burned them back, too.

The arrival of Pellaeon's main body scattered through the shattered and sundered portion of Ackbar's old half of the fleet. Inaras couldn't keep the formation together as a second hammer of six Executors, this supported by three Superiours, struck through it, and it partially collapsed; but he was worried about other, nearly unengaged elements at the

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The arrival of Pellaeon's main body scattered through the shattered and sundered portion of Ackbar's old half of the fleet. Inaras couldn't keep the formation together as a second hammer of six Executors, this supported by three Superiours, struck through it, and it partially collapsed; but he was worried about other, nearly unengaged elements at the moment, anyway. These he was shifting to meet up with the other half of the fleet, and in doing so, cut off the rest of Elise's segment of the Imperial Starfleet which was in a hot close-quarters action that roiled around the position of the Lusankya in that fleet. Pellaeon saw it coming, and flung his fleet forward as Elise led her heavy ships around and then accelerated back into formation on the far side of the fleet, shield strength still dangerously low after such a short respite, only, and at once back into the action.

But, ahead, the trap had been closed. Nearly ten thousand ships cut off. Pellaeon saw it, and he knew that he had no choice. “General attack, all units,” he ordered. “Cut through them!”

Now the greatest fury of the battle before was exceeded; the greatest intensity of fire, redoubled. Thousands of ships clashed in a general close action as the Imperials sought to thrust their way through the blockade of the detached portion of the fleet, the massed starfighters attacking on the starboard flank, Elise's heavies on the port, Pellaeon's forces right into the centre. But they had been attrited and battered, and the forces facing them were fresh, with many more rearmed starfighters from the earlier attacks on Elise's fleet, cycled through the planet, coming up in support. A general battle raged along thousands of kilometers of space, thousands of ships within it firing upon each other in a great clash of arms at every quarter, with every battery which could be concentrated.

But Hamner's forces still had high stocks of warheads in their magazines. Sule's were expended. This now told, and so did the preparation of his forces and the superiour numbers of his starfighters. It was becoming dreadfully apparent that the blockade of the trapped ships could not be broken, those trapped ships being hammered apart by the Lusankya and the other Republican heavies around her, and with their destruction would come the total defeat of Sule's effort at this battle, and with it, his cause and his Imperial aspirations of hegemony over two galaxies. There was no avoiding it, and each minute, each thunderous exchange of broadsides, made that dreadfully clear.

The shields on the Conquérant and the Despot had collapsed again, and this time there would be no respite for those ships. Inexorable was not much better off; and Tonnant in Pellaeon's forces was showing the reduced effectiveness of her hasty repairs. The fighter bays were clogged to excess, and many of the civilian volunteers with their armed ships broke and fled at the intensity of the fire they now faced in trying to punch through Inaras' blockade. Many fighters were destroyed for want of fuel to manoeuvre, and warheads to salvo, and all of this had a cascading effect upon the ships which were fighting fit.

And yet... And yet... Just as at Königgrätz, a messenger had gone forth.




De Imperatoribus Galacticis will be continued in Chapter the Twenty-Seventh

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Chapter's to long for one post, so I just did a hack-splice with the ending.

[NRS Guardian]

First post! Damn that was good. Rebel on Empire goodness, reminds me of Endor, only bigger.

[darthdavid]

HOLY FUCK. That was sweet.