Task Group Hunter, Bridge of the Right To Rule
"Courses plotted and laid in," finally said the chief navigator, and not a moment too soon either. The Alliance Battle group around them was pounding the durasteel out of them, and literally at that, with enemy bombers swarming the Merciless, Indomitable being surrounded by capital ships, and all three destroyers dealing with the remains of the original enemy force.
"All ships, prepare to jump into light speed," spoke the Admiral.
"Sir, enemy frigate screen advancing across our bows!" called out the sensors officer.
The Admiral's eyes strayed between the viewport that kept darkening as turbolaser shots struck the failing bridge deflector shield and the sensor screen by his command chair. Indeed, the remaining Nebulon class Frigates arced across their bows, cutting off three of their avenues of escape, that being directly ahead, to the port, and to the starboard. Fortunately, the enemy only had enough frigates to cover the direct ahead approach, which left them with a few options thanks to the 3D nature of space combat.
Normally they could've blasted their way through the frigates with relative ease, but the Indomitable and Right to Rule had redirected all the power from their weapons into their shields, while Merciless's weapons had been largely picked off in star fighter strafing runs. Their star fighter screen...the Admiral saw only one active TIE star fighter on the board, and that might be a glitch on the screen. The Destroyers had reported between them a total of forty star fighters recovered, many of them damaged to some degree or another, and the gunships he knew would chew any up that tried to re-launch.
Suprisingly though, the new enemies had focused their attacks on only Merciless and Indomitable, leaving his flagship untouched. The Admiral belatedly realised that their enemies goal was to quickly knock out two Destroyers, rather then take on all three before the withdrawal was made. Already the power had been sent from the shields back into the weaponry emplacements, which had been largley untouched.
That left a quick vector change to one of the other two courses as the only option, apart from surrendering and/or scuttling the ships, something he would never do under any circumstances. He examined the two courses available to him. The first was an up trim of fifteen degrees, the latter to the same degree, but down trim instead. Next, he examined the positions of the ships. Merciless might ram a star fighter or two on her way out, but she would survive, the same being said for Right to Rule. Indomitable was the tricky one, but her course out of the system and the Rebel's advance into the system should lend itself to her being clear of the enemy vessels around her, including that large Mon Calamari Star Cruiser.
So, which course to take? The Admiral finally decided on the up trim course, since there was a slight chance that the Destroyers Bridge Towers would ram with the Frigate's downwards protruding superstructure, especially if they tried to stay ahead of the Destroyers.
By the time he had decided, more enemy ships had maneuvered ahead of Indomitable. However, these executed a quick attack run on the Destroyer, inflicting more damage but leaving her bows once again covered only by the frigates. The Admiral realised that his flagship would have to cover the withdrawal of his companion vessels.
"Guns, target the enemy Frigates ahead of Indomitable and Merciless with everything you can bring to bear. We might not be able to kill them, but we can at least put a hurting on their manuevering systems," ordered the Admiral. As he was preparing to send a message for the jump order to the companion vessels, salvoes of fire lanced out from the Right to Rule, blasting through the already weakened shields of the Escort Frigates. The one covering Indomitable had some damage to her engines, while the second Frigate covering Merciless was damaged. This hopefully left the door open for the Imperial ships to escape.
"All ships up trim fifteen degrees and execute immediate jump into hyperspace," ordered the Admiral. Right to Rule came about accordingly and accelerated into hyperspace, striking no star fighters and safely clearing the remains of the enemy Frigate screen by a comfortable margin. Merciless, on the other hand, had never rerouted her weaponry power into her shields, subsequently taking more damage then the other two Destroyers.
When she tried to jump into hyperspace, what can only be assumed to be her reactor core overloaded and went critical, a massive explosion tearing the Destroyer apart and hurling debris in all directions. The explosion was visible as an eclipse of Sullust to the vessels in Task Force Apex, which had just approached the jump point for their exit into hyperspace. A quick look at his screens confirmed to Admiral Kraken of the Merciless's demise. Ironically, the Destroyer had been named for a previous vessel that had died in another big explosion, Admiral Motti's flagship that had been docked with Death Star I when she went up.
A hailstorm of debris ranging in size from nuts and bolts to Lambda class Shuttles expanded outwards at high speed, giving the Rebel star fighters that had been the agents of Merciless's demise little time to react. A score were destroyed instantly, with many more suffering damage or some type or another, a few which were heavily damaged giving time for their pilots to go EV before they too blew up. Shields flickered on the capital ships nearest to the explosion as they too were hit by debris. Apart from the front twenty five meters of the bow, the biggest piece of debris to be found afterwards would be a small five meter section, too blackened and bent to be identified for what it once was.
Although no one would ever know for sure what exactly caused the demise of the Merciless, common speculation would be that the cooling stations for her reactor had been damaged, either by concussion missiles or proton torpedoes fired into the Destroyer's docking bays. The core overheated to dangerous temperatures. A warning should have been issued to the Captain after the final maneuver, but perhaps the engineers were all dead and the automated systems disabled, the latter perhaps by ion cannon fire from the B-wings and Y-wings. Either that or the Captain simply ignored the warnings in favor of getting out of the system. Whatever the case, the power draw for the hyper drives was the final straw that sent the reactor critical, causing the explosion that destroyed the ship and killed all of her twenty seven thousand crew and one thousand miscellaneous personnel. At least, that's one theory, although the one that might become the most widely accepted one over time.
Indomitable too lay where she was. In her final moments, a hail of torpedoes had struck her bridge tower, destroying it and killing her commanding officer before he could either issue the jump order or it could be carried out. The most senior surviving officer was a Lieutenant by the time the secondary bridge was brought online, and he found himself overwhelmed by the need to protect the twenty five thousand personnel under his command who were rapidly dying. He transmitted a furious pleading of surrender while deactivating his ship's weaponry, propulsion, and shields.
Task Group Apex, Bridge of the Suppressor
Three Destroyers had now been lost, one going down with all hands, another surrendering. Still within acceptable limits for the Operational Plan, but only seventy five percent of Sullust's planetary industries and an estimated fifty percent of her ground based population had been wiped out by the bombardment, when the plan called for one hundred on both counts. Looking at it from that perspective, this battle becomes at best a draw, and at worst a defeat, although it certainly didn't feel like one.
The green glow from turbolaser discharges illuminated the bridge, bringing Park's attention away from the sensor screen and his own musings and to the forward viewport, where the Suppressor was now firing on the rear of one of the Dauntless class Cruisers. The eleven Destroyers passed through the enemy formation at a high rate of speed, firing massive broadsides upon the two remaining Heavy Cruisers that wiped them out, one of the Dauntless class ships exploding violently, the other drifting, crippled and becoming abandoned soon judging by the escape pods jettisoning away.
Park made a quick mental calculation as he again studied the sensors board. There were a number of Imperial escape pods that couldn't be recovered by the destroyers on their outbound vectors. Although the Rebels might not be inclined to recover the pods for their prisoners after what the Empire had done here, Park suspected further could be done to seal the deal and prevent any interrogations of Imperial survivors.
"Captain, order the guns to refocus their fire on the Alliance escape pods," ordered Vladimir. Without pausing to wonder why this order was given, the captain carried out his duty. In a mere moment’s time, individual batteries and cannon began targeting the escape pods, which were flying in very predictable courses. Pods met turbolaser bolts and poofed into nothingness, their occupants instantly vaporized. Although the smaller individual pods were hard to target, the larger crew pods were almost all destroyed.
'Let's see the Alliance recover our escape pods now,' thought the Admiral with a grin on his face once again. 'Like shooting Verpines in a hive nest' the analogy brought a chuckle to Vladimir's lips, a chuckle that quickly died when he saw the expression on the Captain's face when he briefly turned to glance at Park.
In the meantime, the Destroyers had passed through the engagement zone and linked up with the surviving Dreadnoughts, Strike Cruisers, and Carrack Cruisers. Park's attention turned again to the sensor screens. With the successful withdrawal of all three Destroyers from Task Group Terror, although they had taken more damage then originally predicted, Alliance forces were converging in his direction from three angles of approach, including a group that had three big ovoid Dreadnoughts whom sensors gave a threat level of three Mark II Imperial Star Destroyers apiece, and the other two groups which each included a large and menacing Mon Calamari Star Cruiser. Star fighters were harassing his ships from the Dreadnought group and the other group in his wake which had attempted to rescue the Sullustian defenders, but their attempts had been for naught. It was all too little, too late for the Alliance fleets now in the system.
Admiral Vladimir Park Kraken's maniacal laugh seemed to trail behind him as the Imperial Fleet accelerated into hyperspace, leaving behind them a devastated world and a planetary system full of debris, death, and suffering. Operation Shadow Strike had come to an end, the Imperial Victory inflicting a severe defeat on the Alliance that it would take a long time to recover from.
Aboard the Velvet Sunderer
The crippled Star Destroyer's countdown timer was nearing the end reach. Just as the timer reached single digits, a series of explosions from stores of tibanna gas tore through the heart of the vessel. Among the extensive damage done by this explosion, a conduit connecting various systems on the bridge to the other parts of the vessel was pierced by shrapnel, cutting through scores of wiring. When the timer reached zero, the signal was sent to detonate the core and remaining combustibles, but it never reached the intended systems, leaving a heavily damaged and crippled Star Destroyer floating in orbit around Sullust.
The End
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