The Force Wills - Chapter 122

The scout ship emerged from hyper eighteen hours later on the extreme periphery of the Bith system.

All the cloaking systems flickered to green indicators in front of him and Hunter let out a breath of relief.

The passive scanners displayed that around the more commonly used emergence point was the biggest clanker fleet he had ever witnessed in person.

Entire squadrons of Munificents with clustered Recusants, all formed around a core of Lucrehulks. Each squadron of capital ships were spread out from each other, avoiding the threat of hyperspace bombing runs from catching the entire fleet at once. Fighter droids buzzed like swarming insects in precision patrols around each ship, adding to the overall point defense capability.  

Bith itself and their target was two million clicks beyond that at this time of year.

Commander Tano put the scout ship on autopilot, laying in a course that would swoop in from below the plane of the system and intercept the shipyard.

“All right, CT99, eleven minutes to target, final checks,” she ordered.

As much as all four members of the team had been ready for an hour prior to their hyperspace emergence, they obeyed the order. Feeling each mission critical piece of equipment on their harnesses, ammo checks, weapon checks and so on. Tech took the longest but eventually they were all satisfied.

The commander had also done the same and when she was also ready, she looked at each of them in turn.

“Understand this, there will be many bith workers in the AO. If we have to go hot and any bith raises a weapon against you, you take them out. There is no room for frak ups. I also wanted to make sure first, but now that we’re close enough… I can sense that General Durge is here.”

“Please tell me the plan is to kill him, commander,” Wrecker asked with excitement.

“As much as I want to make use of the opportunity, the overall war effort is actually better served with his brand of madness staying among the enemy ranks. Durge is a general in name only and acts as the mouthpiece and enforcer for the strategic minds behind the CIS campaign. If he engages us, we will fight to withdraw only, do not waste time and ammo by shooting him. Use your grenade launcher attachment on the DC17 with thermal detonators, but leave him to me otherwise.”

The commander turned her head as if listening to something only she could hear.

“In any event, if we do our jobs, he’ll just watch as things turn to chaos under his non-existent nose.”

An alarm resounded from the cockpit instrument panels and they could see through the forward transparisteel that the shipyard itself was now dominating the view, with just a sliver of Bith itself below them.

“That’s our queue, rear airlock, gentlemen.”

By the time they had clustered inside the small space, with their armor’s full vac seals engaged the scout ship had bled off the last of the relative velocity and it hovered a mere fifty meters from one of the lowest space stations of the overall shipyard complex.

Commander Tano took point and with a few taps on her armor’s vambrace the inner doors closed behind them.

“Three… two… one…”

The outer doors opened.

CT99 were launched out into space with the air screaming out into the void.

Hunter grimaced as he felt the acceleration tug at his guts, but focused on using his armor’s thrusters in the smallest possible bursts.

The short space hop was over within six seconds and they flung their arms forward to shed away the velocity, before they turned over to land on the station itself with their feet.

Their world was now a landscape of armored metal that stretched out for nearly two hundred meters, above was just an infinite expanse of black void that was dominated by the pink and purple orb of Bith, reflecting the light of the local star and drowning out the starlight completely.

“Double check life sign scramblers and mag boots,” Tano ordered.

Hunter and the rest of the team quickly gave thumbs up signals.

“Move out.”

For the next few minutes their world was reduced to only hearing their own breathing, putting one step in front of the other, making sure their boots properly adhered with each step and scanning the space around them visually for any ships that might actually spot them.

This infiltration point had been chosen to minimize chances of that, but it was still a concern.

Tano halted the squad at a maintenance airlock and gestured to Tech.

The clone stepped forward, knelt next to an exterior panel and got to work interfacing with local systems.

CT99 clustered around him, facing outward and kept up their guard.

It was barely ten seconds before the outer airlock doors opened and Hunter couldn’t help but feel impressed. Tech was usually quite fast slicing any system, but to achieve that with a totally unfamiliar hostile system so quickly…

“One moment, looping local security sensors and we’re good to go,” Tech declared, unplugging his interface spike.

The team knelt next to the open door, grabbing hold of the edge before switching off their mag boots and carefully pulling themselves into the station’s gravity field.

With the world now making more sense with a proper up and down, they clustered inside, whilst Tech closed the outer door and repressurised, using a wireless interface from his vambrace.

“We’re clear in the first corridor,” he confirmed.

Tano led the way as the inner door opened, before they scrambled to either side with DC17s raised, covering both sides of the corridor.

The station interior was distinctly alien to Hunter’s eyes. Bith seemed to have a proclivity for organic curves in their design, which seemed to specifically mimic the shape of their domed heads. The colors in use were either all wrong to his sensibilities or there were colors in use that normal human eyes couldn’t even see. The lighting level was also quite low and their helmets had to engage in night vision mode to make proper sense of their surroundings. There was also a constant dull tone resounding in the air that was just out of reach of his ears in hearing properly.

Commander Tano’s voice piped through the short range encrypted com.

“It’s as I suspected. Only communication we do is via subvocalized comms, keep your helmet seals. No sound may leak. One of the Bith security systems is based on sonic principles and once we move beyond this corridor, it’ll become too time consuming to keep subverting as we go. Engage your holo disguises.”

Hunter tapped the disc shaped device on his belt.

His world was briefly washed out in energetic blues and complex geometries, before it settled down into a new form and vanished from his own sight.

Where Commander Tano and CT99 had been, now there were five bith in the typical uniform of shipyard workers.

They were probably the tallest bith on the station right now, since the holodisguise had to compensate for their armor, but it would generally pass scrutiny as long as they didn’t linger too long in one place. Their weapons were secured on the latches on their lower backs, within the holofields before they began a purposeful walk, acting as a group of yard workers just going about their day.

“No quick movements, I will do the talking if required.”

The first target was a database on this space station that was housed on the upper levels.

They walked into the first turbolift and Hunter had to force himself to relax and act the part. They were in the security net now and anything suspicious would be flagged.

Tano tapped the lift controls and the doors closed.

It sped through the station for six floors before it slowed down and stopped, summoned by someone else.

The door opened again and a bith worker with a toolbelt walked into the lift with a tired air about him. His bulbous black eyes took them in without flinching and he walked in to tap a button on the controls for the 33rd floor.

The doors closed again and the lift hurtled upward.

The bith chittered something in their high pitched native language.

The Sinrich holomatrix could achieve many things to make someone blend in, but the ultra high frequency language of the bith was beyond its capabilities to actively translate.

Tano, as a togrutan, with hearing comparable to the bith, had no problems hearing everything that the worker wearing the light brown dockyard overalls said.

She replied with the aid of her own onboard droid. Hunter could only hear chittering that occasionally lowered itself into the human hearing range. Their HUDs were displaying a running translation.

“New here?” said the bith.

“Team just shipped in,” Tano replied.

“Yeah, the nozho CIS just keeps on demanding more and more labor from the homeworld to keep fixing their broken ships. You on half-pay too?”

Tano nodded, her disguise shifting her bith head into a scowl, or at least their version of it. “Yes, obviously the Urgrinox company hasn’t got enough credits to pay everyone it's hiring. But it’s either this, or the CIS starts outright enslaving us.”

The bith made a high pitch of agreement, “Bastards, our politicians are a bunch of puffer turtles for aligning us with them.”

“Careful where and to whom you say that, friend,” she cautioned.

The bith waved his hand dismissively, “Relax, we’ve been making sure that the turbolifts are safe places to talk. The CIS thinks we’re proudly flying the flag and we’re content to keep it that way, until the time is right.”

Hunter felt somewhat glad that the bith as a whole weren’t traitors and like many worlds before them, had only joined because of the threat of the CIS Navy hanging over their heads and marching droid armies through their cities. At this point in the war, only the deliberately ignorant still believed the CIS was there to ‘liberate’ people and worlds from ‘Republic oppression’. That veneer had been fully ripped off the CIS with dozens of examples across the galaxy. It was also clear that there was the beginnings of an underground resistance movement that at least had some organization.

“I like the sound of that,” Tano encouraged.

The bith turned his head to look at her properly, “You have an artificial voice?”

“Yes, an accident in my youth.”

“It’s very good, which brand is it?”

“Kamem,” she replied without skipping a beat.

“That explains it. Was thinking about installing a subcutaneous comlink… I just keep losing mine. Where are my manners? The name’s Hilal Then, senior systems technician.”

“Humde Phiro,” Tano clapped her hands together twice in a traditional bith greeting. “The lumps behind me are Jolow, Fekiam, Gice and the big one is Thippian.”

A big text appeared in their HUDs from M8 immediately.  “DON’T CLAP.”

Wrecker smoothly turned his attempt to do just that into a small stretch.

Hilal simply nodded at each of them. “Pleasure,” he said as the turbolift came to a stop. “This is my floor and welcome to the Mumun Shipyards.”

He smoothly walked out and the lift doors closed behind him.

Hunter could see Wrecker visibly deflate with a released tension. “Smoothly handled, commander. But what if he tries to reference our names?”

“Then he’ll find all of us in the database,” she said simply.

“Infiltration with holodisguises is powerful, but you still need to do the groundwork inside the systems of the place you’re infiltrating, already did that the moment I linked to the airlock systems,” Tech explained quickly.

A few seconds later the turbolift opened and they stepped out onto their destination floor.

Naturally, a critical database system like this wasn’t just housed in an unsecured room that anyone could just walk into.

Two B1 droids stood sentry outside a bulkhead door, which itself was access controlled with physical code cylinder access.

They paused at a nearby corner of the corridor, whilst Tech used his own remote slicing to loop the sensors facing the database room and adjoining spaces.

“Ready,” he announced.

The team walked towards the two sentry droids and Tano made a casual flick of her fingers.

Both droids began seizing and twitching; sparking as if they’d been hit with a droid popper.

Wrecker rushed forward, grabbing them around the spindly waists, lifting them for Tech to access.

Tech stabbed his logic probes from both arms into the hidden port on the lower integral backpack of the B1.

It took just moments before he nodded, “All right, both are subverted and they haven’t managed to send off any distress signals in the network.”

Wrecker dropped the droids to stand back on their feet, who just continued their now silent vigil guarding the door.

“Feels wrong just leaving them standing there,” he muttered.

Tech was already slicing the door and managed to crack it open after just a few seconds.

The team streamed inside, Wrecker, Hunter and Crosshair standing guard on either side and out of sight.

Commander Tano and Tech both headed in between the tall computer storage database towers that filled the room. In moments, they found their respective interface points near screen terminals and stabbed logic probes for their on-board droids to begin the work.

“Virus upload, twenty seconds,” reported Tech.

Hunter rested his hand near his vibroblade and focused on his EM sense. The residual activity of all the computers in the room was practically drowning the place in white noise, but he closed his mind’s eye to it, trying to filter it out and look for the two specific points that represented the B1 droids just outside the computer room.

He tried and tried… there was just so much garbage clouding his sense…

“Done, virus uploaded,” Tech reported, pulling out the spike.

Tano followed suit a few moments later, “All right gentlemen, the clock is ticking. We have twelve hours on the countdown before all hell breaks loose.”

8888888888888888888888888888888888

Resolute and her small state-of-the-art fleet entered high orbit over Eriadu.

Anakin glared at the scan holograph of the planet as it was surrounded by thousands of sensor returns, giving the effect of rings of light, which was actually the slowly growing system of debris from both destroyed Republic and CIS ships. Hundreds of ships of every size imaginable that could fit a tractor beam were scrambling all over and hardly seemed to be making a dent in the problem that was growing with every battle. Secondary collisions that created yet more collisions was just making the problem exponentially worse.

It was especially bad around the Eriadu shipyards and Anakin couldn’t help but be impressed. The pilot skill to traverse that mess without shields of sufficient strength was considerable and it was only something he would do unless he had no choice. As it was, the shipyards were using every tug available to pull in the debris for reclamation and patching the Republic ships already docked there.

Soon enough a safe corridor would be established for ships to come and go again, but there was no telling how long that would take at the moment.

These shipyards were slightly smaller than the Bith yards and the two planets had been in a constant state of technological competition even before the clone wars had thrown a dividing line on the galaxy.

“General Skywalker, incoming communication from Eriadu sector command,” reported Comms.

“Thank you, Comms.”

Anakin waved the holo away and with a gesture the head and upper torso of a familiar looking man in a GAR Naval uniform shimmered into existence.

The man promptly saluted, “General Skywalker, you are a most welcome sight. Brigadier Gideon Tarkin, at your service.”

Ah, probably the younger brother of Wilhuff then, he thought.

“Brigadier, as much as I wish we could exchange formal pleasantries between our commands, I don’t think we’ll have the time. You don’t look to be in good shape.”

“Your sensors are only telling you half the story, I’m afraid,” Tarkin shook his head. “It might look like we have two squadrons of Venators and Acclamators in the outer orbitals, but most of them are barely operating at half capacity. We’ve given priority to fixing the hulls and painting them nicely, but almost no ship doesn’t have wrecked, damaged or malfunctioning guns. We’re also low on fighters and pilots. The local Separatists have a lot of droid tri-fighters in their arsenal to throw at us.

“The forty ships currently stuck inside the shipyards are the worst off and range from Venators to cruisers. There are a dozen scheduled to finish repairs within a week, but we’re beginning to run low on certain critical minerals, lommite especially. That’s why you see us scavenging durasteel from the orbitals.”

Lommite was one of the primary constituent elements that led to durasteel, transparisteel and dura-armor. Scavenging for it was entirely possible, but melting down the scavenged materials from the debris fields was energy, time and labor intensive.

“Well, the 42nd Fleet’s starfighters will just have to plug the gaps you have in the meantime.”

“That would be appreciated. Please tell me, general, that you are just the vanguard?” 

“The 42nd is getting most of the new commissions coming out of Kuat until we’re up to strength, brigadier,” Anakin said vaguely. He would bet his lightsaber that CIS Intel was keeping a close eye on everything that Brigadier Tarkin did or said.

“That is a relief to hear, General.”

“Where is Captain Tarkin, if I may ask?”

Gideon chuckled, “Down on the planet, preventing Eriadu’s politicians from making a terrible mess, whilst also coordinating the industry with an iron fist in getting all our ships back into fighting shape. The biggest headache at the moment is our pilot situation. He wants to train and use Eriaduan pilots in the Z95s and ARCs, but the politicians scream bloody murder at the thought. It’s like they’re seeing their future chances for election evaporating in smoke.”

“They won’t have ‘elections’ worth the name if the Separatists overruns Eriadu,” Anakin pointed out.

“Something my elder brother has to constantly remind them of, but it's the rare politician that can see that far.”

“All right, where do you need my fleet at the moment, Brigadier?”

“While it would be nice to send you securing the outward hyper points and drawing a line in the sand at the Bith point, if the Separatists return in force, you’ll be stuck with Tarastra’s mass shadow at your back limiting your options.”

Tarastra was the system’s only gas giant, and the astronavigation during this time of year meant that the ideal Bith hyperspace point was just outside the large mass shadow that the planet projected.

Anakin brought up another holo showing a detailed astromap of Tarastra and its seven moons, along with the bright green point denoting the Bith hyper point just slightly outside of the gravitational sphere of influence.

“I see, so we concentrate our force around Eriadu.”

Gideon visibly combed his full head of dark hair in a weary gesture of annoyance. “I don’t like it either, but we risk defeat in detail if we put you out there.”

“You’re the sector commander, Brigadier, my command is at your disposal. Can I at least suggest we send out bomber squadrons into hyperspace to patrol the system’s outer reaches and hyper points?” 

“Luckily enough, fuel and ordinance is the one thing we have plenty of, permission granted.”

“I’ll have the 42nd begin our sorties immediately.”

“Good luck to you, General, because we’re going to need it.”

88888888888888888888888888888888  

Tech didn’t know if a pleasure filled afterlife awaited a clone who died, as many religions from many races promised their adherents. Yet it seemed that something like that had found him in the last few hours.

Breaking into system after system, slicing code after code, solving the problem, making his intentions manifest in reality. It was an utterly unique pleasure that came with every moment. The world of numbers, math and engineering was all around him, begging to be understood and in so doing he could tweak here and there to change it, coax it and bring about the beautiful result he wanted.

“Cipher to the 42nd integer, inverse, then square,” said ED-8G.

Tech saw what the droid intelligence was getting at, then with a few more inputs completed the sequence algorithm.

The system yielded to them and with a few taps, yet another virus was uploaded - this time into a local fusion reactor powering Shipyard Station 45G, located near the center of the sprawling Bith complex.

He had to admit that Commander Tano had been right about how much more smoothly and quickly things went when you had a droid intelligence supporting you. The notion of ‘wearing’ a droid was quite odd when one thought about it. For most of his life, Tech had trained to defeat nebulous ‘opponents’, then when the wars broke out and droids were the primary enemy on the battlefield, he began to develop a clear bias against them.

It was something rather foolish in hindsight. He had thought he was beyond ascribing to such illogical things or falling prey to them. Yet, Commander Tano had within seconds proved his folly when he had powered up his upgraded armor.

The team left the reactor room, idly waving at the few on-duty bith technicians.

At this point, they were playing the part of a roaming maintenance crew with impressive success.

There had been only one occasion so far where it looked like their cover would’ve been blown when a bith supervisor had directly asked Wrecker a question.

Commander Tano had answered in fluent bith and had definitely used her powers in the Force to influence the supervisor’s mind into accepting the answer and that there was nothing odd about them.

“All right, we’re still on schedule,” Tano declared. “Tech, by your count, how many droids have we subverted?”

“Thirty-three, commander.”

And wasn’t that a beautiful revelation.

When the commander had shown him the work of art that was the subversion program that could take any Separatist droid and twist their allegiance, it was just… sublime. There was no other word for it.

“Who wrote this commander?” he had asked.

“General Skywalker, a very old droid and I contributed a few lines of code here and there.”

It was just such a pity that network security protocols didn’t allow for the program to spread. It had to be done in person, droid for droid. Yet there were ways to overcome even that.

Commander Tano pretended to look at her chrono, “We are halfway done. The problem now comes to sabotaging some of the newly built enemy ships. Security is much tighter on board them. Tech has given us the access credentials but to sabotage main reactors on these things in a way that would not be detectable before it’s too late… is problematic. Therefore we’re going to approach it in an indirect fashion.”

A few turbolift rides later and a long walk through the access spine of the shipyards, found CT99 gaining access to a Munificent that currently had no name or even a number designation. It was still awaiting components for its spinal turbolaser and final certification checks.

It was almost a relief for Tech to be walking in the corridors of the enemy ship.

This was familiar and they had trained so many times in mock-ups and simulations of these corridors that he had often found himself dreaming of them.

More turbolift rides followed and finally they walked out onto the engineering decks of the Munificent.

Commander Tano led them with a clear purpose in her step, even though Tech wasn’t exactly sure what her intentions were, but given her words it was simple enough to deduce.

Her quarry became evident when a B1 droid walked into view. It wasn’t a combat model, its chassis painted with green striping, denoting a droid adjusted to engineering tasks. A twitch of her fingers resulted in the droid suddenly stopping, its ungainly hand manipulators clutching at its face.

“Ah! What's wrong with my eyes?” it wailed tinnily.

A few moments later its vision returned.

“Oh, what a relief, better get to maintenance.”

Tano flicked her fingers again, just as the droid was walking past them in the opposite direction.

“Go, Wrecker.”

The big clone tackled the droid and a multitude of things happened at once; a door next to the team opened, sparks crackled and fell from points in the ceiling above them and their target droid also spasmed as another discharge hit it from seemingly nowhere.

CT99 piled into the room; a small storage for emergency damage control tooling.

Hunter quickly closed the door behind them, whilst Wrecker dumped the twitching droid on the floor.

Knowing they were on the chrono now, Tech quickly knelt next to their quarry, turned it around and stabbed a logic probe into it.

“All right Tech, standard subversion, but we need to add some instructions for this one to carry out,” said Tano, kneeling on the other side and tapping quickly on her vambrace.

The commands she wanted flowed across his HUD and his eyes widened.

That was… brilliant!

His mind latched onto the idea with fervor and the code began flowing, his hand tapping rapidly on the holographic interface above his arm. ED-8G also took the code, iterated further and began using computer speed to apply it across every circuit of memory.   

Barely twenty seconds later, they were done and Tech pulled out the logic probe.

“Oh dear, I seem to be on the ground for some reason,” the B1 said abruptly, his head twitching against the smooth floor.

The commander shook her head and helped the droid to its feet. “B14, do you understand your instructions?”

“Yes, commander,” the newly named droid saluted. “I am to use my own logic probe to steadily create more of me among all the enemy droids in the engineering spaces. I will assimilate them all!”

“Quietly and subtly,” she reiterated strongly.

“Quietly and subtly, yes, commander!”

“Good, now off you go.”

“For the Republic!” the droid said, before walking out the room.

“There’s something very wrong with that,” Wrecker pulled a face, jerking a thumb in the direction of the droid.

“The time for fun will be when we make our exit, Wrecker, now come,” Tano ordered.

88888888888888888888888888888888888

Anakin sat back in the seat of his own Z-95 starfighter as the tunnel of hyperspace moved past his field of view at an almost unnaturally slow pace. 

It was nice to be back in the cockpit again, with Shadow squadron all around him and Wraith backing them up, even though Ahsoka wasn’t leading them.

“You think they’re all right?” R2 trilled from his slot behind the cockpit canopy.

“They’ll be fine, buddy. Ahsoka’s trained them well and you know-”

The emergency channel trilled an interruption.

Anakin checked the text signal from Brigadier Tarkin and his eyes widened. “R2, plot us an emergence near Tarastra, twenty thousand clicks z positive of the hyper point.”

“Plotting and synchronizing with the squadrons.”

“Shadown One to Shadow squadron and Wraith. We have one Recusant that just entered into the system and they’re launching fighters. Let’s go say hello.”

“Roger that, General.”

The swirling tunnel of hyperspace around them sped up significantly.

“Reversion in three…two… one…”

The tunnel broke apart and shattered into streaks before both squadrons burst into normal space exactly above the massive orange and dark brown marble of a gas giant.

From their point of view, the Recusant’s dorsal side was stretched out lengthwise and the Republic squadrons were swooping down from above.

Three squadrons of Vulture droids and two squadrons of tri-fighters had been released from the Recusant’s hull and were immediately spoiling for a fight, angling to meet them and accelerating to merge course and velocity.

“Shadow and Wraith, lock your missiles and fire!”

R2 already had four scanner locks ready on the enemy.

Anakin chose to focus his first volley on three tri-fighters, and jammed his thumb onto the launch button.

72 externally mounted concussion missiles leaped from the wings of the Z95s and drew long gaseous blue lines through space towards the enemy.

“Enemy lock on! Launching!” R2 squealed in warning.

110 enemy missiles streaked back in reply.

“Shadow, lock torpedoes and fire!”

48 anti-capital torpedoes joined the fray, racing in the wake of their much faster cousins.

Among them the dedicated EW torpedoes opened and unleashed chaos in all the scanner bands, supporting not only themselves but also the concussion missiles.

Anakin began swiftly pulsing his fighter’s thrusters and jinking along a random spiraling course.

“Four enemy missiles have locked on, jamming!” R2 announced.

He pulled back on his throttle, yawed the fighter and pushed forward to full combat acceleration that pushed him back into the seat.

One missile was jammed and sent completely off course into the nearby moon.

The second had been fooled by his maneuvers and would miss to port.

His finger pulled back on the trigger and streams of blaster bolts shot forward.

A single yawing motion slewed the blaster fire straight through the third and fourth missiles.

Two positive pings showed the computer reporting two dead tri-fighter droids from his own missiles, the third had been spoofed off course.

36 enemy fighters had either been destroyed or severely damaged, in exchange for 3 dead GAR fighters.

Anakin had to check his scopes just to confirm.

It was a stupendously impressive result and he could only ascribe it to both improvement in piloting and the further advancement of the Z95s EW systems along with dedicated and experienced R-series droids working them.

The Recusant was now sweeping space with point defense fire, desperately trying to scour the incoming torpedoes, which wasn’t made easy at all with the EW torpedoes complicating matters.

In one wave of flak and explosive plasma, 26 torpedoes were reduced to cinders and debris.

A second stream of defensive fire lanced outward killing 9 more.

The EW torpedoes had managed to do their job at the last moment though and 3 torpedoes slammed into the dorsal shields of the Recusant and detonated.

“Shadow One, torpedo salvo,” Anakin ordered again.

He jinked and twisted his fighter, blasting rapid fire cannon into deflection shots.

It was one stream of a storm of rapid fire that rained straight into the 24 surviving droid fighters, even as the enemy sent plasma bolts in return.

R2 did the job of firing off another two torpedoes, this time from the internal launcher.

42 torpedoes streaked into the void.

Six were immediately destroyed when Vulture droids were ordered to ram themselves into the torpedoes.

Their safeties prevented them from detonating so close to the squadron and the remaining weapons screamed through space. A battlespace that now suffered the Recusant also trying to jam their targeting.

The enemy ship lit up space with massed counterfire, desperately trying to stay alive.

To no avail, as first four torpedoes streaked through the defense under the EW umbrella to detonate, popping the dorsal shields.

Three more torpedoes went straight through and detonated against the hull.

The Recusant was snapped in half in a flash of white light, with brief flames snuffed out in the void, glowing debris and droids spilling out and spiraling outward.

Anakin pushed his fighter into a hard turn with the port thrusters before triggering a stream of fire to cut into an enemy tri-fighter that had been dogfighting him for nearly a full minute.

A Vulture droid took the moment to merge into his course and sent blasts that slammed into his rear deflectors before he could use starboard thrusters to dodge.

“All right, Shadow One to all wings, let’s unveil our surprise.”

“Roger, Shadow One.”

“R2, do me a favor and kill that annoyance.”

“With pleasure,” R2 declared.

A rear bay behind the astromech socket opened and a fully turreted dual blaster cannon popped up.

It tracked the Vulture swiftly and sent a stream of rapid bolts that chewed through the droid’s right nacelle, before it hit an internal fuel cell and exploded.

Space became even more alive with the characteristic blue blaster fire of the Z95s.

Every Vulture and Tri-fighter, still relying on the old tactic and logic of trying to stay behind the Z95 in its rear blind spot, died in plasmatic debris and fire.

Anakin’s eyes widened though as the Force screamed in warning and his prescience painted a very ugly picture.

“Shadow One to all wings! Microjump Omega! Omega! Omega!”

The nineteen survivors of Shadow and Wraith squadrons slewed their noses immediately on an escape vector, burned to a maximum overdrive of 3700Gs and…

Anakin slammed his hand down on the hyperdrive motivator.

The GAR fighters plunged into hyperspace for less than a second, but it was enough to displace them by a few million kilometers towards the system’s Oort Cloud.

Moments later a hyperspace signature appeared on the scanners and yet another Recusant screamed out of hyper in an exact position in the midst of where both GAR squadrons had been.

“Shadow One to Ghost Nine,” Anakin called the cloaked scout that had been acting as overwatch for the battle.

“Ghost Nine here, Shadow One.”

“Full passive scan of that Recusant, send it through to me on alternate encrypted frequency.”

“Roger Shadow One. Wait one.”

“Shadow One to all wings, form up on me. Hyperspace computation for home.”

Anakin released a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding and worked through the Force to calm down. That had been very close to absolute disaster. As much as the rear turret and the advancing EW capabilities on the Z95s had been a near game changer in the missile and gun duels against droid fighters, it seemed the CIS had also been cooking up something nasty.

“Scan complete, Shadow One. Streaming data to you now. Let me tell you it’s good you got out of there.”

A small holo popped up showing the scan data from the Recusant. 

It showed a ship that had changed its usual complement of 90 point defense flak plasma batteries and 12 dual light cannons, for over 120 concussion missile launchers. Each launcher had a nine cell box arrangement that clearly had feeding lines that led back into the main hull.   

Anakin didn’t have to imagine what 1080 concussion missiles launched at close range would do to any fighter squadron who was caught flatfooted. No amount of EW, no matter how good, could spoof that many potential target locks. He could also see this Recusant had dozens of extra scan dishes stippled along its flanks. They definitely had the computing and lock capacity to track eight squadrons worth of fighters simultaneously.

It was a dedicated long range anti-fighter and bomber platform. 

It sacrificed a lot of point defense to do it, but if it was paired with a standard Recusant to do anti-torpedo work.

He quickly keyed his comlink and got a direct line to Brigadier Tarkin.

“Eriadu Actual, this is Shadow One, we have a big problem.”

888888888888888888888888888888888

“Shabla.”

Wrecker heard the commander curse and from her tone and how she drew out the word, knew that something had gone wrong somewhere.

It was the eleventh hour of their infiltration and their cover hadn’t been blown, despite more close calls than Wrecker could count on his hands. Somehow the commander knew just where and when to go and what to do, to a degree that was completely beyond any form of military pre-planning that he had studied on Kamino.

He could only conclude that this was more Jedi craziness at work.

Any other commando unit would’ve been either dead, captured or fighting the entire shipyard at this point.

Not CT99, it seemed.

“Tech, ED, M8, collate all data. How many assimilated droids do we have on the docked Recusants at the moment?”

“79 spread across five ships,” Tech answered after a few moments.

The commander turned the team left at the next junction of Space Dock 94 Alpha in the upper quadrant of the shipyards.

She led them into another damage control room after blinding the surveillance sensors with her Jedi trickery. Then gathered the team around her, bringing up a holo from her left vambrace that showed the live sensor feed from their cloaked scout.

“There are a total of nine brand new Recusants docked, five have subverted droids. We don’t have the time to subvert more than two more before our timer runs out. These ships…” she grabbed at the holo, zooming into a single ship, which was berthed in the spider-like arms wrapping around the hull. “Are new models which can effectively wipe out fighter squadrons from space with massed concussion missile fire.”

“So how are we going to destroy them?” asked Wrecker eagerly.

“Tech, send the signal to our droids on those Recusants. They’re to begin mass assimilation, prioritize the B2s for striking power, the time for subtlety is over. I want those ships under our control now.”

Tech nodded, his hand rapidly tapped on his own vambrace. “Signal sent.”

“Their first task is to spoof sensor feeds and isolate the ships, so no Separatist reinforcement can attempt to retake it.”

“Instructions sent.”

“Good, as for what our new task is. We’re going to hijack a ship.”

As Wrecker listened further to the plan he couldn’t help the huge smile that blossomed on his face.

888888888888888888888888888888888888

It wasn’t far, thankfully, but given that this ship was one of major supply deliverers for the entire shipyard, it was actually easier to infiltrate.

It had a constant flow of bith and droids coming and going. CT99 picked a group of bith walking back on the ship empty handed to blend in.

Crosshair felt his fingers twitch and he wanted nothing more than to be finally unleashed on all the enemies around him. He understood the patience of waiting for that perfect shot, but after eleven constant hours being on edge as they conducted sabotage ops, he was more than ready to cut loose.

He could feel the same tension in his… teammates.

There was an energy in their body language that was being translated through the holo disguises, the pace of their walking and their clenching fists. The trigger had actually already been pulled and the bolt was zipping through the air to the target.

Each step towards the engineering section of the ship felt like it was taking forever. His eyes found every droid and bith they passed in the hallways - rehearsing the best ways to kill.

When they finally found a droid to begin the process, it was so old hat by now, that it was almost a surprise that it was over.

Then, in a break from the routine, they found a B2, subverted it and sent it to support the first subverted B1.

They didn’t have the time to rely on a steady exponential growth, so they found another B1 and repeated the process.

Only when they had twenty B1s and ten B2s, did the commander nod with satisfaction.

“That’s enough, we head to the bridge now.”

They were in the turbolift when Commander Tano’s body stiffened slightly. “All right, general alert just triggered. An unassimilated droid managed to escape from a Recusant.”

The lights in the turbolift tinted red and flashed.

“Arm yourselves,” Tano said flatly, bringing her lightsabers to hand. “We can’t afford prisoners. Every droid, bith or organic on this bridge must be neutralized.”

Crosshair reached behind his back and brought his Firepuncher to hand. It was already in carbine mode so he simply charged it and switched the safety off.

The DC17m’s began humming in the turbolift as they were armed and tucked into shoulders, ready to fire.

The turbolift hissed to a stop and the doors parted.

Tano stepped forward first.

Two B2-ACMs that stood guard on either side, were lifted into the air helplessly under her power, before her lightsabers slashed, leaving four pieces of droid hovering in the air.

Those pieces shot across the expansive bridge of the Lucrehulk like missiles and crushed three B1s who were seated in various stations and knocked the tactical droid away from the command chair.

She blurred through the space and beheaded the neimoidian captain of the ship, whilst lifting the tac droid into the air, whose head was twitching with sparks.

Crosshair and Hunter rushed out with Tech and Wrecker hot on their heels.

He drew a bead and fired, slapping the head off another B1, traversed his aim and headshot a bith at another crew station.

More rapid blasts followed, droids and bith collapsing to the floor and in less than six seconds from first breach, it was over.

Commander Tano gestured with her hands around the bridge.

Bulkhead doors slammed shut, turbolift doors closed and the various dead bodies around the room were ripped away from their consoles.

“Tech, front and center, we need the codes off this tac droid, hurry!”

She dropped the droid onto the floor, kneeling next to it, her hand hovering in a claw-like fashion over its back.

Crosshair checked each droid and body for life.

Finding none he found a spot that would give him a clean line of fire on the three main bridge entrances.

Commander Tano and Tech both had their armor’s logic probes stabbed into the tac droid at this point, whilst Hunter and Wrecker stood guard near the entrances.

“Almost… got it…”

“Done! Disseminate the subversion,” snapped Tano.

“Uploading… almost there… go… go… work,” gasped Tech as his fingers blurred on a small holo interface.

“Frakking got it!” Tano declared in vicious triumph. They pulled their logic probes and she turned the tac droid over and ordered . “Broadcast evac notice for all organic personnel!”

“Affirmative, master,” declared the tac droid.

“Order all droid crew into the ship and seal off all entrances, bridge is off limits.”

“Affirmative.”

She jumped and rushed over to a station near the front of the bridge and began working the controls. “Wrecker, please do the honors.”

“With pleasure, commander.”

The big clone pulled out a handheld detonator, flicked the arming switch and squeezed.

Multiple flashes of light lit the bridge from the forward transparisteel and Crosshair couldn’t help but glance outside.

The Lucrehulk’s position in the upper parts of the shipyard complex meant there was little they could actually see of what was happening below. Commander Tano had that problem covered and interfaced her armor into the console, the large forward screen blossomed with a giant holo.

It showed the view from their cloaked scout and Crosshair smirked with satisfaction.

The shipyard complex was now unraveling - multiple space stations were drifting into brand new orbits from the impetus given by the fusion reactor blasts and precise thruster firings. Connecting struts were snapping and entire yards with ships still inside them were drifting slowly into space, technically out of control.

He watched as two unpowered Munificents slowly crashed into one another.

All over the shipyard complex similar stories were happening; Hardcell and Gozanti cruisers collided, some even exploded as they had built up enough velocity to smash their hulls to scrap.

Wrecker spoke in awe for CT99 in the next moment.

“Now that is a pretty sight.”

8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888

A/N: Boom. Hope you enjoyed the fireworks. Have a stupendous weekend and stay awesome folks.