20 Storm of Blood and Steel [Continued]

Part 2

Task Force "Hammer", CIS blockade of Ryloth

As per their orders, the Republic bombers finished their attack run and headed towards the Command ship. That would be their last target, and after it was silenced, they would retreat to hyperspace.

The V-19's launched from the three carriers that were attacking the blockading fleet, were doing their best to tie up the Vultures, so that the bombers could execute one last attack before the thousands of enemy fighters could cut them to pieces.

It worked. Mostly. The Y-Wings, which had targeted frigates close to the CIS heavy hitters, barely managed to reach the command ship before a wave of Droid fighters jumped them. The clone pilots and their gunners braved the fire and death spat from the vengeful Vultures and defensive weaponry of the battleships.

From the two hundred and nine bombers, one hundred seventy five lived long enough to hit the Command ship. They unloaded their remaining torpedoes at the huge craft and overflew its superstructure with guns blazing.

Hundred and three Y-Wings survived to try escaping to hyperspace.

The Republic bombers which originally attacked frigates further away from the battleships, fought valiantly but were unable to reach the battle-wagons. Nearly two thousand Vultures swarmed them.

The only silver lining was that by diverting those Droid Fighters, some of the surviving Torrents were allowed to flee.

Five hundred and twenty Y-Wings as well as four hundred and forty V-19 attacked the CIS battle line, decimating it. They also took with them nine hundred fifty nine Vultures.

Forty one bombers and sixty seven fighters survived long enough to retreat.

=RK=

Luckrehulk Command Ship Procurer, CIS blockade over Ryloth

Captain Mar Tuuk glared balefully at the information fed into his data goggles. He kriffed up. He'd made one bad call. One flawed assumption, and it was going to cost him his fleet. Oh, he would keep the Republic from achieving their objective, but that was no comfort for him. It might save his carrier but he'll be lucky to ride a desk until the end of the war.

He ordered two thirds of his escorting fighters towards those damn bombers, but he knew it would be largely futile. This was a damn trap and he had fallen into it! It was his kriffing fault for assuming that those Y-Wings were still on board of their motherships! He knew that the Republic small-craft had hyperdrives, damn it!

But to execute such a precise tactical jump! It was risky, kriffing suicidal even! Or would have been...

He shook his head in a grudging admiration. It all made sense!

Those three escort carriers were not sacrificed in vain! They would soon die, but the damage was already done. They had scanned his fleet and the space surrounding it, and sent jump coordinates to the bombers.

Now it was time for the hammer to fall. In quick succession, Tuuk's frigates went off the grid.

Now it was all over but the moping up. The bombers would soon be done for and he'll watch how his Vultures tear apart the Republic fleet...

"Sir! The bombers are coming our way!" exclaimed one of the droids.

"They won't make... it..." stuttered the Captain, before he saw one of the battleships flanking his Command ship, being torn in two when a Republic carrier rammed it! Were those people insane?!

Mar frantically started struggling with the security harness on his chair. He had to strap himself in before it was too late!

The behemoth that was the Procurer shuddered as wave after wave of Y-Wings tore into the battleship's hull. She lurched to the port as her armor was breached, and whole wings of bombers unleashed hell into the chink in her defenses.

The light and data feeds abruptly cut off, causing the Captain to bathe in cold sweat. This was the longest minute in his life.

When the onslaught ended, Tuuk was left in a drifting wreck, which had no communication with the outside world. Only the emergency power was on, bathing the bridge in sinister red light.

Mar looked around, and saw that the B1 droid crew was largely intact and milling around their dark consoles.

"Orders, Captain?" asked the yellow painted droid commander.

"All organic personnel are to abandon ship." snapped Tuuk, while trying to get out of his harness. He no longer felt confident in the outcome. He thought for a moment how long it would take him to reach an intact escape pod. "Give that order in sixty seconds." he growled at the poor droid.

Tuuk had to get off the crippled ship before the Republic battle line managed to finish it off.

=RK=

Blue Squadron, Near Task Force "Retribution"

Ahsoka sent her Interceptor into a spin, desperately trying to evade the fire of dozens, perhaps hundreds, enemy fighters. Her gloved thumb was clamped on the trigger for her Delta 7's cannons, which were sending a stream of blue death at the droids trying to kill her and her men.

Her blasterfire blew up a Droid fighter, then a second and a third in quick succession. Yet for every one she downed, two more were taking its place. Behind Ahsoka, her squadron was flying in close formation, sending missiles and laser bolts at the offending Vultures.

It was a scene repeating itself dozens of times, all along the front of the oncoming swarm.

The Torrents took first blood by salvoing close to two thousand missiles at the armada of enemy machines. Significant parts were shot down by a wall of crimson fire, others homed in on the same fighter. Many detonated prematurely when striking fragments of already destroyed Vultures.

Despite all that, the clone pilots reaped an impressive harvest! One thousand one hundred thirty three enemy fighters lit up the eternal night of space with their funeral pyres.

That was the easy part, something everyone knew. After the first missile volley, the Vultures were upon them. The skirmish was short and brutal.

Fifteen seconds. That's all it took for the droid formation to pass through the Republic fighters trying to stop them. Men of flesh and blood met with beings of cold logic, electronics and steel, in a whirlwind of fire and death.

After becoming an Ace once today, Ahsoka blew up her sixth Vulture for the battle, starting a second tally. She aimed at the seventh and pressed the trigger, before banking up in a futile attempt to evade the enemy. The Force was screaming warnings, and she could feel where the danger laid. The padawan trusted her instincts, weaving her Interceptor between lines of scarlet laser fire, yet it was not enough.

In a perfect moment of clarity, Ahsoka knew that the Jedi's foresight could be as much curse as a blessing. She could see in her mind where the droids' blasterfire would go. Her reflexes were better than even those of the machines she was facing.

Her squadron tried to protect her. They flew at the enemies attacking their leader and managed to buy her a few more seconds. One after another, the members of Blue Squadron perished, turned to space dust as their fighters became funeral pyres.

First to go was Sev, after smashing two more Vultures. His brothers followed suit in the span of moments until only Ax remained. He launched his last two missiles, then proceeded to blast another Droid fighter with his cannons.

With his last breath, he took out one final enemy, when his V-19 annihilated both itself and the Vulture it struck headlong.

She felt them all die in the Force. Even the two who were fast enough to eject in time, were extinguished moment later. Their loss hit her hard, causing her to feel almost physical pain. It broke her concentration for a moment. Her deep connection with the Force wavered and she missed the last opportunity to evade the incoming enemy fire.

After that, her supernatural reflexes were irrelevant. Her Delta 7, simply wasn't agile enough to evade all the fire directed at her. Despite all that, the sacrifice of her squadron meant everything. She found herself into an impossible situation for only few seconds, before the CIS fighters moved away. In that brief slice of time, Ahsoka became the target of a hundred or so machines.

The right wing of her fighter shattered as if it was made of glass. Its nose was speared by a long line of laser bolts, which blew huge chunks of armor and delicate machinery away. It was a small miracle that the fighter didn't explode up there and then.

In a desperate bid for survival, Ahsoka used the force to eject. She knew that her hands wouldn't be fast enough.

She was slammed back into her pilot seat as it was blown away from her dying ride. She channeled all desperation in fueling her telekinetic strength to guide the chair she was strapped to around a hail of laser bolts. Then she pushed herself away from being splattered all over the space frame of a Vulture which flew past her face.

Below her, the mortally wounded Delta 7 exploded, followed by a nearby Droid Fighter. She was touched by the edge of the blast-wave, but mercifully enough, no shrapnel punctured her suit. Before loosing consciousness, she thanked the Force and Delkatar for the sealed suit he had insisted she wear during the battle.

=RK=

Anakin cursed when he felt Ahsoka's presence dimming. She was knocked out and hurt, however he could do nothing to help her right now. He had to suppress an un-Jedi like rush of fury, which threatened to engulf him. He knew that loosing it here and now was likely to get him killed.

Skywalker snarled and blew another enemy fighter which had the unfortunate luck of passing in front of his interceptor. Those kriffing machines had hurt his apprentice! His friend!

He remembered what happened in the Senate. Instead of continuing his attempt to suppress his fury, he let it flow through him, fueling the Force, which he used to further enhance his reflexes.

He pulled off such a sharp turn that the frame of his Delta 7 groaned in protest, but he ignored it and lined up in his sights a squadron of Droid fighters. His laser cannons tore through the offending machines, and he felt a fierce satisfaction of his small victory.

When the short explosion of the last one cleared away, Anakin searched for another target but found none.

The Vultures were speeding away, continuing their self-destructive charge at the fleet. He scowled at the machines and raced after them, followed by the remaining Republic fighters.

The short skirmish saw the destruction of six hundred eighty six Torrents and two thousand five hundred forty seven Vultures.

Anakin wasn't aware of those numbers, but that was irrelevant, There were too many of the kriffing machines remaining, and all his channeled anger wouldn't make his fighter go fast enough.

=RK=

General Veil's Custom Delta 7B, Task Force "Retribution"

By the time I'd made my way to the hangar and launched, most of the Vultures attacking the fleet had either rammed or were blasted to pieces.

That didn't stop me from claiming a few kills. I pounced on a squadron of the Droid fighters, which were making beelines to the remains of the Requiem's command towers. I smiled under my helmet at the way my Interceptor was handling, when I executed a sharp turn and found myself at the tail of the enemy formation.

Few short bursts later and the Vultures were turned into a bunch of disintegrating wrecks. Most of them blew up, raining cooling debris at the cruiser, with only one remaining sufficiently intact to slam in the heavy upper armor. Its only effect was to leave a small dent.

The fighters of this era were nice pieces of equipment. I especially liked my new custom ride, however that didn't stop them feel somewhat lackluster. Here I was, four thousand years in the future, and the standard small craft of both sides didn't even have shields! To be honest I expected so much more! The fact that I could just jump in any given bird of this era and fly without any additional training was telling. Where was the progress?! The amazing new equipment one would expect?!

I helped the CSP to mop up the remaining Vultures and had them reform between the capital ships and the escorts.

While we were dealing with the enemy reserves and reforming after that, the main attack had passed through the fighter screen commanded by Skywalker and was heading our way. Hope that my preparations were sufficient and wait to play my last card. I had kept the escort ships which should have been deployed with my own reserve back.

Six additional Carrack Light Cruisers and ten CR90 Corvettes waited my signal to join the defense line. It won't be long now. The swarm of enemy fighters was just entering into range of my other surprise...

It all began few months ago, when the three Acclamators under my command were being refitted into anti-fighter role. I disagreed with the Navy engineers. They believed that gutting half the heavy cannons of the Assault ships and replacing them with light laser guns would be enough. I beg to differ with such a statement. My problem was that even if all other weaponry was replaced with flak guns it still wouldn't be enough. Not for dealing with the swarms I believed the enemy could deploy if pressed. Besides such a radical refit would need a major redesign of the cruiser's power distribution network, which would place them in dock for a lot longer that I could afford.

That led me to visit the R&D department of the Navy, where I checked some of the concept for dealing with enemy fighters, which were not approved by the brass for one reason or another.

One of the concepts I came through with was something that would be familiar to the wet navies of my Earth, which was few dimensions away. It was to stuff Acclamators or Venators with racks of VLC tubes, advanced sensors and shoot a lot of missiles at the enemy. It would turn the ships in something akin to an Aegis cruiser's big brother. While the heart of the system – the fire control computers and those processing all the data needed to defeat the enemy ECM were deep within the hull of the cruiser, the additional sensor arrays and the box missile launchers were bolted on the hull.

The downside was that the additional sensors and the anti-fighter missiles were relatively expensive. Just one missile cost as much as the combat load of a V-19. Combine that with the fact that so far the CIS were not deploying even close to the maximum fighter strength their ships could carry (I blamed that on Palpy's meddling), and it made clear why the system was not deployed. Damn, there were a few prototypes but no one seemed interested at mounting them on ships.

That changed when the refit of the Dauntless, Honor and Warspite began. It took a lot of bargaining to have the system, which was called Guardian, installed and supplied with missiles. I had to give credit to the creators of the system, though a success would see it build and installed through the fleet, which will make the bastards filthy rich. Not to mention that until the end of the war those folks wouldn't have any problems with getting their new prototypes tested.

Now it was time to put it to the test. My one regret was that each of my three Assault Ships had only a thousand missiles.

When the Vultures entered range, it seemed that the front of the Acclamators disintegrated. Their forward third disappeared behind the violet glare of hundreds of engines.

The Guardian Prototypes could guide two hundred missiles each at separate targets. Even better, they could burn through the ECM carried by the Droid Fighters at relatively long range. However, the missiles we had at this time were not designed for the role. They were relatively dumb. Even with a combination of the ship's massive targeting systems and the Guardian designed for defeating fighter ECM as well as tracking such an agile targets, the success rate was average.

However, not everything was going our way. In a standard engagement, the Guardian would have much longer time to track the targets and shoot them down. That was a big problem because the current iteration of the system had trouble tracking close targets. It simply wasn't designed for that. With the enemy coming in under constant acceleration...

By the time the Vultures were too close to make the missile strikes no longer effective, each Acclamator had fired half their magazines at the coming swarm. Most of those missiles actually hit their targets, creating the illusion of a fire wall heading our way.

Over a thousand Vultures were claimed by the Guardian system, making it a favorite of mine. If I had anything to say about it, which I did, there would be a lot of money thrown into producing and improving it.

That was not the end of the Vulture's troubles. It was time for them to run through the Escorts gauntlet.

First to open fire were the Carrack's, followed by the Arquitens and CR90's. The cold night of space was light up by green and blue laser show and the Acclamators promptly added their own gunfire to the spectacle.

Fighters died by the scores, yet the machines came at us regardless. Some of the droids calculated that it would be prudent to reduce the amount of incoming fire and redirected their flight path at the escorts.

A Carrack staggered under two kamikaze impact, the combination of detonating fuel cells and sheer kinetic impact taking their due. It fell out of formation with its gun silenced but mostly intact thanks to its highly compartmentalized interior. One of her sister ships was not so lucky. She was shattered when a whole squadron hit her in the space of three seconds. Even her over-engineered structure couldn't survive such abuse. The Light Cruiser disappeared in a bright explosion.

There were no survivors, and she wouldn't be the last to fall this day. An Arquitens followed into oblivion, then another.

Corvettes were left as drifting hulk after a hit or two, and the day's bloodletting was far from over.

"Here they come! Choose your targets and May the Force be with you!" I said.

Few seconds later, they were in range. My Interceptor leaped forward, carried by its powerful engines, and I opened fire with the missiles with which I had it modified. Eighteen fire and forget weapons leaped from their box launchers, which I hastily ejected once they were empty, in order to reduce the weight. They had for company the missiles sent by the four hundred and seventeen fighters riding on my heels.

"Jump now!" I ordered the remains of my reserve, moments before my Delta 7 was engulfed by the whirlwind of close range combat.

As the fighters under my direct command met the tattered remains of the enemy Vulture swarm, the remaining Light Cruisers and Corvettes jumped behind. Straight between the enemy and the capital ships.

My laser cannons sliced in two one of the leading Vultures. I spun my Interceptor between the fire sent my way by two of his friends, which I blew away with precise bursts.

All around me, the void was filled with exploding fighters.

I destroyed another target and winced when my brand new astromech droid lost its head to a close miss. I blasted the damn machine which came close to shooting me down and then there were no more targets in my sight.

I made a sharp turn, guiding my Interceptor towards the fleet. I could see on my scanners that the Acclamators had turned to the side, and shooting more missiles at the tails of the Vultures. Few might even catch them before they hit the core of my fleet.

The Droid fighters blew through my second line of escorts, taking some of them out. Over seven hundred remained to strike the umbrella of close in defense weapons of my capital ships.

We were hot on their tails, but there was no way to catch up in time.

All I could do was to watch as the drama unfolded. Few hundred more Vultures were brushed out of the void. A hundred or so were damaged by close misses so they didn't succeed in ramming my ships.

All that was not enough. Just as I knew it won't be.

When all was said and done, it would be estimated that just over three hundred Droid fighters made it through everything we were able to throw at them. They struck my ships with tremendous force, leaving only carnage behind. And while all that was happening, the two still intact CIS battleships never stopped shooting at us.

First to suffer were the Dreadnaughts, which were forming the front line. One was destroyed thanks to series of lucky hits at a few weak points, causing chain reaction. Its reactor failed to scram and took the ship with it. Another three were left as drifting wrecks, which had their weapons and sensors stripped from their battered hulls.

By the grace of the Force, the last one somehow remained unscratched.

Then it was the turn of the Venators. All of them were hit with the exception of the two drifting out of control. Their heavier armor fared much better. Only Onderon was destroyed after taking sixty nearly simultaneous hits at the area over its reactor. Something went wrong, because the tough armor over that area should have been able to handle such an abuse. The cruiser simply blew up spectacularly. What caused it to go up in such a way would remain a mystery.

She was lost with all hands.

That didn't meant that the rest remained unscratched. Armor buckled and was shattered, weapons were torn from their moorings or outright destroyed. Various systems were wrecked from the repeating hammer blows, and thousands were dead or injured on board.

Redeemer was left as a drifting hulk, and on the Resolute, Admiral Yularen and his staff survived only because he found it prudent to evacuate both command towers before the enemy struck. Those structures were flaming wrecks, which had damage control teams trying to cut them off the rest of the ship.

The Requiem as well as the Conviction and Coruscant Pride were left largely untouched, because the Vulture's programming deemed them a lesser threat once the loss of their bridge towers was noted by the machines.

The Executrix was not that lucky. At the start of the onslaught, her heavy anti-fighter defenses laughed at the incoming Vultures. That was until a lucky one managed to smash into one of the two massive shield domes. That was noticed by the remaining Droids assaulting her. Then that behemoth was struck by full hundred and forty kamikazes, which fell on her like rain.

Even then her tough armor shrugged hits which tried to brutalize her upper superstructure beyond recognition. It appeared the Executrix and her class would become the face of the Republic's might.

Then everything went to hell. Her shield domes blew up in titanic explosions and the waves of Vulture droids started finding multiple weak points the hard way. When the storm of steel and fire was over, the Star Destroyer was left as a little more than a drifting wreck. The huge tower here her bridge and shield generators used to be located were shredded beyond belief.

The Droid fighters which survived delivering that hammer blow were viciously hunted down and annihilated with extreme prejudice.

I headed back to the Requiem after ordering SAR teams to be deployed. I still had work to do. There were two battleships and another two thousand or so enemy fighters as well as those six big ass transports to deal with before the liberation of Ryloth could begin.