"Imperial Entanglements" Chapter One (First Draft)

2009-03-01T00:39:54Z

All at once six ships flashed out of hyperspace to instantly occupy what was a moment ago a vast emptiness of space. The light emitted from the ships engines quickly grew brighter, save for one which remained behind the others. The Vento III was to stay back and chase down any ships attempting to flee from what was about take place in the Nipseb system.

Seemingly awaiting what was supposed to be a surprise engagement three ships in a simple triangle formation turned and began to head in the direction of the oncoming assault. Two Action VI transports, believed to have been refitted with four turbolaser cannons and two quad laser cannons sat one kilometer apart with an old Imperial Customs corvette taking the point in front of both transports. Twenty-four, a full two squadrons, of aging TIE fighters were screaming to catch up with the three ships now closing to within 15 kilometers of the incoming capital ships.

“They think we will surrender so easily. What an arrogant Captain he must be, he has not launched as much as one flight of his fighters to oppose us. Fool.”

“Cap, we got a ton of signals comin’ out of hyper off to port, gotta be at least three dozen of ‘em”

Pirate Captain Kroger looked down at his screen to confirm the bad news just as forty-eight starfighters emerged from hyperspace.

“Damn, send the fighters to intercept, tell them I want those B-Wings swept away at all costs!”

“Sir! Incoming message from the frigate Halstarr on all open channels.”

“Let’s hear it” Kroger mumbled as he ran his hand through his waivy shoulder length hair died jet-black. He spun from the sensor screen and gazed out the viewport at the tiny blips approaching in the distance.

Staring out at the bridge of the Halstarr Colonel Pinrou liked what he saw, no surprises. As expected the pirates, mercenaries, whatever they called themselves where no match for Pinrou’s taskforce and as expected they diverted their fighters towards the incoming squadrons. Faced with an impossible victory now maybe Kroger would listen to the demands of the New Republic, now that he saw the Republic truly would stand up for itself, even going so far as to commit warships in order to secure a system that only six months ago had no name.

“They’re listening, Colonel.”

“This is Colonel Adonis Pinrou of the New Republic Defense Force. Your group here has been informed on numerous occasions that this is a New Republic chartered system and that charter has been sold to a private company. They are the sole group allowed to operate in this system. Your claims have been repeatedly dismissed. The time has past for a simpler settlement of this issue. You are ordered to stand down and immediately begin a withdrawal of all personal from this system.”

“Not a chance we got outta prison and paid to protect this system, dyin’ out here ain’t as bad as goin’ back to a cell. Some of ya are ‘bout to join us!”

With that the three pirate ships formed into a column with the old Imperial customs corvette in the middle and headed for the lead ship in Pinrou’s line the Pouncer. The TIE fighters split into a loose attack formation and closed to five kilometers of the incoming starfighters.

“All craft, come to three quarters speed and prepare to move into V formation on my mark. Sprinter squadron cover Durasteel squadron and head for the mining facility. Red squad, Blue squad engage enemy fighters”

“Copy that Colonel. Okay boys form up shields to double front switch to proton torpedoes.”

Commander Dedrick’s two squadrons of E-Wings began selecting targets following a fairly simple routine. Each TIE was assigned a number A 1-12 for one squad and B 1-12 for the second, each pilot in Red squadron selected his corresponding number from A squad and Blue squad did the same with the TIE’s B squad. This practice was done mainly to avoid wasting expensive torpedoes by having multiple pilots fire on the same TIE. And as his pilots knew one proton torpedo was more than enough to shatter a TIE into a million pieces. Dedrick could never imagine piloting such a frail craft that offered almost nothing to protect it’s pilot from attack. TIEs were the product of a toppled regime that regarded all life, human and otherwise, as expendable and immaterial.

“Sprinter, Durasteel break on my mark, Red and Blue light up the TIEs if they move to pursue.”

“NOW!”

The B-wings and A-wings tucked in behind the E-Wings broke off to starboard and headed for the mining facility which was located in the atmosphere of the nearby gas giant named Nipseb. The system and planet had been named for the infamous Bespin mining facility where several heroes of the Rebellion fled after the Battle of Hoth. This planet also had large amounts of tibanna gas in it’s atmosphere and was the reason the system was named and chartered by the New Republic. It was one of hundreds of recently scouted systems in this relatively empty void of the galaxy.

As the fighters broke off the TIEs broke from their intercept course to follow just as they slipped inside torpedo range of the E-wings. Target lock rings went off on all twenty-four ships and immediately after forty-eight torpedos blasted out towards the TIEs who had their port solar arrays turned towards the oncoming torpedoes.

With little time to react most of the pilots panicked and broke off in a multitude of different directions. Two ships in the center of the formation rammed each other smashing their solar arrays and sending them spiraling out into space. That was a better fate than what awaited the rest of the TIEs. The torpedoes ripped into several of the fighters causing massive explosions of orange flame leaving almost no remnants of the fighters they struck. Other torpedoes that barely missed their mark exploded in close proximity to their targets and flames lashed out at the ships causing severe damage.

A mere seven TIEs evaded the barrage and regrouped coming around for a head on pass with Red squadron. “Never had a chance, they could’ve avoided this.” A regretful tone filled Commander Dedrick’s voice as his three laser cannons spewed out shot after shot into the oncoming fighters.

As the TIE fighters were being brushed away Pinrou’s taskforce broke into it’s V formation as it closed to three kilometers from the lead pirate freighter. The corvettes Pouncer and Lightening split one to port, one to starboard and quickly outflanked the pirate vessels. The Advantage followed the Pouncer to port and likewise the Halstarr tailed Lightening to starboard. At the rear of the formation headed on a direct collision course with the lead pirate ship was the Vento IV who’s Captain Brenner had volunteered to plug the escape hole and speed headlong right into whatever was left of the opposing enemy. This was a surprise to no one considering Brenner’s track record of daring attacks at the helm of his Corellian Engineering Corporation CR90 Corvette. This track record was also why Brenner had never been given command of a larger capitol ship.

The corvettes opened up on the lead freighter pouring bursts of scarlet death upon the ship’s shields on both sides. The freighter concentrated it’s return fire on Pouncer to little effect the lasers slapped against the shields and they held. The freighter suddenly dove down and curled to starboard slicing under and behind the Pouncer and coming about the Pouncer’s port side. Now the freighter had the advantage as only the ventral double turbolaser cannon from the corvette could fire on it, while the freighter fired back with all four of it’s turbolasers.

“Pouncer move to full speed cut to starboard and come across the bow of the customs ship, Lightening dive hard to port, full speed and move under the customs ship.”

The corvettes crisscrossed one another and prevented the customs ship from maneuvering. This put the pirate’s flagship right between both Nebulon-B frigates and in for a considerable beating.

The frigates had far more firepower than the Imp ship and wasted no time and immediately opened up with all they had and easily absorbed the return fire. The Imp ship’s shields quickly began to fail forcing it’s captain into a desperate maneuver.

“Sir, she’s turning hard to port and headed straight for us!” Panic crept into Captain Necktoun’s voice as the ship attempted to ram the fragile mid section of the Halstarr. The mid section of the ship connecting the forward hull to rear of the ship was extremely thin and the ship’s biggest weakness. A breach of the mid section would disconnect the engines and fighter bay from the forward section of the ship including the bridge and most of the weapons systems. Ramming another ship is rarely a practical idea in any circumstance let alone in the middle of a battle. However, the Imp ship would probably survive while crimpling the Halstarr and leaving it for dead.

Colonel Pinrou had no intention of letting this happen, he waited until the customs corvette was just under a kilometer away and ordered a hard turn to starboard. The corvette tried to twist to port and complete it’s task but failed narrowly and was now on a heading parallel to the Halstarr.

Meanwhile, the Pouncer was pursuing the tail Action VI freighter who’s captain apparently had decided to run rather than die or surrender. The first freighter was unable to keep up it’s attack on the Pouncer as it had come under fire from the Lightening which had made a headfirst attack on the freighter chasing it from the stern of the Pouncer. Neither freighter would hold up for much longer the Vento III moved to cutoff the rear freighter before it could jump to lightspeed.

The two fighter squadrons headed for the still under construction mining station had a clear path in to their target. As they got within 5 kilometers a quartet of small freighters lifted off from the station and began heading out of the atmosphere.

“Two flight, three flight move to intercept those freighters, try and knock out their engines once they are free of the atmosphere. One flight on me, head in for a quick flyover of the station, send targeting information back to Durasteel squad then clear out and watch the show!” Sprinter Leader finished barking out his orders and led his flight over the station. The A-Wings targeting computer made note of major power sources, the repulsors holding the station floating, comm arrays, and other important hard points on the station. This information was relayed to the targeting computers in Durasteel’s B-Wings who’s pilots began selecting specific targets to cycle through as they fired their proton torpedoes. Each B-Wing was armed with two torpedo launchers with a total of 16 torpedoes, as well as three ion cannons and two laser cannons. More than enough firepower to engage a corvette class ship on it’s on and a full squad could devastate even an Imperial Star Destroyer.

“Lock S-foils in attack position.”

All but one of the B-Wings’ spread their wings and moved into an upright position with the cockpit on the top and the heavily armed wings and mainframe below.

“Eleven, report in.”

“S-foils failed to operate, sir. Can’t get them to unlock.”

“Copy Eleven, hang back and then follow us out.”

Durasteel Eleven slowed and dropped behind the rest of the group. “Maybe next time, Eleven.”

No one ever liked going into combat short handed especially due to a simple equipment malfunction. But, this time it would prove to be inconsequential as the station they were attacking was unarmed and there was no enemy starfighters moving to engage them. The B-Wing had originally been heralded as the replacement for the aging Y-Wing and it certainly had far more firepower than the Y-Wing or any other alliance starfighter for that matter. However, they were slower, bigger targets with less armor when compared to a Y-Wing thus usually needing a heavier escort into their targets than the Y-Wings. They also were not cheap or as reliable as the old Y-Wings which is why the B-Wing had not yet displaced the Y-Wing completely. It was a mystery to many as to why not all B-Wings were equipped to have a copilot with all the weaponry on board it would’ve seemed natural for a copilot to handle the targeting and firing. Indeed, the two seat B-Wings statistics over the years supported this as they were far more accurate and able to cause heavier damage than their single seat counterparts.

Once the B-Wings closed to two kilometers blue streaks rocketed out of the attacking ships two at a time and began to orient themselves with their destination. Within seconds sixty-six torpedoes in five waves filled the sky their bright blue streaks contrasted sharply against the maroon gas filled atmosphere. For a few seconds the scene was beautiful to watch. What happened next was decidedly less pleasant to look at, the first wave found their destinations across the station and greeted their hosts rather rudely. Explosions ripped into the station sending shards of metal into the air surrounded by fiery explosions and left craters in place of the critical components that were there moments before. This process quickly repeated itself four more times and the station turned into a powerless blaze that could no longer fight the gas giant’s gravity and slowly began to disappear. Forever, to be replaced by another station one that would be protected as a chartered, legal settlement of the New Republic.

The rest of the battle was uneventful. Both Action VI freighters and the customs corvette were destroyed. Captain Brunner’s Vento IV finished off the Imp ship when it again moved to ram the Halstarr. Brunner had brought his ship in behind the corvette and managed to knock out it’s engines, then pulled along port and took out the unshielded bridge section. Brunner then ordered his gunners to attack the corvette’s weak point. The corvette had two long prongs that extended out from the rear section of the ship. Triangular in shape and relatively thin they could not withstand large amounts of firepower with the ship not built for capitol ship combat. Vento IV’s two double laser cannons fired towards the back of the port prong where it met the main section of the corvette and quickly tore through it and separated it from the rest of the ship. With the bridge and engines disabled and half the ship separated from the other escape pods began to jettison and Brunner ordered his gunners to hold fire.

“Lets get this mess cleaned up. Captain, call in the seventy-fives, inform them they are to send boarding parties to the three YT-2400s and the main section of the customs corvette. Tell them to be cautious but expect minimum resistance.”

“And the X-Wings, sir?”

“Ahh, almost forgot. No, no need to bring them in. Tell Captain Maddux to head back to base promptly.” Pinrou knew that Captain Maddux would be disappointed to again sat out an engagement while only acting as backup just outside the system. At age thirty-four he was the oldest fighter pilot assigned to Pinrou. With his experience he shouldn’t still find himself in the cockpit of an X-Wing in command of a single fighter squadron. But he was happy where he was and was a great leader and a wealth of information for the younger pilots. Even Commander Dedrick found himself seeking out the captain for advice, although Dedrick would never admit to it.

Within two hours the Dent and Krayt had jumped in system, launched their Lamda shuttles, who performed the boarding actions, and took on all the prisoners the commando teams had collected. Eighteen years after their famed evacuation of Echo Base on the planet Hoth GR-75 medium transports could still be found in a few New Republic fleets and bases. Though they never saw combat like running the blockade at Hoth or battling the Imperial Fleet at Endor they still proved useful in certain roles.

These two no longer had modular cargo pods or a magnetized containment field. Instead they were overhauled with newer engines, power plants and shield generators. They now had enough sublight speed to keep up with most frigates and cruisers but were still considered slow for their size, only ninety meters in length. The bow of the ship now housed a small, permanent hanger that could hold two shuttles. The bow was rounded off and housed the bridge right above the hangar with the rest of it covered in light armor. Located behind the hangar and bridge were living quarters for the two teams of commandos kept on board, a total of forty men, and the crew of the shuttles as well as the ships crew itself. Behind that was a two level detention center with twenty-four one prisoner cells and two interrogation rooms and one medical unit. A mere 20 metric tons of storage space remained at the aft of the ship and was usually filled to the brim with supplies for the ship.

The old bridge which was on a small egg shaped pod on the dorsal side of the ship now had a deflector shield system in it’s place to complement the old shield generator located in the aft section of the pod. This allowed the ship to withstand a decent beating before it’s shields would give way. The refitting had done little to change the ship’s need for constant escort as it was armed only with three quad laser cannon turrets. One was located about half way down both the port and starboard sides of the ship right in the middle of the ship. The third was located right at the tip of the bow, in fact it was now the tip, and able to fire in a 180 degree arc in any direction. It was all topped off with a repainting in a light gray that cleaned up the look of the ship’s armor in that it was now all the same color, save for the indented section that ran the length of both sides in between the top and lower armored shells of the ship which was painted red.

It wasn’t long after the boarding actions had finished up that the taskforce assembled and with all fighters and shuttles onboard their respective ships made the jump to hyperspace. The trip home consisted of two jumps the first took nine hours and the second would take only three. The system they had to stop in to change course was identified as NRES-298 by the New Republic, one of the many systems that had been explored and named but was not currently a system set to be chartered. It did however serve as a transit point to the Nipseb system, which itself was a system that could serve as a direct transit system to the Corporate Sector, and could potentially develop settlements in the future as a trading point between Nipseb and the Filij system were the taskforce’s home base was located.

The stay in system was brief, just over an hour, and the ships again prepared to jump into hyperspace. Taking up the rear was the Nebulon-B Frigate Advantage who’s Captain Flores was to wait five seconds after the group jumped to lightspeed before doing so itself. This was a common practice for any group under Pinrou’s command and was nothing more than a precautionary measure. Though they would never tell Pinrou most of the Captains under his command felt it was unnecessary, even his closest friend Captain Necktoun, who’s ship was usually not chosen for the duty.

As soon as the Advantage found itself alone in NRES-298 her captain wasted no time starting the count to make it’s jump and head home. The navigator counted out the time and flight control waited to throw pack the throttle and engage the hyperdrive.

“Five, four, th-“

“CAPTAIN! Multiple signals coming out of hyperspace twenty kilometers to port!”

“Wha-“

It was too late before anymore could be said the stars stretched out in front of the bridge and the ship snapped into hyperspace the sensors all going blank just as quickly as they had lit up with the unknown ships coming into the sector.

Lieutenant Inyhu, a human as was the rest of the bridge crew, threw his hands up as he looked up from his screen and over to the helmsman.

“Why did you jump to lightspeed?”

“The captain neve-“

“Allow me to finish, he jumped to lightspeed because I never belayed the order to countdown from five and make the jump, so he followed his orders and made the jump. It’s my fault for not telling him to hold off, everything happened so quickly I’m sure you were caught just as off guard as I was.”

“Yes, sorry Sir. I just wanted to get a reading on what those ships were, no one is operating out here that we know of.”

Captain Flores nodded in agreement, as far as they knew their ships were the only ones operating in this area of space. The New Republic scout ships had long since moved on, ruling them out from making an appearance. The ships were likely just a group of smugglers on the run or pirates in search of prey out in the lawless parts of the galaxy. However, they could’ve been a part of the forces they had just encountered in the Nipseb system, a surprise attack that had arrived too late to help perhaps.

“Lieutenant, is it possible our sensors would’ve gotten some sort of a reading on those ships? If nothing more than number of and relative size anyway.”

“Possible, both groups of ships were in realspace for .67 seconds which might just be enough to get a reading on them.”

“And what about them, any chance their sensors came online quick enough to detect us?” The captain sincerely hoped not, should the ships turn out to be hostiles it would be much better to have not been seen.

“No, no way their sensors could’ve gotten a positive ID on us that short of time after exiting hyperspace. I highly doubt they noticed us at all.”

“Good. Run an analysis of the data immediately and have something for me to take to Colonel Pinrou when we got home. Understood?”

“Yes, sir!”

Captain Horvook stood perfectly upright, with his hands clenched behind his back at the waist. Not particularly tall for a human, a little under two meters and rather thin. The man looked every bit forty-two years of age having spent many long and stressful years fighting against the Rebellion. The last ten or so years had gone horribly for him and those who still held the belief that the Empire should and would be the ultimate power and authority in the galaxy once again. Grey hairs had started to creep their way from his sideburns back along his temple thinning out past his smallish ears. He kept his blonde hair short and his face was always freshly clean shaven, not that he had any choice in the matter those were the rules.

Horvook eagerly awaited a report from the base on the fifth planet of what was being called the Tarkin system. Each of the previous two times his ship had escorted in freighters to the base there were long tense moments like this waiting for the base’s ground commander to report in. The secrecy of this operation was crucial to it’s success and survival. If the base had been attacked and captives taken it would be problematic for every other hidden base, ship, officer, corporation and supporters from the Remnant taking part in this.

“Plot us an emergency route out of the system. Quick jump, we will reorient after.”

“Sir?”

“They have not checked in yet and we have been in system for fifteen minutes. We are well within their sensors range.”

“Technical difficulties possibly.” Capt. Horvook always appreciated the high moral of his men, even when faced with the bleakest of situations. The crews on most of the ships in the operation were of the highest moral and would have to be to volunteer despite the risks involved. The pay for most of the crew certainly was not what drove them all out to this empty part of space.

“Sir, we have them.”

A small image appeared above the holonet transceiver of Commander Prat. Prat was even older than Horvook a man who had lived through the whole of the rebellion, the Emperor’s return, Thrawn’s campaigns and now the pathetic truce with the Republic. He was short and had added quite a few pounds in recent years, mostly due to a lack of ground operations since the end of operations outside Imperial space. His hair had thinned greatly and was now a deep gray.

“Sorry for the delay Captain, we had company.”

“That is what I was beginning to fear, was there an attack on the base? I can have my men on the ground in minutes, sir.”

“No, no Captain have the freighters proceed down to base so that there cargo can be unloaded. They did not attack us, in fact I’m certain they do not even know we are here. They appeared to be transiting through the system. One ship jumped out of the system five seconds after the rest of their taskforce, just as your ships entered the system. We believe they may have detected your ships exiting hyperspace. I don’t know why one ship remained behind perhaps they did detect something. We must be cautious.”

“Pinrou. Colonel Pinrou to be exact, sir. He is a Mon Calamari and the commander of their task force securing their newly chartered systems. He, for reasons unknown at least by our intelligence agents, always designates one ship to jump to lightspeed exactly five seconds after the rest of his command.”

“An idiotic exercise in superstition Captain and nothing more than that. Which is good they probably have no idea we are here and will most likely assume your ships were nothing more than smugglers or pirates. We can only hope their scout ships have not come across the shadowport run by that pesky toydarian.”

“Very well Commander, we will commence with the delivery and be on our way. I will inform the Admiral of this development. Anything further?”

“One last thing, be sure to inform the Admiral I feel the delivery schedule and escort should remain exactly the same when you return in two days. If the Rebels look into this system I do not want to tip them to our presence here. That is all, good day Captain.”

adonis1324

"Imperial Entanglements" Chapter One (First Draft)