Chandrila

[Sgt. Slaughter]

“Damn these tiny viewports, how are you supposed to see?” Slaughter scowled through the field of hyperspace streaks in the last thirty seconds of their transit to Chandrila. His flag had been transferred to Kalidor. The Majestic-class Heavy Cruiser was a comparatively smaller warship than Fidelity, but of a more modern and hardened construction than the older MC90 chassis. Which was to say that the corridors were cramped and reinforced girders protruded through the decks; it boasted nothing in the way of creature comforts more extravagant than life support; the canopy of the bridge was flush with the super structure and afforded almost no visibility to the command crew.

 

“....that’s what sensors are for--” came a muttering from the crew pits, interrupted by a shout of “Fifteen seconds!” from the navigation station.

 

Slaughter took his position just as the streaks faded, to be replaced by the azure glow of Chandrila and the grey specks of the Mandalorian fleet. Not that the Rebel Admiral saw any of those--his eyes were flickering over a cloud of data from the armada’s sensors and the few surveillance satellites that were still transmitting to Rebel ships. There were a lot of Mandalorian ships in orbit. And a lot of fires planetside.

 

A faint growling began to issue from his throat. His hands went to the comlink and the cheap plastic crackled in complaint under his grip.

 

“Will flank planetside,” Slaughter responded to the Imperial Head of State. “Once we have orbital superiority, corvettes’ll provide support for our men on the ground. Let’s go.”

 

He replaced the wired comlink and missed its housing. As Slaughter began to issue his orders and Kalidor’s sublight engines flared up, the forgotten comlink began to swing back and forth. His squadron fanned out towards the flank and would place themselves between the Rebel fleet and Chandrila. The Heavy Cruiser’s complement of corvettes fanned out above and below the task force’s flag, only a short distance ahead of the bird-like Kalidor so its heavier guns could provide support. They would be needed for the liberation of Chandrila and couldn’t be lost to the Mandalorians.

 

And as usual, the task force’s A-Wings were only happy to race ahead of the formation, seemingly intent on engaging the basilisk droids all by themselves.

 

Taffy 82 (Asset Denial Task Force)

Spoiler

 

Kalidor

Shp Class: Majestic-class Heavy Crusier

Ship Length: 700 meters

Armaments (for flavor):

Heavy turbolaser cannons: 10

Ion cannons: 40

Laser Cannons: 20

Concussion missile tubes: 8

Tractor beam projectors: 4

Antimissile octets: 20

 

Incisor

Warrior-class Frigate

Armaments:

10 Turbolaser Cannons

8 Laser Cannons

4 Concussion Missile Tubes

Antimissile Octets

 

Chir'daki

Warrior-class Frigate

Armaments:

10 Turbolaser Cannons

8 Laser Cannons

4 Concussion Missile Tubes

Antimissile Octets

 

Strill

Warrior-class Frigate

Armaments:

10 Turbolaser Cannons

8 Laser Cannons

4 Concussion Missile Tubes

Antimissile Octets

 

Bloodhound

DP20 Frigate (Corellian Gunship)

Armaments

8 Double Turbolaser Cannons

6 Quad Laser Cannons

4 Concussion Missile Tubes

 

Lancet

DP20 Frigate (Corellian Gunship)

Armaments

8 Double Turbolaser Cannons

6 Quad Laser Cannons

4 Concussion Missile Tubes

 

Elmo’s Fire

DP20 Frigate (Corellian Gunship)

Armaments

8 Double Turbolaser Cannons

6 Quad Laser Cannons

4 Concussion Missile Tubes

 

 

[Sgt. Slaughter]

((Ship estimations are based on the WBS archives. If the force estimate is too much I can downgrade it.))

 

“This is going to be a rough one,” Slaughter muttered to himself, staring over the shoulders of a bridge officer at sensor readouts. One Fane of Storms-class Frigate, one of those damned Neo Kandosii-class Star Destroyers… and something new. Something… big. The fleet’s visual scanners had yet to map the hull of the ship, but its mass and power output were comparable to the Star Dreadnoughts that the Empire favored as its command ships. Undoubtedly this design bristled with just as many weapons as those monsters, and would be just as difficult to defeat.

 

And was just as much of a waste of resources. 

 

"No ground fires reported, sir," his executive officer, a giant Twi'lek, shouted across the bridge.

 

"Carry on the descent to Chandrila, see if we can draw off some of those Basilisks." Kalidor's supporting corvettes began trying for missile locks on the encroaching starfighters. At the extreme range of their concussion missile batteries, the threat would be minimal, but it would at least distract those heavy fighters from the more immediately threat of Misericordia.

[Sgt. Slaughter]

Every time that Slaughter had come to blows with the Mandalorians, his forces had been on the defensive. They were buying time--buying lives--and sometimes the bargain that they struck was scarcely even worth the expenditure of men and materiel. The Mandalorians had become accustomed to watching the Galactic Alliance flee before their forces--had come to expect their foes to make the pragmatic choice and withdraw. They had yet to meet with the pitiless face of the Republic’s wrath.

 

Seemingly expecting the same tactical choices, the advance screen of Bes’uliik charged into an equal force of X-Wings. As with Coruscant, the Basilisk fighters dispersed into a throng of fireteams that strafed and juked with their maneuvering thrusters, whereas the Rebel fighters favored their traditional wing-pairs. While those unpredictable lateral movements made the Mandalorian fighters exceptionally deadly in a dogfight, they diverted power from their primary thrusters and rendered them vulnerable to flanking fire. While the Mon Calamari Cruiser and Imperial counterpart had been approaching the Mandalorians from the front and enveloping the Fane of Storms-class Frigate in turbolaser and ion fire, the corvettes in Slaughter’s task force had skirted around the engagement and poured fire from the side. As steady platforms that bristled with laser cannons and missile launchers, the supporting fire from the corvettes rapidly whittled away at the numbers of the Mandalorian fighters.

 

“Comms, hail Misericordia and ask them to limit their fire to ion--nevermind.” Even staring through the tiny slits that passed for a canopy on a Majestic-class Cruiser, the glaring flash of secondary explosions aboard the beleaguered frigate forced the veteran soldier to turn away. That was just in time to miss the effects of a long-range barrage from the remaining Neo-Kandosii-class Destroyer and the Mandalorian flagship. Hundreds of turbolasers opened up on Stalwart Guidance, stripping away its shields and peeling away armor plating. But Calamari engineering was built to withstand a mauling with dignity, and its backup generators restored its shields just in time to a barrage from the Neo-Kandosii-class that arrived seconds later. 

 

Still, even Slaughter, in spite of years of personal experience of the fortitude of Calamari ships, had to wonder how long Stalwart Guidance could withstand the attention of a Star Dreadnought.

 

“That will have to be enough, conn. Take us in to engage that Star Dreadnought, flanking speed.” The view of starfield swung about and a dull, bassy rumble teased at the bottom range of the stout man’s hearing as the heavy cruiser’s sublights approached their engineering limits. Kalidor would be in close range within minutes. With any luck, the Mandalorian forces planetside would force their gunners to at least hesitate before opening fire with Chandrila in the vector.

 

A transmission from the Alliance’s marines, however, quashed those plans. “Hannah City is free, Chandrila is free.” 

 

Slaughter gesticulated madly to have his communications officers respond to Marshall Howlster’s transmission. “Marshall, Slaughter. What is the status of the Mandalorian resistance? Mopping up, or have they surrendered? Can your squad’s presence be spared?”

[Sgt. Slaughter]

No luck on the support from planetside: taking down the Star Dreadnaught was going to need to be carried out by the fleet. Between the heavy support from the flanking corvettes and a fighter complement that had learned to compensate for the unusual tactics deployed by the Mandalorians, their Basilisk fighters were being whittled away at an alarming pace. The new tactics, though lacking in subtlety, were effective: each attack was led by a flight of A-Wings that scattered as many concussion missiles as possible in a few seconds. The warhead were dodged easily enough by the juking Mandalorians, but that forced them to expend valuable engine power and rendered them vulnerable to the flurry of X-Wings and E-Wings that pounced on their opponents. Distracting and flanking the Mandalorian fighters with multiple waves of threats, rather than a single crashing below of numerous weapons systems, was more effective.

 

Though exceptionally deadly in one-on-one fights, the Bes’uliik fighters fared poorly when beset upon from multiple angles.

 

But it was the surviving Neo-Kandosii-class and Star Dreadnaught that made Slaughter worry. Misericordia and Stalwart Guidance were in the process of mauling the smaller vessel and portions of the Mandalorian capital ship were falling dark when struck by ion fire, but the second barrage from the Mandalorian fleet ravaged the armor of the Mon Calamari cruiser. Turbolaser cannons were blasted free of their mounts when lucky shots struck magazines, and fires began to blaze as dozens of pinpricks before the external compartments were sealed or expended their supply of oxygen.

 

As with at Dark Sun Station, Misericordia offered herself as a shield to protect the other ships in the fleet. Before the next salvo was disgorged from the Mandalorian command ship, the Imperial II-class Star Destroyer placed herself between the brutalized Mon Calamari cruiser and her tormentors, causing the fire to land on a set of fresh shields. Her return barrage was no less fierce, and between the pounding from her turbolasers and the starfighters that were beginning to break through the Mandalorian screen, the surviving Neo-Kandosii-class was overwhelmed and took an ion barrage that dimmed her engines.

 

Slaughter’s element, fortunately, had only taken token fire from the Star Dreadnaught--a Medusa-class, as the IFF transponders were calling it. The vast majority of her batteries were focused on the more imminent threat of a Mon Calamari cruiser and an Imperial Star Destroyer, but the Mandalorians had forgotten that even these smaller corvettes and frigates that he commanded could bite--and unlike those mighty capital ships, they could maneuver akin to a heavy starfighter. At full flank, diverting all power to engines, the DP20 Corvettes and Warrior-class Frigates blasted forward: two kilometers, fifteen hundred meters, one thousand, seven hundred, five hundred… and they still held fire. It was only at two hundred meters from the surface of the gargantuan warship that the ships broke their loose formation and scattered, racing all over the ship’s hull in an enormous approximation of Trench Run Disease. Much of the Star Dreadnaught’s fire was ineffective--the corvettes were nearly as fast as a heavy starfighter, and they packed many times more firepower. Kalidor, for her part, was able to slip to the rear of the vessel and hounded its engine compartments with ion fire.

 

More importantly, the airspace above the Medusa-class Star Dreadnaught was now dominated by six corvettes, It was effectively an arena devoid of enemy starfighter activity, and the Taffy 82’s starfighters riddled the formerly pristine surface of the command ship with missiles and torpedos. But these ships were infamously hardy--nearly impossible to outright destroy. Even hounded by a half-dozen corvettes from point-blank range, hundreds of starfighters, and a stubborn Heavy Cruiser that seemed to believe that a steady stream of ion fire could disable the many-kilometer-long command ship, it still boasted enough firepower to defeat the entire Rebel fleet on its own.

 

Unless, of course, it could be decapitated.

[Sgt. Slaughter]

The next three minutes were a case study in how not to deploy a Star Dreadnaught. The prodigious size of the vessels may have rendered the Medusa-class nearly impossible to destroy outright, but it was also the cause of its downfall--the steel behemoth required support and local air superiority to be effective. Its turbolasers and point-defense turrets were simply insufficient to cover the entire bulk of the multikilometer-long capital ship from a combined assault of starfighters and corvettes. Racing along the superstructure surrounding the bridge, Slaughter’s corvettes and starfighters blasted away at sensor arrays, fire control towers, and the weapons themselves. The overwhelming bulk of the Star Dreadnaught’s firepower gradually fell silent… or inaccurate and outright ineffective, no longer capable of unleashing the crashing volleys that had mauled Misericordia and Stalwart Guidance.

 

“That’ll do, XO. Time to cripple this monster. Signal Strill--”

 

“Strill is disabled, sir. Took a hit to the sublights.”

 

“Damn. Uh, Bloodhound and Chir’daki. We’ll hit the primary hangar and bridge at the same time. On my mark, we’ll pop out of their engines and draw fire from their ventral guns.”

 

“Aye. Standing by.”

 

For the next fifteen seconds, Kalidor continued to hammer away at the engines of the Star Dreadnaught. Sublight clusters blew apart under the turbolaser fire and azure lightning arced between maneuvering thrusters, effectively kneecapping the steel behemoth and stripping what little maneuverability a ship of her class enjoyed. At this same moment, however, Hesperidium took a volley to her ventral sublight clusters and the Nebulon-B Escort Frigate began to veer towards the dorsal surface of the Mandalorian ship. Escape pods began to jettison from the sides of the crippled ship, but it was too late--the bottom of its command pod began to scrap along the hull of the Mandalorian capital ship, cleaving apart everything in its path. Completely out of control, Hesperidium crashed into the ship and exploded violently, the debris from the cataclysm pulverizing several square kilometers of the Star Dreadnaught.

 

“Mark.”

 

At that moment, the floor dropped from under Slaughter’s boots as Kalidor popped out from the engine cluster. More than a hundred turbolaser batteries and several missile launchers immediately engaged the Heavy Cruiser--the antimissile octets vaporized most of the missiles, but nothing could stop the turbolasers from plowing through the birdlike cruiser’s shields and rending away most of her bow weaponry. Slaughter winced as he felt the rumble of turbolaser magazines erupting in flame just forward of the bridge--but tempting the aft-facing weaponry of the Star Dreadnought had allowed one of his DP20 Frigates to slip through the barrage penetrate its primary ventral hangar. Bloodhound fired at will from within the ship, and a terrible garland of explosions began to blow apart exterior armor plates from within.

 

A similar scene transpired at the dorsal surface of the Star Dreadnaught. Chir’daki, one of the speedy little Warrior-class Corvettes that was attached to Slaughter’s squadron, raced through the ravine that had been bulldozed by the ruin of the Hesperidium. She and a squadron of X-Wing escorts managed to penetrate the fearsome necklace of turbolaser and laser cannons that ringed the command bridge… and they laid waste to it with a combination of proton torpedoes, and vermillion laser fire. Within seconds, the few armor-clad individuals who were not vented into space had been rendered to a sort of pulpy ash by the combined energy of hundreds of laser blasts.

 

Slaughter nodded in appreciation as the external running lights and turbolasers over vast sectors of the ship were extinguished. Sensors read that local power planets all over the ship were beginning to overload or were shut down seemingly at random. At this point, several sectors had even lost life-support. “Bloodhound, solid hit. Secondary explosions all over the ship. She’s beginning to go dark. Now, comms, can you please find someone alive who can surrender this monster to us, or am I going to need to take ‘er apart piece by piece?”

 

_____

 

Hours later, the surrender was complete. The Rebel Alliance would take command of the Star Dreadnaught Medusa. Slaughter had no idea how the Alliance could possibly restore the steel behemoth to fighting condition, and he suspected that the ship would never fight again. It would probably be hauled by tugboats to the breaking yards to be stripped for scrap and spare parts. A fitting end to this piratical band of murderers, he decided. The old soldier was exhausted from the casualty numbers, however--Hesperidium was lost outright, and Strill and Incisor likely would not be combat-worthy for weeks. Hundreds of casualties aboard Misericordia and Stalwart Guidance--the crew of that Imperial Star Destroyer seemed to relish the hard knocks of war. Kalidor would need to spend at least a week in drydock from that single unaimed volley at point-blank range. And Bloodhound would need to be completely repainted. There was not a square centimeter of hull that had not been dented or scratched by debris or scorched by the fireballed that ensued from her rampage within the guts of Medusa.

 

“Yeoman, when Bloodhound and Chir’daki are refitted, please inform their crews that they are authorized to paint half a Medusa Star Dreadnaught on their hulls. XO, you have the bridge." Slaughter badly wanted to just sit down, read casualty reports, and try to figure out how the Rebel Alliance was going to absorb the costs of this victory--a pyrrhic victory, at best.

 

“Uh, sir--we’ve a signal from Hanna City. Local mayor--or magistrate--survivors of the planetside government would like to meet with you. They specifically asked for senior-most command, and--”

 

“And I have a couple years on Alekseyev…”

 

“Aye, sir. Priorities are aid distribution, repairing local infrastructure, and sounds like a state dinner tomorrow night.”

 

Slaughter just nodded. Making his way to his private shuttle bay, the stocky old soldier braced himself to face the horrors of war....