I was standing on the bridge overlooking the black and empty space.
Turning towards the hyperspace specialist I began speaking.
"How far out from Naboo are we?" I asked him.
"Your Grace, we are precisely 0.1 clicks out from Naboo or 30 seconds with hyperspace." He said and I nodded.
"Very good. Let's start the attack." I said as I turned to Admiral Jaime.
"Alright let's begin. Have the 80 bombers, 200 Z-95, and 16 DP20 Frigates deploy into the first line of the jump, then bring the Valiant and the Gladiators on the 2nd line so that we do not crash." I said and he nodded, signaling for the comms officer to pass it on to the fighters.
"Then bring the rest on the 3rd line. Make sure you have the timing correct, we can't arrive too early or too late behind them." I directed that to the hyperspace specialist.
"Yes Your Grace, we will direct all resources to the deployment." He said and I nodded.
"Jump when ready." I said as I walked towards the HoloTable.
Admiral Jaime, General Tyr, Commodore Flint, and Lord Commandant Alexander followed me.
"Alright, Commodore Flint, you're in charge of starfighter deployment." I said as 6 Lucrehulks showed on the radar.
The Lucrehulks stood in a unique formation, one Lucrehulk in the middle, 2 in front, and 3 in the back. Honestly, that formation is quite ineffective and is only good for a good show.
"Focus on the cruiser in the middle." I said as I pointed at it, and a hologram of a few bombers running in on it.
"Have the fighters screen the bombers, the Lucrehulk is likely to command ship due to its protection." I said and Admiral Jaime nodded.
"By taking that ship out we can disrupt their entire formation…" Jaime said while thinking.
"Reports indicate that each ship is commanded by a crew of 30 organics, but the rest is droids. Due to their small number, it's unlikely the ship enters total chaos but everyone is on the bridge and can still cause problems." Alexander said and I nodded.
"I agree, which is why we must take out that control ship at all costs." I said and they nodded.
"Once we arrive, launch all fighters. We can't afford to put any in reserve, we'll launch a quick attack and then retreat." I said and they all nodded.
"Alright, Tyr. You'll need to assemble a boarding team alongside Alexander." I said and he nodded.
"How many boarding pods did you get, Jaime?" I asked him and he took out his datapad.
"Approximately 41 boarding pods." He said and I nodded.
"Alright, once we arrive focus all ion-cannons on the two forward Lucrehulks. When they're deactivated launch the boarding pods." I said and Tyr nodded.
"How many can each pod hold?" I asked Jaime.
"About 12 men." He said and I nodded.
"Well, we've got the support from 6 elite bounty hunters, place them inside one of the pods. The remaining 486 spots are for your men, The Sovereign Guards will also be joining, and they number about 200, so the remaining 286 spots are yours." I said with a chuckle, he got fewer and fewer spots.
"Yes, Your Grace." He responded while chuckling.
"Alright, but we'll still have to fight the remaining 3 Lucrehulks, however luckily the droid dies once their command ship is destroyed, so we'll kill 1500 droid fighters for every Lucrehulk." I said and they nodded, the problem with centralized control of the droid army.
That's when we all felt a slight shift in gravity, signaling that we entered hyperspace.
An officer then ran in.
"Your Grace, Sir's, we've entered hyperspace!" He exclaimed and I nodded.
"Alright, get to your posts, we're exiting soon." I said as I walked to the front of the bridge. Meanwhile, Commodore Jon ran as he had to get to the second bridge, and his units would get there first.
"Man, all guns!" I shouted as tens of naval officers jumped down into the gunner platform.
"Activate the shield!" I told someone sitting in a chair facing the wall, he was in charge of the shields.
"All pilots to their stations." I heard over the speakers, coming from Flint.
"10 seconds to arrival." I heard the hyperspace control officer say behind me.
"The first fighter wave has arrived and is speeding towards the Lucrehulks." The radio officer said.
10 seconds later we arrived.
The view that spotted me was about 500 Vulture droids speeding towards 280 fighters, 80 in the back and 200 in the front. They were about 4 kilometers away from the first Lucrehulk, and we were 16 Kilometers away, precisely 1 minute until we crashed into it.
"Fire the Ion Cannons! We should be way into the 800-kilometer firing range!" I shouted and the response was the bright light flying straight towards the 2 first Lucrehulks.
"Launch 2 waves of 8 proton torpedoes!" I said again and 8 missiles shot out, blinking blue and releasing some kind of smoke.
Meanwhile, I could see on my status pod, in front of me. Informing me that all our fighters were launched.
I could see the Lucrehulks raining out swarms of fighters, 5 of them coming out every single second.
"Tell the bombers to bomb the control ship! Send all fighters to escort them." I shouted and got a few responses.
"Yes, Your Grace."
"At once, Your Grace."
"You heard the man!"
"General Tyr, Alexander. Get your men into the pods we're launching them." I said as the spam of ion cannons hit the ship, working into their system and shutting them down.
They quickly ran down to the hangar.
"Launch the pods once we're in range! Full speed ahead!" I said as we sped up, to 800 km/h.
I then took out my communication device.
"Dengar, are you in the pod?" I said into the mic and soon enough I got a response.
"Aye, but the fat reptile named Bossk is taking too much space." He said and I smiled. It's good that they still had humor.
However soon enough a bonk came through the mic and a grunt came from Dengar, not that shocking really. Of course, he would use violence.
"Alright, well prepare. We're launching you soon." I said as I turned to a specific officer.
"Contact Commander Thorne via the code system. Notify him of our arrival and get some information-" I said, just in time for a bright flash to enter my sight.
12 H6 bombers had made a bomb run on the main Lucrehulk's core. They had destroyed the hangar blockade and they had gotten in. They had then destroyed the main reactor, which would force them to rely on their backup generator. And luckily the ship was too large and the backup generator too small to enforce the shield over the entire Lucrehulks body.
"Focus all fire on the main Lucrehulk! The shields are down." I said and got a few mumbled responses, but the fire of all cruisers turned towards the main Lucrehulk.
I then turned to Jaime.
"Order the Munificents to push forward, equal to our position, and tell the Gladiators to hold back. We'll form an inverted wedge, but we'll stick out. Work on enclosing the 2 closest Lucrehulks so that the boarding forces can do their work." I said and he nodded, we need to cut the Lucrehulks we were boarding out of the main force.
"Order the Carracks to push forward towards the 2 Lucrehulks, focus on their reactors and weapons system." I said, just in time to see the power on the 2 forward finally die out.
"Are we within range?" I asked Jaime.
"Yes, Your Grace." He said.
"Deploy all the boarding pods and call back 4 squadrons to escort them." I said, and the order of the fighters were passed to Flint while the other was sent to General Tyr.
"Continue firing upon them with the ion cannons." I said as I checked our status.
The battle had begun less than 2 minutes ago, and we had already suffered a lot of damage.
"Shields are at 80%," Some random officer said.
Shit.
"How many have we lost?" I turned to Jaime.
"25 Z-95 Headhunters and 3 Alpha-V Wings." He said and I nodded.
"We also lost 1 DP20 and another had to return for repair." Another man said.
"I see, order the pilots to prepare for a retreat. Once we've taken out the main control ship we'll need more defense." I said, just in time to see a Vulture-Droid crash into our hull.
That's when my communications droid began talking.
"Your Grace! Senior Commander Thorne has responded!" He exclaimed and I turned to him.
"What's their status?" I asked.
"They are fighting off 2 billion battle droids! Each Lucrehulk sent half of their reserve onto Naboo. There's 2 943 000 000 throughout the planet and they had 2 billion in the capital, and 900 000 000 spread through the rest of the planet." He said and I nodded.
"How many troops do they have?" I asked
"They have about 2 billion gungans, hower they barely have 200 000 000 gungans with actual guns. The rest use spears and slingers." He said and I nodded.
"Where are they positioned and what's their status?" I asked.
"They have formed a defensive perimeter in the forest, using their shields to deal strikes against their infantry while being protected from the tanks. However, they are slowly losing due to the force of the tanks." He said and I went into deep thinking.
They would require multiple bombing runs to kill off the tanks. But the only problem was that we couldn't penetrate their defenses yet. We currently have starfighter supremacy, but we'll lose it soon enough, and if we focus our forces on helping the bombers run through the blockade then we'll lose the starfighter superiority and they can mount a counter-attack at our fleet.
I turned to Jaime.
"Order the entire fleet to focus on the main cruiser! We need to cause chaos. Ignore the other Lucrehulks." I said and he nodded, I then turned to another man, a Commodore.
"Order the carracks to push forward and engage the main Lucrehulk, they can do much more damage while they're close than if they're here." I said and he nodded, running off.
"Increase the speed of our entire fleet, push through their first line of defense. Have the Cumulus Corsairs aim at the Lucrehulk's hangars, we need to temporarily stop their fighters." I said and he nodded.
Blockades were always annoying according to my studies. There were never any game-changing strategies you could perform on a decently competent commander. The only way of winning was outnumbering them.
Any competent Commander would not be baited, and as long as you had superior firepower and couldn't be baited then you won. Or you could unleash some of Anakin's suicide tactics which more often than not included ramming or boarding.
"What's the status of the boarding parties?" I asked Tyr, who had just entered the bridge.
"My Lord, they have successfully connected to the 2 Lucrehulks, 20 in each as we lost a single pod while getting there. Due to the thousands of fighters flying within close proximity of the Lucrehulk, their scanners didn't pick them up as pods but simple starfighters." He said and I nodded, I gambled on their scanners not being able to discern them.
"Alright, great job. Now we just have to wait." I said, getting acknowledging nods from both Tyr and Jaime. Alexander had joined the boarding parties.
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i = e on (patrion)
Sorry for not releasing yesterday, I'll try to give you two, but I don't know if I'll manage.
8 advance chapters at Patrion.
patrion.com/pondsfyre
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