“They’re firing at Halberd again sir; Captain Klon is taking evasive action,” the tactical officer reported. Tiaan continued to stare ahead at the independent station at Center Point as it sat ahead of him. His orders had been to capture the station intact, so that the ISB could make use of the large sensor arrays and well known monitoring equipment. The fight in the Corellian zone had gone red hot and vicious, and the Empire needed every advantage it could get. The occupants of the station though, did not see things that way. Tiaan was preparing to use Obedience and Unforgiving as large shields to force the station to fire upon them, while his Gozanti cruisers would be able to land waves of troops at the docking point. The beach head along with the ISB agents already aboard would quickly overwhelm the casual defenders, and the station would fall with little effort.
“Sir, detecting several Rebel ships jumping out of
hyperspace in front of us!” the tactical officer called out. Tiaan
snapped his attention to the incoming fleet. The station must have
decided to cast their lot with the Rebels, he thought.
Tiann knew that he couldn’t safely lands his troops while also taking fire
from several heavily armed rebel ships. “New course. Turn us towards
the rebel ships. Launch fighters and prepare to engage the enemy”.
Unforgiving smoothly turned itself to head towards
the new threat, with Khopesh coming up along its right flank.
Obedience, Halberd and the Gozantis were slightly out of position, and
were still in danger of coming under fire from the station. “Prepare
for Grav. Shift Re-route, target the station and push
it away” Tiaan ordered. He hoped the push would not damage the equipment, but he couldn’t afford to allow it to fire into his ships
flanks while they began to engage the Rebels. As the station began to
drift away, a nearby dust field was also pushed, obscuring
the approach of his carrier completely. The tactical display began to
light up with the rebel ships, although a pair of shapes that were on
the other side of the dust field were displayed as just hostile targets,
with no information about them. That could
be troublesome if the rebels decide to stay on the side of that. But
at least if our scanners are having trouble penetrating them, the rebels
won’t be able to target us either, Tiaan thought.
Out of the dust field came the first wave came the
first rebel fighters, looking to try to jump on the separated Imperial
forces and delay them from getting into a firing position. However, the
Imperial pilots were positioned perfectly
to intercept them, and the Rebel losses became staggering early into
the battle. As Halberd began to take more evasive action to avoid more
harassing fire from the station, a CR-90 corvette burst from the dust
cloud in front of it, and both ships let loose
a volley of fire at close range. That was where Halberd loved to fight
though, to be able to bring to bear its impressive salvos of missiles
which tore through the Corvette’s thin armor in quick order. A great
success early in the battle drove Tiaan to take
a risk and continue to head straight into the teeth of the enemy. He
needed to win a true victory today, and being able to remove a well
outfitted rebel task force would be just that. His fighters continued
to score kill after kill against the rebel pilots,
and while it appeared that one squadron of Defenders had been nearly
wiped out, the large amount of TIE Fighters were overwhelming the ever
shrinking number of X-wings in the battlefield.
In front of Tiaan a Nebulon B and several
transports appeared out of the dust cloud, to stand next to the assault
frigate and massive Mon Cal cruiser that he could already see clearly.
“Order Khopesh to coordinate fire on those transports”
Tiaan called to the comms officer. He needed to clear his firing lane to get a shot at the
Assault frigate. He had calculated Obedience’s distance, and it would
be able to get into missile range of the frigate very soon, and he wanted
to bring it down with coordinated fire quickly.
The transports withered under the fire, but it did give the other rebel
ships an opening now to fire on the flagship. “Reinforcing front
shields,” came the Chief of Engineering’s update. “We’re taking some
light structural damage, but we have repair teams in place.” As the Nebulon-B class Frigate began to fire on
Unforgiving, fires sprouted up all across its narrow hull as Obedience’s
guns were now clear of the dust field that had screened its approach.
The Victory class star destroyer did not slow
down either, ramming through the burning frigate and continuing forward
towards its next target. The Nebulon shattered into two halves and continued to burn in space. The charging star destroyer had now captured
the attention of the assault frigate, but both remaining rebel ships
continued to maintain a steady barrage of fire at Unforgiving.
The damage had begun to pile up, even as the damage control officers
worked magic to keep key systems online.
“Sir, it looks like the Rebels are going to try to
jump away, we’re reading their hyper drives are powering up.” Tiaan
needed to not let both ships get away to complete this victory today.
He ordered Khopesh into the direct path of the
Assault Frigate, to make sure it could not make the jump. The tactic
worked, as the frigate had to come to a near stand still, opening it up
to the guns of all three Imperial ships in range. It exploded into a
ball of fire. However, in doing so, Khopesh
now had come directly into the gun line of the Mon Cal ship, which
fired a crippling shot into its hull before jumping away. Tiaan
surveyed the wreckage of rebel ships and fighters ahead of him. The
comms officer said "Sir, getting a transmission from the
station. They’re wanting to discuss terms of allowing Imperial forces
aboard.” Tiaan smiled, today he had already delivered terms once. He'd relish doing so again.
Epilogue
The station at Centerpoint was now firmly under Imperial control, with all of the previous leadership having found itself a new home aboard some Imperial prison planet. Tiaan had overseen the refitting of the station, making it more defensible than it had been previously. The new intelligence that the ISB could pull from the station's equipment would be invaluable going forward. This was good, because Admiral Motti had been forced to withdraw from his further defense of Corfai. The previously thought to be contained Admiral Sato had slipped past defensive screens at Selonia and had been able to take Corfai in a pitched battle that saw several Raiders defeated but a large blow struck to the rebel pilots. The fight for the Corellian sector was continuing forward in a pitched way, but the Imperial forces were now well positioned to begin digging out the Rebel infestation.
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