Lucky Strike (A Star Wars SI)

[Yacov]

"That isn't a bunch of C-9979 troop carriers," Teskit watched as what looked like a Trade Federation Core ship with the innards split up rose out of Ord Cestus's atmosphere.

"Incoming transmission!" Franz handed a headset to the captain.

"Captain Teskit, we all know that we face a manpower issue in our small battlegroup," Colonel Waters' ever chipper voice brought a frown to the captain's face. "Well, it just so happens that our Commandos and ARC troopers managed to capture the guy with the command codes for this lovely ship and the droids on the world. With the freedom you gave me, we quickly retrieved said codes and decided that we would add to our fleet. The enemy CO has been disposed of, and we should have all the droids we need to crew our ships."

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This might anger the more mercantile Confederates more than just blowing up the ships. It's one thing to blow up their assets, but to steal their assets is a whole new level of insult.

I felt exhausted, we had been working around the clock to bring the Horizon around to working order before jumping into combat. The only thing keeping us functional at the moment was combat stims and Caf. (And the latter only worked for short periods of time)

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At least Hull is used to it given his introduction to the Star Wars galaxy. At least more than the other volunteers aboard the fleet.

Due to the issues with whatever lifeform was on the ship's scrubbers, we were all in our vacuum rated suits with helmets sealed and emergency air supplies beside each station. Any communications relayed through the local COMSNET before moving through as orders to the rest of the ship.

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Getting some Gundam bridge crew vibes from that image. I wonder if there are any fishbowl helmets lying around the Horizon?

"Our capture and use of the command codes to overwrite the droids and take the ship being used to transport the majority of them is something we will likely not get the chance to accomplish again," Teskit stated. "After we've distributed droids and supplies throughout the fleet, as well as made repairs to the Horizon, we will make the jump to Botajef. If possible, we'll attempt to capture an officer and turn their own ships against them, but if not, we'll seize whatever's mostly finished in the yards, as well as whatever supplies we can before destroying them and moving on."

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Considering the Jefi have a culture of being a bunch of bootlickers, that is actually a safe bet if you can find one in an officer's uniform. Although given the bootlicker status that may be difficult even if they make up 85% of the system's population,

Heck if Hull, Teskit, or a clone commander can appear competent and yell loud enough, some of them will try to hop on board the nearest Republic vessel and try to join the fleet.

 

[khatun]

I have a feeling that when the empire happens there's a large chance this fleet of privateers will go full pirate.

 

[Andrew1993]

Also unlikely to happen but id love to see them get ahold of some providence and recusant dreadnoughts the bigger 2km ones

 

[MarkWarrior]

Chapter 18

"Try it now!" I called out to the B-Series engineer droid I was working with on one of the power relays.

"Roger, roger," the droid replied, tapping a control before looking at the readout on the console in front of it.

"Everything looks good on my end," I went to put the panel back on the wall. "Any issues with power flow?"

"Negative," The engineer shook its head. "All systems are operating at 85% efficiency."

"That's better than what we had before," I wiped sweat off my brow, grateful to be able to work outside of armor. "Let's go ahead and move on to the next section, we've got plenty of work to do."

Stepping through the corridor, I grinned at the sight of other personnel and droids filling the ship. Sparks flew out from small repairs being made to damaged circuits and conduits as I walked by, noting that each droid repair crew was being supervised by a clone or engineer.

As it turned out, the raid on Ord Cestus had been better than we'd expected. The Adjusted Interest had been exactly what we needed to get the Horizon close to full operational capacity. Her stores had extra of everything. From food, to common spare parts, blasters, hell, the spheroid cargo ship had even had air scrubbers that were compatible with the Interdictor-Class cruiser. Which meant that we'd been able to use some of the complement of Engineer droids to swap them out and jettison the compromised scrubbers into the local sun. Which is why I could now enjoy working without being encased in armor with one of those stupid fishbowl helmets.

The droid complement was plentiful enough that we'd rapidly filled up the Horizon and every other ship that was missing crew with said droids. Standard B1s and the upgraded engineer classes worked on the power conduits under the supervision of clones and techs. We might be using the droids, but we didn't trust that their programming was entirely ours yet.

Though, from what I understood, there were a couple of teams working on ripping out some engineering droids cores, reprogramming them, and then having those droids do the same to the others that were among the Battlegroup.

Gesturing for my companion engineer to keep following me, I grabbed my comlink as it chirped.

"Lieutenant Hull," I answered.

"I see you've finished up with most of the conduits on the port side," Ronard's tired voice greeted me. "Mind checking out the hangar bay there? If we can get those doors open, we should be able to report combat readiness to Teskit. I'd have Aliya do it, but I just sent her to go grab some bunk time."

"I'll go check it out," I replied. "Need me to check anything else?"

"Have some of the droids do a quick inventory of the starfighters we've got on board. I recognize the Aurek-Classes, but I've no idea what half of the others are or if they'll be able to compete with modern fighters."

"Copy that," I nodded at a handful of technicians hovering over a control panel. "I'm en route."

Fortunately, I was already on the port side of the ship, and all I had to do was find a nearby turbolift and take it up to the levels that made up the hangar. Now, if I were having to transition from the fore of the ship to the aft, I'd have to take one of the small railcars that ran through the spine of the ship.

Instead, I stepped into the hangar and noted that there weren't a lot of people working in this section.

"Hey guys, you might want to evac for now," I nodded at the trio of techs and handful of droid squads working. "I'm about to test the doors, and if we can't get the screen back up, we'll probably lose atmosphere."

"Thanks for the warning," The techs pulled the droids out and headed for the nearby sealed 'control tower' with me. "So, I take it the power conduits been repaired?" the lead tech asked me, his nametag covered in grease or something from whatever it was he'd been working on.

"We're not at 100%," I shrugged. "But at this point, I figure we'll take what we can get and grab yard time if we ever make it back to Republic Space."

"Fair enough," He chuckled. "Now, if we're gonna test this, we should probably go ahead and vent the atmosphere. Explosive decompression's a bitch to handle."

"Right," I nodded, waving for him to follow through and vent the atmosphere while I worked the console to power on the static shield again."

At first it sputtered, the blue glow fading out and then after the lights dimmed a bit, the shield and lights returned to their full brightness.

"Alright, shield's working," I checked the status of it and noted that it was well within operating capacity. "We're ready to check the bay doors."

With a groan, the massive doors shuddered and then slowly began to open, revealing the stars and dark inky void of space beyond the blue shield that was supposed to contain the atmosphere.

"Everything seems good," The tech leaned over his station. "I'm pumping the atmosphere back into the hangar now."

After waiting for several minutes, we rechecked everything and I grabbed my comlink, hitting the equivalent of the 'redial' button and waiting for Ronard to pick up.

"Portside hangar's back up and running," I informed him. "There's already techs working on inventory and inspection of the starfighters."

"Good," the older man replied. "I'll review the reports when they're done. Go get some rest, Lieutenant. We'll probably resume combat operations in the next day or so."

---

"Captain on Deck!" Ensign Franz called out as Teskit entered the bridge, his long legs carrying him to the center of the bridge of the Providence.

"At ease," Teskit replied, his eyes running over the crew, noting that they seemed better rested than they'd been over the last few weeks of travel. "Get me the scouting logs and the status reports from the rest of the battlegroup," He ordered Ensign Franz. "Commander, you have the con," the captain nodded at the Clone officer.

Stepping back into the tactical center, Teskit pulled out his datapad and transferred the reports to the small holotable.

They wouldn't be able to move forward with the initial plan. The ARC-170 squadrons had jumped into Botajef, gathered sensor reports, and then jumped back to the fleet.

Botajef had been reinforced in the last few days, instead of a lighty armed garrison fleet, the system had a handful of Recusant destroyers, a Lucrehulk, and a handful of Maleficent and other ships to fill in the gaps.

Basically the shipyards were going to be out of touch, but in order to reinforce the shipyards, they'd have to pull back forces from somewhere else.

Drawing his finger across the nearby hyperlanes, Teskit slowly mapped things out. Serenno might be a fortress at the moment, but if he made any moves to threaten it, then it would be fulfilling his mission objectives. Pulling enemy forces away from the frontlines to hunt his battlegroup down. So, if he made an overt appearance in Toprawa, tangled with any Separatist elements there and then made an accidental unencrypted transmission about their jump in the direction of Serenno, they would be forced to assume he was spearheading further into Confederacy controlled space.

Which they'd be assuming correctly. They just wouldn't have the destination correct. Instead, they'd jump into Yavin, a bit off the beaten path, but perfect to throw off any enemies chasing them before using the smaller hyperlanes to head towards the Galactic East. While he'd heard rumors from RI about shipyards in Rothana, he wasn't certain that his small battlegroup would make it there. No, he would instead head for Mon Calamari. They had fantastic shipyards and were Loyalists. Exactly what he needed to get more ships and have any damage repaired.

"Commander, set course for Toprawa," Teskit ordered, stepping out of the tactical room. "Feed jump coordinates to the rest of the Battlegroup. And Ensign Franz, tell the Adjusted Interest that she's to jump to the Yavin system along with two of our Arquitens."

"Setting course, captain," Task, the clone Commander replied.

A few moments went by before the navigators had the coordinates and relayed them to the Communications officer. Franz's hands darted across her controls as she fed the coordinates to the rest of Battlegroup Huntress.

"Relaying commands to the battlegroup, all ships are signaling ready status," She said, pausing and waiting for Teskit's orders.

"Execute."

–
–

"Enemy contacts are in system!" The sensors officer called out as the feed updated. "Reading twelve modified C-9979s, a pair of Munificents, a bunch of Gozantis, and some old Customs ships. Enemy ships are launching fighters and coming around to face us.."

"Fall into battle line Krill," Teskit ordered. "Have all fighters cover the gaps and bring the Horizon abreast of the Ineveitable. The Even Keel and Maverick will move to flanking maneuvers, I want those carriers dead and gone, send our Consulars and a pair of starfighter squadrons as escorts."

"Relaying Orders, sir," she replied. "We're ready for combat."

The ships moved into position and the slow sunlight voyage towards eachother seemed to simultaneously crawl and speed up as they slowly came into extreme weapons range.

"Hold fire until you're certain of hits," Commander Task ordered the crew of the Providence, Teskit nodding at the wisdom in the thought.

Even with the seized goods and the stores of Tibanna that were aboard the Adjusted Interest, they would need to conserve ammunition. Better to ensure that all shots were accurate and useful instead of wasted.

With that, the battle began. The smaller customs corvettes pulling ahead of the larger Munificents to act as a screening force and paying the price of being caught up in the middle of where the twin forces of Starfighters met.

Droid Vultures and bombers danced around the customs vessels while the ARC-170s and other assorted Republic Starfighters chased after them, missed concussion missiles and proton torpedoes detonating against the smaller corvettes and causing brilliant explosions to fill the void.

Then the turbolasers joined in, their song of red, blue, and green crossing the void between the capital ships, Ion cannons joining in with bursts of electrical energy that opened up holes in shields and allowed turbolasers to carve deep within a ship.

The Providence rocked underneath Teskit and but he remained calm as he casually stood on the bridge, looking for all the world like this battle was a routine inspection as power fluctuated, lights dimmed, and the bridge went to emergency lighting for a moment. Then, in a brilliant display, the void lit up as one of the Munificents detonated, spilling Tibanna gas all over the other ships as the Providence cycled her reactors and restored power throughout the ship.

"Damage control teams to section Aleph, decks fifteen, eighteen, and twenty!" The damage control officer instructed. "All sectors report to ready stations!"

Looking over his console, the officer tapped a few controls before continuing to give orders and call out damage.

"Turbolasers one, five, and seven are offline, have teams on standby to repair them."

"Enemy ships are retreating, sir!" The sensors officer reported as the handful of small carriers jumped into hyperspace, followed by the lone Maleficent remaining.

"Get a status report from the battlegroup and begin making emergency repairs," Teskit ordered. "Ensign, execute the 'accidental transmission'. There'll still be Separatists listening in, and we can hopefully lead them in the opposite direction."

"Sending the Seppies after a ghost fleet, aye sir!"

"All hands prepare for hyperspace coordinates transmission," She typed out and spoke into her headset. 'Accidentally' leaving the message unencrypted for a moment before encrypting the latter half of it.

After transmitting, the battlegroup sat for a few hours collecting the ejected starfighter pilots and hauling what starfighters could be repaired back into hangar bays before jumping out, seemingly in the direction of Serenno.

Immediately after they jumped out, another window opened and a Lucrehulk and her escorts arrived, deploying fighters and scouring the system for any trace of the Battlegroup Huntress.

 

[Andrew1993]

Hah, keep playing grand theft starship against the seppies, really build up a nice little warfleet

 

[Yacov]

It isn't Hull if he isn't repairing ancient starships. At least he has help this time.

 

[Andrew1993]

It isn't Hull if he isn't repairing ancient starships. At least he has help this time.

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Wonder when he finds a centurion battlecruiser to fix up as his new flagship

 

[Ilovfanfic123]

"Enemy ships are retreating, sir!" The sensors officer reported as the handful of small carriers jumped into hyperspace, followed by the lone Maleficent remaining.

Click to shrink...

I think this is supposed to be Munificent.

 

[MarkWarrior]

Chapter 19

The Yavin system was considered an out of the way system with little to no value outside of potential colonization efforts in the future. There were a handful of habitable worlds/moons that orbited the massive gas giant that dominated the system. Thankfully, its out of the way nature was perfect for us to use as a halfway point for repairs and planning the next few jumps.

With the Horizon in (mostly) working order and us having taken minimal damage in the last engagement, we were assigned to guard the Inevitable and Providence while they affected emergency repairs before the next jump. The Providence had taken enough damage that she was still leaking atmosphere in some sections, and deep scars darkened the armor around her turbolasers.

That old Dreadnought had been damaged, but her heart was still beating and she was still able to put up a fight. She'd just need some help in order to keep conducting operations.

Unfortunately, even with the Adjusted Interest's help and the engineer droids swarming the ship, we wouldn't be able to fully repair the Providence. Not in any short timeframes at least. The ship had been hit by what was nearly a golden BB, a lone, lucky, heavy turbolaser shot having nearly ruptured her shield generators and overloaded the primary reactor.

While the reactor had been temporarily reactivated in combat, the shields were the main concern, repairing emitters and replacing the nearly fried generators would take days if not weeks of time. Time that we didn't have but would have to take anyway.

Which made me infinitely glad that Jedi-Commander Durald was not on my ship as soon as we entered the Yavin system. Sure, I knew that we weren't planning on heading to Yavin IV, but I knew what lay on that world. That Naga Shadow, Exar Kun, and potentially other Dark Side artifacts and horrors were waiting for the right Jedi to make the mistake of stumbling into them blindly.

But I knew that it didn't matter what the plan was. Yavin IV drew force users to it. Whether Jedi or Sith, it seemed that every world that had experienced great deeds (for good or ill) brought them to it and they either conquered whatever lay in store, or succumbed to it and came out twisted in the end.

I had hopes that Durald had a good head on her shoulders, she'd shown herself to be competent so far, but with the Force involved, there was no telling what would happen.

Despite all of my concerns, I was in charge of the Horizon, not Durald, and not the battlegroup. So, I focused on that. Well, that and the meal in front of me.

"Hull, we've made what repairs to the ship we can without a yard," Aliya sighed, digging into her ration and drowning out the tasteless food brick with a cup of caf. "And we got extremely lucky with the finding of those air scrubbers that the Separatists had. One of their Lucrehulks must be old enough to still take the antiques."

"I'm just glad that we managed to get rid of whatever that bioweapon was. I don't know who made it, but that it was still alive after being thrown into the void," I took a sip of my caf and grimaced at the 'not' coffee flavor that tormented my taste buds.

"What I wouldn't give for a proper cup of coffee," I muttered, considering the cup.

"Local beverages are always better than the mass-produced caf," the engineer agreed. "But the stuff works, and the stimulant keeps me awake and capable of working."

"Fair enough," I swallowed the gross liquid and allowing the mixture of caffeine and vitamins to do their job. "Anyway, I'm putting together a requisition list for when we eventually reach Republic Space again. You have anything you want to add to it?"

I slid a datapad with the Republic emblem on the bottom over to her.

"I'll take a look and see what I think we might need," She nodded and stood up. "I'll ask the other engineers and get this back to you after my shift."

With that, she stood up and tossed the disposable cup into the trash before vanishing into the hallway that led back to the turbolifts and then onto engineering. Leaving me alone to finish my own tasteless meal brick.

A stash of MREs would almost be perfect at this point. For all that they got a bad rep, they tasted infinitely better than the god-awful nutrient dense bricks that made up rations in the Star Wars 'verse. Still, I finished my 'meal' and dealt with the waste before heading out and up towards the bridge. I had taken a break for long enough.

---

"Captain, four of our ten medium turbolasers are down for the count, shields won't be able to be restored beyond fifty percent functionality, and the reactor is going to be running close to critical for the foreseeable future," The engineer in charge of the Providence informed Teskit, standing across at the desk. "Full details for the repairs and what's needed to get us back up to full are here."

"Thank you," Teskit replied, accepting the datapad. "Get done what you can, we'll make a decision on what we're going to be doing tomorrow."

With that, the captain dismissed the engineer and began going back over his notes. A map pulled up on the holoprojector and the repair datapad in his hand.

There were a few more out of the way systems that they were near to that could be used as step-off places, and even one that they might be able to get assistance from. Though, it would require him and the battlegroup to negotiate with a neutral system.

Arda didn't have any major shipyards, and he couldn't trust them to do anything with the Horizon, but there was a high chance of them having access to Dreadnought parts that would be needed for repairing the Providence.

"I need a channel opened to the Adjusted Interest," Teskit informed the ensign on duty.

"Yes, sir," the ensign replied, the sound of controls being used distant in the speakers. "Opening channel now."

"This is the Interest," Lieutenant Shrail's voice replied.

"Lieutenant, I need a full inventory of any valuables in the Adjusted Interest's stores," Teskit ordered. "With the damage to the Providence, we're going to have to stop for repairs in the Arda system. With them being neutral, we're going to need something to trade."

"Well, there's a lot of supplies here," she replied. "And we've enough droids here that we could destabilize the economy of a small Outer Rim World if we're not careful."

"Just get a manifest of anything we can use for trade. We're going to need it-" A knock came at the door.

"We leave tomorrow, I'll need the list before then, Teskit, out." The captain cut the feed and stood up to open the door, revealing Jedi-Commander Durald.

"How can I help you, Knight Durald?" Teskit asked.

"We need to leave," Her eyes flashed with worry as she stepped inside. "There's something dark in this system, something beyond my powers and that of our battlegroup. It must be reported to the Council Immediately."

"I wish we could leave immediately," Teskit sighed. "Unfortunately, until the main reactor is back online, we're stranded."

Teskit flipped through the datapad for the main reactor's status. "ETA puts us at three hours before it's back online, we can jump utilizing the backup hyperdrive then. But not a moment sooner."

"It will have to be enough," Durald took a calming breath. The Dark side thrives here. Let us hope it remains unaware of our presence."

Author's Note: Sorry for the shorter chapter. I'm a bit under the weather at the moment and this is what I could get out. I'll probably expand or improve it later.

 

[bloodyparty]

Thanks for the chapter and get well soon!
Please don't overdo it, if you're unwell it's better to sit it out than to force yourself to write, that way lies burnout

 

[Yacov]

"We need to leave," Her eyes flashed with worry as she stepped inside. "There's something dark in this system, something beyond my powers and that of our battlegroup. It must be reported to the Council Immediately."

"I wish we could leave immediately," Teskit sighed. "Unfortunately, until the main reactor is back online, we're stranded."

Teskit flipped through the datapad for the main reactor's status. "ETA puts us at three hours before it's back online, we can jump utilizing the backup hyperdrive then. But not a moment sooner."

"It will have to be enough," Durald took a calming breath. The Dark side thrives here. Let us hope it remains unaware of our presence."

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Classic horror movie red flags. The Force just loves throwing Hull into systems with Dark Side shenanigans.

 

[Andrew1993]

Do we have any stats on the weapons and fighters etc of the interdictor?

 

[MarkWarrior]

Do we have any stats on the weapons and fighters etc of the interdictor?

Click to shrink...

The interdictor was modified from the original design, that'll be relevant later.

As for fighters, Aurek and Liberator class fighters for the most part.

 

[Andrew1993]

The interdictor was modified from the original design, that'll be relevant later.

As for fighters, Aurek and Liberator class fighters for the most part.

Click to shrink...

Awesome, probally get a list of kit and weapons on the ship at the shiyard id guess?

 

[Seyum]

The remains of Yavin Station fom Kotor still exist in the System. It's a shame he can't retrive them.