2Sublight Drive: Starfighters of Agamar
Operation Storm-Door
Agamar System, Lahara Sector
First Fleet Group
Flight Commander Tofen Vane, Tempest Zero Starfighter
A sapphire latticework embroidered the heavens.
Point defense.
It didn't bother fighter ace Tofen Vane as he hurtled through the Republic fleet at a velocity far outmatching the ARC-170 at his back. He was almost a triple Jedi ace, attested to by the 12 Aethersprite silhouettes painted on the red hull of his Tempest Zero starfighter.
He kept his hand light as an Omwati feather on the stick, splitting his attention between the transparisteel viewport separating him from the vacuum of space and the targeting computer of his rear gun.
Even as he twitched the stick to the right, sending his Tempest Zero into a snap-roll starboard, he kept his aiming reticle steady on the spiraling target.
It danced back and forth with its s-foils in attack position, solar energy reflecting off burnished metal plating like wings of a dragonfly in the morning dew. Twitching, jerking, firing.
Then, it was as if the enemy starfighter sunk like a rock into the ether, dropping back and ponderously moving within his gunsights.
Even before XT trilled out a lock confirmation, he fired. A snapshot.
Sparks flew off the shields of the enemy fighter, collapsing almost immediately under the stream of green tibanna bolts before exploding in an argent fireball.
"That's the last of them, Lead!" his wingman, Flight Captain Turr Richt, called out. Turr's voice was fuzzed and distorted, sounding as though he had Wroshyr dowels shoved up his nose.
"Is the telemetry with the bombers linked, Two?" Tofen asked. No time to celebrate yet another kill. He kept up sporadic jinking to throw off enemy targeting.
"Affirmative!"
Turr was eager, Tofen could tell that much. He was still getting used to his new wingman but Tofen needed Haasi's expertise to command the new squadrons, not watch his back.
Tofen glanced down and scowled at his sensor readout. Fuzzy. He scowled again, the wavering form of half a million LACs zipping around in waves reminding him of his father's grave on Valahari. He could still see it, over 2000 parsecs distant, he could still see it. Blue flames engulfing the shimmering holoprojected figure of his father, looking onwards as high and noble in death as he was in life.
He'd sworn once, to his mother, that his father's death would be remembered across the galaxy. Forever.
He rubbed his eyes, hard, worrying the dark circles beneath them to clear his head. He'd been stuck in the cockpit of his starfighter for hours at this point, the only considerable rest he'd gotten in the past few weeks had been during the ceasefire, and then during the hyperspace jump to Agamar aboard the Providence Inconceivable. He tapped the transparisteel cowling, as if that would clear up the Republic jamming. No such luck, not this close to their fleet.
"Another group of Torrents coming at us!" Haasi, Marauder Squadron Leader, said. "Incoming at heading zero three thirty by zero seventy four! Relative altitude 10 klicks!"
"All squads break by flights and envelop," Tofen ordered on his command channel, his voice injecting nothing but cool ice into his audicaster. He looked up and saw the… insufficient fighters spilling over the lateral sides of a Venator from the dorsal hangar.
36 Torrents against 48 Tempests. Hardly an even fight.
A blue jet of flame streaked up from the portside guns of a nearby Acclamator troopship. Tofen pressed the stick forward, pushing the nose down before he pulled up and evened out to avoid the fire. No sense in getting vaped by a stray bolt. Only light and random fire for the fighters, it seemed. The Republic dogs had bigger problems to worry about.
Behind him blazed twenty thousand Hyena bombers, launched using slingshot maneuvers out of the carriers of Admiral Kirst's left wing, closing the distance with impossible speed. That was only half of the intended wave, the other half having experienced some… user errors regarding the tractor beam deployment.
Toffen and the four squadrons under his command had already blown past the first line of the Republic ships, after the Vultures had soaked up the worst of it first, naturally. They were in the thick tangle of ships now, formations of gargantuan vessels becoming nothing more than a blur even as he used his etheric rudders to slow down.
The droid bombers, with all the electronic warfare measures undertaken by the GAR, had a tendency to be sluggish with their targeting solutions when moving at such high velocities relative to their targets, oftentimes overshooting.
That meant the elite 191st Confederate Fighter Wing, 'Tofen's Raiders,' had the job of syncing their telemetry data for an accurate fire solution.
"I'm on your wing, Lead," Turr said.
"On your wing." Three and Four said simultaneously.
Tofen switched to his flight's channel. "Set gun convergence to two kilometers. Save your missiles for the capital ships when we come around."
He received three bursts of static, his men's affirmations.
The nimble Valahari starfighters came about in a loose formation, twelve flights of four fighters, each flight having a pair slightly forward of the other.
Bright flashes shadowed the incoming V-19s. The Hyenas had zipped straight through the forward Republic forces to hit the more strategically important carriers and troopships which were the operational backbone of Republic fleet doctrine.
The first wave of bombers had hit, golden explosions cascading across nearby ships before the bombers zoomed past at a fraction of the speed of light, untouchable save for the unlucky few that had the privilege of sharing their kinetic energy with Republic vessels. It seemed as though the explosive force held its breath for a moment, before the Venator shattered into a million pieces of shrapnel. Shrapnel contained, thankfully, by a now-intervening Acclamator.
The departure of the Hyenas meant they were no longer his responsibility to youngling-sit. Good. They'd be moving on to the Captors which lay in wait at the system's asteroid belt where they could have time to decelerate and be caught by friendly tractor beams. From then on, the majority would rearm, refuel, and be flung back into the Republic's flanks again. The others would dock and disperse back down the Braxant Run using the backroads, so to speak, to hit enemy supply routes.
"Five klicks to target," Flight Captain Haasi called over the intersquad freq.
"Break starboard!" Tofen called after switching to that same frequency. He pulled his stick up and to the right while stamping down hard on his right rudder pedal, sending him into a tight turn. Turr followed, same as the rest of his men. If they had any doubts about his judgment, they weren't voicing them.
While his own pilots would be stingy on the missiles, he had a hunch the Republic fighters wouldn't want to close in on the far superior Valahari craft for a dogfight.
His hunch was proved right. XT shrieked, the fighter's sensors having detected enemy locks. The V-19s dumped six concussion missiles each in a full salvo, blue contrails followed in their wake.
XT chirped sharply at the 216 missiles, about 5 for each of his men. Tofen gritted his teeth, his etheric rudder giving a shrill cry as the fighter twisted. He breathed and glanced to his left, the missiles closed the distance in a blink of an eye. 1 klick, 500 meters, 250, they had a proximity fuze of 50 right? Or was it 25? It was 25.
Only a single blast rocked Tofen's portside deflectors. The others missed.
"Damage report, XT!"
The custom astromech twittered something in reply. Tofen looked at his main viewscreen. Shields were good, not so much as a scratch on the paint. All his men's IFFs were still active. Good, good. He couldn't have them getting vaped in their first engagement by some missile-slinging half-matured pod-babies, now could he?
"All squadrons, move in to engage and destroy!" he sounded over the COM freq. "XT, split all discretionary power between engines and front deflectors."
XT warbled an affirmation.
The fighters were 2.5 klicks distant. This is where the fun began, where the skill of the pilot mattered rather than some fatalistic happenstance.
2 klicks. XT chittered out a positive target lock. Tofen depressed his firing stud.
The four laser cannons of his Tempest Zero spat out a flurry of bolts four at a time. His stream of green fire lanced through a V-19 before the first enemy locks even sounded out over his headset, rewarding him with the sight of a golden starburst.
The opposing lines of starfighters crashed into each other. His flight began letting loose callouts, enemy ships exploded left and right.
Tofen felt himself sink into his seat slightly coming into a tight turn to port on the tail of an enemy, he had set his acceleration compensators to 90%. If he'd have set it to 100% compensation, he wouldn't be able to 'feel' where he was in the battle. He felt grounded in reality, sat there in his cockpit, as natural as one could be in a furball of this magnitude.
He pulled his stick, hard. A V-19 brushed the edge of his gunsight. He fired without a complete lock, clipping the fighter's starboard stabilizer foil. The enemy fighter went ballistic, careening off in the last spin its pilot would ever perform.
"Enemy fighter pair on your tail, Lead! I'm coming around!" Raider 3 reported.
Tofen knew he could outmaneuver the comparatively sluggish V-19 or just shoot it down with his rear gun, but he was working with new squadrons, new men. He had to instill the importance of communications during battle into them while times were 'easy.'
"Copy that, Three. Break to starboard on your mark." Tofen jinked his fighter around, viewing through his rear gunsight. There were a pair of fighters there, alright. He squinted at the image, blazing blue bolts whizzing past.
"On my mark," Three began, "three… two… one.. Mark!"
Tofen jerked his stick to the right, stamping down on his right rudder pedal, slewing his aft around to port. He let out a grin, his fighter was in top shape. He knew it could turn on a decicred, if he really wanted it to.
The pair of enemy fighters shot past behind him, then began to bank starboard to come at him. Raider Three got one one of them as Tofen twitched his stick to port to meet the last one head on.
The Republic pilot was already dead, he just didn't know it yet.
The enemy fighter fired on Tofen, two bolts of sapphire shimmered off his frontal shields, prompting XT to chirp a keening cry. He lightly tapped his stick forward and back, jinking vertically in a wave. More blue bursts flew past his cockpit.
XT cried out a positive target lock. Tofen depressed the firing stud, lancing through its shields with three quad blasts of tibanna. The fighter's armor disintegrated and the craft lost all semblance of coherency.
Tofen flew through the newly created debris field, shrapnel buffeting his deflector shields.
"We're clear." Haasi reported. "No threats vectoring to intercept."
"Copy, Marauder Lead, keep on our original course and collapse into the flank of the center at the 100 klick mark. All squadrons acknowledge."
The squad leaders all gave their assent. He hadn't lost anyone in that engagement. Good. He wouldn't have to write any letters home. At that thought, he spared a glance to the flimsiplast photo attached to a corner of his instruments.
They stood there on the balcony atop the ancestral castle of the House of Vane, backdropped by the Matrehorm Mountains. He stood there shooting a smile at the holocam in his dress whites, adorned with gold epaulettes, red collar and sash. Even on flimsi the Durasteel Starburst, 1st Class which hung about his neck seemed to glint in the setting sun. That ancient D'Astan medal awarded for conspicuous gallantry on the battlefield had been draped about his neck by none other than the Confederate Head of State Count Dooku himself.
He tugged at his collar at that, his new standard issue Confederate grays a reminder of how he'd ended up at this battle in the first place. WIth the passage of the Militia Act and the rescinding of the letters of marque, Tofen's Raiders had come under the increasingly centralized command of the Confederate Armed Forces, the fruits of the Pantoran's labors.
Tofen still didn't know what to think of the Pantoran's claims regarding the Count, regarding the man who had offered so much comfort and support to him and his mother in the wake of his father's death at the hands of the Jedi. He had viewed the Count as a mentor, even when he was still a part of the Order on Coruscant. He almost refused the Techno Union's request for licensed production of the Tempest Zero and other Valahari design in protest to the Pantoran's claims, but he'd sucked up his personal feelings, they had a war to win.
He blinked hard to clear his mind of such thoughts, thinking again of the flimsi.
There was Omi, his Omi, looking as resplendent as ever in her dress. The gentle swell of her belly contained a vision of the future. The child she now carried within her was heir to the throne of Valahari, the future of his people.
That was what Tofen was fighting for. For a future of a free galaxy no longer burdened by the shackles of a corrupt bureaucracy filled with sniveling sycophants. For a future for Valahari. For a future for his child, a child they had yet to name together.
An expanding ball of fiery gasses to his starboard caught his eye. The other Hyena swarms were already cutting through the flank on the opposite side of the Republic battleline. They'd split in two at the start of the battle, forced apart by the minefield Admiral Kirst had lain around the converging hyperspace egress points, and reformed into a far sloppier formation. For all the haste of the 8th and 9th Northern Armadas, they'd either done little recon, or had their hands tied by the politicians sitting in their ivory towers on Coruscant.
That brought a grim smile to Tofen's face. It felt good to see them suffer, the same Republic which had brought poverty and starvation to countless worlds through their unjust blockades.
His astromech XT trilled something, bringing Tofen out of his momentary reverie. He craned his neck to the main readout, seeing the translation to XT's spiel.
"Bring him on-screen."
Tofen split his attention between the newly appeared 3D map of the Agamar System and the view in front of his fighter.
The map panned, zooming past the hundreds of warships now maneuvering to kill each other, and highlighted a section where the fighting was thickest. It zoomed in.
A single squadron of starfighters cleaved through a Vulture swarm, scything through a hundred LACs in the blink of an eye. It was all the more impressive considering those Vultures had been outfitted with the advanced engines Valahari was renowned for producing.
Their leader was a masterful pilot.
Their Jedi leader was a masterful pilot.
Tofen grimaced at the display. "Shut it down XT, we have our orders." The display winked off.
"Lead, there's a Corellian corvette vectoring towards us!" Count Phennir, the leader of Plunder Squadron, reported.
Tofen glanced at his sensor screen. There was indeed a CR90 moving to intercept. "Break off by squadrons and bypass it. Attack pattern cresh. Striker Squadron, hit the bridge with a volley of torpedoes, then join back in with the rest of us."
"I copy Lead," came Striker Leader's unhesitating reply.
The Corellian corvette closed the distance quickly. Tofen shunted all discretionary power to his engines, rocketing off with his squadron. Attack pattern cresh, as practiced in so many simulations in their downtime, would have them shoot past 'below' the ventral side of the corvette at the very last moment, where their lines of fire would be most limited and their yawing reaction times lowest.
The CR90 fired, luminescent bolts stitching the fabric of space. XT chirped something which sounded distinctly worried. Tofen ignored the droid, gently rolling his stick around in evasive actions.
He glanced through his rear scopes just as the 12 fighters of Striker squadron dumped their torpedoes into the bridge of the corvette, shattering shields and piercing armor plating. That threat was gone. With their torpedoes expended, they'd be acting as support for the rest of the 171st in their attack runs on the Venators in the Republic centerline.
"100 klick mark reached, head onto new course zero nine zero by zero zero zero. Move 50 klicks then adjust course to zero four five by zero zero zero."
All four squadron leaders confirmed.
As Tofen banked his fighter around to face the frontlines of the battle, all he saw were the scintillating colors of rhydonium detonations, concussion missile barages, and turbolaser bombardments. Admiral Kirst's forward pickets were just meeting the Republic's. Munificents with their superheavy spinals, Arquitens with their missiles and Acclamators with their gargantuan torpedo tubes all vying for the initial positioning which could make or break a space engagement all before the thick of it began.
Already the Republic had lost so much, over a hundred capital ships ravaged by hordes of Hyenas now far gone towards the asteroid belt. The metal of droids seemed far cheaper compared to the blood of men. There also seemed to be far more Confederate metal to Republic blood. This was no battle of Columex where three sector armies flexed their might
The 8th Armada had been whittled down somewhat by the heavy fighting in the north. They had lost some ships to the fighting itself, of course, but they'd also had to sacrifice some of their number to blockade Mygeeto and guard their supply lines through the Maelstrom Nebula on the Relgim Run. The 9th Armada was more of the same, actually having been stationed at Ithor to recuperate from the hard fighting against the original Confederate Third Fleet at the beginning of the war.
The 7th threw a bit of a kowakian hydrospanner into this battle, however. Rather than taking the Celanon Spur up to Ithor to reinforce the 9th on their approach to Agamar as expected, they'd taken the Entralla Route up to Jaemus. That had Admiral Kirst worried. Though Tofen was no flag strategist, he'd figured from hangar scuttlebutt that the 7th would either relieve the 8th of frontline duty, relegating them to supporting roles, or they'd free up the 8th's policing assets for frontline action.
Apparently Kirst had seen something different, so much so that he omitted an entire Division that included half a dozen Providence carrier-destroyers from the current order of battle, holding them in reserve somewhere.
In any case, it was Tofen's job to help whittle the enemy fleet down. The imposing blue-white drive cones of a Venator grew larger in Tofen's cockpit. His canopy gradually polarized as the 171st drew ever closer. XT trilled something, they'd soon be in range.
"Ready proton torpedoes," he said, his tone glacial. No enemy fighter cover, too busy with Vultures. Good. XT beeped out a target lock. "Release on my mark." They'd need to be coordinated to do as much damage as possible.
Tofen switched his stick's firing stud over from guns to launchers. "Three… two… one… mark!"
Captain Jeros Idanian, Dreadnought Starcrusher
"There goes another one," Admiral Kirst said with all the excitement of an aristocrat at opera, smugly leaning his weight on one elbow with a crooked smirk gracing his features.
"Indeed," Captain Idanian said, twisting one end of his mustache at the view of the exploding Star Destroyer provided by the tactical display. He frowned. "Sir, if I might ask, why do you feel the need to toy with them with such tactics? If we were to send but a single battlegroup, a Lucrehulk battleship with accompanying escorts, we could do some real damage."
Admiral Kirst turned to look at the aging captain, the Admiral's cunning blue eyes and full head of hair in stark contrast to his own balding grey pate and eyes dulled from years of dutiful service. The Admiral could be temperamental, and seemed to have a flair for the theatrical at times (the most memorable of these moments being when he claimed to be a direct descendent of Xim the Despot and his disappointment shortly before the battle that he wouldn't be able to call the slingshot maneuver the 'Kirst Catapult'), but what mattered most to Jeros was his ability to win battles and bring his ships home in one piece.
In fact, the Starcrusher's paint hadn't so much as been scratched during all the fierce fighting in the galactic north, when the First Fleet Group had been the Third Fleet. Though that fact could probably be more aptly attributed to its weaponry more so than anything else, Kirst's command ability included.
Perhaps now, though, the most valuable of his traits was loyalty to the Raxus Parliament, but Jeros was not one for petty party politics. He was here to fight.
Kirst gave him an indulgent look. "Captain, might I ask you what you think our purpose here at Agamar is?"
Jeros turned towards him, paused in thought for a few seconds, and said, "To hold the enemy for as long as possible, sir, as we've discussed multiple times. To make a fighting retreat towards Celanon to buy time for the other fronts."
"And just how do you think risking a valuable Lucrehulk battlegroup would aid in that objective?" Kirst leaned his chin on a palm.
Jeros thought for a moment once again, carefully trying not to elicit one of the Admiral's long winded tirades about grand strategy in the middle of a battle. "It would certainly slow the enemy, sir. Isn't our goal to gain as much time as possible? Wouldn't moving our fleet in full force to mangle their right or left flank be the ideal course of action?"
Kirst smirked and stood from his command chair.
Not a good sign.
"Lieutenant Daan, would you retrieve for the good Captain Idanian a holoprojection of the galactic situation?" he requested with a flourish of a hand, one arm tucked behind his back.
"Yes sir," the redhead bridge officer replied, tapping a button on her console.
Kirst gestured grandly at the local system readout and towards the greater galactic map. "Though I wouldn't say it in Senator Bremack's presence, this system is not all that important. Agamar is a backwater, valuable only for its place as a hyperspace junction and for the food it produces. Though we've done our best to make it defensible, this planet is lost. It has been lost from the first drafting of Operation Storm-Door. No ground-to-aerospace cannons, no planetary shields." Kirst shook his head and paused.
Jeros nodded sagely, wondering where the Admiral was going with this. He uneasily adjusted the hem of his Confederate greys, having made the switch from the grey-green of the Raxus Defense Forces.
"You have something to say, Captain?" Kirst's eyebrow quirked and he waved his hand laterally in his direction.
"Well, sir, it seems that the more losses we inflict on the enemy now, naturally, the less we would have to deal with later."
Kirst nodded. "A very true and reasonable conclusion, Captain. However, let's say I sent forth the Broken Circle forward along with, let's say, Forn Squadron with its dozen Providence destroyers. What would happen? Sure, we might take out twice as many Republic ships to the total loss of such a Lucrehulk battlegroup, but what would be the effect of this action on our defensive campaign?"
Jeros was momentarily distracted by an exploding Carrack light cruiser on the tactical display before refocusing on Kirst. The way the Admiral stood confused him as to whether or not his question had been rhetorical.
Jeros stroked his chin, deciding it was a question to be answered. "I suppose the Republic would be able to replace their losses far more easily than we our's."
Kirst grinned and continued, flicking an index finger up for emphasis, "Because of that fact, Captain, our goal here at Agamar is not just to inflict maximum casualties on the enemy, buy time, and retreat, but to inflict maximum casualties, buy time, and retreat while preserving our own forces."
Kirst paused, this time more for dramatic emphasis than to prompt a comment from Jeros. "Now do you see, Captain?"
"Yes sir," Jeros nodded.
"Good."
Jeros's subsequent intake of breath forestalled any further comments from the Admiral. "Though, sir, I still cannot help but wonder at your insistence regarding the movement of the 7th Division towards Argazda. The forces of the Ciutric Hegemony cover the Veragi flank, not to mention the month-long diversion they'd have to take."
"I do not place great faith in Ciutric," Kirst scoffed and turned towards the transparisteel viewscreen, crossing his arms and lofting a fist up under his chin, deep in thought. "Their Seventh Armada worries me, Captain. Jaemus worries me, Bescane worries me, Dubrillion worries me."
Jeros offered no further comment, silently contemplating his superior's thoughts.
Kirst turned towards Lieutenant Daan, leaning over her shoulder. "Get me tight-beam transmissions to our pickets, they've done enough damage for today."
AN: Just something fun I'm doing. If you want sneak peaks at my future chapters, please subscribe to m by the same name (zzzxxc1)