"Captain. It's done. She's all yours."
On the bridge of the Shadowhawk, Vex Korrath hung up the call and settled back into her command chair.
She could feel the difference in the ship beneath her a deepening of the Shadowhawk's voice from familiar hum to something lower, heavier, more alive. The bridge lighting had brightened as excess power bled into secondary systems. The tactical displays seemed sharper.
And the engines. The Shadowhawk's drives were straining forward against station-keeping orders like a leashed hunting beast, the output so far above standard that the drive nacelles produced a brilliant blue-white plume of superheated particles stretching behind the destroyer like a comet's tail.
"Fire."
Lieutenant Hask discharged all twenty turbolaser cannons simultaneously.
The bolts that left the barrels were wrong. Standard turbolaser bolts from this class were concentrated plasma approximately two meters in diameter. What erupted from the Shadowhawk's gun ports were swollen, over-saturated with energy their emerald color deepened to almost black-green at the core where plasma density exceeded normal parameters. They crossed the void not as sharp, clean lines but as heavy brutal strokes of light that seemed to distort the space around them.
The first salvo struck the station's shields. The tactical display registered an energy transfer spike that made Hask do a double take.
"Captain, overcharged fire is landing at approximately four to five times standard energy transfer per bolt," Hask reported.
"Target the lead Harrower. The Ironwraith. I want her shields tested before she gets comfortable."
Lieutenant Hask adjusted the firing solution in the span of a breath, and the next volley screamed across one hundred and ninety kilometers of vacuum toward the foremost of the five advancing ships. The overcharged bolts struck the Ironwraith's forward deflector shields and even at this distance the impact was enough to make the dreadnought's shield indicators spike. The Ironwraith's tactical officer would be seeing a severe reduction from a single volley, the shields would regenerate, of course military-grade deflectors on a Harrower-class recycled absorbed energy back into their matrix at a steady rate recovering approximately two to three percent under sustained fire.
Seven seconds. The capacitors recharged. The turbolasers fired again.
The second salvo struck the Ironwraith with the same brutal impact as the first, twenty overcharged bolts hammering across the void in a near simultaneous impact against her forward shields. Even at one hundred and ninety kilometers, Vex could see the flicker through the bridge's main viewport a washed-out shimmer of deflector trying to disperse energy.
"Their regeneration is falling behind our fire rate." Lieutenant Hask reported, his voice carrying across the room.
"Of course it is. Helm, evasive pattern Korrath-three. Now"
The order rippled out across the bridge in a chorus of acknowledgments, and beneath her boots Vex felt the Shadowhawk answer. The destroyer's drives didn't merely respond they lunged, the deeper voice of the ship climbing into a register the deck plating wasn't quite designed to transmit. The artificial gravity compensators groaned audibly somewhere behind the bulkhead as the six-hundred-meter ship rolled along her axis and angled seventeen degrees to the left, the plume of her exhaust scrawling a curve becoming noticeably longer across the black of space.
It wasn't enough speed to outrun a Harrower's targeting solution, the Shadowhawk was still a five-hundred meter destroyer pushing capital ship mass through vacuum, but it was enough to spoil firing solutions. The first answering volley from the Ironwraith arrived four seconds later as thirty-six quad-turbolaser batteries firing in coordinated salvo. The dreadnought's full forward broadside lighting up the void with crimson bolts the diameter of speeder bikes. Most of them missed entirely, the Shadowhawk's roll carrying her out of the projected impact zone before the bolts crossed the gap. Three found her shields and spent themselves in flaring discharges along the dorsal deflectors.
"Shields ninety-six percent" called the deflector officer. "Distributed evenly. Marginal heat buildup on the port-dorsal projectors."
"Acceptable." Vex's voice was flat. "Hask continue suppressive fire on the Ironwraith. I want her shields below forty before her sisters close the gap."
The Shadowhawk's twenty turbolasers cycled and continued to fire again, as they did Vex watched the impact register and felt for just a moment, the dark satisfaction of a hunter who has the measure of her prey. Eleven percent. Eight percent. Nine percent. Each volley peeling shielding faster than the Ironwraith's projectors could repair it. The dreadnought's tactical officer would be screaming at his power management team right now, ordering capacitor reallocations and emergency rerouting that wouldn't be enough.
"Movement on the flanks." The sensor officer's voice climbed half an octave. "Three Centurion battlecruisers are advancing through the formation gaps. They're...Captain, they're threading between the Harrowers. Inside the screen."
Vex's display updated. The three Centurions which she didn't bother to read their names; her contempt for naval architecture extended to its battlecruisers, which were genuinely dangerous were doing exactly what their doctrine called for. They flowed forward through the dreadnought wall like water finding cracks, their lighter mass and better thrust ratios letting them slip into the cone of fire that the Harrowers themselves had created, using their bigger sisters as as a shield. Each Centurion carried turbolasers, heavy ion cannons, tractor projectors, and the better part of ninety starfighters.
"Permission to redirect fire Captain?" Hask asked.
"Negative. Keep peeling the Ironwraith. The Centurions are still out of effective ion range, and I want at least one of those dreadnoughts wishing she'd stayed in formation."
She had perhaps two minutes before that changed.
The tactical display chimed again and Vex's jaw tightened by a fraction. Four heat signatures had separated from the underside of the station and were accelerating hard—Gage-class transports, four-hundred-and-twenty-five meter brutes with the same wedge-armor as their destroyer cousins but built for hauling, not fighting. Each one carried only a token battery of four turbolasers and a handful of laser turrets, but their hull plating was rated to ram battle stations and survive most of the trip.
The Gages were moving fast. Not capital-ship fast—their drives weren't built for it—but redlining their engines in a way that meant their captains were either being threatened or volunteering, and Vex didn't particularly care which.
"They're going to screen the dreadnoughts" Hask said. "Captain, they're trying to interpose."
"I can see what they're doing, Lieutenant."
The Shadowhawk's next volley fired just as the leading Gage transport which she could read the designation now, the Marrow crossed into the projected impact corridor at full burn. The pilot of that ship was either suicidally brave or had been told that allowing the Ironwraith to take another overcharged broadside would be considered a personal failure by someone with the rank to make personal failures lethal.
The result was almost surgical. The Marrow slid into position with the unhurried grace of a creature settling into a hunting stance, her bulk eclipsing nearly the entire forward profile of the Ironwraith from the Shadowhawk's firing angle. The twenty overcharged turbolaser bolts struck the transport's deflectors one after another.
Vex saw the shields flare to white then to something past white, a saturated chromatic scream as the Marrow's shield projectors tried to dissipate roughly twenty times their rated absorption ceiling in a single instant. The deflectors held for perhaps half a second longer than they should have. Then they collapsed entirely in a cascading failure that traveled along the transport's ventral hull in flickering blue arcs.
The Marrow convulsed. Her armor was rated for ramming but the two bolts gouged trenches across her hull slag spraying outward in geysers of molten durasteel. The third punched through her ventral plating entirely, blew through three decks of cargo bay, and detonated against an interior bulkhead in a way that cracked her spine. The fourth followed the same path two meters further aft and turned what must have been a fuel cell into a single expanding sphere of plasma.
The Ironwraith, behind her dying screen, was undamaged.
"That was a sacrifice play" Hask murmured, the words barely audible.
"Mark it" Vex said.
Movement at the edge of the tactical plot.
For a moment Vex thought it was another Centurion sliding into the engagement envelope. Then her threat board updated with a confirmation she hadn't expected, and she felt the corner of her eyes narrow.
A Terminus-class destroyer had just emerged from behind the curve of the battle station, riding a clean attack vector that would put her almost directly astern of the Shadowhawk's current heading and drives burning hot.
'The galaxy has a sense of humor' Vex thought as she laughed.
It wasn't a long laugh, or a particularly loud one, just a short dry exhalation that carried real amusement, the kind that the rest of the bridge crew had learned over years of service meant their captain had just decided the situation was worse than they thought and had chosen to find it funny rather than worrying. Hask glanced at her sideways and decided not to ask.
"They sent my own cousin" Vex said. Her mouth curved at the corner. "Five Harrowers, three Centurions, four Gages, and now a Terminus. They really don't want us to reach the station."
She tapped a command into her chair's armrest. "Fine. Hask, split the batteries. Bow ten on the Ironwraith, continue suppressive. Aft ten on the new destroyer I want her to know exactly what she's flying into. Pilot, bring us up forty degrees relative I want clean firing arcs for both groups."
"Splitting fire, aye." Hask's fingers moved across his console in the rapid practiced patterns "Bow group firing on the Ironwraith. Aft cycling toward the new arrival. Designation pending, querying Intelligence database."
"Don't bother. Whoever's commanding her will transmit it soon enough."
The Shadowhawk fired in halves now. Ten overcharged bolts arced forward and down hammering the Ironwraith's shields. Ten more pivoted crossing toward the Terminus.
But the Imperial fleet had been waiting for her to commit to a target and they had the firing solutions queued.
The Ironwraith, the Subjugator, and the Void Fang fired their batteries in coordinated salvo. The Penance and the Malcontent, flanking on the far edges, fired in delay shaping their volley so that the Shadowhawk would be turning into the second wave even as she dodged the first. Behind them, the three Centurions launched proton torpedoes in clustered swarms.
The launch flares from the Centurions' forward tubes lit the tactical display like a constellation being born. Twelve proton torpedoes in the first volley, eight in the second, then six more from the lead battlecruiser's secondary racks — twenty-six warheads in total, scattering into a loose attack formation as their drive cores stabilized and their seeker heads locked on. Vex watched the numbers populate her threat board: time to closest impact twenty eight seconds. Approach vector, top left quadrant. Spread pattern, wide enough that no single defensive volley would clear it.
"Helm, give me a thirty-degree shift to starboard and pitch nose down twelve." Her voice didn't rise. "I want our shield projectors out of their line and the engagement window stretched as long as you can keep it. Make them chase us."
"Thirty, pitching twelve."
The Shadowhawk answered with a complaint of stressed metal. The maneuver took nearly four full seconds to execute but during those four seconds the line of the torpedo attack changed. The warheads, locked onto the Shadowhawk's center of mass at the moment of launch had to correct their headings. Their targeting computers burned fuel chasing the new vector. And every meter the Shadowhawk moved meant another fraction of a second the warheads spent in the kill zone of her point defense rather than embedded in her shields.
"Point defense, free engagement" Vex said. "All batteries light them up."
Along the Shadowhawk's hull the laser turrets that supplemented her main turbolaser banks woke up. These were the smaller weapons starship scale designed for tracking small fast moving targets and burning them down before they reached effective detonation range. They opened fire as a coordinated array their bolts a tighter, paler green than the destroyer's main batteries.
The first torpedo died at twenty-two seconds, a flash of premature detonation as a point defense bolt found its warhead outside of damage range. The second went six-tenths of a second later. Then two more in quick succession then another, the kill markers on Vex's display ticking up in a satisfying rhythm.
Ahead of her she watched as the opposing Terminus had completed her own firing solution as turbolaser fired and their bolts crossed the gulf in a clean broadside. The Shadowhawk's aft shields took the brunt. Vex felt the impact as a deep vibration through the deck and watched the deflector indicators slide down.
"Aft shields at seventy-two and dropping. They're walking their fire across the same area we used to roll." The deflector officer's voice was tight. "She's a Terminus captain. She knows what a Terminus is going to do."
"Then we do something a Terminus isn't going to do." Vex's eyes flicked to the firing solution display. "Hask aft batteries, give her a half volley. Five bolts walking across her bridge tower. Don't try to kill her. Make her blind."
The turbolasers fired in sequence rather than in salvo, five overcharged bolts crossing the gap one after another in a deliberate sweep across the enemy destroyer's superstructure. The Terminus's shields held but her gunners broke fire for the better part of three seconds as their bridge crew dealt with the sudden, blinding overload of their own forward sensor pickups. Three seconds wasn't a victory. It was just three seconds.
Fifteen seconds to torpedo impact. The point defense had killed nineteen of the twenty-six warheads. Five remained, drives burning hot locked on the Shadowhawk's shifting profile.
A soft chime sounded from the side panel of her command chair.
Vex looked at the indicator and felt something tighten in her chest that had nothing to do with the battle. The frequency was encrypted three times deeper than Imperial Intelligence's own protocols and was routed through a single private node aboard a ship that should have been roughly four sectors away from her current position. There was exactly one person in the galaxy who used that frequency.
She tapped the receiver.
The small holoprojector on the chair's right armrest flickered to life, and a quarter meter tall figure materialized above it in pale blue. Mandalorian armor colored purple and gold, polished to a hard sheen, the chest plate bearing the etched outline of a neebray skull, that long curved silhouette with its empty hollow eyes that Vex had grown to know better than her own service insignia over the past eight years.The figure with their helmet on was standing on what looked like a raised command platform, surrounded by other figures in similar armor.
"Hello beloved" Vex said into the channel. Her voice was perfectly level. "Your timing is, as always exquisite."
"How's your day going Cipher?"
"I'm being attacked by the local Imperial garrison otherwise it is quiet productive."
The figure on the holo cocked her helmeted head in a way that suggested a raised eyebrow.
"Hold one" Vex said. "I'm in the middle of something."
She didn't end the call.
Ten seconds.
Four torpedoes remained. The point defense crews were burning their capacitors at twice the rated sustained rate and Vex could see the heat readouts on the turrets climbing into the orange. One more torpedo flashed and died. Then another. Two left.
Seven seconds. Six.
The third to last torpedo took a hit but didn't detonate its warhead. It corkscrewed wildly past the ship's hull at high speed and continued out into open space.
Four seconds. The last torpedo continued as point defense turrets converged their fire on the final warhead. Bolts crashed against the torpedo's drive trail, against its sides, against the leading edge of its nose. The torpedo's countermeasures activated — chaff, jamming, a small evasive burn — and it slipped through the converging fire with the irritating luck of something that had decided today was its day.
It struck the Shadowhawk's shields and detonated. The bridge lighting flickered hard as a sound rang across the ship a different note this time, sharper and higher than the turbolaser impacts, the deflectors shedding the warhead's directed energy in a brutal cascade. Vex felt the deck shift fractionally beneath her boots. The shield indicator for that area had dropped from fifty-eight percent to twenty-nine percent in a single eye blink.
"Shields at twenty-nine percent. Projector cluster three-alpha is offline due to overheating. Estimated thirty seconds to bring it back online manually."
"Reroute coverage from three-beta and three-gamma. Don't let them see the gap."
Vex looked back down at the holo on her armrest. Sera hadn't moved.
"Sera" she said. "Tell me you have good news."
-----------------------------
(Sera Vance POV)
"Sera" The holographic image of Vex flickering once as some unseen impact rang through the Shadowhawk's deck. "Tell me you have good news."
Sera Vance smiled inside her helmet, and the warmth of it carried through the modulator with a softness that did not match the harsh angular bulk of the Kad'ika's command dais around her.
"One minute, cyar'ika. We're leaving now. Have fun. Don't die before I get there and I'm bringing company."
"How much company?"
"Enough."
Vex's mouth twitched at one corner. It was the closest thing to a relieved laugh Sera had seen out of her in months. On the holo, the Shadowhawk's bridge lurched briefly as another impact rolled through her, and somewhere off camera Lieutenant Hask was calling percentages.
"Then hurry, I'm running out of clever."
"Fine. I'll see you on the other side."
The hologram dissolved.
Sera stood for half a breath on the dais of the Kad'ika. The dim amber chamber lights painting the purple of her armor a deeper shade of purple and catching the gold of the neebray skull etched across her chest plate. Then she straightened rolled her shoulders inside the beskar, and crossed three measured paces to the wall console set into the dais rail. Her gauntlet found the broadcast key. She tapped it open.
The transmission indicator burned green across the top of her HUD. Fleet-wide, all hulls, all decks. Fifteen ships. Tens of thousands of warriors. The vast majority of the fighting strength of Clan Zen'zat listening.
"All hands. Listen up. The Great Hunt opens in a few years. Some of you young ones have been training for it since you could walk. You've been counting the days. I know the feeling as I was you once. Your fathers or mothers and aunts will be watching you to see whether you have what it takes to step into the ringand answer for the clan in front of every other clan in the galaxy. It is the proving ground.
"It is not today's proving ground. Today is something simpler."
"The Empire has won its war against the Republic now in the recent war. They have taken worlds. They have broken fleets. They have signed treaties at gunpoint and called it diplomacy and somewhere along the way the Imperial Navy has gotten drunk on its own victories. In one minute we drop into a real battle against a real Imperial fleet. The training holos do not bleed. The drone fleets do not shoot back with anything that matters. Some of us may not come home from this. I will not lie to you about that. But understand who we are and why we are doing this."
"The Empire has poked a Mandalorian interest. Let us remind them what happens when they do."
She killed the broadcast.
For one beat the battle deck held perfectly still and then it broke into the focused controlled storm of warriors going to combat stations in the practiced silence of people who had drilled this until it was breathing. Helmets sealed. Gauntlets locked. Crew chiefs called positions. Beneath Sera's boots the deeper harder thrum of the drives climbed through the deck plating as her cross shaped engine assembly clawed for hyperspace.
Through the viewport behind the dais, Sera watched the engines paint a long white-blue tunnel against the dark. Three Kandosii-type dreadnaughts. Seven Mandalorian cruisers. Five Jehavey'ir-type assault ships. The full strike package all riding the same translation solutio, all set to drop in tight coordination at the far end.
She turned to the holodisplay at the center of the dais. An octagonal projector ring nearly four meters across, set flush into the deck with twelve auxiliary stations clustered around its rim where her clan officers ran tactical, sensor, communication, and gunnery boards. The whole installation glowed in soft blue white from below, casting upward in a pale column that lit the underside of every helmet visor on the dais. Sera had stood at this projector since she was old enough to reach the controls without a step, her mother had stood here before her and she planned to do the same for her children.
Above the projector, the tactical reconstruction Vex had streamed during the call resolved itself into a slow rotating three-dimensional model of the engagement zone as it had stood about forty seconds before Vex hung up.
"Show me" Sera said.
Her senior tactical officer — a broad-shouldered woman named Karra Beviin, third cousin on Sera's mother's side and the Kad'ika's warlord for the duration of this fight stepped forward and began rotating the model with sharp economical gestures of her gauntlet.
"The Shadowhawk is here." A small green wedge near the center of the model. "Five hundred meters modified Terminus, overcharged reactor. She's holding a sustained engagement against this formation —" Karra's gauntlet swept across five massive wedge icons "Harrowers in echelon. Ironwraith, Subjugator, Penance, Void Fang, Malcontent. Eight hundred meters each, thirty-six quad turbolaser batteries per ship."
"Centurions?"
"Three, threading the gaps between the Harrowers. Eight hundred meters apiece, ninety fighters and proton torpedo racks each. They already launched twenty-six warheads at her. Her point defense killed twenty-five, the last one hit herback shield. Four Gages One of them the Marrow took the overcharged broadside meant for the Ironwraith. She's drifting on momentum with a sixty-meter hole in her hull. The other three are repositioning into screening positions along the Harrower line."
"And the Terminus."
Karra rotated the model. A second small wedge resolved itself to the left the Shadowhawk riding a clean attack vector trying to curve around the ship while staying out of range.
"Imperial Terminus. Sister-class to Vex's. Standard production loadout with twenty turbolasers, twenty laser turrets, four ion cannons. Her shields are nominal. She's been trading fire with Vex's aft batteries."
"Station?"
"Holding. She hasn't committed her primary batteries. She's letting the Harrowers do the work. Probably saving her heavy fire for if Vex tries to disengage."
Sera studied the model for two long seconds.
"Karra. Vector solution." Sera's gauntlet traced a line down through the model and stopped above the wedge of the Imperial Terminus astern of the Shadowhawk. "Five Jehavey'ir come down on top of her. On top of her. I want them dropping out of hyperspace with their guns already hot and their bow tubes loaded. Two kilometer drop bracket above her hull and I want an attack vector straight down her spine shields collapsing before her bridge crew has even registered the new contacts."
Karra's gauntlet moved across her board. "Confirmed with Beten, Kal'gaan, Vencuyot, Aruetii's Bane, and Mhi Solus. All five captains acknowledge. Translation solutions ahead of ours by approximately four seconds so they'll be in the kill envelope and firing before we drop."
"Good. Let them have it." Sera's finger shifted across the model and traced a line forward of the Shadowhawk's current heading, between her destroyer and the advancing Harrower wall. "The Kad'ika, Beviin'la, and Mar'eyce drop here blocking the Harrowers. The seven cruisers form a screen behind us point defense interlocked. We are not here to brawl with five Harrowers. We are here to make the Harrowers stop shooting at my wife while I get her through those ships."
A ripple of acknowledgments around the dais. The clan officers were already pushing solutions to their sister ships, the formation diagram updating across the projector in real time. Sera could see the cruiser captains confirmations cascading down the side of her HUD.
"Captain." The voice came from the navigation station at the rim of the projector, a younger officer. "Twenty-second warning on translation. Mark."
"Acknowledged. Combat alert one. All hands find your hard seats and brace for transition."
The chamber settled into the deeper quiet of warriors waiting for the drop. Sera turned away from the holo-display, walked the three paces back to the transparisteel viewport at the rear of the dais, and rested her gauntlet on the rail.
The long blue-white tunnel of hyperspace streamed past beyond the transparisteel. Eighteen seconds.
Behind her the clan officers were running through their final checks as they made sure Concussion missile tubes were loaded and point-defense triple-laser cannons cycling.
Eight seconds.
Four.
Two.
One.
The viewport blazed white and then resolved into black and the Kad'ika was there.
Thirteen hundred and sixty meters of beskar plated dreadnaught translated into real space with the heavy, satisfied groan of a ship coming home to a fight. Her engine assembly flared bright across the rear hull as her drives stabilized and began their sequence to combat speed. Sera felt the deck shift beneath her boots. The inertial compensators still took half a second longer to settle than needed no matter what she replaced and she didn't mind. To her port and starboard four seconds behind the Kad'ika's drop, the Beviin'la and Mar'eyce translated cleanly into formation.
The octagonal projector at the center of the dais flickered as the Kad'ika's sensors caught up with reality and the tactical reconstruction Vex had streamed dissolved and reformed into a live model.
Sera's eyes narrowed inside her helmet. The display showed it cleanly now as the enemy Terminus had not been simply astern of the Shadowhawk. She had been swinging, riding a long curved trajectory. The arc was almost beautiful. Standard textbook flanking maneuver, the kind a senior Imperial captain might run in a fleet exercise to show his junior officers how to cut off a fleeing destroyer's retreat lane. The Imperial Terminus had not been chasing Vex. She had been closing the lid on the box. And now five sharp angular silhouettes hung directly above her and were already pouring fire down her.
The display showed them in tight formation, two thousand meters above the Imperial Terminus's bridge tower, weapons already cycling at intervals. The Terminus's shields glowed white under the concentrated impact. Beten and Kal'gaan were firing heavy ion cannons across the sections surrounding the hangers in long pale arcs. Vencuyot and Aruetii's Bane were dumping concussion missiles down her spine in clustered salvos that detonated against her shields in overlapping flashes. Mhi Solus held back twenty meters and ran her medium double turbolasers across the Terminus's bridge tower in deliberate, methodical sweeps.
"Captain." Karra's voice was tight with the controlled professional pleasure of a tactical officer watching her own plan work exactly as drawn. "The Imperial Terminus is reacting. She's trying to turn as her aft drives are spooling. She may be trying to break the arc and disengage."
"She won't make it." Sera's gauntlet rested on the rim of the projector. "Let the Jehavey'ir captains finish their work. We have our own."
She turned away from the display.
"Helm, ahead full. Beviin'la and Mar'eyce, form on me for a charge. We are not firing yet. Let them watch us come."
She felt as they surged forward. The ships drives finally reached full thrust and the deck thrummed harder under Sher boots. Beyond the viewport the long stretch of vacuum between the Mandalorian formation and the advancing Harrower wall began to compress with the visible deliberateness of a hunting pack closing on a herd.
The Imperial side reacted exactly the way Sera had wanted them to.
The Harrower formation's neat echelon broke as their captains tried to reorient. The Ironwraith, which had been pouring fire forward at the Shadowhawk, suddenly had to start angling her thirty-six quad-turbolaser batteries to address an entirely different threat. The Subjugator and the Penance had to break their positions to bring their own batteries onto the new line. The Void Fang and the Malcontent, further out on the starboard wing were now staring at a Mandalorian charge that had appeared where they assumed nothing more than space dust.
The seven Mandalorian cruisers translated into real space directly behind their three ships, corvettes resolving in a tight cluster of sharp-edged hulls each carrying enough deflector shields to make a Harrower think twice. The lead cruiser the Ruus'alor, dropped no more than two thousand meters astern of Sera's ship engine. Behind her the other ships fell into a line abreast across her flanks.
"Cruisers in formation" Karra reported. "Ruus'alor confirms shield-wall protocol. They're forming the line now."
Sera nodded once. She had drilled this maneuver with Captain Vau of the Ruus'alor a hundred times in the simulators and twice in the field. The seven cruisers' shield projectors were the most powerful in the strike group built for fast deployment, designed to interlock their deflector matrices into a single overlapping wall that could absorb sustained capital ship fire long enough to matter. It was not even close to invulnerable. But it was mobile, and it would buy the Shadowhawk exactly the kind of cover Vex needed.
Sera tapped her comm. "Cyar'ika. You have a wall. Use it."
"Acknowledged Sera. Oh! tell Captain Vau to give me a firing lane forward whenever I call for one. I'm going to be coming out from behind that screen to throw overcharged volleys forward, then pulling back before the Harrowers can answer."
"He heard you. He's already routing the shield permissions."
"Tell him thank you."
"Tell him yourself in person, when we're done."
The Kad'ika and her sisters were now thirty kilometers ahead of the cruiser line and closing on the Harrowers at full combat thrust. The Imperial dreadnaughts were still trying to finish their pivot to engage. Their newly-broken echelon meant their crossfire patterns were ragged for at least another twelve to fifteen seconds — a window in which they could not concentrate fire effectively without risking their own sister ships in the line of return fire.
"Karra" Sera said. "Now."
"Main batteries firing."
The five heavy double turbolaser batteries opened up in a coordinated salvo that ran the full length of her spine. Ten bolts crossed the gap in pale red-orange strokes — the older Mandalorian frequency band, not the red of Imperial turbolasers or the blue of Republic, the unmistakable color signature had been reworked across generations of clan engineers. The Beviin'la and Mar'eyce fired within a quarter second of the Kad'ika. Thirty heavy double turbolaser bolts streamed forward in a coordinated salvos and converged on the Ironwraith.
The Harrower's forward shields took the brunt and the impact registered across the holodisplay in a satisfying spike. Sera watched the Ironwraith's shield indicator drop ten percent in a single volley. Not as satisfying as one of Vex's own broadsides, but the Kad'ika could sustain her fire rate indefinitely and Vex could not. And there were three of them.
The enemy ships fired back and Hundreds of crimson bolts crossed the gap toward the Mandalorian wedge in coordinated volleys.
The Kad'ika took the first wave on her forward shields. The bridge lighting dimmed for a fraction of a second as the deflector capacitors drew power. Sera felt the impact through the deck plating as a deep resonant note that ran through her bones and was answered, two beats later, by the deeper note of the secondary batteries cycling back up for their next volley.
Sera laughed once and then her HUD flashed an amber threat update and her amusement folded back into the controlled professional intensity of someone watching a battle become more complicated.
"Fighters launching out of all ships, all Hanger bays open." she said. She had seen it on the display before Karra called it.
The Imperial fighter swarms emerged from the carrier hangars first, the Harrowers' interceptor squadrons punching out from their forward bays in tighter formations as then the Centurions' heavier fighters spilling out from the hangars along their flanks. Within twenty seconds the Imperial fleet had produced starfighters across the engagement zone, the small craft sorting themselves into attack wings and bomber groups with the practiced coordination of a navy that had been winning starfighter engagements against the Republic for the better part of two years.
The Sith Empire had been pouring resources into starfighter production for those same years, and the Mark VI Supremacy-class fighters streaming out of the Harrower and Centurion hangars showed it — sleek narrow-bodied craft with twin forward laser cannons and high-thrust drives, their hulls painted in the matte black-and-crimson colors of the Imperial Navy fleet. Behind them came the heavier bombers, slower and more thickly armored, hauling proton torpedo loads that would have to be dealt with before they reached the Kad'ika's shielding. Four hundred fighters and bombers in total, sorting themselves into the precise attack-wing formations.
"Karra. Launch the starfighters."
"Launching now."
Across the several ships hangar doors cycled open in coordinated sequence. The Kad'ika's fighter complement spilled out of her hangars in the practiced launch profile that her flight chiefs had drilled across a thousand exercises. Davaab-type starfighter after starfighter, every one of them emerging from the hangars in coordinated pairs, their twin laser cannons already primed and their concussion missile racks loaded accelerating into the engagement zone on trails that streamed behind them like banners.
The Beviin'la and Mar'eyce launched their own Davaab squadrons within four seconds. The seven cruisers behind them disgorged smaller flights from their lighter hangars in older airframes, more battle-scarred. Clan Zen'zat had never seen the point of buying new fighters when the old ones still flew and the old ones still flew because every clan member who could spell their own name had been required from childhood to spend at least one rotation in a Davaab cockpit.
Two hundred and forty Davaab-type starfighters into the void.
Sera watched them spread across the holodisplay in a coordinated lattice — squadrons of twelve, wings of three squadrons, the whole formation organizing itself into the layered Mandalorian attack profile that had been refined over clan warfare. The lead wings angled forward toward the Imperial fighter swarm. The reserve wings hung back along the dreadnaught flanks, ready to plug gaps. The escort wings tucked in close to the cruiser shield wall to deal with anything that got past the screen.
The two swarms began to close across the gap.
For a few seconds perhaps fifteen, maybe twenty, the precise count would matter later when the after-action reports were written, there was nothing between the two formations except vacuum and the distant flicker of capital ship turbolaser exchanges happening above and below them. The Davaab pilots held their fire. The Mark VI pilots held theirs. Both sides were closing at combined relative velocities that would have made any engagement impossible, and both sides knew exactly the moment to break that hold and the moment was not yet.
Sera watched the gap close and felt the old familiar tightening in her chest that always came in the seconds before a fighter engagement broke open. She had flown a Davaab in three battles before she had taken her father's command chair. She knew the cockpit. She knew the cant of the wing under a heavy maneuver.
The first Mandalorian missile fired.
It came from the lead Davaab in the first squadron from second wing leader, streaking across the closing gap and detonated against the forward shielding of the lead Mark VI two and a half seconds before any other shot was fired. The Imperial fighter staggered, lost half its forward shielding, and tried to peel away. The Davaab that had fired the missile was already in its laser-cannon firing arc by the time it could complete the turn causing The Mark VI to explode.
After that, the void came apart.
Two hundred and forty Davaab starfighters and four hundred Mark VIs and Imperial bombers collided in the chaotic three dimensional knife fight that any fighter engagement at this density became and the engagement was dense. Sera could only see it displayed as a single roiling cloud of arrows and contact markers, individual fighters tracking only when they did something interesting the rest collapsing into a swarm-shape that pulsed and folded across the gap as the two formations interpenetrated. Davaab squadrons broke into pairs and started cutting through Imperial wings on coordinated attack runs. Mark VI squadrons answered with their own tactics, using their superior numbers to fix Davaab elements in place while flanking wings swept in from above and below.
A Davaab broke apart under concentrated cannon fire from three Mark VIs. The pilot punched out an instant before the cockpit went and his rescue beacon began to ping on Sera's display. Two Mark VIs followed the Davaab into oblivion within the next second as his wingmate avenged him with a laser shot through both their canopies. A bomber wing trying to push through to the Beviin'la was caught by a Davaab escort element coming up from beneath, and three of the six bombers exploded before they could release their torpedoes. The other three released anyway. Two warheads were intercepted by point-defense fire from the Beviin'la's triple-laser cannons. The third detonated against her forward shielding in a flash bright enough to wash the bridge viewport white for a full second.
"Beviin'la forward shields at sixty-four percent" Karra reported. "She's holding."
"Tell Captain Ordo to keep her drives up. We're not slowing the charge."
"He says he wouldn't slow for the Mand'alor herself, captain."
"That sounds about right."
She continued to watch as the wedge continued its advance. Thirty kilometers had become twenty. Twenty was becoming fifteen. At fifteen kilometers the Kad'ika's gunners would be able to start picking individual sub-systems on the Harrowers' hulls. Sera could see the calculation playing out across the display.
The Harrowers fired again. The ship shook as it took the volley on her forward shields and answered with another full broadside from her heavy double turbolaser batteries. The Beviin'la and Mar'eyce fired with her. Thirty pale orange bolts crossed the gap in a coordinated salvo and converged on the Ironwraith's forward shields.
The Ironwraith's shields, already softened by Vex's overcharged broadsides and the sustained Mandalorian fire of the last forty-five seconds, gave way. She watched smiling as it happen with cold satisfaction.
The Harrower's forward shield indicator dropped from forty-one percent to nine then to zero in the span of 25 bolts. Five of the bolts managed to hit the ship, the first bolt opened a long gouge across the Ironwraith's hull and slagged the housings of two of her thirty-six quad turbolaser batteries before continuing through into the secondary armor layer beneath. The second hit her main bridge tower fifty meters below the command deck and turned a sensor relay into a sphere of expanding plasma. The third punched through the upper edge of her forward shield generator housing and detonated against the projector core in a way that meant the Ironwraith would not be getting her forward shields back for at least the next three minutes, possibly longer if the secondary generator was damaged in the cascade. The fourth and fifth bolts hit further aft and gouged two long parallel trenches across her port-dorsal hull plating, venting atmosphere from at least four compartments along their length.
Sera's left hand clenched by her side "Tell Beviin'la and Mar'eyce to focus their next volleys on the Subjugator and the Penance. Vex will keep hammering the Ironwraith. I want all five Harrowers losing shielding on the same axis at the same time. Spread their damage. Don't let them concentrate their repair crews."
"Acknowledged."
The order rippled out across the channel. Sera could see the firing solutions updating in real time as the Beviin'la shifting her main batteries onto the Subjugator, the Mar'eyce onto the Penance, the Kad'ika maintaining sustained fire on the Ironwraith alongside Vex.
Vex's Shadowhawk slid out from behind the cruiser shield wall again exactly on cue. Her port maneuvering thrusters fired and she punched out of the shielded pocket. Twenty overcharged turbolasers fired in a single brutal broadside and the volley hit the Ironwraith's now unshielded flank like a hammer falling on glass.
Sera watched her wife's broadside open a hole in the armor that was visible from where she was sttanding. The bolts walked across the Harrower's port side in a brutal stitching pattern. Sections of hull plating peeled outward in flares of molten durasteel. A secondary battery exploded under direct impact. A long line of compartments along the Ironwraith's port amidships went up in atmospheric detonations as their pressure seals failed in sequence. The Harrower's drives sputtered for half a second as her main reactor protection systems automatically dropped her output to compensate for the cascading damage.
As this happened the Shadowhawk was already retreating behind the cruiser shield wall before the Harrower could finish her shudder after taking a tight ark that was impressive for a ship of that size.
A flicker of light flashed through the window. Sera glanced toward the upper right of the display to where it happened and her smile widened behind her helmet.
The Imperial Terminus was coming apart. The Jehavey'ir-type assault ships above her had not let up for one second since their drop, and her shielding had collapsed two minutes ago. Now her hull was showing extensive damage from the sustained concussion missile salvos and the heavy ion cannons. Sera could see secondary explosions blooming along her spine. Her drives were sputtering on and off. Her tower was venting atmosphere from at least three compartments. One of the assault ships was running medium turbolaser fire across her command deck in deliberate attacks that were systematically eliminating every viewport and sensor cluster the Terminus had.
"Imperial Terminus is combat ineffective" Karra reported. "She's adrift. Her crew is initiating escape protocols. The Jehavey'ir captains are asking for permission to disengage and rejoin the main engagement."
"Granted. Tell them to come down on the Centurions from above and behind. The battlecruisers haven't been hit yet. I want them hit."
"Acknowledged. Beten, Kal'gaan, Vencuyot, Aruetii's Bane, and Mhi Solus all report engines hot. They're coming over the top."
Beyond the dogfighting fighters Sera could see one of the Imperial Centurions trying to launch a fresh torpedo volley at the cruiser shield wall protecting Vex. Sixteen torpedoes streaked out from the battlecruiser's forward racks in clustered formation locked on the cruiser line. The defense walls point-defense triple-laser cannons opened up in interlocking arcs of pale white fire. Twelve of the sixteen torpedoes died in the first three seconds of point-defense fire. Three more died in the next two seconds. The last one slipped through and detonated against the Aliit'kar's forward shielding in a flash that rocked the cruiser back on her station but did not breach the shields.
The two fighter swarms continued their grinding knife-fight across the space between the two fleets. Imperial bombers tried twice more to break through to the dreadnaughts, both runs were broken up by Davaab defense wings before the bombers could release their torpedoes. One Mandalorian ship managed to score a direct kill on a Mark VI from beyond effective range and the Imperial fighter spun off into the dark engines still burning. A Davaab pilot from the Kad'ika's fourth wing took a glancing cannon hit that disabled her primary thruster but managed to bring down two Mark VIs in a final attack run before her own ship came apart around her.
The running casualty count climb across the corner of her HUD and let herself say nothing for almost a full minute.
There were moments in any fleet engagement when the captain's job was to issue orders, and there were moments when the captain's job was to trust the wing leaders and the squadron captains and the gunnery chiefs to do what they had been drilled to do and to let them do it. The first kind of moment came at the opening and the close of an engagement. The second kind came in the long grinding middle, when everyone already knew the plan and any new instruction from the command deck would only fracture the rhythm.
This was the middle.
The numbers on her HUD ticked upward in both directions. Twenty-three Davaab down. Forty-seven Mark VIs and bombers confirmed dead. Verd'goten squadron had punched into the Penance's hangar screen and was now somewhere inside the Harrower's fighter screen, attempting to deliver concussion missiles directly into open hangar bays. A different Davaab wing had been chewed apart by a heavier Mark VI element in a coordinated three-axis ambush, and only four of the original twelve Mandalorian fighters had pulled clear of the engagement. Their wingmates were already burning to avenge them. A bomber group trying for one of the dreadnaughts engines had been intercepted at the last possible second by a Davaab squad that had broken off from the fight and the resulting brawl was happening so close to the ships own point-defense that her flight chiefs had to hold their fire to avoid hitting friendlies.
Then the bombers broke through.
It happened in the lower left of the Holodisplay, in the place where she had been least focused and by the time the contact alert flashed amber they were already inside the cruiser shield wall's engagement envelope.
"Bomber wing through the screen" Karra's voice was tight. "Six Imperial bombers, came in under the Aliit'kar's shield rim. Davaab pursuit element from fourth wing is on them but they're not going to make it."
"Point defense?"
"Engaging but the angle's bad. They came in under our own crossfire."
Sera turned to the holo-display and watched as the bomber wing showed as six red contact markers in a tight packed formation. Behind them four Davaab fighters were burning at full thrust to catch up. Their bolts were already crossing the gap and scoring hits on the trailing bombers. Two bombers blew apart in quick succession as their pursuers fired nonstop across their formation. Then a third bomber marker disappeared.
The lead bomber didn't want to wait any longer and released its torpedo far from the ships hull. The torpedo streaked across the gap on a white trail. The Beviin'la's point-defense cannons opened up the instant it cleared the bomber's launch tube, the cone of defensive fire converging on the warhead in interlocking arcs light. The torpedo's countermeasures were activated. Immediately Chaff flew around it along with jamming. A small evasive burn that turned it three degrees off the projected impact line. It was not enough.
The torpedo took two glancing hits that disabled its thrust but did not detonate the warhead, and it slammed into the shielding on residual drive thrust alone. The detonation when it came, was directed by the Beviin'la's deflectors into the rear of the ship but caused the deflector to overload from the impact. Moments later secondary explosions appeared from the rear of the ships armor in a series of cascading detonations heading towards the engine.
"Beviin'la reports aft shield failure. Hull damage along her engine block Captain Ordo is reporting one engine offline, two more reduced output, fire suppression engaged in three compartments. She's holding combat capability but her drive ratio is down to seventy percent."
The remaining two bombers that had not yet released were finally caught and broken apart by pursuing Davaab element. The trailing pilot punched out his torpedo as his cockpit caught fire and the warhead detonated harmlessly against a different section of the shield in a flash that did no damage at all.
"Tell Captain Ordo to fall back into the cruiser wake if his drives can't hold the charge," Sera said. "We will not have him out of formation."
"He says he can hold, captain. He wants to keep his guns on the Subjugator."
"Then he holds. But I want a damage report every minute until his fire suppression crews have her stable."
"Acknowledged."
Sera turned back to the viewport.
The Imperial Terminus they had killed was a slowly tumbling hulk behind them now escape pods drifting from her aft sections in clusters of bright pinpricks. The five Mandalorian ships had finished her and were already burning hard on a new attack vector coming over the top of the engagement zone toward the three Centurion class battlecruisers at the heart of the Imperial formation.
It looked like by the time the Centurion sensor crews registered the Jehavey'ir attack run, the assault ships were already inside effective range. The Centurion ships reacted with the kind of speed that came from drilled professionalism. All three battlecruisers initiated a flip.
It was a maneuver Sera had read about in naval doctrine and seen executed exactly twice in her career. A coordinated 180-degree pivot on the Y axis, drives still burning forward the ship spinning to bring her bow batteries onto a target astern while her forward momentum carried her on the same vector. It allowed a ship to engage a target astern without having to actually reverse her drive vector she would simply rotate, fire forward and continue drifting backward on her existing momentum until her drives caught back up. Done correctly it was beautiful, done incorrectly it tore the ship apart against her own inertia.
Two of the three Centurions did it correctly.
The lead Centurion in Sera's display tagged her as the Imperator's Resolve completed her flip cleanly. Her drives held, her batteries cycled forward as her bow swung around onto the approaching Jehavey'ir formation, and within four seconds she had a firing solution and her sixteen quad turbolaser batteries opened up in a brutal forward fire.
The third Centurion — the Crucible — did not do it correctly. She could see the moment her drives failed on the holodisplay. Two of her four primary engines cut out in cascade and a third reduced output to maintain reactor stability. The Crucible completed her flip but her forward momentum was now off to a different vector. She was drifting forward in roughly the direction her bow had originally been pointed with no drive control to correct her heading, and none of her batteries were aligned on target.
She was for the next critical fifteen to twenty seconds a target.
The two intact Centurions opened fire on the Jehavey'ir ships.
The Beten leading the attack run caught the worst of the Imperator's Resolve's opening volley. Sixteen quad turbolaser batteries on a clean firing solution at fourteen kilometers. The Jehavey'ir's forward shielding flared white as her deflectors took the full brunt of the first salvo, and her shield indicator on Sera's display dropped from one hundred to forty-three percent in a single eye blink. The second volley walked across the Beten's side a second later. Forty-three became twenty-one. The Beten's captain who she knew personally, an older man named Skirata who had taught her how to clean her father's blaster when she was seven held his attack run with the discipline of a clan veteran and put two full salvos of heavy ion cannon fire into the Imperator's Resolve's bridge tower before his ship started to arc its movement.
The Resolve's forward shielding lit up in pale white-blue arcs as the ion cannon fire ran across her bridge not killing shots, ion fire never was against a target this size but instead would be playing havoc with her electronic systems for the next several seconds and shorting out non-essential circuits across her command deck and surrounding decks.
The Kal'gaan's concussion missile launchers opened up in a sustained salvo six super-heavy warheads in the first volley, six more in the second. They crossed the gap to the Crucible's unshielded hull and detonated against her unprotected armor in blossoms of fire. The Centurion's plating gave way along the third detonation as her port reactor housing went up on the fifth and broke apart on the final Sixth missile.
It was not a clean breakup. The Crucible's hull split along her port amidships in a long fracture that ran nearly half her length, atmosphere venting in long bright streamers from compartments along the break. Her engines what remained of them sputtered and died. Her starboard half continued on its original momentum vector as the port half began to spin slowly on her new center of mass. Escape pods began to launch from both sections as her crew evacuated whatever stations had survived.
A flash on the holodisplay.
Sera glanced toward the upper left and tapped on the rail. The Ironwraith had just taken a volley that had spread out and destroyed a large section of her structure.
The Harrower's main reactor went critical four seconds later.
Sera watched as the small wedge icon of the Ironwraith — eight hundred meters of Imperial dreadnaught, two thousand four hundred crew aboard — pulse once, hard, and resolve into a sphere of expanding plasma and tumbling debris that lit the engagement zone for nearly two full seconds. The shockwave struck the Subjugator's flank and rocked her badly enough that her firing arcs went off target for almost three seconds. Debris peppered the Penance's hull in a long rattle. A small piece of the command tower still glowing white hot, tumbled past the Shadowhawk's dorsal sensors at a closing speed that would have been disastrous if the ship hadn't been behind the cruiser shield wall.
"Ironwraith is gone" Karra said quietly. "Reactor breach amidships. Total structural failure."
For a span of perhaps four seconds the bridge of the Kad'ika registered no sound from her command dais except the steady ambient hum of screens and the muffled background calls of the gunnery, sensor, and damage control officers running their boards around the room. Sera Vance was a Mandalorian, and what a Mandalorian felt when an enemy fell was something her grandmother had taught her at five years old.
She felt nothing.
That was the truth of it. Twenty-four hundred Imperial sailors had just died and she felt nothing at all about it only the cold clean satisfaction of an objective that had finally come open in front of her. Her grandmother had told her once that this would be the hardest part of command to carry. To kill without anger is what makes us soldiers. To not feel the kill, that is what the helmet was made for. The helmet remembers so we do not have to. The helmet always remembers.
Sera straightened on the dais.
"The Ironwraith has left us a hole in their line." Her voice was steady on the clan channel. "We are going to use it. Kad'ika, Beviin'la, Mar'eyce close formation and push through the breach where the Ironwraith was. We will pass between the Imperial line at minimum range. Cruisers close to half-kilometer interval on our wake. The Shadowhawk will stays in the pocket. We are not leaving her exposed."
A chorus of acknowledgments came back across the channel.
"Sera." Captain Vau of the Ruus'alor, his voice carrying the dry warning of an old friend. "You realize what you're asking the shield wall to do right?"
"I do."
"At that range we cannot dodge."
"Then absorb. The Imperials will be just as close to us as we are to them, and they will be eating fire from every battery the Kad'ika and her sisters can bring to bear. They are not built for a knife fight at four kilometers. We are."
Vau was quiet for a beat. "Cruiser line confirms closing formation. We will hold."
"You will hold."
Sera turned to her tactical officer.
"Karra. The Shadowhawk needs to come through clean. Vex's main objective is the station. The moment the Shadowhawk clears the back end of the Imperial line the rest of us will be the only thing standing between her and clean acceleration to the station. The Imperials will know what she's doing. They will try to stop her, we need to make it so they cannot."
"Understood."
"Get me the Subjugator's and Penance's shield indicators on the main display. I want to know exactly when their forward shielding gives. We will time our push to their failure window."
"Already up."
The Kad'ika's drives surged as to port and starboard the Beviin'la and Mar'eyce matched her output with the practiced rhythm of formation ships that had drilled this exact maneuver in the simulators a hundred times. The three Kandosii dreadnaughts closing into a tight wedge with no more than eight hundred meters between hulls, the cruiser shield wall pulling tight on their rear, and the Shadowhawk sliding into the pocket between the two like a destroyer being escorted home by her own honor guard.
The fighter swarms began to peel back.
It happened the way these things always happened at the close ranges of a major fleet engagement. The moment when the fighter wing leaders realized that staying in that space was suicide. The Davaab squadrons broke off their attack runs first, the lead wings pulling up and over the Kad'ika's hull to regroup along her flanks. The Mark VI elements followed seconds later, peeling away from their pursuit vectors and burning hard to clear the closing lane before they got caught in the crossfire. The Verd'goten squadron still inside the Penance's hangar envelope, finished a final attack run and punched out through the Harrower's fighter port with two of their original twelve still flying.
The casualty count had stopped climbing on her HUD. Sera glanced down at the running totals thirty-six Davaab gone, with another sixteen flying damaged. Imperial losses: ninety Mark VIs and bombers confirmed. The fighter exchange had been a win. Not free but still a win.
Range to the Ironwraith's debris field?" Sera asked.
"Six kilometers and closing fast. The gap she left in the Imperial line is roughly two kilometers wide between the Subjugator's starboard flank and the Penance's port flank. Subjugator shields at thirty-one percent forward and falling. Penance shields at thirty-eight percent forward. Both are concentrating their fire forward. They're trying to break the shields before we can close to point-blank range."
"They will not succeed. Tell the gunnery chiefs across all three dreadnaughts to redline the main batteries on my mark. I want their capacitors at one hundred and twenty percent of rated cycle for the duration of the pass."
"Captain the capacitors at sustained fire is going to burn out our heat sinks within ninety seconds. We could lose batteries."
"I know. We have less than ninety seconds before we are through the gap. Tell them to do it."
Karra hesitated for half a heartbeat. Then she nodded once and turned to her board. "Redline order going out. Beviin'la, Mar'eyce do you copy?"
The acknowledgments came back. The order rippled through the gunnery decks of three dreadnaughts and the gun chiefs began rerouting power, locking out the safety cycles to drink from the reactor capacitors at rates the ships' design parameters had never been intended to sustain. Sera felt the subtle shift of the Kad'ika's power systems even on the command dais the familiar hum becoming sharper as the batteries prepared to cycle faster than their designers had ever intended.
"Mark."
"Redline confirmed. All three dreadnaughts."
The Kad'ika fired.
Her five heavy double turbolaser batteries opened up in a coordinated salvo that was followed, less than three seconds later, by a second salvo, and a third within five. The bolts crossing the closing gap in pale red-orange strokes that hammered against the Subjugator's forward shielding with a rhythm that the Harrower's deflectors had not been designed to absorb. The Beviin'la and Mar'eyce matched her cadence throwing out thirty heavy double turbolaser bolts every five seconds. The Subjugator's forward shield indicator on Sera's display ticked down from thirty-one percent to nineteen to eight to zero in the span of those fifteen seconds, and then the Mandalorian bolts began to find unshielded hull.
Then the Imperials returned the favor.
At three kilometers the range at which the dreadnaughts were just sliding into the gap left by the dead Ironwraith, the cruiser shield wall tight on their aft, the Shadowhawk snug in the pocket every Imperial battery around the formation that could still bear opened fire simultaneously.
The Kad'ika shook.
It was not the deep resonant note of a single absorbed volley. It was a continuous brutal pressure on her shields that registered across Sera's display as deflector overload warnings cascading through every projector cluster on the forward hull. Bridge lighting dimmed and held dimmed. The harmonic note of the shields under fire became a constant low organ tone that ran through the deck plating and stayed there. The Beviin'la and Mar'eyce on her flanks were taking the same punishment the hulls absorbing the concentrated close range broadsides of two Harrower class dreadnoughts at point blank range, plus a Centurion's contribution from further out, plus the heavy turbolasers of two remaining Gage transports that were now firing on them as well.
The Kad'ika did not dodge.
Sera had not given the order to dodge and she would not give the order to dodge. Kandosii dreadnaughts were not built to be evasive. They were built to be ruthless, indomitable and immovable. They had thirteen hundred and sixty meters of plated hull, the heaviest deflector arrays in the Mandalorian arsenal, and clan engineering pride invested in every seam. The Kad'ika took the broadsides on her forward shields because that was what she had been built to do, and the Beviin'la and the Mar'eyce did the same.
The Kad'ika shook again harder, this time, the kind of shake that Sera felt as a snap through the deck. She braced her gauntlet on the projector rim.
"Captain that wasn't the Imperials." Karra's voice climbed an octave. "The station has just opened her primary batteries on us."
The display updated. The station had finally committed her heavy fire. Twenty-four super-heavy turbolaser batteries that were facing the battle, plus a flight of medium and light secondary turrets for closer work. The first salvo of bolts crossed the distance between the station and the Kad'ika's hull and they hit the shielding with the impact of a small moon being thrown at a closed door.
The bridge lighting failed entirely for one full second. Sera could see absolutely nothing for that second except the harsh white flicker of the holodisplay and the dim emergency strips along the deck. Then the backup power kicked in and the chamber resolved itself back into amber light.
"Forward shields at twenty-nine percent, one more like that and we are open hull."
"How long until we clear the gap?"
"Six seconds. Five."
The Kad'ika fired again, the gun chiefs throwing every spare watt into the batteries and the consequences started to show. Two of the heavy double turbolaser batteries failed under the sustained fire, their heat sinks melting through their cooling jackets in cascading internal fires that the damage control crews would deal with later if there was a later. The remaining three batteries kept firing.
The Subjugator's port hull began to come apart under the concentrated punishment. Sera watched as the Harrower's armor opened in a long ragged tear. The Penance on the other side of the gap, was absorbing the same punishment with the same results as her starboard hull peeling open under sustained heavy turbolaser fire that her shields could no longer mitigate.
Then they were through.
The Kad'ika punched out the back end of the gap with her drives still burning forward and her remaining batteries cycling. The Beviin'la and Mar'eyce came through to either side, hulls visibly scorched along their flanks, sections of armor venting atmosphere from compartment breaches but holding combat capability. The cruiser shield wall came through behind them in the formation Sera had ordered, the seven Crusader-derived cruisers taking the residual fire as they cleared the Imperial line.
The Shadowhawk had broken formation the moment her bow cleared the exchange between the two forces and she was burning toward the station.