Lianna system, Pef Empire (under MPT)

21 BBY

"Emperor Pef, this is Admiral Etahn A'baht with the Derellium fleets. We have multiple Lucrehulks and some Fantail-class destroyer and dozens, no, hundreds of CIS starships emerging from hyperspace, coming from Duinarbulon . Am proceeding to engage, for the Empire!" my Dornean admiral sent, with a worried tone.

Eh, you'll be fine with your 92 Meteors and their escorts. I only have 100 Meteors and I feel perfectly fine. Almost perfect.

Let's order 2 fleets from Cadinth to jump towards Lianna then. I could use 60 more Meteors for this battle.

If they reach Lianna in time. These sharks were a bit slow, and will take them 5 hours to traverse what normally takes 1 hour with mark 1.0 hyperdrives.

At least the system also has defenses now, 21 Golan planetary defense platforms with a hundred turbolaser guns and missiles launchers each, and a million Scarab droid starfighters positioned in 100 divisions of ten thousands each.

Ten armies, made of 10 million B11 droids and 10 marine divisions were already guarding the locals on the ground.

And I also had Celestial Meteor, my personal battleship with its own Rakata forcefield and 3000 heavy guns, 2000 of those ion cannons, just like all numbered Meteors. Why not return the energy fired at me back at the enemy?

And the escorts, 100 MC80 Liberty star cruisers, 300 Muni destroyers, and 200 Recu carriers, 100 MC30 frigates and 1500 Dakka corvettes.

We have 2 thousands ships against some 10 thousands CIS ships. I liked these odds, except I didn't expect the converted Munificents and Recusants to survive the battle. Thus, only droid crews for them, and their own parasite droid Scarab starfighters.

"Pef, a thousand CIS ships jumped in at Arcan system. Your Admiral is beginning the attack. If I die, I'm coming back to strangle you!" Vette transmitted from her Meteor One.

Huh, so they did attempt to breakout, after all.

And as expected...

"Emperor, at least a thousand ships are engaging us at Cadinth. We should be fine, since you've left us the entire escort." Kiles L'toth the other Dornean Admiral sent, with a hint of admonition.

What? I had a hunch and followed it. Plus you have enough firepower to deal with 800 Munificent frigates. That's only like 10 minutes of concentrated fire, in sequence. The CIS Lucrehulks will take much longer to defeat.

Then, the armada of CIS warships began emerging in the Lianna system and I had no more time, well except a hundred partitions or so, to devote to other things than electronic warfare, jamming, counter jamming, battle meditation and prioritizing targets.

A thousand CIS Munificents accelerated forward towards the planet, launching parasite Vulture starfighters and heading directly towards the defense platforms.

What was this? Suicide waves? About 100 of the CIS frigates reached firing range, and overloaded their two main turbolasers, attempting to evaporate our defenses.

The Core AI interposed his shielded Scarabs with perfect accuracy, diminishing the strength of the laser beams to less than half, by the time each beam passed through 5 Scarabs. 1000 Scarabs were wasted and only 2 platforms lost.

Okay, you did pretty good, my AI friend. Have 10 thousands Scarab starfighters more, to play with.

And let's send 10 Meteor dreadnaughts forward, ourselves. Say 'aaaaaaa' my space sharks and open the maw wide....and fire!

From their maws 1000 MACs spilled their ferrous spit at a thousand CIS Munificents, now forming for another charge. One of the MACs missed, perhaps.

But 999 Munificents exploded, the MACs supremely effective, as intended, and the CIS commander hesitated for a second. Possibly he didn't expect such a devastating salvo? His mental signature felt strange, almost like a cyborg.

Hey, they sent Grievous? It felt like a cyborg, in the force. Like I could almost sense what's he gonna do...

All out assault. That's him alright.

Form up, my Meteors. Shoulder to shoulder, with the Calamari Liberty cruisers just below the attack plane, to cover our engines. Tingles of hyperspace echoes...

Wait, another CIS fleet is emerging from hyperspace, here in the Lianna system? Cheaters, I say. Cheaters!

And they keep coming. The CIS brought 10 thousand more ships.

Kriff. That's 20 thousands ships, in a single battle. Against 2 thousands.

And now they're all launching starfighters. 2 million, 5 million, 10 millions starfighters!

You maniacs, where did you get that many?

Gah. They might even win now.

"Emperor Pef, are these numbers correct? Cause...they would outnumber us like 5000 to 1, Or something." my Gand Captain muttered beside me.

Eh. They mostly first variant Vultures. This will make good training for the crews.

Or you all die, and I go back to Gand to start again.

"Trust in your Emperor, who trusts in you, Captain." I proclaimed heroically instead, since morale was a thing for organics.

Let's launch our own starfighters, and test the Reapers, the cyborg piloted starfighters, modeled after the Darth Maul's Scimitar. Dangerous and expensive little things, my Reapers, but very few.

Our Recu fleet carriers began disgorging their own Scarab droid starfighters, and the hive versus hive battle began, my Scarbs obtaining at least 5 kills for every one of their loses. Not perfect, but should be enough...

Hey, the AI got 8 to 1 kill ratio with his own fighters. Not fair! Why is he a better AI than me?

Whatever, take half of the fighters then, so I can devote 50 more partitions on the capital ships.

And fire, and fire. Turbolaser fire came back, targeting the weakest ships.

Our converted Muni destroyers were starting to die, as expected. Sigh.

What to do? Dakka corvettes, cover them. Damn it. I need more Dakka!

I can never have enough Dakka...

Push forward, my Meteors! Use one ion cannon battery and two masers batteries to take out Munificent frigates in one sequential salvo.

Use 5 maser batteries for Recusants. And those creepy ships? No idea! Same as the frigates I think. They're pretty small. Unlike in some movies, there were some unknown type of vessels out there, but it shouldn't matter.

Now, open the big shark mouths and voice your outrage, my dear ships! Tell them how you feel!

"Die Die Die!" Wait, did I say that out loud?

"Errrr. Emperor, you're being very loud. Keep it down on my bridge, my crew needs to focus." the Findsman captain beside me said politely, and banged me on the helmet one last time, with his pistol butt.

Okay, I might have got carried away...

How long has it been?

5 hours!

We've been fighting for 5 hours? Man, time flies when you're having fun!

About 30 Meteors were listing in space, without engines or shields, but the thick armor still held, and some guns were still firing. Then again, two kilometers of iron armor. Not so easy to completely pierce. Let's tractor them back.

Of my precious Calamari Liberty cruisers 11 were just gone, evaporated from those damn Lucrehulks.

And the CIS still has 12 thousand capital ships, about a thousand of them Lucrehulks, and 5 million starfighters. Gah. We're about to lose...

Maybe I should order a retreat?

"Emperor, we are emerging from hyperspace in 20 seconds. Let's hope we're not too late" the Dronean vice-admiral sent, his voice calm and professional. Well, that's why they are pros.

Ah, the ships from Cadith have arrived. Just in time.

"All ships, regroup and rotate your order of battle." I sent through the fleet battlenet.

We'll let the newbs take point for now. Cause my chest hurts of so much Rakata feedback. I drew too hard on the Force, I think.

The 60 fresh Meteor dreadnaughts had jumped into the system, crushing whatever hope for victory the CIS had. I had broken the balance in guns now, with the new fleet.

'Form up, above and below the reinforcements. Then advance, new Meteors first' I ordered, a bit tired.

Breathe Pef! Let's take our own ship to guard the prize, planet Lianna itself.

The pain is not yours, it's the Rakata recoil from overuse. Damn it, still worked wonders. Just my ship has murdered about 2000 CIS ships, 100 of them battleships. 100 Lucrehulks, with a total of 40 thousands turbolasers, and they couldn't break my forcefield.

Let's pulse a wave of Reinforcement and Healing to my crew. The pain affected them even worse. Hits you right in the soul, I swear.

Ah, that Gand navigator...he feels like the bad egg that Mujilik brought me. And that one too. Turned to the Dark Side, like they say.

So much pain and death really mess up organics, after all.

I ordered them escorted out from the bridge and taken to calm down and decompress, in the ship's brig.

The Gand captain noticed too, and nodded at me gently.

I'll send their souls to the Force, if they were really broken.

But, after the battle.

For now, I just watched throughthe holocams, passing from captain to captain, and Admiral to vice-admiral, looking for signs of hurt and paranoia and madness.

Only my ship was affected. Great. I was making hate zombies now. Not uncommon for Rakata devices though.

The Core AI seemed perfectly fine, but then again, it only had a single crystal as a focus for its conscience, some type of Mestare crystal that Xer found pretty, and placed it as an eye on his gardening droid. I guess AI really do not have souls here. Too bad.

His efficiency in combat had grown during the fight, as he adapted and learned how to use my Scarabs. HIs kill ratio was almost 10 to 1 now.

The cyborg pilots did extraordinarily well, with 60 to 1, or even 80 kills each. And not even one has died, from 200 pilots. Then again, they had cloaked starfighters. Pretty hard to shoot them down, as I knew for myself.

Come back and rest, my semi-mechanical fanatical followers.

You are still flesh, and get tired eventually. And tired people make mistakes.

The CIS fleet began wavering as its loses reached 50% , but did not stop their assault, instead launching thousands of the new De-Orbiting Kinetic Anti-emplacement Weapon towards planet Lianna.

Morons! Let's move to intercept, and don't worry. I'll remember this. War crimes are not cool.

Let's have 50 Meteors and their escorts, jump behind them. Leave no survivors.

Lianna system, Pef Empire

6 hours later

Come on, what's taking so long?

Damn these Lucrehulks have gotten smart and are now firing on the move, avoiding most of the Meteors' MACs.

I had 20 more Meteors to be tractored away from the main engagement, all without shields and with their upper fins and half their heavy maser batteries melted off.

Gah. That was gonna take a month to fix or replace. At least these ones still had engines.

Only 1000 CIS Lucrehulks remain though, and perhaps a million Vultures. The skeletal Munificent and Recusants were either floating listing to a side, all electronics ionized, or in pieces, large and small. Our own Muni destroyers were also scrap, and the Recu carriers had retreated under the planetary shields.

The Lucrehulks though, with their powerful shields, now even more strong, due to their early encounter with Meteor One at Dellalt, they were hard to put down. And were still heading towards the planet, slowly.

No way, trying an orbital bombardment now? With our whole fleet pounding them relentlessly?

I dedicated a partition to analyze this. They couldn't hope to break the planetary shields in time. Lianna has two separate shields now, since it was kinda obvious it would be attacked again...

So, they had agents on the ground, dark jedi or such, who will attempt to disable the shields.

Send orders, prepare to receive saboteurs or jedi, use sonic weapons and slug throwers, where possible. Sadly, you can't really stop suicidal attacks. Just reduce their effectiveness.

And indeed, just as 400 thousands of Lucrehulks' turbolasers started pounding on the planetary shield, creating large and visible energy splashes and no doubt terrifying the locals, a horde of CIS mercenaries and droids and dark acolytes began attacking the static defenses around the shields projectors.

Little chance of actually achieving their objective now, even with force abilities...but then again, it did work at Endor.

Let's bring out the Stingers and the Carrions and have them strafe the attackers.

The Baneblade tanks should stay and remain on guard, next to the bunkers entrances.

And the Meteors, keep firing as the Lucrehulks stopped to fire at the shield! The shield should last 10 minutes or so, even with all this firepower crashing on it. And now the CIS Vultures begin to form kamikaze waves?

Sigh. I had a bad feeling about this. A million CIS starfighters impacting the planetary shield like railgun projectiles? I doubt these shields were designed to withstand such attacks. Their design makes them more efficient against energy based weapons.

Hmm, something to fix in the future. The Vong do not use turbolasers.

Fire! 10 Lucrehulks exploded, then 20 more. Too slow. They were gonna break through!

'All ships, even Cruisers and Recus, engage as well!'

And bring my own flagship closer. Closer!

Now, let's focus some partitions on technopathy and take over the nearest Lucrehulk...it wasn't that hard actually. Firewalls and crypto-passwords can't really stop Force abilities. Sad, I know.

There! Now massacre the organic crew, my new droids, and switch main baterries targets on the farthest Lucrehulk.

And next and next. Seconds passed slowly, as I focused more and more on technopathic attacks.

There's 20 Lucrehulks on my side now, and 50 more got destroyed.

Faster, I need to be faster.

I need to use Acceleration then, 5x. Time slows a bit. Or rather, I think much faster.

Some 40 more Lucrehulks captured, 60, 80, 100! 100 more Lucrehulks destroyed, and the first planetary shield has just shorted out. Not the ground attackers, just overloaded due to kamikaze impacts.

More speed then! 7x.

One hundred more Lucrehulks changed sides, and one hundred more battleships died on the CIS side.

The CIS Vultures began impacting our ships and the second planetary shield, and the Scarab starfighters that the Core AI tried to interpose in their path.

Gah, no. Don't let them win!

Meteor One and its escorts jumped in the system and added more firepower to my tactical net.

Good. it wasn't much, and they were too far to be of immediate help, but every little bit matters. 'Focus to disable and capture their crippled ships, Vette!'

The Cadinth fleet jumped in as well, adding even more firepower. Most of the entire Pef Navy fleet is now here. Makes for a fabulous display of force.

Good...now, let's try for trick shots, bouncing a MAC shell from one donut battleship to the next, and hit 5 with one shell.

It mostly worked. Ha. Not really. Kinetic energy dissipates too fast.

Still, 100 more Lucrehulks got taken over and 100 more are dead. It won't be long now.

On the ground, a last fight ends. My Baneblade tank fired its heavy maser into a pair of mad Sith brothers using red lightsabers, and spread their burning molecules over a few kilometers of devastated grass. Vinoc and Karoc , possibly.

Primitives, bringing a sword to a tank fight.

Now, more speed 8x. Endure the heat.

Not long now. If only the planetary shield would hold...it wouldn't, would it?

'Meteor One, Two and Three, along my own, interpose yourselves and fire back.'

Better I hurt a little, then lose 5 billion people on my watch.

Ah, it hurts a lot! I don't even have nerves!

100 more Lucrehulks captured and 120 more dead, and then the shield failed.

More of our ships rushed to interpose themselves, blocking a few turbolaser hits if they were corvettes, or hundreds if they were cruisers. Brave crews on those ships...you'll be forever heroes.

And done. No more enemy ships. The holomap seemed so empty now.

Look upon my works, ye mighty. And despair.

Thousands of CIS turbolasers still hit the planet's surface, killing millions and setting fires to everything.

My fleet was in ruins, 60 Meteors out of action, all 300 Muni destroyers, 50 Liberty cruisers, and 1000 Dakka corvettes gone. Sad reality of war. Light units die too fast.

The Recu carriers and the Calamari MC30 frigates got off easy, but they probably weren't seen as dangerous enough.

Only half a million of my Scarabs starfighters survived. Bleh.

A costly victory.

But, we held them and now it was time to push back.

Tomorrow. The ships were out of missiles, and the organic crews needed 12 hours of sleep.

Plus, relief actions for the civilians below.

And compose propaganda clips, with images from the ground and our valiant ships using their own hulls and lives to stop an apocalypse. Very heroic.

Also, let's tractor up those falling ships back in orbit. Wouldn't do to ruin our image now, by adding more misery and devastation to the burning planet.

Droid gunships like Stingers and Carrions could help as well, moving civilians away from fires.

And I can use my telekinesis too, at least for a million small children, airlift them to safety.

'Mountains, launch medical dropships with kolto baths, to treat those with burns and fractures.'

And let's commandeer whatever medical and firefighting droids the planet has, to help put the fires out. Reconstruction will take some time though.

Maybe tomorrow is too soon for a counter attack.

'Hey, Emperor Pef, we're the good guys now, saving the organics?' the Core wondered, a bit confused at my actions.

Give those Scarabs back, for now.

Wouldn't want a genocidal AI to ruin my work.

'Of course, my AI friend. We'll save everyone. Just need time.' I answered with some pain in my chest. So much death and pain hurts, who knew?

'You're weird. But, this battle was indeed fun. I want more!' the Core AI concluded after a few seconds of deliberation.

Oh, don't worry. We're just getting started.