Well, so much for picking off the Maw's many enemies one by one.
No sooner had the Taskmaster given his orders, directing all the fire his little fleet could muster into the onrushing House Io forces, than a great multitude of additional contacts began to sweep down upon the Brotherhood forces. Some of the incoming sensor contacts were familiar: Enclave signals he'd seen at Roon, Eternal Empire pings just like at Odessen, Silver Jedi codes similar to the ones at Lao-mon, Alliance and NIO blips drawn from... well, just about
every battle over the past ten years. But there were some new comm patterns and IFF codes as well, ones he
hadn't seen before.
The Tython Accords were even larger than the
last anti-Maw coalition.
And every captain's eye was drawn to the Avatar... and the
Fatalis.
Tu'teggacha felt his earlier nervousness turn to near-panic as he surveyed the full scope of the threat bearing down on him, all too aware that this massive enemy force - already
more than enough to crush Strike Force Bogan - was still growing as more and more defenders arrived. Staring out the viewport at the fast-approaching shapes, so much bigger than what he could boast, he felt as if he was a child aboard his clan cruiser again. In those days, when his own people had beaten and spat on him for his Force-given "curse", everything bigger than he was had been a terrifying threat.
His instinct had always been to crawl into some small, sheltering duct...
... but that wasn't really an option while commanding a flagship.
In that moment of terror, the Taskmaster suddenly flashed back to the
end of his time on that clan cruiser. He had gained power, his hate and fear and pain fueling his curse, every kick to the ribs or thrown plate of food or vile insult strengthening his connection to the Dark Side. The time had come when he hadn't been force to hide anymore. With his magic he could reach out and twist the minds of his tormentors, forcing
them to relive their worst moments, to suffer their fears and pain over and over and over. They had been helpless against him after that... but he remembered something else.
Tu'teggacha had saved the cruiser's captain, leader of the pirate clan, for last. He had forced the old Ebruchi to watch as the Accursed One had torn through the minds of the crew, leaving them mewling wrecks writhing senselessly upon the deck plating, screaming at phantom demons. Finally he had cornered the fool on the bridge, just the two of them, staring into one another's bulbous black eyes. The captain had not begged or bargained. He had looked
resigned.
"They say 'it's good to be king', Accursed One," he said, and sighed.
"But they are liars. It is bad to be king."
"To be the greatest one, to wear the crown, is to wear a target."
Then he died screaming, and Tu'teggacha paid him no heed.
Now, with three enemy fleets actively gunning for the
Fatalis and the misshapen alien sitting in its command throne, the Taskmaster finally understood what the wrinkled elder had meant. Even surrounded by
eight star destroyers, even with a planet-killing superweapon
right next to it, the
Fatalis wore the crown. It had been the Mawite flagship for more than a decade, since before there
was a Final Dawn, through all of the greatest battles of the Second Great Hyperspace War. It had helped seal the doom of Csilla, survived the carnage on Korriban, dealt a deathblow to the Sith regimes.
It was the undisputed king of the Brotherhood Warfleet...
... and
everyone was coming for the king.
The Super Star Destroyer was a vessel of incredible power, with armaments that could turn continents to glass and armor thicker than the entire breadth of a corvette. But the trade-off for all that power was
instant attention, drawing enemy fire like metal shavings to a magnet. Now, with the greatest concentration of enemies the Brotherhood had ever faced swarming around it, with three larger fleets bearing down on it
directly, all of its prowess could not scatter its foes. It could no longer be the scythe that swept through the battlefield, scattering legions of foes like chaff from the grain.
Now it was like one giant predator
swarmed by tiny ones.
It could not withstand all their little teeth forever.
But perhaps he could exploit this single-minded focus. If the
Fatalis could not be the hammer, perhaps it could be the
anvil.
"Cease firing," the Ebruchi commanded, and his bridge officers - though confused - scrambled to obey.
"Redirect all weapon and engine power to shields, point defense, and repair systems. Reassign all turbolaser crews to damage control. We will withstand this assault!" For as long as they could, anyway. Systems thrummed and indicator lights cycled on and off as the reactor output was redirected, all of the ship's powerful
offense now working to protect it.
And not a moment too soon.
While the Eternal Empire forces kept back, cautiously engaging the Mawite pickets - presumably Sularen's, since Strike Force Bogan hadn't
deployed any flak frigates - the Elysians, newcomers to fighting the Maw, rushed in behind House Io. Their carriers deployed a true
legion of starfighters, quite literally
hundreds of squadrons, many times the total number that Tu'teggacha's fleet could carry. There was little point in launching his own fighter screen, which would have been so laughably outnumbered that it would be torn to pieces in moments. But that decision had benefits.
It made all of the strike fighters and interceptors
useless.
No fighters to hunt, and no way to hurt capital ships.
That left the bombers, and those
were a problem. They were incredibly heavily armed, equipped with all manner of missiles and torpedoes; even the mighty shields and armor of the
Fatalis couldn't hold up against
three hundred squadrons of such craft for long. But the bombers had a disadvantage, too: their speed and maneuverability were merely average, and their defenses
lacking. Weak shields, thin armor... a shot or two from the powerful point defense lasers of the Super Star Destroyer could surely
shred them, and no amount of fighter escort could prevent that except through self-sacrifice.
And
all of the
Fatalis's weapon power was now in point defense.
While those defenses laid down a withering fire screen against the attacking bombers, and the
Fatalis's missile deactivation transmitters went to work preventing as many of the incoming missiles as possible from ever detonating, Tu'teggacha turned his attention back to House Io. All vessels
except the flagship continued firing relentlessly on the Io support vessels, targeting those that had already suffered weapon system damage, seeking to strip away their offensive capabilities as much as possible. They might not be able to
turn back this attack, not when overwhelmed by so many foes...
... but they could at least lessen and delay its impact.
They'd buy time for the Avatar... and for the Dark Voice's ritual.
And they'd find it pretty easy, too, because nothing was returning their fire. The Io ships seemed as single-minded as insect drones, calmly marching between the
Fatalis's eight star destroyer escorts without reacting to the
withering fire that the
heavily-armed vessels directed into them from all sides the entire time, apparently too focused on the SSD to even notice anything else. Turbolasers, missile arrays, and orbital autocannons opened up on them with
impunity, such that Tu'teggacha could not see how they would ever reach the range they sought against the flagship behind these escorts.
Then five Hammerhead-sized ramships raced ahead of them.
The Ebruchi blinked slowly. Then he laughed.
There was a
slight size difference.
"Prioritize the cruisers and frigates," the Ebruchi ordered,
"but eliminate those ramships if an opportunity arises." Surely no one would be foolish enough to think that the tiny vessels could do
anything at all to the hulking
Fatalis by ramming it, so there must be some other plan at play, explosives or something. No matter. All available power would hold back the incoming torpedo barrage for as long as possible, and the rest of the fleet would grind down the unresisting Io ships in the meantime. Shields
were weakening at an alarming rate, but if they could just lessen the incoming fire a little...
That was when he sensed something else, a
presence reaching out across the void. A presence trying to... take over the firing controls of an
entire star destroyer? Tu'teggacha shook his head. This foe did not lack for ambition, certainly. She apparently thought that she could outfight
forty thousand crew with her mind and turn a capital ship into her puppet. Capturing
one gun battery from across the void would be an incredible accomplishment. Taking over an entire star destroyer? That was the action of a god, and no Force-user the Ebruchi had ever heard of could do it.
He'd best try to stop her, though, in case she managed to redirect
some of the vessel's fire onto friendlies; that would be a
disaster given how badly they were already outnumbered. The Taskmaster sent out his own presence into the void, seeking the mind of the ambitious one. His one and only Force gift was touching the minds of others, but he had honed that gift to razor sharpness. Searching for the attacker, he sent out his knobby, slimy mental fingers, trying to pick through her memories.
He sought out the worst days of her life, trying to throw them up in front of her eyes on an endless loop of pain.
Hopefully that would be enough to disrupt her concentration.
Sularen was busy with many, many foes of his own.
Tu'teggacha stood alone.
"Your outflanking plan had better work," the Ebruchi hissed, though he had no channel open and Sularen could not actually hear him. Sweat dribbled down his rubbery flesh, running in stinging rivulets into his glossy black eyes, making his vision swim.
"If it doesn't, if we don't get warfleet reinforcements into position, we'll be finished in minutes." He was the bait, and the anvil on which the Maw could break its foes... but if the hammer never arrived, if he was left on his own in this laughably outnumbered state, no amount of power redirection would save him and his kingly ship.
The crown would tumble, and he would fall.
Fenn Stag
|
Shakka Bralor
|
Runi Kuryida
| Kaz Krayt |
Gwyneira Vizsla
|
Vulcan Krayt
| @Omen Mereel
Verin Oldo
| Vemric Keldra |
Isla Draellix-Kobitana
|
Khione
|
Kranak Vizsla
