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THE RENDEZVOUS
Vexta Belt, Carrion sector
89 days after the Battle of Endor
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This wasn't the first time the asteroid base was emptying out. The hollowed out space rock, nearly a kilometer in diameter, carved with barracks and armories, atomespherically sealed with ray shielding, and disguised to look almost like any other space rock, was nearly devoid of its regular 4000 occupants. Everything that could be moved from it, all of its personnel, the portable equipment and precious consumables, had been moved to the five capital ships docked outside. Only the command center, a fortified room at the core of the asteroid, was still lit and occupied. Inside, the commanders of Scarlet Moons huddled around a holo-table, blue shimmer danced across faces.
It had been two hours. The main Rebel taskforce was suppose to jump in two standard hours ago. Their advanced platoon arrived three weeks prior, though the cell structure of the Rebel Alliance meant the two groups had little knowledge of each other. That advanced platoon, led by a Zabrak captain and flown in a hyperspace-capable shuttle, had integrated reasonably well with Scarlet Moons. However, these were just fifty some troops. Alliance General Airen Cracken promised half dozen starships, one of which was a mighty Mon Calamari star cruiser.
At just short of three hours past the scheduled rendezvous, a hyperspace blip registered outside of the asteroid belt. The Scarlet Moons' commanders all perked up from their seats. A single vessel registered on the holo-table. Then, nothing.
"That's no Rebel fleet..." Someone murmured.
The excitement in the command room began to fade; tension quickly took its place. Eyes were fixed to the holograms, waiting for the clearance code. Sure enough, the lone vessel broadcasted the Rebel code.
"Identify yourself." Colonel Stormcaller spoke to an open comm channel.
"This is Mapfo, commander of the
Sphyrna-class corvette H6." The vessel hailed back. "I'm part of the Alliance taskforce to the—wait, are you..."
The signal wasn't very clear. It was expected, as only a backup transmitter was still left in the asteroid base. The people in the command room looked at each other with various degrees of worry; all of them silent for Stormcaller's reply.
"Colonel Stormcaller, Scarlet Moons." The Kaleesh answered. "Where's the rest of your fleet?"
"There's some, how do you say it, complications." Came Mapfo's reply. "I can explain if you clear me for docking, and tell me which one of these 500 rocks you're hiding in."
For some reason, Major Thiena Thel always pictured the typical Rebel officer as a Mon Cal. She never saw many of them, but their spacefaring reputations were legendary, especially after the Battle of Endor. General Cracken didn't tell her which specific commander was coming to their aid. She just assumed they looked like Admiral Gial Ackbar in those propaganda holovids, not some...
"...dolphin boy!" As Stormcaller just said. Commander Mapfo was a Herglic (and wearing a puffy blue jumpsuit, instead of the Alliance's khakis).
"Excuse me, colonel?"
"Are you kriffing deaf, dolphin boy?" Stormcaller yelled. If it weren't for that mask, his furious expression would be quite frightening. It's hard to blame him; Stormcaller spent the last three months planning for this operation. He believed it was the culmination of the quest his god-hero had given him. "I said—"
"Whale, actually." Mapfo held up a whale-like fin-finger thing. "We Herglics are—"
"Yeah, great; I don't care!" Stormcaller threw up his arms. "So you're telling me that you lost five out of six capital ships, including an MC-75 cruiser, to raiders!?"
"It was a trap!" Mapfo shrank back; his black and white skin slowly reddening. "Like I just explained, we ran into their hyperspace mines, then they hit us with ion torpedoes, boarded our ships and slaughtered the crew. Only my vessel escaped."
"Sounds like standard RRS tactics to me." Thiena chimed in.
"Yeah, that's what they called themselves; something like Relgim Rescue and Security." Mapfo nodded. "Didn't seem like any rescuing or securing to me."
"And your crew's just, gone?" Major Yunus Dimet asked.
"Can't blame them." Mapfo's shoulders sagged. "We took a couple of hits and one reactor blew up when we came out near Entralla. All four engineers died. The crew mutinied. I tricked them into the cargo hold and vented those traitors into space."
"Clever." Dveerah Euphonid smirked. "Must've Mace windowed two dozen of them. I bet they're human; only brainless monkeys fall for that." Dimet sighed.
"Mace what?" Mapfo rubbed the top of his big cetacean head, a puff emerged from his blowhole. "Uh, anyway, I still have all the droids. The H6 is fully repaired and operational."
"This is not good enough!" Gun Chuqu had been fidgeting with her uniform, and now she looked ready to bolt for the closest escape pod. "You only brought one Hammerhead corvette; it only has three guns! We are no match for the Imperials. This operation's doomed!"
"No, no! No!" Stormcaller stomped his feet. The room fell silent again, save for the murmuring of the holo-table. "We analyzed the defenses at Ord Thoden; only one star destroyer. The existing five ships have enough firepower to destroy it, if we can hit it from the flank."
"My corvette has advanced targeting systems." Mapfo produced a datapad. "The H6 is the advanced scout of—"
"It better, dolphin boy." Stormcaller marched up to Mapfo, raising his as if to strangle the Herglic. Instead, Stormcaller removed his mask, showing Mapfo the sneer on his reptilian features. "Slave your systems to my flagship, Sweet Revenge. We're jumping in an hour. We've come too far to fail now."
"By the stars," Gun Chuqu groaned, "we are all going to die."
Forty minutes later, Thiena was back on her ship, the Nebulon-B frigate Evergreen. The first thing she noticed was how crowded the corridors were. Troops of all species, and of all specialties, ran, slid and even flew from place to place. Thiena's pretty sure that this amount of people was well beyond what the frigate's manual recommended. Nevertheless, the had to cramp every single being of the Scarlet Moons onto their ships. They were loaded for a full-scale planetary assault.
The inspection of the cargo bay was a little dicey. Some soldiers from Prisma Battalion and Captain Ortega's platoon were transferred under her command. They would be seizing a space station, so that Stormcaller's elites could attack planetside. So far, several dozen had set up cots in the cargo bay, between stacks of (dangerous) crates (and despite the stale air and poor heating). Talking to them revealed no officers between them; they seemed to low ranking members, as the officers had already helped themselves to spare cabins. By then, the ships were jumping to hyperspace. The trip would be just under eight hours, the troops would get five and half hours of free time, followed by briefing and prep.
Thiena decided to delegate the cargo bay problem to NED. There's no better individual to sort out administrative mess than a droid's mechanical processors, and hopefully in getting the troops some better accommodation, they would get used to following the orders of a bot. After checking in with the bridge, Thiena went the officer's lounge and summoned Cleomenes Ortega and Arosha Tye there, to inform them that their space superiority had been "simplified".
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