Core Worlds

Chandrila

Lake Sah'ot

Mothma Family Dacha

The normally serene and peaceful vacation home had been, in the span of 4-5 hours, transformed into a beehive of absolutely panicked activity. Dignitaries, intelligence personnel, and military officials ran to and fro, gathering data and sending reports. Above the ruckus hovered 2 MC40a's and 5 Nebulon-Bs, guns pointed in every direction save straight down. Around them squadrons of A-wings, B-wings, and X-wings streaked across the sunlit sky, on constant vigil for any signs of danger. And though he couldn't see them, Wedge Antilles knew that in orbit above everything, 3 battered but still fully operational fleets were formed in layered defensive formations.

And as he watched, a shuttle carrying the person necessitating all these defenses landed. The ramp lowered, revealing a mix of senate guards and RN commandos. The troops exited the shuttle, fingers on the triggers and sights swiveling from side to side. In spite of the situation, Wedge felt a slight grin tugging at his lips. Her protectors were taking no chances and it was probably driving her mad.

A moment passed before the troopers finally declared the area safe and called it in. And so she was next out of the shuttle, even with an arm in a sling and moving with a slight limp, Mon Mothma still somehow managed to move down the ramp with her characteristic grace.

He greeted her with a slight Incline of his head as she approached.

"Chief Mothma, I am glad to see you're unharmed," He eyed the sling, "or… mostly unharmed."

Mothma offered him a smile that conveyed far more sadness than it did pleasure, "The price for my safety was a rather heavy one I'm afraid."

He grimaced, "How bad?"

"A third of our remaining defense fleet."

Wedge gritted his teeth when he heard that, "How many are left?"

"Not enough. When I last spoke to him, Admiral Nilyos was making plans for a withdrawal once the last hypervelocity cannons were destroyed. For all intents and purposes, Coruscant is lost to us."

He sighed, resisting the urge to run a hand through his hair, "Alright. I had hoped the reports were exaggerated, but it appears that that's not the case."

The two were silent for the moment, each contemplating the sheer hopelessness of this catastrophe.

Finally he looked back up at her, gesturing to the door behind him.

"Let's make sure their deaths weren't in vain. With your arrival the meeting can officially begin. Shall we?"

She nodded, and together they entered the building.

Expansion Region

Kinyen System

Asteroid belt

"What do you think ma'am?"

From their perch among the asteroids Executor eyed the passing republic fleet. Five Venators, seven dreadnaughts, four Acclamators, and at least two dozen escort corvettes were moving through the system, their guns trained in Executor's general direction. Not directly at her, thanks to the asteroids and copious amounts of ECM she was throwing up. But while it wasn't enough to hide her completely, it was enough to conceal her precise location, meaning the only thing they knew was that there was something big in the belt, and wisely decided not to investigate.

Still, the mere existence of republic ship-girls raised a great many concerns for exactly how many ships had been resurrected. Adding to that was the observation that many of those ship-girls were damaged, which could mean…

"Tarlandia, where did they come from? Which hyperspace route?"

"From Mechis ma'am."

Executor glared at the passing fleet, "Correct me if I'm wrong, but Mechis III was a Separatist stronghold during the Clone Wars, was it not?"

"It was ma'am."

She growled, "Then the Separatists are back."

"Then we're heading to Mechis instead?" Desolation asked, "I wouldn't mind blowing up some tin cans again."

Vehement chuckled, "Oh right, you were built during the Clone Wars weren't you Des? Getting nostalgic are you?"

"Last two months," she replied, grinning, "Scraping droids is one hell of a good time! Right Hymn?"

At that Executor turned and looked skeptically at Battle Hymn, "You were built during the Clone Wars as well?"

Battle Hymn glared at Desolation, "No I wasn't."

Desolation merely arched an eyebrow.

Battle Hymn scowled at her before reluctantly shrugging, "But ...I did fight in the campaigns against many of their holdouts. And, yea, it was kinda fun."

Executor huffed, "Interesting, but no, we'll be continuing on to the Imperial Center. We have no clue how many ships are at Mechis, and we wouldn't have any backup."

Consequence interjected, "Yea, but if Republic and Separatists ships are returning...well, how many ships died at the Battle of Coruscant?"

Desolation shrugged, "Roughly ten thousand, give or take a couple hundred."

"So we'll be heading into massive bloody warzone alone and with no support," Consequence frowned, "My lady, I believe we should rethink this."

"No, we shouldn't," Executor said, "because we won't be going in alone."

Consequence didn't seem very convinced, so Executor elaborated, "It's Imperial Center. I severely doubt we're going to be the only imperial forces heading there."

The others considered that before shrugging, "Fair enough."

"That being said," Executor continued, "We might be facing more obstacles on the way than we had first anticipated. Speaking of which, Bloodborn, how's that shield dome?"

Bloodborn scowled, "Shattered, I'll need an actual shipyard to fully repair it. Which means that shields are maxed at 50% til that happens."

Dreadful chuckled, "That's what you get for charging ahead. Next time wait until all the fighters are destroyed before doing that."

Bloodborn's scowl turned into a snarl at that.

"It was a single Y-wing! A single one!"

"Yea, and it got you good."

"Enough," Executor said, "We've still have a ways to go yet, and I don't want to listen to your bickering the whole time. Has everyone got the coordinates for Yag'dhul locked in?"

The other girls swiftly confirmed they all did, and so with a nod Executor finished, "Good, then let's get out of here."

The small but dangerous fleet quickly pushed forward and away from the asteroid belt, and ignoring the panicked maneuvering of the Republic ships tilted their prows towards the edge of the system and in a bright flash, hyperspaced away, deeper into the core.

The room was awash with raised voices. Generals, Adminals, and a wide assortment of other officials all yelling and arguing with one another. Mon Mothma quietly took a seat towards the back of the room, Wedge following her example and doing so as well. For a long moment she simply watched the chaos, a disgusted look upon her face as she beheld the "conference".

The yelling and shouting continued for several moments more, until inevitably one of the generals spotted her out the corner of his eye. Realizing the situation, he immediately ceased yelling and snapped to attention.

"Chief of State Mothma, present!"

The shout caught the rest of the room's occupants off guard, all of whom swiftly spotted her as well. Upon seeing the glare she directed at them they descended into awkward silence, before stiffly lowering back down in their seats.

Mon Mothma regarded the room, her look of disgust shifting into one of disappointment as it quieted down. After several moments of letting them fidget under her gaze she finally spoke.

"Now that ...that is over, may someone enlighten me on the current galactic situation?"

The officials glanced between them before Admiral Toren stood up.

"Its…," he began, nervously licking his lips, "Its pandemonium ma'am. The Republic, hell the entire galaxy is fracturing. From what we can tell, every single warship that has died in the past three decades is being resurrected as these… these... ship-girls. All of whom seem to be intent on continuing the battles they died in. Every major system in the entire galaxy, with the possible exception of Hutt space, is essentially one giant warzone. Every single one."

"And our own forces?"

"Are in complete shambles," Admiral Morsmith interjected, tapping the holotable. A map of the galaxy appeared, detailing the territory and military forces of the New Republic, as well as those of their various rival galactic factions.

Barely a day ago almost two thirds of that map was painted colored New Republic orange. They had owned the entire southern half of the galaxy as well as the vast majority of the core, in addition to a few ever-growing pockets in the north. Now pitifully little orange remained. Instead an ever-present red took its place, denoting thousands of conflicted systems. Even more worrisome were the small yet growing pockets of grey, areas were all contact had been lost and their status was completely unknown.

"As you can see, the situation is grim," he intoned, "Less than ten percent of Republic space is still secure, virtually all of which are backwater, isolated, or strategically useless systems. We've completely lost contact with roughly twenty percent of our territory, a statistic that is growing by the hour. And the remaining seventy percent of our systems are in the midst of this galaxy-wide brawl. In addition, the wide-spread damages and battles have severely crippled the Holonet infrastructure. Our most optimistic predictions show a complete galaxy-wide communications breakdown within the next twenty hours. A more realistic estimate is between ten to fifteen hours."

A moment of tense silence covered the room, before he mirthlessly chuckled.

"If there's a silver-lining to this debacle, it's that the Remnant and other Warlord factions are in the exact same predicament."

General Grayvin snorted, "Doesn't exactly help us though. Just means they'll be too busy defending themselves to invade us."

Mothma interjected, "What of the ship-girls themselves? Do we have any of our own?"

Admiral Morsmith snorted, "We do, probably, but we've yet to make contact with them. More to the point, we likely aren't to have many in the first place."

Mothma raised an eyebrow, "Oh?"

"We're victims of our own success. Our entire doctrine revolves around conserving as much of our strength as possible. It wasn't until recently that we could afford otherwise. And we were damn good at it, meaning that ship losses on our side were few and far between. Compare that the Empire and their warlords, who have been doing nothing but blowing each other up for the last three years. Same with the Old Republic and the Separatists. They devoted their entire economies to the largest war in the past three thousand years, and were more than willing to sacrifice entire fleets to achieve their objectives."

He shrugged, "Basically, even If we do have ship-girls, they're outnumbered ten to one."

"Then what are the other faction's ship-girl's goals in all this?"

The command staff glanced between each other, before one of them shrugged, "Revenge against their killers? Following their last orders? Recreate their host nation? Just wanting fight? We don't really kno-"

"To finish what we started."

The voice rang out across the room, drawing all eyes to it source. There, standing in the doorway a man stood, the brown cloak the figure wore insufficient to hide their identity.

"Master Skywalker, I'm pleased to see you made it."

Skywalker nodded towards her, "Likewise ma'am. I was worried when we lost contact with Coruscant. It's good to see your evacuation was successful."

Mothma's expression turned sorrowful for a moment, "I believe "successful" is a callous term when referring to that operation."

She shook her head, "Regardless, "to finish what we started", you said? You have knowledge of our new foes?"

"I do," he said, approaching the holotable and uploading an image. A few taps, and the map of the galaxy vanished, replaced with a hologram of one of the ship-girls.

Letting the room get a good view of the ship-girl in question he stepped back before continuing.

"Is anyone here familiar with the ISD Vengeful?"

Grayvin spoke up, "If you wish to inform us that ship-girls are resurrected ships, I hate to disappoint you, but we are well aware of that fact."

"But are you aware of how to beat them?"

The General scowled, before shaking his head.

Luke gave a slight smile, "Then yes, I have prudent information."

Gesturing to the hologram he continued, "The ISD Vengeful, commanded by a Captain Danerhime, joined the Eriadu Authority shortly after Endor. The Vengeful as assigned to defend the minor world of Tibrin, on the doorstep of Eriadu itself. Upon Warlord Delvardus's defeat, word of the EA's effective dissolution swiftly reached Tibrin and the Vengeful attempted to flee the system. Before it could escape however, Tibrin officially defected to the New Republic and the local defense forces succeeded in disabling the ship. When our own forces finally arrived in-system, Captain Danerhime scuttled the ship rather than let us seize it."

He glanced around, making sure he had the room's collective attention.

"Roughly nine hours ago, the Vengeful resurrected and, living up to its name, proceeded to begin bombarding Tibrin in revenge for its demise. Fortunately, one of our fleets happened to be passing by at the time and responded to the planet's distress calls. The fleet had three capital ships, multiple carriers, numerous cruisers, and most importantly, a CC-7700 interdictor. The fighter complement of the fleet, combined with Tibrin's defense squadrons, numbered almost a 1,500. Such a fleet could normally handle half-a-dozen star destroyers with relative ease."

He paused.

"It took close to two and a half hours to destroy the Vengeful, and it came at the cost of 213 fighters and 4 cruisers."

Shocked and horrified mummers filled the room.

"How?" one intelligence officer asked, "How could one ship cause so much damage, and be so difficult to destroy?"

"Because it's a human-sized figure with the durability, speed, and armament of a star destroyer. Because none of our fighters could damage it, while none of our capital ships could hit it. And because it had no such restrictions and was able to attack us with impunity."

"But still!"

He huffed, "We normally destroy ISDs by exploiting their rather significant weak points. Their exposed bridge, their shield domes, the lack of weapons on their rear and bottom, etc. Said weakness are likely still present on the ship-girls, but they're so small that even our fighters have extreme difficulty hitting them. The only way to insure a hit was through sheer volume of fire."

"So how was it finally destroyed?"

"Over two-hundred Y-wings, at great cost to themselves I might add, managed to blanket it with a combined ion barrage, successfully disabling it. At that point the cruisers and capital ships parked themselves right next to it and fired until it finally shattered apart."

The room was silent as they digested this information.

Morsmith cleared his throat, "In light of this new information, I strongly advise against a conventional assault to reclaim our territory. Our forces have been drastically reduced in the past several hours, and if such horrendous casualties are to be expected against singular ship-girls, I fear the amount of forces and cost needed to secure a victory against a fleet's worth."

"Then what do we do?" demanded Grayvin, "We must come up with some sort of plan of action, and with the communications breakdown we must do it soon, or it won't matter!"

"Order a full-scale retreat the fleets." Morsmith interjected, eyes hard, "Our shipyards are lost, and so conserving as much of our fleet as possible is of vital importance."

"And where do they go?" Toren questioned, "You said it yourself, all our major systems are either lost or contested."

"Perhaps not." Grayvin murmured.

Quickly tapping the holotable and bring the map back up, he zoomed in on the eastern sectors, on one system in particular.

"The Hast shipyards." Morsmith said with a grin, "It had no involvement in the Clone Wars, meaning there's no CIS or Republic fleets in the area. It was attacked in the past by an Imperial fleet, but if those ships resurrected they would have found themselves facing a defensive fleet that makes the one they fought years ago look like an unarmed merchant ship."

"Exactly," Grayvin said, "We'll have the fleet regroup there. Any ships that can't reach Hast, for whatever reason, will retreat into deep space, or to what few systems we still do have. Just so long as they aren't fighting. Meanwhile, we focus our defensive efforts on the planets themselves. Theater shields, turbolaser towers, turrets, armored and mechanized forces, anything we can use."

He grinned, "If we can't hold them in space then we'll just have to hold them on the ground."

As the meeting devolved into fleet movements and supply analysis, Mon Mothma looked over to see Luke approach. Offering a short bow he sat down beside her, leading Mothma to arch a questioning eyebrow.

"I'm heading out shortly. With luck I can find some friendly ship-girls."

"Do you actually have a location in mind, or is the force giving you directions?"

Luke grimaced, "The former actually. The force is very ...it can't help right now."

Mothma's brow wrinkled in concern, "What's the matter? Is something wrong?"

"It seems so. The force normally guides, directs, compeles, or ...nudges is guess would be an appropriate term. But right now it's ...screaming almost. Not in pain thankfully, more in shock, confusion, and, dare I say it, anger. No, it's not in a position to help right now."

"Then your destination is?"

"Where else than one of our greatest defeats? I'm going to Deepspace Besh."