Ahsoka POV

Halsey had given me a fleet. Me. A fleet. I still couldn't believe it. And it wasn't just any fleet either, but a stealth one. As far as I was aware the last Republic attempt at a stealth ship had been at the start of the war. And that one was no more than corvette class.

Halsey had bragged a lot about her newest creation. Apparently, she had used stygium crystals in the shield generators to make us invisible to enemy radar and had managed to incorporate some into the hyperdrive to make our hyperspace jumps undetectable. I was itching to try her out.

After explaining how she made the fleet Halsey had told me why. To go behind enemy lines. While Separatist territory was shrinking rapidly their troop numbers weren't falling anywhere near as fast. Seeing as how they couldn't bleed us of men now that the Chief was reinforcing the troops with Mandalorians, the new Separatist strategy was to tightly guard a smaller handful of worlds. These worlds were leading industrial centres for the entire galaxy, not just the Separatists. With a larger troop presence, they could minimise losses. The could then, theoretically, use these industry worlds to offset their losses. If they could keep a hold of these key worlds then they might be able to replace every troop they lost. And from there it was just a waiting game. While every troop the Separatists produce is as good as the ones they lost the same can't be said for the Republic.

With the destruction of Jango's DNA, the Republic army couldn't replace their troops anywhere near as easily. While the Chief was able to offset this by using Mandalorians to fill any openings in the ranks and to reinforce his men that was still a temporary fix. If we didn't end the war soon the Republic would eventually have to start implementing conscription and that meant troops that had nowhere near the training of the Mandalorians, clone or otherwise. The Separatists just needed to hold out long enough then the conscripts will come in. When the Republic starts using conscripts and troop quality goes down the Separatist army can finally start pushing back. Or so Halsey had explained.

Which is why my fleet would be going behind enemy lines and destroying Separatist factories. ONI had been sending Spartan teams to do this since the war had started but they were no longer being able to make a dent. For every factory destroyed the Separatist seemed to be able to make a new one in record time. So the Republic needed to destroy more of them in larger quantities.

With the new stealth tech, the fleet would be able to jump into system undetected, bomb the factories and then get out of system before the defensive fleet can locate us.

While I was doing this, Republic forces would be making several pushes on the larger industry worlds, leaving me to mop up the smaller ones. The Master Chief had reorganised the outer rim sieges into a new campaign that targeted these worlds and was throwing troops at them. He was trying to take them out as a quickly as he could. Unfortunately, asset denial tactics were off limits for these worlds, meaning no orbital bombardment. They would be key to the recovery effort once the war was over.

Halsey had done more than add stygium to things when she made the fleet. For starters, all ships were Venator class. As both destroyers and carriers, they were the perfect ship for this fleet. We had no support ships like the Acclamators or Arquintens simply because they weren't needed. Destroying ground installations and launching bombers is all we needed to do, we wouldn't be getting into ship-to-ship engagements.

Also, all ships in the fleet had minimal crew. Our mission wasn't to assault planets so we had no need of ground forces. In their place we had replacement ship personal, but again, seeing as how we weren't supposed to be getting into fights this was kept to a minimum.

She had also converted all vehicle bays into fighter bays. While all fighters still had to be launched them via the central launch bay the ships could store and use more starships. Nearly every starship within the fleet was bomber class, though there were some fighter escorts. Our main focus was bombing ground targets and it was more likely they would be defended by AA rather than fighters. Still, the possibility couldn't be ruled out. Halsey had also given us some Broadswords. They were apparently a multirole starship meant for both fighter-to-fighter engagements as well as bombing runs. Halsey said they were a Strike class ship.

As we were meant to be operating behind enemy lines for months at a time Halsey had stocked each ship up on food, water, ammunition and ship parts. While we didn't get any more medical supplies than normal that by itself was more than enough for a crew of this size.

As to how ONI got a hold of all these assets, considering they fall under naval jurisdiction, I don't know. The crews were all ONI personnel but ONI shouldn't have access to Venators or bombers. While Halsey had used as many ONI assets as and when she could, this being shown in the fact that the few dropships the fleet had access to were all Pelicans, she should never have been able to get her hands on one Venator let alone six. It only made me more weary of the dangerous woman.

Halsey also told me this would be a Black class operation. Black class ops were operations that no one who didn't need to know knew about. Not the Chancellor and not the Chief. To explain away my disappearance from the galaxy Halsey had said she would be faking my death. I was apparently going to die in battle when the ONI team I was leading got ambushed on Cordis IV. Not the most heroic of deaths but I'd live. Or not, I suppose. Either way, Halsey needed something from me, something to convince the Jedi I was really dead. My blades.

I had been so reluctant to hand them over. It was only the knowledge that I could get them back when the war was over that made me do it. I just hope Master Obi-wan doesn't hit me when I come back for having lied to him again and for taking another undercover mission without telling him. At least this time it was for the Republic so the council had nothing to complain about.

My fleet admiral was someone I had never heard of before, but then that was no real surprise, and she seems amicable enough from what little interaction we'd had. In fact, everything I knew about Shonn Volta could boil down to one word. Professional. She had Halsey's full backing but how she could just pull an admiral into her little project with no questioning it, considering Admirals to fell under naval jurisdiction, was as much a mystery as everything else the woman did.

Oh, I almost forgot. Halsey had come up with a name for this whole fake-death-Black-operation-invisible-fleet-thing. Ghost Division. I think it fits rather well.

John POV

It felt good to be back in the field. I don't think I suited ruling. No, I belonged on the battlefield. I was born for it. It was probably the reason I hated being cooped up all day, listening to the petty squabbles of my alors and advisors. Out here I was who I was meant to be, a soldier.

Not that Halsey or Hood agreed. Both seemed please with my progress and had tried to keep me on the throne longer. They said my place was ruling over Mandalore not out here on the frontlines. I disagreed and that was that. Despite being my advisors, at the end of the day, it was my orders they followed. If I wanted to fight then I fought.

I left Hood to rule in my stead. He had done well in the absence of a true Mandalore and I trusted he would continue to now. He knew what my plans for our people were and would put them into action. The only real reason he had tried to keep me on Mandalore was to try and resolve some civil disputes that had arisen when I took the throne. Some of the Clans didn't like the fact that a nobody had become Mandalore and rejected my right to rule. It wasn't as if they were in open rebellion or anything, those that were had fled with Pre, but I did have to suffer through them whining through council meetings. It would seem they prefer Pre over me simply because they knew who he was, never mind the fact he was unfit to call himself Mandalorian let alone Mandalore. Hood claimed that dealing with these people personally would only solidify my rule, and perhaps he was right, but I had spent too much time away from the men. Besides, if I win the war then I earn the people's favour. If they still grumble and complain after that then I have no doubt that another of their Clan will eventually replace them as alor and the problem will sort itself out.

As for the Clans that followed Pre into exile, they were: Clans Saxon, Rook, Eldar and Wren. I had argued to Halsey I had more chance of finding them out here, fighting in the outer rim sieges, than I did sitting around on Mandalore when she questioned why I had left Mandalore. She probably saw it for what it was, an excuse, but made no comment so I took that to mean I had her reluctant approval.

I was currently on the way to Balmorra. It was one of the largest industry worlds in the galaxy and was currently part of the CIS. We had landed forces on the planet nearly a month ago during the sieges but had only taken about a third of the planet. Even at two-thirds strength, ONI reports indicated CIS-held-Balmorra still produced enough droids to reinforce a twentieth of the Separatist armies and enough munitions to supply half their entire force, navy and army combined.

That was how important Balmorra is. When Balmorra fell so too would the CIS, it would only be a matter of time. And with Balmorra being so important it was also the most heavily defended planet in the entire galaxy. A full six CIS armies were stationed on the planet and the Chancellor absolutely refused any drastic actions like orbital bombardment, and I happened to agree. Balmorra was one planet we could ill afford to be without.

And it was, for this reason, the Chancellor and I had assigned the 501st, the 327th, the 212th, the 41st, Krayt and a couple hundred other Legions to take the planet. A near eighth of our total numbers. With us and the droids, the planet was near to bursting. And the space around the planet was in a similar situation. Both sides were constantly reinforcing their fleets and we had been at constant war above the planet for weeks, making the battle for Balmorra the longest space battle of the entire war. Neither side was willing to lose the planet.

When the 501st touched down at Point Sigma we were immediately redirected to our assigned sectors. ONI was pulling extreme overtime to make sure this thing ran as smoothly as possible. The slightest hitch would grind the entire campaign to a halt. No doubt Logistics was being run ragged. It then took a full day and a half to travel from Sigma to our sector of the front. When we arrived I immediately reported to sector HQ to found out what was going on.

When I entered I was immediately greeted by Generals Kenobi and Skywalker. I was surprised to see Skywalker glaring at me as I had thought we part on good terms, all those months ago. Had that really only been a year? It felt far longer. Either way, Skywalker seemed to have found some other reason to be mad at me so I paid him no mind. I asked Kenobi to fill me in.

According to him, we were having a hard time making the push towards one of Balmorra's chief production cities. The plan was for us to break through the droid lines and push towards the city. Legions would then filter in after us to make sure our supply lines weren't cut off. Once we captured it ONI would be directing fresh Legions to move through the corridor we made in the enemies rank and would then spread them out behind the enemy, linking up with other Legions coming from other captured cities that were supposed to be taken at around the same time. This would hopefully encircle most of the droid forces on the planet and we could flank and destroy them.

It was basic but we had no time for fancy battle tactics on Balmorra. The battlefield changed too much to ever be able to predict it, and if you can't predict something then you can't plan for it. The plan carried a big risk of us getting outflanked ourselves if the droids managed to cut of our supply corridor but so long as we kept two cities and their supply corridors we could link them. And if we could link them we could encircle all the droids between them. Once they were dealt with the Separatists would be forced to compensate and we should be able to smash through their newly weakened frontline.

Kenobi informed me we were nowhere close to making a hole in their lines big enough to push men through. I suppose that means it was up to the 501st to do it instead. I called up all the other Sector commands to confirm the arrival of their reinforcements. After receiving confirmation from them I informed them that tomorrow, 0800 standard hours, would be when we were going to be making our second big push. Hopefully, we actually broke through this time.

Aayla POV

I don't know how long I spent on this planet. Its weird, distorted gravity stopped chronos from working. While Master Fey and her companions spent their time in caves translating ancient texts and figuring out what old pictograms meant I went looking for my men. I found it highly unlikely that I had been the only one to survive.

And I was right. After nearly a days travel from the cave Master Fey was studying I finally managed to raise a signal on my comms. An escape pod full of survivors had crashed close to my location and I went to go find them. When I did I noticed most of them were just soldiers but one had been an engineer. It seems he had been using his time to boost the comms to try and pick up any other signals but I was the only one to respond. Considering I had been no more than a few hours away over rocky terrain just went to show how little distance the signal had travelled. I lead some of the other men back to my pod to see if we could salvage anything from it to boost their pods' range.

Thankfully, we had. The engineer had quickly used these parts to boost the range but it still went no more than a few miles. Considering these were designed to be heard from orbit without needing to be boosted I suspect the planet's gravity was interfering with communications as well.

Deciding it would be best to have a change of scenery, I had the men pull the comms array from the pod and had them set it up in one of the abandoned cities on the planet. It provided shelter, freshwater and the lands around the city were teeming with animals to kill and eat.

Our next problems were finding a way off this planet and finding the rest of the men. I had thought the transport problem would have been simple. Master Fey and her friends had landed on the planet somehow and, considering they didn't seem too bothered about leaving, I bet that their ship hadn't crashed. Though I suspect Master Fey and that Chirrut man wouldn't panic even if it had. Baze, on the other hand, looked more rational and so if he was calm about the whole thing it was reasonable to suggest they had landed safely.

When I asked Master Fey about leaving she said we would in due time and to not worry about it for now. Kriff no. Master Fey might be willing to sit around and let the Force do everything for her but I wasn't. I was a do-it-yourself kind of girl and I didn't appreciate being rescued when I could do so myself. That, and I still had to find the rest of my men first.

I had organised the men into small patrol shifts. They would carry the jury-rigged communications array with them on their patrols to pseudo boost its area. After about a week of trying we got a hit. It seems someone else had gotten the same idea about setting up patrol patterns and had their patrols continuously blasting the comms hoping for an answer.

The clone behind this brilliant idea had been a 501st ODST. In my experience, non-officer clones weren't very flexible in terms of tactics. You got a few bright sparks here and there but most had been snapped up by officer training. It was hard to be creative when you were bred to be loyal. Considering the officers, barring myself and Bly, had been some of the first evacuated I was impressed at the clones creativity. It seems the Chief valued free thinkers.

Finding this ODST and his men had put us in touch with other holdouts that they had gotten into contact with but didn't have the resources to go out and recover. Fortunately, with the city as our base, I did. After recovering the men and the equipment from the various pods we came across I had the engineers try to make a fully operational communications array that could get us in touch with every man on the planet. A few days of solid work and they were done. The next challenge had been trying to find where all the men were.

As we had no reliable maps of the world we had been forced to rely on the primitive ones made by the planets previous inhabitants. After nearly a month of solid work, we had managed to place every team on the planet somewhere on the map. How close we were is something we'd only find out once we actually went out and found them.

That's not to say we had gathered up some of the survivors in the meantime, we had. Gathering the men in the immediate vicinity had been a priority task while we had people working on placing men on the map. We had even tried directing groups towards each other and cities so that they weren't just left to fend for themselves in the wild. Some had been more fortunate than others in that regard.

It would take another month after placing all the men before we managed to get everyone into a city with other troops. Bly was currently in charge of the largest of the holdouts as most of the pods had fallen close to him. Once we had no more teams wandering the wilderness we began recovery efforts.

Using the distress beacons of the escape pods we began directing teams to go and recover the pods and the men inside them. Their bodies had begun to rot but that only made us more determined to put them to rest. We tried to burn as many bodies as we could and what we couldn't burn we buried together, as per Mandalorian custom. We had gotten a few lucky breaks by finding the odd survivor here and there but it had mostly been bodies. By the time we recovered all the pods sending out a distress signal it had been roughly four months since we landed on the planet.

Days on this planet didn't seem to have any consistency. They could come and go quickly or be around for extended periods of time. Because of this, and our broken chronos, we had taken to counting the days by sleep schedules. It wasn't the most effective method but it is all we had on hand.

After the pods it would be another two-ish months before Master Fey had finished with her studies. She said the people of the planet had been powerful Force users, gifted in the art of foresight. They had made many prophecies in their time and Master Fey thought they were the ones to first make the prophecy of the chosen one. But that wasn't what had interested Master Fey. She wanted to learn about the Silence.

According to her, the Silence was a great evil that had swept across the galaxy two times in the past. The Celestials had created grand weapons to defeat the Silence and to stop the plague from flooding the galaxy. The first time the Celestials succeeded in pushing the Silence out of the galaxy but the second time had not gone so well. Master Fey said that the stories said that the second firing of the weapons had been sabotaged. The misfire had then created a rift somewhere in the galaxy. She speculated that this rift was the hyperspace disturbance at the galactic edge.

The disturbance stopped all forms of hyperspace making it impossible to travel through it. A few years ago, a short time before the war broke out, the Jedi sent a team of six Masters and twelve Knights on an exploration vessel known as the Outbound Flight. The goal had been to penetrate this rift by using the Force to guide the Outbound Flight safely through it. If it had indeed been caused by the Celestials then it was no wonder the Outbound Flight had been lost.

Now that she had found what she wanted to know, Master Fey told me how she landed on the planet. Apparently the magnetic field around the planet was as unpredictable as the days. It would occasionally drop for days at a time before coming back up. We only had to wait another day or so before the next drop happened.

When the field dropped our signal was picked up by a Republic fleet that had been passing through the sector, as luck would have it. After getting the signal Master Fey had smiled at me and told me that all was as the Force wills it. I wasn't about to give the Force that much credit. The fleet quickly got to work rounding up the survivors. After we were all safely aboard they reported us and our safe return back to high command. While it was nice to see some familiar faces again it wasn't too hard to notice there were quite a few absences. I hoped that just meant they were unavailable but somehow I didn't think this would be the case. After reporting what had happened, on the planet and at Felucia, the fleet started making its way towards Coruscant. All the while, the ships captain filling us in on what we had missed.