The planet Thalassia was located on the easternmost borders of the Meram Sector, in close proximity to the Nembas Sector, which was under the influence of the Corporate Sector.
Only a few light years separated the planet from that infamous border, and at times, the Thalassians living on this world felt as though they could see, in the night sky, the stars that illuminated planets in another part of the galaxy.
But reality was far more prosaic.
And far more cruel.
Thalassia was the homeworld of as bloodthirsty, unscrupulous, aggressive, and greedy a phenomenon as the Thalassian slavers.
The defining characteristic of this category of criminals was that they represented strictly nationalized groups, independent in nature, without specific or shared markets, suppliers, or logistics.
Dozens of different cells were united only by how they acquired their victims.
The most famous and widespread tactic of the Thalassian slavers was, as was well known, capturing starships to enslave all sentient beings on board.
In addition, the Thalassian slavers also diversified into mercenary work when their earnings from the slave trade proved insufficient for the gang's survival.
They also did not shy away from piracy, which earned them the dubious reputation of "Thalassian pirates" as well.
The Thalassian slavers killed many Snivvians from the Aparo Sector, which was located not far from the border of the "Corporate" territory, selling their pelts for their thermal properties to various industries.
This barbarism nearly led to the extinction of the Snivvian species and almost destroyed their culture before the Old Republic intervened.
And even then, it did little good.
Precisely because the profits from the slave trade had always attracted representatives of one or another line of authority.
Before the Clone Wars, a group of Republic senators voluntarily became involved with the Thalassian slavers' activities. Despite clear evidence of their guilt, the senators managed to escape and joined the ranks of the CIS.
Strangely enough, even after receiving powerful armed forces at its disposal, the Old Republic paid little attention to the welfare of this region.
This allowed the Thalassian slavers to support the Confederacy of Independent Systems right up until its defeat.
But even after the Separatists' rout, the Thalassian slavers did not stop their activities.
They united their forces with surviving Separatist remnants, and it was only during the operation to purge the rebels in this part of the sector — carried out by the Galactic Empire — that the slavers got what they deserved: an encounter with warriors who were in no way inferior to them in cruelty and skill at arms.
The Imperial stormtroopers thoroughly shook the souls out of the local population that had been harboring slavers and pirates, leading to the creation of numerous criminal bases on various planets.
Many of them remain undiscovered to this day.
Despite the fact that the sector was subjugated by the Dominion, Thalassia was, and would continue to be for the foreseeable future, one enormous festering wound, promising trouble for anyone who dared to clean it out.
Not to mention that by its actions in destroying the slave trade and piracy on its own and nearby territory, the Dominion had hardly earned any love from the local population.
The Thalassians did not want to work according to legal norms and had no intention of doing so.
Generation after generation, pirate families lived in prosperity while their men plied their trade.
And the fact that, despite their unwillingness, the sector had come under Dominion rule only angered the local population.
In its time — about a month ago — the situation on the planet had escalated to the breaking point.
The locals, unhappy with the Dominion's laws on racial equality and the ban on slave labor, rose up against the Imperial garrison, believing that the returning forces of their own slavers would protect them from retribution.
Without losing a single member of the garrison, but slaughtering nearly all of the attackers, the Dominion stormtroopers left the planet, concentrating their presence in the system to a single Star Destroyer, imposing a ban on the use of military technology and flights beyond the atmosphere on the locals.
Even the orbital defense stations placed in high orbit vanished overnight.
This could not but delight the local rebels, who believed in their own strength and realized that the invincible Dominion could be forced to comply with their wishes after all.
Three garrison bases were left on the planet, which maintained control over the local approximations of spaceports.
The stormtroopers didn't bother the locals, and the locals didn't approach the bases, fearing the operational turbolasers of the garrison bases.
Though severely outdated, they still posed a considerable threat to anyone who would risk violating the demilitarized zone around each of the garrisons.
Meanwhile, the Void Wanderer, like a Cerberus, hung in the planet's far orbit with a single purpose: to control the hyperspace route that the Thalassian slavers used to infiltrate the system undetected.
Recently, it had been supported by a Immobilizer 418-class mine-laying cruiser named the Bastion, which repeatedly blocked the enemy's invisible route with its gravity trawls, hoping to catch at least one of the numerous Thalassian slaver cells when they decided to return to their home planet.
Since all officially known "paths" within the sectors were under the control of the Metropolitan Defense Forces, this secret "trail" was the only way for the Thalassians to return to their families and kin, bringing new prey to replace the slaves that had been taken and restored to their rights by the Dominion's stormtroopers.
Yes, Grand Moff Ferrus had refused to bow to the local population and buy their slaves from them.
Thalassia, both in the time of the Old Republic and under the Empire, had plied the slave trade — out of the planet's ten million inhabitants, only one million were Thalassians.
The rest of the population consisted of slaves, many of whom were descendants of those who had once been captured by the slavers.
This situation violated any and all laws — from old Republican to Dominion laws — and therefore no compensation for the seizure of slaves was provided for by the metropolitan government.
Naturally, this did not suit the locals, and they demanded billions to be paid for releasing their bondmen.
Grand Moff Ferrus's proposal to voluntarily surrender to the authorities and accept punishment for violating the ban on slave labor, in exchange for compensation for the seized slaves, had also not endeared him to the local population.
The Dominion could not allow Thalassia to secede from it due to the convenient location of several hyperspace routes passing through this star system.
Otherwise, it would become a convenient staging ground for an attack on worlds within the Meram Sector and the Corvo Sector, located to the north of this territory.
That was why the Void Wanderer was standing guard.
The sole visible defender of Dominion law.
Occasionally, the ship sent supply transports and rotated the garrisons at the bases, watched with undisguised interest by local radicals.
Captain Abyss knew very well how much these sentient beings wanted to get their hands on the vast stocks of weapons and ammunition in the garrison arsenals.
He knew perfectly well that the local radicals would attack at the first opportunity, regardless of casualties, to gain control of the garrisons.
All it would take was for the Void Wanderer to leave or be destroyed in battle, and those three hundred stormtroopers on the three bases — the necessary minimum, which the natives knew perfectly well — would be torn apart and enslaved.
He also knew, according to intelligence, that the Thalassian slavers were cooperating with Black Sun, thanks to which each cell had at least one Kaloth-class battlecruiser — the favorite plaything of all pirates.
And the number of such cells already numbered around twenty.
And one day, when the Dominion was threatened with danger, they would come to their homeland.
And the only thing left for the Void Wanderer, drifting in Thalassia's far orbit, would be to accept the fight and leave the system, taking the Bastion with it.
"Captain Abyss," the watch officer addressed the commander of the Void Wanderer. "Our gravacoustic operator reports a large number of ships approaching in hyperspace. Estimated time of arrival at the Bastion's gravity trawls: ten minutes."
Well, the time had come.
"Have we informed the Bastion?" he asked.
"Yes, sir. They are requesting instructions on changing position and deactivating the gravity trawls."
"Authorized, per Plan Alpha," Abyss said. "All crew, prepare to withdraw to rendezvous point Aurek. Broadcast our withdrawal signal to the garrison bases on the surface. Operation Withdrawal is commencing."
The sound of sirens echoed through the corridors of the Dominion regular fleet Star Destroyer.
Within a short span of time, thousands of sentient beings were at their battle stations, and, propelled by the sublight engines, the Void Wanderer left Thalassia's far orbit, moving toward the Bastion.
The Star Destroyer caught up with the interdictor cruiser just as dozens of warships, torn from hyperspace, began to appear in the center of the system.
As expected, the Thalassian slavers had returned.
Two dozen Kaloth-class battlecruisers, accompanied by over fifty Y164 transports, as well as fighters and support ships — a dozen Corellian DP20 frigates covering the rear of the slaver faction.
Plan Alpha meant that of the four vectors of the gravity trawl array, radially deployed before the Bastion's bow, only one remained active — the one projecting toward eleven o'clock on an imaginary chronometer dial, where the cruiser's bow corresponded to twelve o'clock and the stern to six.
With this approach, the slaver starships emerged from hyperspace as a single mass, while the Void Wanderer and the Bastion were astern of their last ships — the Corellian DP20 frigates and several escort squadrons.
Obsolete Headhunters and Freaks.
Nothing powerful enough to oppose two Dominion starships, which were joined by a Crusader-class corvette dropped from its magnetic grapples and its awakened-engines counterpart, covering the larger ships from enemy fighter attacks.
As expected, the battlecruisers, finding themselves out of position, would waste too much time turning around to strike at the four Dominion ships retreating toward twelve o'clock.
But they would not leave the rear of their formation defenseless, throwing their rearguard against the retreating ships.
The slavers would never allow even one of their Y164s to be damaged.
Because that was where everything they had lived far from home for was concentrated.
The captives taken across the galaxy and brought to Thalassia to restore the old order there.
Slaver vessel, model Y164.
That was exactly what Captain Abyss had been counting on.
"Gunners, open fire," the commander of the Void Wanderer ordered, watching as the turbolasers and ion cannons of his destroyer's port side, along with the artillery of the Bastion, moving in a staggered formation above and to starboard, parallel to the course of its larger partner, concentrated their fire on different targets among the enemy starships.
The missiles launched by the frigates were reliably intercepted by the Crusaders, protecting the cruiser and Star Destroyer with all their weapons.
The screen launched by the Void Wanderer and the Bastion concentrated on the ships' mid-range defensive perimeter, ruthlessly and efficiently slaughtering the slavers' small craft.
Four squadrons of Headhunters rushed into the fray: two squadrons surrounded the Void Wanderer, and the other two each picked a Crusader-class corvette, receiving some very unflattering return fire from the Bastion's gunners.
The interdictor cruiser's curtain fire led to the destruction of half a dozen obsolete fighters — mostly Freaks — which, truth be told, wasn't entirely the Bastion's doing alone.
Abyss's gunners had contributed a fair share to this carnage of laser and turbolaser fire, as they would soon demonstrate.
Together with their air group's pilots, they reliably protected the flagship from various small craft attacks.
All while firing salvos toward the encroaching DP20s.
The first of these, relying on luck, attempted to approach from the Star Destroyer's lower hemisphere and was unspeakably — but fatally — surprised that the turbolasers on the lower deck, which had been silent until then, along with those covering the main hangar, responded to its audacity.
The modernization of the Void Wanderer from a Mark I to a Mark III had been completed shortly before its assignment to such a critical post, which allowed the command to hold such an important direction with only these scarce combat forces.
As if not understanding that they had precisely zero chance in that direction, the Corellian-built frigates followed the first victim, hoping to prevent it from raising its assault gunships.
But unfortunately for them, the Dominion gunners had a categorical order on that matter.
And they, shot after shot, were hammering it into the heads of their foolish opponents.
In the ten minutes of battle it took for the four Dominion starships to make it to the jump point leading to the rendezvous location, all that was left behind them was a trail of wreckage from two enemy fighter squadrons and three Thalassian slaver frigates turned into heaps of scrap metal.
Another three, having sustained significant damage, were diligently trying to stop an uncontrolled drift occurring for various reasons due to the damage inflicted by the Dominion side.
The battlecruisers vainly tried to bring their guns to bear on the retreating Dominion starships.
They pushed their engines in vain — after receiving several direct hits from the Void Wanderer, one of the Kaloths veered off, dropping out of the pursuit due to its shredded bow section.
Abandoning the chase as soon as the four Dominion starships had broken the distance, the slavers returned to their previous course, approaching Thalassia's far orbit.
Casting a final glance at the planet, Captain Abyss looked at the ship's chronometer display.
Taking into account the time for maneuvering and the firefight, the enemy fleet would arrive at the near orbit no earlier than thirty minutes.
That was more than enough to implement the second part of the plan.
"We've bought enough time for our boys to get properly prepared," he said.
These were the last words before the detachment entered hyperspace, leaving the Thalassia system.
* * *
The radicals on Thalassia were running rampant, feeling their impunity and rejoicing at the return of their countrymen.
Triumph, the liberation of the planet from the Dominion, was celebrated in war songs as they stormed the garrison bases on the planet.
Now that the annoying Star Destroyer and its cruiser sidekick had left the system, now that the slaver ships were about to enter near orbit, and shuttles would soon descend to the planet, returning long-separated relatives and delivering expensive goods and the most desired thing of all — slaves — they dug up their hidden weapons and went on the assault.
What were three hundred stormtroopers, especially such rough and dim-witted ones as those scattered across the three garrison bases?
Clumsy, bad shots — pah, not soldiers at all!
Such men could never resist the fighters of Thalassia!
And even if they had old turbolasers in protected towers, that wouldn't change anything.
Absolutely nothing.
"If you kill even one of us, all your survivors will find death a blessing!" the leaders of the radicals and rebels shouted through megaphones, addressing the garrison.
The old but deadly turbolasers swept their predatory barrels around, ready to open fire on the enemy.
The foolish people had placed their prefabricated structures in the most unsuitable regions.
The Thalassians watched everything happening at the bases using simple macrobinoculars, having set up their observation posts directly in the grottoes of the low but snow-covered cliffs, in the valleys between which the enemy had set up its camps.
At three mountain passes, impassable by nature, which the Thalassians had no intention of assaulting.
They had reached these bases through old tunnels in the mountains, descended from the peaks, and now stood behind the high sloping walls of the garrisons, mocking the doomed soldiers.
"You've been abandoned!
"You are unwanted!"
"Surrender — we won't overload you!"
"You will be our obedient slaves!"
"It's been a while since I tasted human flesh!"
The sentinels on the garrison walls held firm, not disgracing their assault armor by yielding to provocation.
They did not retreat from their combat posts, even as they watched excavation machines bore through the rock at the mountain's base, revealing massive tunnels leading to underground bases.
Those very bases that Imperial soldiers left behind on the planet had failed to discover for so long.
The Thalassians knew that Command believed they had killed every radical, activist, and militant on the planet when the Dominion arrived and began establishing order.
They thought the punitive operations launched after every attack on caravans carrying confiscated slaves were the reason the radicals had scurried into hiding.
No. They were wrong.
Thalassians do not flee.
They burrowed deep underground, drawing closer each day to the garrisons the enemy had left behind.
Did the Dominion really believe something could break centuries-old traditions and force the locals to abandon slavery?
Of course not.
Nothing ever could.
The Thalassians knew perfectly well that the Dominion had left these garrisons solely to have a reason to return to the planet.
There was no need to deliver thousands of crates of rifles, ammunition, and long-term rations for just three hundred soldiers.
No — this was all done so they could return here, use these footholds as supply bases, and subjugate the people of Thalassia by force.
But they would fail.
At a signal from their commanders, the thirty-minute wait intended to give the enemy time to surrender ended.
Having received confirmation from orbiting ships that the Dominion had fled the system toward the Korva sector, the Thalassians understood that nothing now held them back from seizing the enemy stockpiles.
And a fanatical army of tens of thousands of Thalassians launched their assault.
Simultaneously — on each of the three fortresses the enemy had left on Thalassia's surface.
The Dominion fought back fiercely.
Hundreds of blaster rifles spat white-blue fire into the attackers.
Turbolasers — outdated but still functional — laid down rare but punishing fire into the advancing ranks.
Every hit meant dozens dead and even more wounded and maimed.
The attacks drowned in blood, but nothing could stop the Thalassian radicals now.
They stepped over the dying and wounded, crashing against the Dominion fortresses in living waves.
Using crude ladders or simply climbing over each other, the frenzied mob surged toward the walls.
They fell from the sloped battlements, plunging many meters to shatter on the rocks, killing themselves and maiming their kin.
But they kept attacking the garrison bases.
A prefabricated Imperial garrison base.
They kept attacking and advancing, carpeting the base of every fortress wall with hundreds — soon thousands — of corpses.
They broke the impregnable main gates and tried to descend from the mountains onto the command center tower.
They were slaughtered — but for every fallen man, ten more rose up, angrier, madder, ready to tear apart any stormtrooper in that absurd armor this planet had first seen back in the Clone Wars.
Finally, through the walls, the breaches in them, and the shattered main gates, the Thalassians broke into every fortress.
Like wild animals, they scattered through the empty levels, pursuing the retreating white-armored soldiers, trying to catch them and tear them apart.
But those soldiers, sensing their end approaching, hastily fell back toward the arsenal and stockpiles.
The Thalassians cornered them like beasts, realizing that their crude bullet weapons didn't kill — they only wounded the Phase I armored stormtroopers.
And this only made the native radicals crave Dominion weaponry even more.
So they paid no attention to the blood-soaked corridors they were moving through, where the bodies of their less fortunate brethren — wounded and dead — were piling up.
The radicals surged toward the weapons and supplies of the shamefully fleeing Dominion troops, declaring themselves the new masters of everything they found by right of might.
And right now, they couldn't care less that there were no fighters or combat vehicles on the base.
The bloody frenzy of plunder ignored the absence of basic furniture, hygiene supplies, or the personal belongings of the remaining soldiers.
No datapads. No magazines.
Just bare walls leading to the stockpiles of those who had already run hundreds of meters over the bodies of their fallen kin.
And finally, with strange synchronicity, the attackers reached the warehouse gates.
As if hypnotized, they stared at the surviving Dominion soldiers standing with weapons raised before the halted crowd.
Unfazed, they stood behind a heap of their fallen and wounded comrades' bodies, rifles trained on the Thalassians.
"Surrender!" the natives shouted. "Your ships are gone! You've been left here to die!"
Having lost over five thousand of their own in the bloody assault, the local leaders realistically assessed that the few dozen soldiers in each fortress might reconsider and lay down their arms, knowing they could do nothing more.
"The Black Sun is with us!" roared hundreds of throats.
"Our ships have already reached mid-orbit and will be here any minute!" the natives shouted.
"Surrender," the rebel leaders offered with ragged voices. "You have nowhere to run."
But the enemy's remaining commanders stayed silent, merely watching the crowd that had packed bases designed for three thousand men to nearly twice that number.
And that was just the living.
With the dead counted, each garrison held far more.
"Well? Do you surrender, or do we wipe you all out?!" It was the last offer made to the surrounded soldiers.
The Thalassians, desperate to reach the pyramids of cargo containers, were practically blind and deaf by now.
They saw the markings on the crates. They knew this was the most advanced weaponry the Empire and Dominion had ever produced.
And the Thalassians wanted it.
Knowing full well that with Imperial tech in hand, they could join any slave-trading cell and earn massive bonuses from every mission they'd take part in.
All they had to do was break the exhausted enemy and reach out to take what was theirs by right of might.
But instead of an answer — instead of surrender — this tense moment turned tragic.
"Our ships are hitting mines!"
Cries of this sort — and similar ones — spread through the assault force like wildfire, sobering them and making them understand that the Dominion's retreat had been a trap.
"We're losing battlecruisers!"
"Two are already destroyed!"
"Enough coddling these dolls!"
"Right! Let's take the stockpiles!"
The mob of local radicals, armed with slug-throwers, was about to charge forward and crush the last resistance in the garrisons when the Dominion stormtroopers spoke the most terrifying and unbelievable words this planet's population had ever heard.
They had heard it once before — when they joined the Confederacy of Independent Systems.
And when they first heard their mechanical soldiers acknowledge orders.
"Got it, got it," said the remaining "stormtroopers" in every captured fortress, with the same hollow intonation, "foolishly" positioned in the gorges of Thalassia's snow-covered mountains.
And then the old bases exploded.
* * *
How do you solve the problem of a decentralized pirate — and slaver — network operating not just on your borders but all across the Outer Rim?
And do it in a way that inflicts maximum damage, ensuring they need years to recover and gather new resources?
While also luring the radical elements hiding in underground bases — real labyrinthine tunnel networks — out into the open, where you can finally deal with them?
The logical answer was to gather them all in one place.
And Thalassia was perfect for that.
What infuriates a slaver operating far from home the most?
Not being able to return.
What makes a radical pick up a weapon?
The authorities doing things that violate the population's sense of what is acceptable.
And the only acceptable standard for a Thalassian slaver is the value of his slaves.
Slaves whom the Dominion had granted equal rights alongside every other sentient being on its territory.
The descendants of slaves taken from their owners without a single credit of compensation.
Because no one buys slaves inside the Dominion — they are given the freedom that any sentient being deserves.
That was when the Thalassians first felt what it meant to have their established template shattered.
They lost their slaves — taken by their husbands, fathers, brothers, and every other young, active male.
And got nothing in return.
Just blood and ruthlessness during operations to destroy the gangs that attacked caravans transporting former slaves.
At first, that helped. Then we realized the enemy knew the terrain perfectly and, at the slightest danger, disappeared underground.
And I simply didn't have the manpower to clear those catacombs — in such bunkers, you could lose an entire army and still not achieve your objective.
It was only a matter of time before every slaver cell returned to Thalassia.
Sooner or later, they would.
But first — after securing the support of our enemies.
And indeed, they came.
And the assault on our garrisons began on the ground.
As I thought about how to solve the underground problem and the returning cells, a scene from a book I read long ago came to mind.
The Adventures of Captain Blood.
In the plot arc I was interested in, pirates intended to attack a coastal fortress.
Knowing they didn't have enough strength, they used a trick, deceiving the enemy watching their landing force come ashore.
The pirates' enemies saw with their own eyes that the pirates had landed far more men than intelligence had reported.
Realizing this, the fortress garrison understood they couldn't defeat a superior force.
Only later did they learn the terrible (for them) truth.
The pirates had no extra forces.
Exactly as many as intelligence had indicated.
The pirates simply transported their infantry so that the enemy could only see the boats' contents on the way from the ships to the shore.
But not on the way back.
The trick was that when the pirates were being transported from ship to shore, the soldiers stood or sat in the boats — clearly visible.
But when the same boats returned from shore to the ships, those same soldiers didn't leave the boats — they just lay down in the bottom, hidden from the observers' view.
Given the distance between the fortress and the transports, the optical illusion worked better than any other.
No deception — just sleight of hand.
That was how the idea was born to place old garrison modules — ones that had seen the Empire's heyday — in the mountainous regions.
Specifically, in mountain gorges.
And it was there, week after week, under the guise of ammunition, weapons, and food for a large number of people (suggesting these bases were intended as staging grounds), that transport shuttles arrived.
Delivering in large crates exactly what the slavers so desperately wanted — ships they claimed as their own creations, built by the slaves we had freed.
With one exception: inside the crates was baradium.
And rhydonium.
And space mines, which the shuttles had been placing in mid-orbit during their flights, week after week turning Thalassia's orbit into a minefield.
While the Thalassian observers counted and catalogued our crates of explosives, anticipating taking them from the hundred stormtroopers on each base, we packed explosives into the structures at the base of the snow-covered mountains.
And mined the orbit.
And now, with Captain Abyss having reached the rendezvous point with fleet forces and returning to Thalassia's orbit, while massive sheets of ice and snow slide down the mountain peaks, shaken by the most powerful explosions, the solid-state liquid on Thalassia's surface solves our problem of the radical natives for us.
Covering those who survived the blast, pouring into the gaping maws of tunnels inconveniently opened near our bases.
Not to mention how deep the blast shockwaves went underground, collapsing ceilings and tunnels, dooming the radicals and their sympathizers who were down there.
Meanwhile, observation posts in Thalassia's orbit reported that the Void Wanderer had returned to the system.
Along with his entire fleet — pulled out of hyperspace on the far orbit by the Bastion, which had arrived in the system first.
Phase two of the Thalassian slavers' destruction had begun.
Now the Thalassians in orbit would get the chance to find out — where had our defensive stations gone from the planet's orbit.
* * *
The bridge of the Void Wanderer was plunged into darkness, lit only by the dim glow of pale blue emergency lighting and the reflections from active console panels lining the bulkheads.
Well, semi-darkness — another reminder that the Star Destroyer had undergone modernization.
"Mine-layers are in position," the watch officer reported. "Deployment of 'Asteroids,' gravitic barriers, and minefields on the Dominion's borders in the Meram sector has begun."
In truth, all hyperlanes — the major ones — had been blocked this way long ago.
This report concerned only those that had been left open as bait for enemies like the Thalassian slavers, who wouldn't hesitate to use such loopholes — smuggler routes — to attack the Dominion.
Through the viewport, Captain Abyss could see an enemy battlecruiser being destroyed in a series of explosions.
He could also see two second-generation Dragon escorts flanking the flagship, stripping shields and mobility with single shots from the Thalassian transports clustered in the rear formation.
Slaves or something else — these fat starships would soon be boarded and searched.
Unlike the battlecruisers that had flown straight into the minefield laid in mid-orbit.
Right along the trajectories most commonly used to approach the planet — in the projection of the equatorial zone.
That was where the planet's gravity field was strongest.
And that was exactly how non-military ships approached planets — to enter the gravity well faster, engage engines, and settle into orbit to save fuel.
And it was there that all these pirates would be destroyed.
"Shield status," he demanded.
"Ninety-seven percent, sir."
His flotilla wasn't large.
One Star Destroyer — the Void Wanderer.
One interdictor cruiser, deploying its invisible gravity net and trapping the Thalassians in their homeworld's orbit.
Two fresh Dragons, picking off slaver transports left and right.
And half a dozen Mark II Crusaders, keeping the annoying "uglies" away from the squadron's ships.
For the four surviving Kaloth ships, lost among the transports and believing the minefield made them untouchable, it seemed like a stalemate.
But the problem was something else.
This enemy behavior had been anticipated.
"Orbital stations — decloak," Abyss ordered.
As if in a synchronized sport competition, four Golan-II defense stations appeared on higher — for half of them — and lower — for the others — orbits than the enemy.
Like predator fangs, these space objects — a complete surprise for the pirates — opened fire.
Positioned above and below the Thalassian ships, they effortlessly located the enemy Kaloth vessels and flooded them with streams of turbolaser fire and proton torpedoes.
The stations' ion cannons fired on those transports that still had maneuverability.
Captain Abyss watched the scene and knew he had perfectly judged the timing of delaying the Thalassian fleet's arrival at the planet's orbit.
He had drawn out the battle, damaging the enemy frigates (and at the moment, the Void Wanderer was finishing off the last DP20s), allowing the hidden stations to shift orbits and position themselves as far as possible from the then-deactivated minefield.
The Void Wanderer emitted a signal preventing the mine detonators from arming.
While in the system, it kept the minefield deactivated, so neither the cloaked stations nor the transport ships reinforcing the minefield detonated on the mines.
The Golans, completely blind and deaf under their cloaking field, relied solely on observation systems connected by fiber-optic cables to scout droids passively gathering all orbital data.
Thanks to them, maneuvering thrusters lifted the stations to the necessary orbits, positioning them so that the enemy starships would inevitably be caught in crossfire.
And now, with the minefield deactivated again and the Thalassian slaver ships unaware of it, they were being destroyed.
The Dominion doesn't need prisoners when capturing them would cause unnecessary losses among its own fighters.
The slaughter happening in orbit is a visual lesson for the Thalassians on the planet.
Those who lived and waited for their kin to return with plunder and drive the Dominion away.
And the slavers did return.
Straight into a trap.
Their ground forces — the local radical natives — died at the decoy fortresses.
Their ships were shot to pieces and scattered across orbit, and boarding shuttles with battle droids and stormtroopers were already launching from the hangars of the Void Wanderer and both Dragons.
They docked with every immobilized slaver transport.
And then everything followed the same pattern.
Emergency airlocks were cut open.
Flashbangs and smoke grenades flew inside.
With a clatter of metal, droidekas rolled across the decks and passageways, followed by naval special forces and space infantry stormtroopers.
Judging by reports — the Thalassian pirates and slavers were surrendering, realizing resistance was futile.
Cells and cages used to transport slaves were opened, and the slaves were the first to be returned to Dominion starships.
The pirates were extracted last.
They were glad to have been lucky enough to survive.
They laughed and joked with each other, glancing at the expressionless faceplates of the stormtroopers escorting them to the cells.
The Thalassian slavers, having survived the collapse of their organization, were happy to be alive.
They didn't yet know that at Captain Abyss's task force's operational base, prison transports were already waiting to ship them to penal colonies.
The former pirates and slavers, along with their accomplices, didn't know that day after day they would be pulled from their cells, interrogated, and confronted face-to-face with former slaves and their own "business associates."
They knew but hoped the court would not sentence them to death — which was the Dominion's penalty for piracy and slaving.
Each of them hoped that the testimony they gave against their own former comrades would be credited by the judges and that the death sentence would be commuted to hard labor on one of the Dominion's sparsely populated planets.
Captain Abyss knew with what relief the Thalassian pirates — like hundreds of other hardened criminals before them: pirates, bandits, murderers, maniacs, rapists, traitors, spies — would smile upon hearing they were being sent to the facility on Kessel.
Because they knew that escaping Kessel was difficult but possible — you just had to think and make the right connections.
Yes, it would be harsh, but they consoled themselves with the thought that mines were better than execution.
The only thing those who heard the judge's verdict — "Send to the mines of Kessel" didn't know was that the energy spiders in the Kessel mines couldn't care less about the criminals' plans.
Energy spiders eat everyone.
And produce spice.
That's the full extent of their interest in criminals.