The Droch-class light boarding ship first saw the light, like many other technologies used by the Dominion, thirty years ago, during the conflict between the Galactic Republic and the Confederacy of Independent Systems.
Sergeant THX-0333 did not consider this little ship anything outstanding or the best means of delivering a boarding party to its target.
Light boarding ship of the Droch class.
This twenty-meter vessel, a Dominion-modernized version, was currently arguably the fastest means of delivering the Fourth Special Squad to their target.
As well as other special forces groups.
Their target was a space station of the Zann Consortium.
Already stripped of its main weapon — the plasma-ion cannon, it was firing with all its might at the retreating Scimitars.
All the stations had lost their communications equipment.
Deflector generators.
Part of their armament and reactors.
And the main caliber — that was taken out first.
Now, only the finishing touch remained.
Capture the stations.
And for that, the special forces went in first.
They were ready.
And the best thing they could do at that moment was attack.
The stations' plans were known to them.
The trophies from the Battle of Smarck had been studied, and detailed recommendations for storming this type of object had been compiled.
The standard methods of penetration — through airlocks, hangars, or landing on the station's surface — were unacceptable.
Sending droids forward was also out of the question.
Even with damaged reactors, the enemy could still blow up their stations.
Speed was needed.
Force was needed.
Special forces were needed.
The sergeant knew clearly that in the past, Drochs were launched by the Separatists in entire swarms.
The ship originally had no shields, the hull was easily penetrated by standard weapons, and the interior could only accommodate six droids and the pilot.
Now, from the Guardian, hundreds of such landing ships were similarly raining down, latching onto all the Golans and the central station, which was built to Zann Consortium specifications.
The other identical stations weren't important.
The Guardian would destroy them.
Just as six blocking groups would destroy the enemy's lurking starships before they realized what was happening.
The Dominion-upgraded Drochs had gained half a meter in length — accelerators were installed on them.
And shield generators.
Now they were a swift projectile, capable of surviving several turbolaser hits.
And inside it, only four special forces soldiers, one of whom piloted the boarding ship.
With them, two droidekas for support.
With them, a full combat load — the necessary resource for completing the capture mission.
In the forward section of the ship's hull, thanks to the designers' will, was a powerful drill, capable of boring through even the armored hull of a Star Destroyer or any other armored object.
The thin outer hulls of non-combat vessels, like liners, the Drochs penetrated on impact, without docking to the hull and activating the drill.
But that was almost thirty years ago.
Now, besides the drill, these ships were equipped with plasma cutters, similar to those previously used on "diggers."
Now the Drochs didn't just drill the hull.
They drilled it and burned through it with a plasma charge.
And that allowed them to penetrate exactly where needed.
Therefore, Drochs were disposable.
Extracting this ship, stuck in the heart of a vessel or station, was now only possible in pieces, after cutting it apart.
THX-0333 was completely uninterested in how the evacuation of their landing craft would proceed.
He only knew that the plasma charge in the cutter was running out, and their starship was passing through one deck after another.
Instruments showed they needed to breach ten more bulkheads to reach the reactor hall.
Five seconds per melt-through.
Ten seconds per drill-through.
The ship shook.
It was getting hot inside, but the armor protected the assault commandos' bodies from this discomfort.
Seven decks.
"Prepare," the sergeant commanded.
The soldiers of his squad — rookies again.
Trained, yes, but his subordinates didn't live long.
Probably someone else would die in this battle.
They'd have to take replacements.
That was bad.
Colonel Selid's cloning was complete.
No genetic material remained.
Every assault on space, and indeed ground, objects conducted by the Dominion involved numerous assault commandos of this genetic template.
They had all died.
But they had accomplished their objectives.
He was the last.
Now, that was certain.
What the assault commandos would be like now was unknown.
But THX-0333 was the only face of Colonel Selid left in the entire regular army of the Dominion.
That was bad.
Assault commandos died too often.
It was inefficient.
Four decks.
The plasma indicator showed very little charge remaining.
Three decks.
The plasma ran out.
The ship switched to drilling.
The vibration inside grew stronger.
One of the soldiers dropped his weapon.
THX-0333 reprimanded him while he retrieved his blaster and checked its functionality.
Two decks.
The hull was pierced by blaster shots in three places from outside.
The soldier who dropped his blaster died from hits to the chest and head.
The third charge was absorbed by the hull of a droideka.
That was bad.
Losses before the mission even began.
One deck.
The drill bit into the metal, pressed against it by the boarding ship's engines.
Through the external speakers, they could hear the metal howling as it was torn by the Droch's drills.
They also heard the roar of atmosphere escaping through the passage the ship had made.
It also leaked out of the landing compartment through the blaster holes, which no one intended to seal.
Finally, they reached the required deck.
With a clang and a crash, the magnetic ring locked the landing section to the deck, where the Droch's "claws," spreading out in four directions, tore a huge hole.
The droidekas were the first to fall "down."
With a metallic clatter, the droids rolled across the deck, unfolding into combat position and opening fire.
A beachhead was secured.
Time for the assault commandos.
One after another, the soldiers in black armor, covering a five-meter drop, landed on the deck of the reactor hall.
Sentinents were scurrying about — the droidekas killed them, driving them away from the power sources with fire.
"Scurrying" was too strong a word.
The enemy was regrouping.
These were experienced soldiers.
It wouldn't be easy.
That was good.
The assault commandos began the clearance.
THX-0333 turned two enemy soldiers to ash with a stream of fire before taking cover behind the shield of the nearest droideka.
THX-0333 continued the advance.
His flamethrower drove three more of the Zann Consortium's fighters behind cover, and that allowed another commando to flank them and gun them down with his blaster.
The sergeant saw a sentient running toward a control panel, ignoring the shooting around him.
The commander of the Fourth Special Squad understood perfectly well what the enemy fighter intended to do.
That was the self-destruct system panel, installed during construction by the Zann Consortium's engineers.
THX-0333 switched the firing mode of his flamethrower.
He pulled the trigger, and instead of a multi-meter stream of fire, a "fire spit" shot toward the enemy.
The enemy burst into flames like dry wood.
He didn't scream or panic.
He tried to reach the panel.
The sergeant grabbed a blaster pistol and killed the enemy with a precise shot.
The corpse fell to the deck but continued to burn.
THX-0333 cut down two more enemies with a burst before his squad, having lost another commando, took full control of all the distribution systems in the reactor hall.
The control panels were disabled, the main reactors were de-energized, and the working fluid was stopped.
The power from the emergency reactors wouldn't be enough to detonate the station.
Magnetic charges blew up the control panels.
Now, no one and nothing could detonate the Fourth Special Squad's trophy.
"Sergeant THX-0333 speaking," taking cover behind the remains of the control panel, the assault commando squad leader opened a communication channel with the Guardian. "The reactor hall is under our complete control. The threat of detonation has been eliminated. Requesting support."
"Received, Sergeant," the answer came instantly. "Sending combat droids and stormtrooper squads. Hold your position."
"Understood."
THX-0333 closed the communication channel with the flagship just as his last soldier fell with a shot-through visor.
The sergeant's gaze lingered for a fraction of a second on the neat hole in the subordinate's helmet, then he checked the charge level in his flamethrower.
Another unit of the Fourth Special Squad was dead.
He had survived again.
This was starting to become a habit.
THX-0333 aimed and released a stream of fire, turning three enemies into ash who had decided to flank him.
The fuel mixture was exhausted.
He hadn't brought a spare canister into battle, knowing full well how vulnerable it was in combat if hit by a stray shot.
Switching to his blaster rifle, the sergeant took a position and opened fire on the enemy soldiers.
Both droidekas shifted to cover his flanks.
Thirty minutes later, when reinforcements broke into the reactor hall, only THX-0333 remained alive, bearing three wounds and finishing off the last enemy soldier with a shard of an obsidian knife.
* * *
Captain Pellaeon, having listened to the watch officer's report, nodded affirmatively, then quickly walked to the chair where Grand Admiral Thrawn was seated.
"Sir, confirmation has arrived. The central Zann Consortium station has been captured and is under stormtrooper control. Clearance is complete. No risk of detonation."
"Received, Captain," the Supreme Commander's voice was, as always, calm, composed, and emotionless.
Pellaeon looked at the tactical hologram, which clearly displayed everything happening in the system.
On five out of six vectors leading out of the system, the enemy's hidden ships, stunned by the appearance of the blocking groups, had not managed to react to the external invasion.
Three groups had already suffered catastrophic losses — the Scimitar attack had not only deprived their Aggressors of their main weapon, which posed the greatest danger, but had also blown the battleships to pieces.
Now, stripped of their main striking force, the remaining Vengeances were trying to organize something vaguely resembling resistance.
"In the fifth group, an Aggressor managed to fire on a heavy cruiser," Pellaeon reported. "An Avenger has been destroyed. The crew was partially rescued in escape pods."
Thrawn was silent.
"Of the six interdiction destroyers, the sole Interdictor was also damaged — two of its four gravity well generators in the forward hemisphere are destroyed."
This meant half the area of hyperspace interdiction on that vector.
And that was the same sixth vector along which enemy ships had fled almost a full day ago.
"Remind the group commanders that we are taking no prisoners and are not pursuing trophies among enemy ships," the Grand Admiral said. "Our target is Lurr. And the Golan stations."
Everything, as always, simple and clear.
There was no point in wasting time and soldiers' lives to capture ships that, as the Dominion had already learned, the enemy would never surrender if they had the chance to blow them up.
They didn't fit into the fleet's force structure or into the reserve units.
Just scrap metal that no one would restore just to increase the Dominion fleet's numbers.
The already considerable number of ships were simply waiting their turn — modernization and crews.
But with the stations, it was a completely different matter.
There were a total of ten defensive stations in orbit.
An equal number produced by "Golan Arms" and the "Zann Consortium."
Only one of them — the central one — was positioned directly above the largest Lurrian settlement.
It also blocked the possibility of landing troops on the surface, covering the ideal vectors for entering the planet's atmosphere with its guns and launchers.
And five Golan platforms...
Those were five Golan platforms.
No more, no less.
Even though the Dominion produced copies of such defensive platforms, five extra units would never hurt.
After all, what's easier — building five new platforms to defend planets, or capturing five platforms in battle, repairing, modernizing them as needed (if it's needed, of course) and moving them using the already established system for transporting them through hyperspace to a new duty station in another system?
Or, if Lurr really was so valuable that Thrawn himself had decided to conquer it, these platforms could stay as defense for the planet after its deoccupation.
Captain Pellaeon looked through the central viewport at one of the Guardian's targets.
The multi-kilometer giant was firing in all directions it could reach simultaneously.
The forward plutongs of guns and launchers, shifting their focus, were mercilessly mangling one of the "Zann" platforms.
Turbolaser bolts and anti-ship missiles, in volleys and singly, streaked toward their target.
Biting into shields and detonating on the hull, they caused considerable damage to the orbital station's structure.
The mighty space construction fought back as best it could.
But despite the fact that it was built to repel space attacks, the station simply could not oppose the fire of the regular fleet's flagship.
Streams of white-green fire poured over it so frequently it became terrifying.
Like enormous waves that could, in a single instant, surge over a breakwater and drown everything behind it with their mass, they poured down on the station's weakening deflector.
Meanwhile, anti-ship missiles with baradium payloads successfully breached the energy barrier and detonated against the outer hull of the defensive structure.
Everything was deformed: the weapon turrets and launchers, the hull plating and armor sheets, the shield projectors and communications antennas of the station...
If Captain Pellaeon had been in the defenders' position, he would surely have thought that divine punishment had been unleashed upon them.
Nobody was planning to board the crews on those stations.
Reconnaissance droids deployed during the previous attempts to penetrate the system had clearly observed that every last useful and important cargo had been evacuated from those stations.
Now they were simply targets.
That would not surrender, no matter what happened.
The disfigured, scorched station, built by the forces of the Zann Consortium, could barely return fire.
But neither the crew nor, least of all, the Dominion's gunners cared about that in the slightest.
They were doing their job — destroying the enemy.
And they were executing their task flawlessly.
Pellaeon looked at the tactical display.
That station — its fate was clear. It would be destroyed.
And that time was not far off.
"Cease turbolaser fire on target number one," Grand Admiral Thrawn ordered, stroking the body of an ysalamiri.
"Cease fire, aye," Pellaeon echoed, passing the order down the chain of command. "Sir, has the order changed?"
Thrawn had just ordered its destruction himself, and now...
"Not in the slightest, Captain," the Grand Admiral countered. "Order the nearest Scimitar squadron to destroy the station for us. Turn the Guardian seventy degrees to port. Shift priorities. Forward turbolasers, switch to engaging target number three. Ion cannons, redirect all attention to target number two. Depower it and order the boarding parties to take it next. How is our boarding operation progressing?"
Ah, now the reason for the order adjustment was clear.
Thrawn didn't want to waste time destroying an unimportant target with the ship's own artillery.
The bombers also needed practice in such attacks — and as often as possible.
The commander of the flagship Star Destroyer refocused his attention on the new target.
On the tactical hologram, a double green line stretched from the white elongated triangle of the Guardian toward another Zann station, indicating continuous turbolaser fire.
The bolts slammed into the station's deflector screen, spreading across its surface; part of the energy was absorbed by the shield, while another part, deflected, ricocheted into the great cosmic void...
But the very next salvo brought down the invisible shell of the deflector and bit into the structure's surface, piercing and melting every node and aggregate it encountered along its path.
A series of explosions rippled through the enemy's turbolaser battery, spewing streams of fire, plasma, and debris — what had once been part of the station and its weapons — into space.
No mercy.
No leniency.
Annihilation — and only that.
Pellaeon watched for a few more seconds as the missile salvo reached the structure and a powerful blast consigned the station to oblivion.
The polarization system of the viewport's transparisteel dampened the intensity of the glare.
When the flash of the explosion faded, the Guardian's commander could observe another stronghold of the Zann Consortium's fighters breaking apart.
Nothing can withstand the intensity of fire from an Executor-class Super Star Destroyer.
The Lusankya, the weakest of all her sister ships, had collapsed a section of a planetary deflector shield in minutes when the Ice Queen fled Coruscant several years ago.
What could the deflector field of some insignificant enemy orbital station possibly oppose to the guns of the Guardian, which had undergone Dominion upgrades?
Nothing.
All of this was nothing more than a prolongation of the agony.
The captain shifted his gaze to another tactical monitor.
The Guardian's ion batteries fired another salvo, and the holodisplay on the bridge traced a blue line stabbing between the schematic image of the Super Star Destroyer and the marker denoting the Golan station.
Target number three was repeatedly enveloped in the glow of the flagship's ion cannon impacts.
The Guardian's acquisition marker flashed — the central computer reported a drop in the power of the Golan-II's deflector fields.
After the second salvo, the icon changed to a similar one but without the oval of the protective field.
As predicted, one of the most common and formidable defensive stations in the galaxy was losing its position.
Bolts of white-blue energy danced across its surface.
Section by section, the platform plunged into darkness as soon as the heavy ion cannons spat clots of energy, deadly to any electronics, from their maws.
It took several minutes for the station to go dark and begin drifting slowly toward the surface of Lur.
"Target number three is neutralized," Pellaeon reported.
"Excellent work by the gunners, Captain," Thrawn replied. "Bring the Guardian closer to its prize and use the main engines and tractor beams to raise the Golan station to a higher orbit. We wouldn't want several million tons of durasteel crashing down on the heads of the population of a planet belonging to the Dominion."
"Affirmative, sir," Pellaeon agreed. "We wouldn't."
He swept his gaze over the Guardian's two previous targets.
But on the orbit, only a motley collection of debris remained, steadily descending, already beginning to heat up from friction with the upper atmosphere.
"Sir, I recommend striking the largest pieces of debris," the Super Star Destroyer's commander stated.
The logic of his proposal was simple to the extreme.
The smaller the fragments falling to the planet's surface, the greater the chance they would burn up completely in the atmosphere and harm neither the planet nor the troopers of the 501st Legion, who were making mass landings and immediately engaging in the ground phase of the Battle for Lur.
"An excellent idea, Captain," Thrawn assessed. "Give the order."
"Turbolaser batteries three through seven — destroy the debris," Pellaeon commanded. "Ion cannons, begin engaging target number four," an instant later, another Golan station came under fire. "Remaining turbolaser crews, switch to target number five."
The Guardian, whose guns had been silent for only a few seconds, again belched turbolaser-ion flame from its core.
Green-blue-white waves engulfed the last defensive lines of the planet Lur's orbit.
The outcome of this battle was already visible even to the blind.
But the fighters of the Zann Consortium kept fighting, even though they had absolutely no chance of victory.
* * *
As expected, the enemy's air force was a mixture of the most diverse types of flying machines.
From the truly ancient to the relatively new.
Everything flashed around the pilots — the Guardian and the defensive stations were exchanging salvos.
Despite the fact that the behemoth was alone, and the stations were, in terms of combined firepower, at least slightly its equal, Grand Admiral Thrawn had deprived the enemy of its main advantage.
In the center of each Zann Consortium station gaped a huge wound, inflicted by the Scimitar squadron's raid.
And besides, the Super Star Destroyer had chosen an excellent tactic.
It was destroying its targets one by one, completely ignoring the others and wasting no effort on them.
Its shields were strong, constantly reinforced by the SEAL system, and therefore, without a very large caliber, the enemy couldn't even dream of damaging the behemoth or at least penetrating its deflectors.
Green and red turbolaser beams mixed with the white-blue energy of ion cannons.
Mutual exchanges of fire had turned space into a continuous obstacle course, where one wrong move could end in death.
The deflectors of small craft were sometimes strong enough, but a hit from a turbolaser was not something they were designed for.
As if to prove this statement, one of the X-wings bearing the emblems of the Black Sun literally vaporized the moment its course intersected the trajectory of a turbolaser bolt.
The gunner, however, did not hesitate, and within a second, several more white-green projectiles tore through the same spot.
Around the Guardian, around each of the stations, a real battle raged between fighters of all types.
The enemy fought desperately, but without panic.
Kreb felt something akin to anxiety and apprehension for the first time regarding the successful outcome of the operation.
The enemy pilots made any sacrifice, did not count losses, and literally charged head-on to break through the medium defensive perimeter of the Super Star Destroyer.
This was... a rather strange tactic.
As if these pilots, like droids, lacked any sense of self-preservation, knew no fear...
It took Kreb several space battles to test his hypothesis about who was sitting at the controls of the enemy ships.
It was enough to look at his own pilots and find a few differences.
The pilots on both sides were clones.
But the Dominion pilots knew perfectly well that their key task was not just to follow orders, but also to preserve their own lives.
A dead pilot learned nothing.
He would never become better than himself.
A dead pilot was just another name on the casualty list.
The shots that found their mark — another ship — amidst the myriad of fighters were absorbed by shields, but on the smaller ships, they gave out quickly.
Both sides in the starfighter confrontation tried to shoot down the small ships with their cannons to get rid of the harassing fire, and many fighters on both sides were reduced to heaps of scrap.
The Avenger squadron had engaged an aggressive squadron of wishbones.
The TIE Avengers were faster, but the pilots controlling the enemy machines clearly knew their business.
Kreb got the first one when he got on his tail and fired at a sharp angle, lodging a laser bolt into the engine casing.
The wishbone immediately rolled onto its right side, forcing the major to repeat the maneuver.
Working the engines, the Avenger-Leader cut his speed to a minimum, then fed more power to the left engine, literally pivoting his ship to the right on a dime.
Having done this, he managed to lock the enemy in his sights, anticipating a similar maneuver from his opponent.
The latter realized he had been outplayed only a second or two later and tried to flee from Kreb at full speed.
The major didn't give chase.
He simply fired a torpedo, and a couple of moments later, as he locked onto another enemy, the wishbone broke apart from a direct hit to the engine.
While he was lining up a new target, a burst of laser fire streaked past his ship.
The major threw his fighter to the left so fast it nearly folded in half, and slammed two consecutive salvos from all four cannons into another wishbone pursuing him, which shot past.
This time, the hits struck just aft of the cockpit.
Its shields died, but the ship continued to climb sharply, racing away from the one it had failed to destroy.
The major again used the engines to pitch his ship's nose up and fix the enemy in his sights.
Another weapon switch, and missiles were brought into play again.
The wishbone, struck in the engine, disintegrated.
And the control panel was already telling him he was needed elsewhere — and as soon as possible.
The Avenger-Leader accelerated, dove sharply, and spun into a dive to get on the tail of a wishbone that was firing on his wingman.
"Two, this is Leader. In combat. Break off."
"Copy, Leader!"
The wingman peeled away, and Kreb, in the same instant, slashed his cannons across the pursuer.
The enemy's deflectors vaporized, but not him.
Blue ion beams shot toward him from the wishbone's cockpit.
The forward deflector flared brightly, immediately losing power, leaving the canopy defenseless against the attack.
The major veered sharply right and down, using the very wishbone's engine as a shield, then fed extra power to his own deflectors.
"Avengers, attention," he said in a calm tone. "Wishbone-twos confirmed."
No explanation was needed.
This term meant that, besides the pilot, these types of ships carried a dorsal gunner, who had nearly stripped the wing commander's ship not only of its shields but of all its electronics at once.
Confirmation came from the pilots.
The wingman additionally reported the information being relayed to the CIC.
Now it would be disseminated to all pilots of the Guardian's air wing.
Keeping below the wishbone, out of its firing arc, Kreb accelerated his Avenger, then climbed and fired a burst at the enemy ship.
Its pilot began to turn the fighter to give the gunner a shot at the Dominion pilot, but a well-aimed hit on the gunner's blister not only robbed him of that opportunity but vaporized him.
And right after that came an internal explosion, and the enemy ship was torn to pieces.
Kreb marked his next target.
Free hunting and the skill level of both the major himself and his clones allowed them to break up their accustomed pairs and engage in individual pursuit and destruction of targets.
Kreb was engaged in just such a pursuit.
Rolling onto his left surfaces and adjusting his course slightly, he caught the nimble ship in his sights and fired.
After the first quad salvo, only the rear shield went down, but the wishbone kept flying.
Then another white-green salvo slammed into its stern, and the wishbone tumbled away, spinning uncontrollably.
The wingman flew past, switching to the next target.
Kreb had a few seconds for a break and to reassess the situation around him.
The central station was captured and no longer firing.
Boarding shuttles, dropships, and barges with light equipment glided past it to ease the work of the shock troopers.
Besides that, three of the five Zann Consortium stations were already destroyed, and the Guardian was beating the fifth with all its might.
But at the same moment, it abandoned that task, and the last target came under attack by the Scimitar squadron.
A powerful flash could have blinded him if not for the helmet's visor.
Three of the five Golans were likewise depowered.
Another was engaged in an exchange of ion artillery fire with the Super Star Destroyer.
The fifth Golan was not visually detectable.
Probably destroyed or out of sight.
But Kreb found himself a new target.
He executed a quick barrel roll and dove down, then, spinning the Avenger in the other direction, shot upward.
The major constantly changed direction, flying in a straight line for no more than a second or two, breaking through the battlefield.
None of the enemy's small ships were firing at him, but the major, on pure instinct, was not about to become an easy target that someone might take a potshot at.
The vacuum was filled with powerful energy leaping from the Dominion ship to the station and back, while smaller energy clots scattered in all directions from the fighters.
Proton torpedoes and high-explosive missiles raced toward their targets, as if guided by the fear of those they pursued.
But Kreb's target was something entirely different.
In the midst of the battle, he saw a gunship fall victim to an E-wing, which had shot it practically point-blank.
What a new main starfighter of the Alliance was doing here, Kreb couldn't have cared less.
One of his pilots had just been destroyed.
The E-wing had used its speed advantage.
There was no point in talking about a fair fight or anything of the sort — that kind of nonsense interested no one in combat.
If you can, kill.
If you can't, get out of the way for someone who can.
Every pilot — on both sides — had the same task: to exterminate.
And now Major Kreb was going after the one who was "in his weight class," unlike his subordinates.
A few seconds of closing distance were enough for the major not only to get into firing range but also to inform the CIC about the presence of such an opponent on the battlefield.
The E-wing did not decline the engagement and set an intercept course with the major's ship.
Just as it was about to blow Kreb apart, the latter cut speed, dove down, then pulled back on the stick and shot upward.
He rolled onto his right wing because he knew that executing such a maneuver would take the enemy a little longer.
Without wasting a moment, the major got right on his tail.
Immediately afterward, the enemy was "treated" to a burst from all four barrels, after which his deflectors failed, and the opponent himself began to bank onto his left side in an attempt to shake the pursuer.
I hit him with a burst from the ion cannon, then spun onto my left side and tried to flee.
He, too, had assessed that he was up against what seemed like a TIE, but one that was more "toothy" and faster than the interceptors buzzing around.
But Kreb had no intention of letting his quarry go so easily.
The death machine was working properly.
The major latched onto his pursued target like a nek on a Hutt's tail, and the enemy had no chance whatsoever to refuse such unwanted "company."
The major rolled onto his right wing, forcing the fighter to fly sideways, then dove and spun a left barrel roll.
He threw his Avenger up, then down a couple of times, before rolling onto his left side again, diving, and spinning through his left wing.
Then he rolled ninety degrees to the left, as if starting another lazy barrel roll, pulled back on the control stick, and bled speed using the maneuvering thrusters.
The enemy, who at that moment was to his left, was himself surprised at how the Avenger had managed to get on his flank.
Only at the very last moment did he manage to veer right, but it was too late.
Kreb shot off his right engine nacelle, and the uncontrolled ship spun in zero gravity, spewing pieces of itself into space.
Some people have such slow thinking that you can hear their synapses sparking as they lazily transmit the signal.
Others have such fast minds that their instantaneous decisions always amaze you, and it's only after five or ten minutes that you figure out their logical path.
And some have thoughts racing in all directions at the speed of light, and you can't even begin to guess how their brains work.
Major Kreb belonged to the second type of sentient.
That's precisely why, the moment he noticed that there were several more E-wings within range of his guns, actively slaughtering TIE interceptors and gunships, he didn't hesitate for a second.
"Avengers — rally at point two-two-zero-nine," he commanded, steering his ship toward the combatants.
A cold calculation, overriding his thoughts, formed the battle picture in a fraction of an instant.
No ship in this part of space was capable of fighting on equal terms with the E-wings.
The interceptors were not the easiest, but still a predictable target for them.
The Xg-1 Alpha gunships were, too.
Even despite the missile armament they were actively using.
The major had already figured out how the latter had ended up in this situation — they had been lured out of the Guardian's close defense perimeter by light targets like "headhunters" or "uglies."
And thus, catching the pilots in the thrill of easy kills, they had been baited into a local trap, delivered to the E-wings to be torn apart.
The interceptors, noticing the injustice, had rushed to help.
A tactic as old as the world.
By now, only half of each formation remained from both squadrons.
Unfortunately, the pilots cloned to fly the gunships were quite young.
But undoubtedly talented.
If he delayed any longer, there would be even fewer pilots.
Kreb fell upon the one he considered the most dangerous opponent of the entire enemy squadron at maximum speed.
Without overthinking it, he made the E-wing chase him, and then, switching to a counterattack, simply destroyed the enemy with missiles.
The onboard computer informed him that this type of ammunition was no longer available.
No matter — the main thing was that he had managed to pull a fairly serious opponent off the tail of one gunship.
The wounded ship limped toward the Guardian.
Kreb checked his instruments.
Two minutes until the squadron's arrival.
The enemy needed one and a half to kill everyone here.
The major opened a comm channel with the surviving pilots.
His mind worked like a computer.
As it should in a death machine.
Briefly explaining to the pilots what they needed to do, Kreb and the remaining five interceptor pilots, in a single formation, began driving the enemy away from the retreating gunships.
The enemy tried furiously to break through, but Kreb and his pilots wouldn't allow it.
Thankfully, the ships were piloted by clones just like him.
But newer versions, whose skills hadn't been sufficiently consolidated.
They managed to catch one enemy ship in a turn.
Right after that, an interceptor drove another one onto the Avenger-Leader.
Then Kreb himself shifted the deflector power to the forward projection and passed through the enemy formation like a hot knife melting butter.
The enemy reacted to what was happening.
Perfectly understanding the consequences of having an opponent in their rear, they abandoned their targets.
The gunships, with empty launchers, were retreating safely.
One minute until reinforcements arrived.
A furball ensued.
Kreb reversed his engines and dove, then rolled and pulled a loop to get on the tail of his chosen opponent.
The latter foresaw this maneuver and rolled onto his right wing to evade the Avenger, inviting him to give chase.
But he didn't account for exposing his side to a TIE interceptor.
White-green beams knocked out his deflectors by the time the enemy decided to bank.
At that same moment, Kreb got on his tail and shot out the E-wing's engine with his onboard weapons.
The ship tumbled through the vacuum, drifting away from the battle site.
Kreb's next target was a pursuer of the fourth interceptor.
He had accelerated too much and was approaching the enemy faster than necessary, so his first shot went wide of the cockpit.
Kreb snapped into a quick barrel roll over the left side and pulled back on the control stick.
He flew "up" for a full three seconds, then flipped over and continued his ascent in a shallow loop.
At that same moment, two E-wings appeared right in front of him, with interceptors on their tails.
Rolling his fighter onto its right flank, the major minimized his profile but couldn't avoid several hits to the deflectors.
The Avenger screamed past the enemy, but another Zann Consortium starfighter had already entered his sights.
Ten seconds until reinforcements arrived.
Only three TIE Interceptor pilots remained alive.
The enemy had six fighters.
And the scanner showed a mark indicating another squadron moving in their direction.
From the looks of it — more E-wings.
Too many new fighters for a criminal organization.
The enemy swept past the major's nose, but he didn't get a shot off.
Kreb rolled onto his right side, then cut hard left and throttled back to cruise speed, engaging the right maneuvering thrusters to tighten his turn radius.
Coming out of it, he accelerated again, dodging a volley of laser cannons from yet another E-wing.
A fast barrel roll, a dance of the maneuvering jets — and he was slamming a salvo into the tail of his recent pursuer.
Deflectors down, direct hit to the cockpit. The canopy didn't shatter, but the decompression blast ripped through the interior, and the crippled fighter tumbled out into space.
"Guardian OCC, this is Avenger-Leader," Kreb said. "Point two-one-six, vector four, acceleration seventeen. E-wing. Requesting extraction."
It was no secret that in the Alliance — just like in the New Republic — military hardware could be sold to just about anyone.
But it was doubly strange that these mainline fighters had ended up in the hands of a third party (the Zann Consortium likely wasn't their real name) instead of being absorbed into the Defense Forces.
Something wasn't right here.
Let the techs study the fighter and the astromech.
Like standard procedure for new enemy starfighters, it was sealed in an armored capsule and could survive a lot.
And it would have a lot to tell too.
"Targeting received, Avenger-Leader," the controller replied dryly. "Dispatching extraction shuttle."
The rest held little interest for Kreb.
Eleven TIE Avengers screamed past him, joining the slaughter without cluttering the comms.
By the time Kreb swung his fighter's nose toward the battlefield, nothing remained of the first E-wing squadron but memories.
And wreckage.
But another enemy squadron was pushing forward.
Only this time, they wouldn't be bullying interceptors or gunships.
Those E-wings were about to face the E-wing hunters.
Five minutes later, the entire Avenger squadron was escorting the extraction shuttle back to the Guardian, towing a captured E-wing with a hole punched through its cockpit on an invisible tether.
And an hour after that, the space battle in orbit of the planet Lur ended in a total Dominion victory.
Transport ships, escorted by fighters, poured into orbit in an endless stream.
The enemy was about to deeply regret ever settling in this relatively peaceful part of the world.
The atmospheric phenomena here were so mild that Dominion pilots barely acknowledged them as obstacles.