Chapter 94
Empress Teta Orbit, Empress Teta System
Koros Sector
“And you are absolutely certain the distress signal originated from Coruscant!?” Commodore Vinoc demanded in furious pace as he marched through the passageways of the Koros Spaceworks.
“Affirmative,” the BD-3000 attendant droid replied, hijacked by Lady Lex’s programming, her stiff servomotors struggling to keep pace with his haste, “My sister and I have already calculated the shortest flight plan possible. At best speed, we can reach Coruscant in eighteen hours.”
Vinoc clenched his jaw. Eighteen hours? A pipe dream! The full might of Honor Salima’s Home Fleet stood vigil over Coruscant, with all of the most advanced Star Destroyers the Republic Navy had at its disposal. In comparison, Vinoc’s 284th Battle Division barely numbered seventy-four old and tired warships, with no more than twenty-two capital ships among their number. With some clever hyperspace plotting, they could surely bypass all of the picket lines between them and Coruscant, but they could never hope to touch the Jewel of the Core Worlds.
His pace slowed as he turned left, gaze drawn toward the vast viewports lining the passageway. Beyond them, the warships of the ‘4th Battle Division lay moored in the void, a flotilla of battered war machines silhouetted against the glittering shimmer of Empress Teta. The capital ships hung like wearily, the scorch marks of turbolaser fire and the patchwork plating of hasty repairs telling stories of their own..
His eyes settled on Crying Sun, his flagship, a Providence-class dreadnought that seemed to weep golden tears in the reflected light of the ecumenopolis below. It was a beast of a warship, its once-pristine hull now a mosaic of battle damage and retrofit modifications.
Flanking it, Recusant-class light destroyers stood in formation, their long, skeletal frames bristling with turbolasers. Lean and predatory, they had been the autonomous vanguard of his Deep Core Campaign, slipping past Republic sentry lines and striking deep into enemy strongholds. Beside them, the Munificent-class frigates rested like sleeping sentinels, their hyperwave jammers still warm from the last engagement. And that was not to speak of the dozens of cruisers and corvettes that filled their lines of battle.
They were not the shining, pristine warships of the Coruscant Home Fleet, nor the Perlemian Coalition’s painted warships gleaming in parade formations over Raxus Secundus. No, these ships were something else. Veterans of the void, of a hidden war they would never be thanked for fighting.