The Confederate wedge began to push their way through asteroids. The grey-clad Trojan took point, with her heavy turbolasers battering the space-borne rocks into fine dust. Directly astern of the Nebula-class Star Destroyer, the Revanche indomitably combated the rocks with every weapon at her disposal, from cannons to missiles. One of the more novel gunnery teams used their tractor beam projector to grab hold of the asteroids and careen them across the field to their foes. Slightly astern and on either side of the Revanche, the Defender and Visionary’s batteries disintegrated rocks not only in their way, but those in the way of the flagship. Up ahead, the elite Hellhound Bomber Wing, flying Nemesis Bombers, made their final thrust at the base’s rocky mantel. Several hundred concussion missiles slammed into the rocks and detonated; sending a shockwave throughout the base and exposing the pirate’s barracks to hard vacuum. The younger Lucerne stared at the distant carnage.

“We have them now,” whispered the man, turning to Flight Controller, “Recall the Hellhounds back to the hangars. We won’t be needing them out their any more, and I’d rather not risk them out there any more than I have to.”

“Aye sir.”

“Sir,” reported the communication’s officer, “We’re getting a plea from the Iensis base to stop firing. The facility wishes to surrender.”

“Very well,” acknowledged the Rear-Admiral, “standard procedure; have them power down all weapon systems and ray shields. It may be a bit before we can safely board them.”

The man tapped several buttons on his command chair, zooming in on the embattled piratical fleet. Serendivius was already making short work of a pair of frigates, which appeared to be the core of their fleet. Leaving a quartet of Corellian gunships as the last remnants of the piratical fleet within the area. They won’t take long, the Trojan’s ion cannons are already in the process of disabling target Green Two. Heck, with the Starhammers decimated by our fighters, there aren’t anymore threats to our allied capital ships aside from the asteroids. Thank the maker. A voice yelled out from the crew pit.

“Green Two disabled. Trojan is concentrating fire on Green One.”

“Missile batteries,” ordered Lucerne, “change to ionic warheads and target Green Three and Four.”

A series of acknowledgements rang out from the weapon system’s operators. Seconds later, a volley of Starflare missiles surged forth from the Revanche, flashed into hyperspace, and reverted on top of the gunships. The warheads struck their target, releasing waves of cyan lightning across the gunships’ hull. Corise glanced down on his sensor readouts. Three and Four disabled.

“All enemy gunships disabled,” reported an officer.

“Three minutes until we’re able to dock with the base,” informed the helmsmen.

“Move to yellow alert, put all boarders on standby. Weapons, tractor in the gunships for boarding operations,” commanded the Kashan man, “what’s the status of the remaining piratical forces?”

“They’re starfighters elements have been crushed sir. We have an 85% casuality rate. The rest of them are fleeing out of the belt and beyond the range of the Constellation's gravity wells.”

“See if we can get a group of Deathsabers to track them,” recommended Lucerne.

“Already on it sir.”

“And the pair of frigates?”

Deep within the asteriod belt two unseen foes moved between the asteriods; each one kept a certain distance so not to collid with the roids. As they moved into positions a small cable suddenly appeared and snaked its way into a smaller asteriod.

The battle continued to rage, Seren Reten Fighters against what little remained of the pirate starfighters. As it continued, however, the sensor suite aboard the Cynax began to pick up anomalious readings.

"Ma'am," said an officer he pinged the new contact. "Got something on long range sensors, it's a short distance from the asteriod base.." he said. Lavality, curious, walked over to the sensor station and stared at the unknown contact. "Could be a ship, could be a stray torpedo..." she said.

It was then that the battleships onboard AI detected a targetting lock being made; bathing the bridge in an eerie bluish color. Unlike most of her officers who instinctly looked up at the ceiling, Lavality instead kept her eye on the contact.

"They targetting us?" she said calmly. The officer nodded before another contact appeared not far from the first. "Picking up increased power levels," he said and turned to the weapons officer.

In the field the two shadowy objects suddenly materialized in space. Each one had a barrel roughly seven hundred meters long with a body of a corvette. The barrels appeared to be white hot, as if they had just fired off a round.

"Ma'am! Contact confirmed! The-" informed the sensor officer before being cut off by the ships violent rocking. Two solid objects slammed into the undercarriage of the ship the collision was enough to cause the mighty battleship to literally change course.

"Deck ten, section four and five are vacuum, no casulties ma'am, emergency bulkheads are in place," another officer said over the blaring alarms. Lavality grumbled and lightly banged the bottom of her fist against the console. "How the hell did they get access to our MAC guns?" she demanded but no one had an answer.

"How severe is the damage?" she asked over the alarms. "Not severe ma'am, infact, we're lucky. The rounds impacted an armor of the ship that had the most armor, granted it was reflective armor but it still absorbed half the impact," an officer said.

Lavality nodded and pushed off the console and walked toward the center of the bridge. "Weapons, any friendly in firing arc?" she asked, her voice calm and collected.

"Confirmed ma'am, several of our starfighter and Confed starfighters are battling a small group of pirate fighters that refuse to give up," her weapons officer said. "Send a priority message for them to scatter," she said and the officer nodded and relayed the message.

As she watched the display to her left; she noticed a targetting reticle appear over the now identified MAC corvettes, commonly referred to as: Lone Rangers. She folded her arms and waited, noting that the corvettes had just begun to recloak. "Weapons, do we have a full charge on our straffers?"

"Confirmed ma'am, all friendly are out of the firing arc. AI is making a final navigational correction then we can fire,"

Outside the mighty battleship which had been struck by two solid object had rolled hard to starboard, but it's micro-thrusters and various other thrusters were correcting the ship and righting it. Along three area's of the port side red specs appeared along the hull, these specs slowly got bigger and also changed color. At first they were red, then blue, then purple and then finally settled to white.

Even before Lavality managed to complete her order to fire the three straffer cannons answered her call; lashing out in a deadly, needle, like fashion that punchered space and spun holes into anything that was in its path. An asteriod caught one of these beams and was sliced in two, one half moving in one direction while the other drifted in another direction.

One of the three beams connected with the first corvette; it's hull boiled as the beam made contact and penetrated the hull like it was paper. Cutting a huge swaff through the hull, the AI apperently wanted to make swiss cheese as the beam made several lateral motions before finally connecting with the corvette's ammo supply. A second later the corvette was nothing more than a burning hulk of it's former self.

A second later the second corvette responded with its own weapon, but this shell was directly in the path of a straffer beam and was cut in two; it's halve moving through space at such a speed that, due to the rounds no longer together, promptly crumbled in on themselves.

Microexplosions appeared along the hull of the second corvette as the beam made a spiral pattern, cutting the bridge and instantly killing all onboard. Then the beam connected with something not on the corvette, but rather, in the asteriod that the corvette was tethered to.

A might explosion rang out, emgolfing the second corvette and reducing to nothing more than melted slag. As the bridge crew of the Cynax watched, Lavality couldn't help but feel impressed. "Ma'am, their sending a surrender again, I think those guns weren't mean to fire... in fact.. I think whomever was in control didn't want to give up," her communications officer said.

"Order the Crescents to disable all weaponry on and around the asteriod base. I want two of our marine carriers to get into position for boarding action, orders are to capture the station crew, no killing unless absolutely required," she ordered. The comm. officer nodded and related the order.

Outside two carriers that originally hung back slowly advanced toward the station under a large escort of starfighters and corvettes. Meanwhile, several shadowy Crescent frigates advanced on the station, only occasionally firing their own straffers when they fitted a weapons platform or some other threatening object.

Iensis Corellian Gunship Green Two

Pirates lined the darkened walls of the diplidated warship, weapons drawn and pointed at the airlock. The ship slightly jarred as the tractor beam drew it into contact with the Revanche. Seconds later, sparks sprung out from the airlock as the battleship's crew cut down the door. The remains of the airlock door crashed down and clattered on the metal floor. Iensis crewmen pulled the triggers on their weapons, sending flurries of bolts into the conjoined dark room of the Revanche. Nothing answered the piratical attacks. Some of the criminals stopped firing, lowering their weapons in confusion. A spherical object sailed over from the Revanche to clatter down at the base of the Iensis' feet. It detonated, spewing out clouds of ivy green gas: sleeping gas. Some of the Iensis instantly collapsed to the ground. Others covered their noses with cloths or breath masks.

Large humaniod figures charged through the airlock, their feet clattering on the deck in a disjoined ruckus. Crimson and emerald bolts surged across the room, connecting with members of the Iensis and the Confederate boarding party. Pirates fell to the ground in droves in the stun attacks from the boarders. Bolts from the pirates smashed into and dissipated on the Paladin IIs armor. As the last of the pirates fell under the battle droids' assault, Kashan Shock Troopers in full battle regalia marched through the airlock. Each marine took charge of a subdued prisoner, letting Paladin droids explore the rest of the ship to hunt down any remainders of Iensis resistance.

Revanche-class Star Defender Revanche

"Sir," informed an officer, "Green Two has been fully captured."

"Very good," replied Lucerne, "that is the last one disabled, correct?"

"Yes sir."

"Then we just have to wait for Serendivius to finish their operations on the base itself..."

Deep within the asteriod belt; the Serendivus Marine frigates along with their fighter and bomber escorts moved under cloak, bypassing gun platforms that couldn't detect them, and visual sensors that couldn't see them.

The marine frigates moved at a slow speed; unlike their escorts who could fly at full speed while cloaked the marine frigates couldn't because they were outdated and their drives were older than that would be used on the newest marine frigates that were scheduled to be put into services in a matter of weeks.

As the frigates snuggled up against the asteriod base; their onboard marine battallions loaded their weapons, dawned armor, and prepared their own set of droids for inbase combat.

In the ear peice of Command Sergeant Major Chile, he could hear the comm. chatter from the frigate's comm. officer as she sent cryptic orders to the fighter escort to take out the comm. antenna's to prevent any SOS from being sent.

Then the word came down. "All marine's prepare for boarding action, Lavality wants the command center taken as soon as possible, she wants all the pirates to be kept alive for trial but has already stated that lethal force is authorized," the comm. officer said over his ear set, he knew the rest of his batallion could also hear her words.

To his left was a young nineteen year old male fresh out of a Serendivus High School located on one of the many colony's they owned. He had a long beared and his hair was rather long for male, coming down just past his shoulders. He hefted an older generation blaster in one hand and several granades in the other, he was the squads granadier, as he was also equiped with a granade launcher.

As an engineer began to work on the door the private put his blaster away and hefted his granade launcher and loaded up a nade with paralyzing gas. A blast shield had been put in his path to protect him, albiet temporary, from blaster fire.

The engineer was almost through the door when he stopped and backed away toward a small box, he then pulled out what appeared to be an explosive with abhesive tape. He stuck the explosive to the door, primed it, then quickly hid behind another blast shield.

Second's later the airlock doors was blasted to peices, sending hot peices of metal pinging off the walls of the asteriod base. Several screams could be heard as the hot metal found a few Iensus crew who hadn't taken cover.

Four soft 'thumps' could be heard in the hallway as the granade launcher unleashed four nades into the Iensus hallway. The nade's promptly exploded, releasing a hellish red cloud that instantly made several of the crewmen directly in the center fall to the ground, unable to move.

The cloud slowly expanded and caused more of the crew to fall victom to the gas; soon the gas dissipated and the remaining crew opened fire on the Serendivus. Behind their blast shields the onslaught of laser fire proved to be ineffective, after a few minutes the crew stopped firing and the Seren's responded with their own set of laser fire.

Unlike most Serendivus ships who had their anti-intruder turrets located at intersections and important area's of their ships, the marine frigates had their's located at the boarding locks to help in the boarding action of ships and sometimes even stations. Frigate's also had turrets embedded in the walls that could come out and had a longer field of fire than their ceiling mounted breathern.

Thats why the Serendivus marines didn't move behind their cover; instead they all watched as a ceiling mounted laser cannon appeared and opened fire on the Iensus crew. For several minute's the marine waited until the hallway was silent, then they moved behind cover and stormed the base.

Within minutes the marines secured several vital area's of the base; including weapons control and the reactor complex, both of which had been foolishly located near the airlock they had entered in from. Ten minute's after that the marines stormed the command center, taking several high ranking pirate officers into custody, however the head of the group was no where in sight.

The marines soon found the base's main frame computer; one of the marines attached a device to it and began to hack into the datastream. "How long?" the sergeant asked.

"Can't rush this Sergeant, they have a self destruct mechanism attached to the core.. if I'm not careful we'll all be killed," he said and took in a deep breath before continuing his hacking job.

The sergeant nodded and walked some distance away before engaging his comm. set. "Admiral, we've taken the base. No sign of the clan leader, we are assuming he's not on the base but I've got a man hacking their main frame as we speak so we should no soon enough," he said and keyed his headset off.

Revanche-class Star Defender Revanche

Confederation starfighters swarmed around the line unit of cruisers, methodically forming lines to land on their carrier ships. It was a normally a very simple task, but the presence of asteriods made it dangerous for both the fighters and the heavy cruiser. Starfighters had to continually dodge the smaller rocks whilst capital vessels had to make sure none collided with their warship, which was unshielded in areas where the starfighters were landing. A process that should have taken ten minutes tops could potentially take up to an hour, or so his flight ops officer told him. While flashes of green turbolaser fire occasionally thundered out from the ships to intercept oncoming asteroids, for the most part, the ship's crews were idle, and with them, the command crew. Corise had relinquished direct command of the battleship to its captain, instead preferring to review the holofeed of the battle from the perspectives of various Confederate vessels. A lone voice echoed up from the crewpit.

"Sir, all piratical forces have been put out of action. Serendivius is in the process of completing their boarding operation of the main base as we speak."

Corise nodded. "Very well. Is the prisoner transfer completed from the Iensis gunships?"

"Just a second...yes," reported the Lieutenant, "We just got the last batch contained in a holding cell on deck C-3. Everyone is accounted for."

The Rear-Admiral nodded. "Very well, let's put prize crews on the DP-20s. We'll deviate from standard operating procedure, and have them accompany us for the duration of this mission. Compile a list of every crewman who has experience on Corellian Engineering Corporation vessels, especially Corellian Gunships, and make it a priority order to have them be part of the prize crews. I want top efficiency in case of an attack."

"Sir yes sir."

"Have interrogations started?"

"Yes sir. We have a request from the CSIS liaison officer to authorize the doseage of Skirtopanol to all prisoners."

Lucerne slightly bit his lip. Skirtopanol...a truth serum. Would certainly open up the tougher lots of the crews to do some talking. And that wouldn't hurt. Intelligence is always a good thing. The Kashan man imperciptably nodded. It's a must for any practical interrogation to be somewhat expedient.

"Very well. Skirtopanol is authorized, but tell Examinator Hagel to be judicious in its use. If there's any sign of misuse, well, I will have to come up with some...interesting reprimands."

"Aye sir."

The younger Lucerne turned to his communication's officer. "Open a line with the Serendivius command ship, would you Lieutenant?"

"On it sir."

Lavality was just about ready to get some rest the comm. unit on her desk beeped. She dawned on a robe and took a seat at her chair and pressed a button on the side of the unit. "Lavality here.. what's wrong?" she siad to her comm. officer.

"Sir, comm. request from the Revanche," the Lieutenant on the other end said. "Patch him through," she said and removed the headset from the side of the unit and put it onto her head.

As she waited for the connection she wondered how their side of the operation had gone; telling by how things looked outside she figured everything had gone as planned - and yet they were missing the most important peice of the operation - the clan leader. "Lavality here," she said into the mic attached to her headset.

"This is Rear-Admiral Lucerne speaking," informed the Kashan man, "I am curious onto how your operations at the base are proceeding. We have finished capturing the Iensis gunships and are in the process of interrogating their crews..."

"We've captured the base and most of it's personel, in the process of cracking their mainframe to see if they have any patrols or capture fleets out. Their clan leader wasn't there, so I'm assuming he's out with a fleet somewhere, possibly pillaging like most pirates do," Lavality said and ran her hand through her hair.

With a sigh she added. "If you don't mind me saying this Rear-Admiral... this was almost too easy, don't you agree?"

Corise instinctively blinked. Too easy? It may not have been an exceptionally ardous battle, but easy? If one was too look at it from a purely material aspect, yes, yes it would be easy. Significantly larger and superiorly equipped forces allied together against a supply depot? Yes, then it is easy. But what of sending men to their death? We didn't take massive casualities, but there are some who didn't return. The younger Lucerne wiped a bead of sweat from his brow and put on a fake smile.

"It was not terrible for a battle," admitted the Kashan man, "but we did lose people, and that will be somewhat hard on some members of my crews. Losing people is never easy, at least from my perspective, Grand Admiral."

Lavality bit her lip; realizing she had said something she wasn't supposed to. "Apologie's Read-Admiral," she said and looked at the group. "Poor choice of words on my part, meant to say that while they had a large presence, it seemed odd that it wasn't as large as the reports indicated. One of my intel's claim they had a few battlecruisers and battleships, another clai--" she said before someone intervened on the line.

"Hold on Rear Admiral," she said and switched lines. On the other end was the marine incharge of operation on the pirate supply depot. "Yes?" she asked, her voice slightly aggitated.

"Ma'am, we got a problem. According to the mainframe's records. The Clan Leader went out on a raid a few hours ago and is currently on his way back. The problem is that he has several heavy battlecruisers with him and two battleships, along with a series of cruisers, frigates and a couple of corvettes. Unknown number of fighters, those aren't listed in the database," the marine said.

"ID's on the BC's and BS's?" she asked. It took the marine a second to realize what she was talking about, "no ma'am, they had at least some smarts not to list that," he said before closing the line.

Lavality sighed. "Me and my big mouth," she grumbled and switched back to the Rear Admiral. "Seem's my marines found out something," she said and transferred a recording of her conversation with her marine. "Any idea's on how to proceed with this new development?"