19 BBY, Providence-Class Dreadnaught, Dawn of Dusk, In Orbit over Muunilinst
Most beings in the galaxy could look up at the stars and imagine great wonders and adventures across the arms of their galactic home. To the beings currently in orbit around Muunilinst, the only thoughts going through their heads were those of fear, adrenaline, and the idea that everything everywhere was trying to kill them.
Far above the planet Muunilinst, home of the InterGalactic Banking Clan, fire raged across space. Several hours ago, a command sent from a secret bunker on the planet Mustafar, had reached out all across the galaxy, to every Separatist ship, stronghold, and outpost, and caused almost every Separatist droid in every army to shut down.
It was officially the end of the brutal, three-year campaign that had ravaged the galaxy and torn it apart.
It was the end of the Clone wars.
Almost.
Not every droid had successfully received the command, and not all the systems and planets that had fought on the Separatists’ side wanted the war to end, especially since they were on the losing side. After the command was sent out, some Separatist commanders had reactivated their droid armies and continued on fighting.
And so, in orbit around Muunilinst, several hundred warships of the Confederacy of Independent Systems exchanged fire with a fleet of their new Imperial counterparts. In reality, they were the same ships that the Separatists had been fighting only hours ago, only the name of their enemy had changed. With the near-total shutdown of the droid army, the newly christened Imperial fleet was slowly growing larger with every passing hour, as reinforcements that were no longer bogged down fighting in other systems arrived to help quash the not-as-yet-surrendered Separatist forces around Muunilinst.
On the bridge of one of the larger vessels in the Separatist fleet, a Providence-class Dreadnaught, the Dawn of Dusk, the sole being that was panicking was the Muun Commander, while the droids listened to his conflicting orders, annoyed, but otherwise calm. However, for the first time in the whole battle he started giving some orders that sort of made sense.
Sort of.
“Ok, it’s clear we can’t hold up against the continued advance of the Imperial fleet, so I’m having our ships pull back and regroup. We can fight them when we’re a bit more clear-headed. 72624! Where are you?” the Muun commander said, whirling around to find the B1 droid captain standing right behind him.
“Right here, sir,” the droid replied in its high-pitched, mechanical voice.
“Pull back the fighters, get any transports on board that you can, then tell the fleet to make a series of randomized jump vectors to avoid being followed, and after that we’ll regroup.”
“Sir,” the droid reminded him, “We don’t have a “fleet”, the only other ships we have under our command are three frigates and two destroyers.”
“I don’t care! Send the orders to every Confederate ship over Muunilinst! Maybe some of the others will listen to us, they have to listen to us! We can’t stay out here, we’re getting torn apart.”
As the bridge crew began relaying the orders, through the transparisteel window, the Commander and Captain watched as a group of three Star Destroyers pushed through the outgoing flak and attempted a breakthrough in the Confederate fleet. A Separatist frigate that had taken up position beside the dreadnaught charged forward and rammed itself into the starboard Star Destroyer, causing both to explode spectacularly, while an oversized Separatist destroyer came about to engage the port enemy ship. The two massive vessels slowly drifted towards each other, and came so close to each other they actually scraped each other, locking their superstructures together. A moment later, both ships opened fire at point-blank range.
When the light from the explosion of the frigate and Star Destroyer’s collision died down, the final enemy Star Destroyer of the battle group could be seen much closer, and pressing its attack.
And it seemed to have focused all of its attention on the Dawn of Dusk.
Not only were its turbolaser batteries flashing, but the tiny shapes of fighters could be seen racing towards the dreadnaught, with larger, slower shapes coming up behind them.
“Intensify forward fire!” the Muun cried, “Have all our point-defense batteries focus on those fighters, while our own finish docking!”
“Sir,” a droid spoke up, “The forward batteries are already firing at full. Half of our forward point-defense lasers have been damaged beyond use or destroyed. We can’t do any more than we are right now.”
The Commander looked back out through the transparisteel, and saw some of the fleet’s vulture fighters engaging some of the clone Starfighters. However, the dreadnaught’s own point-defense lasers were barely making a dent in the oncoming swarm, a testament to their overtaxing this late in the battle. As the Star Destroyer and its fighters closed the distance between the two capital ships, the bridge crew could finally see what the small transports behind the fighters were.
They were boarding craft.
By the time the Muun Commander and his OOM droid Captain realized this, the Star Destroyer had closed to only a few kilometers, and clone fighters swarmed the hull of the Dawn of Dusk.
“Captain! I want you to order- scratch that, I’ll give the order myself.”
Turning on the ship’s interior comm, the Muun yelled, his nasally voice reverberating through out the vessel, “All security teams, we have enemy boarding craft inbound! I want you to secure the hangars and stand by to repel boarders!”
Turning back to the bridge crew, he said, “Alright, send the orders for the emergency jump, and get us out of here! Those Star Destroyers cleared us a path, plot a course through the opening and as soon as we’re clear of the planet’s gravity, make a series of randomized jumps to throw off any pursuers.”
“Commander,” the B1 battle droid captain said, holding a metal hand up to its head, “I’m getting reports that boarding parties have managed to land inside the main hangar. Our forces are being beaten out of the area, but I’m getting deactivated droids in storage to power up to deal with them.”
The rumble of the engines shook the dreadnaught as it, along with over a hundred other capital ships of the Confederate Navy started moving forward to escape Muunilinst’s gravity well. The sudden change in formation caught the Imperial forces off-guard, allowing a dozen vessels to transition to hyperspace on random vectors.
The Imperial ships were quick to regain their footing however, and moved to intercept the rest of the escapees before they cleared the planet’s gravity.
One such Imperial ship was the Star Destroyer that had engaged the Dawn of Dusk, and was now tailing it back out of the main battle, along with its fighter complement. The Separatist dreadnaught had managed to recollect all of its fighters that hadn’t been destroyed in the battle; a meager amount compared to what it had started out with, but then, the ship had been engaging enemy forces for hours now.
“72624! Stop those boarders at all costs! I can’t be captured, I won’t be captured!” the Muun commander screamed, panic showing in his thin face, replacing the momentary confidence that had been there only moments before.
“Sir, the security teams are doing everything they can. The clones are headed here, to the bridge, but they’re taking heavy losses.”
Just then, something exploded near the rear of the ship and the vessel lurched, causing the Commander to stumble off to the side.
Catching himself on one of the consoles, he yelled at the droid, “Captain, I will not allow myself to be captured! Kill those intruders!”
“But sir, there’s nothing more I-”
“I don’t want to hear it, 72624! I am ordering you to kill every living thing on board this ship! Do you understand? I cannot be captured, at any cost!”
“Uh, um… yes sir. Bridge security, new target,” the droid Captain said, motioning to the Muun Commander.
Suddenly the Muun found himself facing a dozen Commando Droids, all with blasters pointed at him.
“Wha- 72624! Has your processor melted?! What do you think you’re doing? I meant-”
“I’m sorry, Commander, I’m just following your orders. ‘Kill every living thing on board this ship’.” The high-pitched, mechanical voice said flatly, while the Commando Droids primed their blasters.
“Wait, no! You don’t- I’m not- Don’t shoot-!” The Muun screamed as the bridge security team fired simultaneously.
“Sir,” a pilot droid near the front of the bridge piped up, “Randomized coordinates are set, the hyperdrive’s spooled up, and we’re free of the gravity well. Jumping to hyperspace in 3… 2… 1…”
After that, the stars in the distance elongated to infinity and smeared together to create a bluish-blackish palette as the massive Separatist dreadnaught transitioned from normal space to hyperspace, leaving the Star Destroyer and its clone Starfighters behind.
* * *
“Almost… almost… there! Got it!” Twilight yelled triumphantly as she meticulously set the crystal inside the metal frame.
Dispelling the magic that had levitated the small, pink crystal into the contraption, Twilight Sparkle took a step back from her work and smiled to herself. She was finally done. After forty straight hours of perfecting the masterpiece in front of her, she was exhausted, but she wouldn’t rest now; she was so close to getting it right!
“Alright Spike, like they say, twenty-third time’s the charm!” She said enthusiastically.
“Yeah, okay. Have fun Twilight, don’t blow anything up,” Spike replied, from where he was sitting on a cushion in the corner, reading a book. He flicked his gaze over to the young alicorn mare for just a second, and since everything looked exactly as it had for the last seven hours, he wasn’t about to interest himself with what he was sure was going to be another failed attempt.
They were in Twilight’s castle, in a room attached to the library that had become Twilight’s personal laboratory and workshop. Although she wasn’t usually one for hard manual work and fixing things, liking to read, study, and practice magic more, she had been keeping herself in that one room for the better part of a week, ever since she had had her brilliant idea. Since then, she had made twenty-three iterations of her invention, each one slightly more attuned to the crystal that would serve as the central power source, and each one more flexible and more sturdily built. She had been spending so much time in the room in fact, that she had only been leaving it to go to the bathroom and grab something to eat. Spike had been coming and going as he pleased, and had long since given up trying to convince Twilight to slow down or even get more sleep; doing so only resulted in him being teleported out of the room.
On the table in front of her, with a small pink crystal in its center, sat a figure made out of metal, sculpted into the likeness of a mare. It was little more than a suit of armor stuffed with springs and a few air pistons, but then again, it had started out as armor, so that was to be expected.
Twilight had gotten the idea to enchant suits of armor to patrol and do all the duties of a regular pony guard without needing an actual pony guard to wear it, thereby placing the guard out of harm’s way. Her idea had initially come when her brother, Shining Armor, had been injured in a fight with a Minotaur that had tried sneaking into the Crystal Palace. Twilight had been distraught that her brother had gotten injured, and had vowed to make the guards’ jobs easier, and even as her first tests failed, she hadn’t given up; no she had kept working and throughout the whole process had changed the overall look of the armor to resemble a young mare, although her straight metal mane reminded Twilight of Pinkie’s sister, Maud, more than a guard.
But when she thought about it, Maud was very protective of Pinkie, and protectiveness was what Twilight had been going for.
Now, readying the spell to animate the metal suit-like contraption, Twilight paused for the briefest moment to savor the feeling of triumph she had. But, that feeling didn’t last forever, and the longer Twilight held onto it, the more it slipped away, and her eyelids drooped in response, a testament to how tired she was.
“Got to focus,” she murmured to herself. Spike, in the corner, didn’t hear her.
Summoning the energies to start the spell, Twilight watched as the mechanical pony was lifted off the table by the arcane forces, a light purple hue enveloping it. She could sense, feel the crystal inside as it absorbed her magic, imprinted with instructions to work the metal body and act like a real guard. She poured her heart and soul into the spell, and with it, the ability to understand speech, and to carry out whatever it was told to do. Adding more and more instructions into the crystal, and enough energy to keep it powered for several days, Twilight could feel her magic start to have an effect on the crystal. Small, intricate geometric runes began carving themselves into its surface, housed within its special casing in the heart of the metal pony, and more and more light and energy were both given off, and absorbed by the invention at the same time as she tried imprinting the final piece of the puzzle onto the gemstone.
This part was always the hardest, and the time when most of the accidents had occurred, rendering her previous versions beyond repair in a violent, violet explosion. A large pile of dust and small bits of metal was swept up into a corner; all that remained of her previous attempts.
Meanwhile, Twilight was concentrating on finishing the spell, but as had happened the last couple times, she was straining to fit all the runes that needed to form on the crystal. If they didn’t all fit, they would spill into each other, and she would be forced to stop the spell, as it would start creating different effects, or worse, shatter the crystal. She couldn’t even use much larger crystals, as the energy needed to keep the spell going increased exponentially with the size of the crystal.
Twilight could feel the spell slipping, the first runes were about to clash, and bring her final test to pieces once again.
“Almost… almost…” She said, straining to match her magic perfectly with the gemstone. With a final burst of energy, she fell back, depleted, and cut off the flow of magic. It took her vision a few seconds to swim back into focus, but when it did, she was disappointed to see that the metal figure in front of her was still and quiet.
“Ah! No! Not again! This time was almost perfect…” she grumbled to herself. Spike looked up from his comic book momentarily to see Twilight kneeling in front of the pony-shaped suit of armor, a dejected look on her face.
“Why won’t this work? It never works! Stupid metal mare…” continuing her mumbling, Twilight stood up on shaky legs, and nearly fell over, causing Spike to run over and help her stay on her hooves.
“Thanks, Spike. I think I’m done for now, I’ve had enough of this. What time is it?” she asked.
“Almost two thirty in the morning,” Spike replied, yawning loudly as he helped his friend through the castle and to her room, “It’s way past both of our bedtimes.”
“Two thirty?! Spike, why didn’t you tell me it was so late?” Twilight asked, astonished, and for just a second, looked almost as awake as usual.
Spike sighed, “I did, four times, but you didn’t listen. So I decided to stay up and keep an eye on you. Lucky I did, you can barely walk. Tomorrow you’re going to sleep in and go to bed early in the evening. No more experiments for a few days.”
“Spike, I can take care of myself.”
“Not when you’re obsessed over something.”
“I do not obsess over anything!” Twilight shouted indignantly.
“Really? What about the time you forgot to send Princess Celestia a friendship letter? Or the time you were visited by yourself from the future, and then spent the next week worrying about what you had wanted to tell yourself? Or the time-”
“Ok, ok, I get it. So I can go a bit overboard sometimes, no big deal.”
“Twilight, over the course of the last week, you’ve gotten twenty hours of sleep,” Spike deadpanned, “If that’s not a big deal then I’m afraid to ask what is.”
“Ok, fine, it’s a bit of a big deal, but I swear I’ll be fine, ok? And I’ll try to listen to you from now on when I’m working on a big project,” Twilight said as she finally gave in.
“I doubt it, but thanks for pretending.”
As Spike helped Twilight to her bed, she shooed him from the room so she could change.
“Alright, alright I’m leaving, sheesh. It’s not like you haven’t slept in your clothes when you’ve been this tired before.”
“I’m trying to stop doing that. Now thank you for your help, Spike. Goodnight, I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Yea-ah,” Spike replied, yawning again. He made his way to his room where he too changed into his pyjamas and got into bed. But while he fell asleep almost instantly, Twilight tossed and turned for a few minutes, her disappointment at yet another failure trying its best to keep her from sleep. Eventually, though, it overcame her whirling mind and she fell into its deep embrace.
In the darkness of the castle, a small pink glow formed behind the empty glass eyepieces of a suit of armor in the shape of a mare.
***
B1-72624 had finally found out what the large explosion that had occurred near the rear of the ship was. Apparently, while the Dawn of Dusk was still engaging the Star Destroyer, the rear shields had finally failed and the enemy warship had had a clear shot at the dreadnaught’s communications spire. The entire tower had been ripped free from its base by the firepower of the attack and the Separatist warship was without any long-range communications. However, fortunately for them, because of one of the Commander’s last orders, the dreadnaught had gotten several small ships to berth inside its main hanger before the jump.
Still, 72624 realized that perhaps he had misunderstood the Commander. Although he had expressly told them not to let the enemy capture him at any cost, and he had even ordered them not to let a single living thing stay alive on the dreadnaught, 72624 still felt as though the Commander hadn’t exactly been thinking straight. Oh well, it wasn’t the droid’s place to question orders. Only now… there wasn’t anyone left to give orders, except for him.
He stored that thought in his memory banks for later, as he stepped onto the bridge to watch the vessel revert to normal space.
The massive Separatist flagship dropped out of hyperspace, looking slightly worse for wear, but other than missing the conning spire and several turbolaser emplacements, the ship itself was operating at almost normal levels.
72624 surveyed the system they had arrived in from the Captain’s chair on the bridge of the dreadnaught, damage reports scrolling across the datapad held at his side.
The body of the late Muun Commander had been cleaned up and the droid Captain had ordered it be incinerated, along with the bodies of the clones from the boarding parties. The attackers had only gotten about a hundred meters beyond the main hangar, when the bridge crew had trapped them in ray shields and then vented that area of the ship. The force of the air escaping had sucked the clones into the ray shields, most of whom were killed instantly. After that, the stragglers had been dealt with quickly and efficiently.
72624 had ordered the remains incinerated rather than dump them out an airlock when they finished the jump, so that they could make repairs and then leave the system; no need for anyone to know that the Separatist vessel had been there.
Now looking out the main viewport, 72624 surveyed the system they had arrived in. It was unimpressive to say the least. A small white dwarf star and a single small, rocky, green-and-blue planet with one moon hung in the blackness of space, surrounded by an asteroid field.
“Uh, Captain, what should we do?” a pilot droid asked, looking up from its console in the direction of the droid captain.
“Go through the navicomputer and try to find out where our randomized jump brought us. 44498, I want you to move us closer to the planet and begin a scan to see if it has the materials we would need to make repairs. 76504, use what long-range sensors we have left and do the same with the asteroid field. That’ll take longer so you can have someone assist you with it in shifts. Everyone else, begin a full systems check and reactor shakedown. I want us operating as close to full steam as possible within twelve hours.”
The bridge crew jumped to action as they set about their tasks, which meant… they stayed exactly where they were and started tapping holographic button on their consoles. But the near-silent thrum of the engines and the occasional squeak of a motor as a droid moved slightly was all there was to be heard on the bridge as the Captain watched the tiny blue-and-green dot of a planet slowly get bigger in the forward window.
As he sat and waited, quite comfortable on the hard metal seat of the Captain’s chair, 72624 started getting the creeping feeling deep down in his core processor that something important was in this star system.
Or it could be his continued confusion at the late Commander’s orders.
Oh well, thinking that hard was beyond his programming.