Flight from Kuat

Sabrond had lost track of the battle by the time the “Imperial” reinforcements arrived behind her task force; whatever those rectangular blocks with engines were, they certainly weren’t ships. And while Commander Martins might’ve bragged on and on about their firepower, they already had all the firepower they could possibly need aboard the Derriphan. What they really needed were support ships, and carriers to reinforce fighter screens. The defenses of the Invoker had fallen, and the last she’d heard from Captain Ixeh was the stubborn order that they would never abandon ship, never surrender. Then a series of transmissions between Commander Martins and an unknown Vigilante commander had begun, with Martins seemingly trying to negotiate an armistice. As if that could work. The Vigilantes were trapped, and they knew it; the shipyards blocked them in front, not to mention the massive anti-capital emplacements on the orbital ring itself that shredded any Vigilante ships that entered range, while the Imperial fleet encircled them from the back and front. And so the Vigilantes fought, struck out like a trapped animal with nowhere to go, and they were winning. Several of the pathetic Imperial defenders’ ships had already fallen under Vigilante control or influence; those fools were ready to negotiate their lives and safety for their ships.

Another bridge crewer shouted out something about the state of the Imperial fleet? Vigilante fleet? They couldn’t even be sure anymore, because transmissions on all frequencies were open and overriding each other across the battlefield. The interdiction fields certainly didn’t aid in that effort, either. She’d made her decision, like any responsible captain should, that they couldn’t trust orders from higher-ups until the Vigilantes were all gone, or until Imperial reinforcements appeared from outside the system.

They had defectors. Damn them. Damn those rebels! Somehow the Vigilantes had convinced the Eternal’s members to defect to their side, and those defectors were now helping them capture the Invoker. That would be bad news for any Imperial or Eternal forces stationed here; with the Xystons on their side, there was always the constant, looming threat that the Vigilantes could always blow the shipyard and escape in the chaos, and that was unacceptable.

But if anyone had the good chances of shooting down the Invoker before the last few locations were taken and secured, it was the Derriphan.

They had the ship’s readouts. Blueprints. Crew numbers. Everything.

The Derriphan had recently been pounding away at the Vigilante fleet, decimating any ship damaged enough or foolish enough to get within their turbolasers’ range, but she called that order off, now. All batteries were to now hit the minor airlocks all across the friendly battlecruiser, as to force the emergency bulkheads to activate and prevent atmospheric decompression. That, in turn, would force the already-struggling reactor into overdrive. One hit is all it would take, from both inside the ship and outside, so she prayed that there were at least some loyal crew members aboard and they weren’t all immobilized yet. That they’d have the sense to destroy their own ship.

If they blew the Invoker, the Vigilante-Xyston threat would be neutralized.

If they blew the Invoker, Martins’ tank fleet would have a clear shot at the Vigilantes behind it.

If they blew the Invoker, they still stood a chance.

Sabrond tried to give the order without hesitation, in the same unflinching manner she’d ordered the deaths of worlds, the deaths of the billion civilians on them. But she couldn’t. Something in her, oblivious to the slaughter of innocents, rebelled against the idea of shooting down an allied battlecruiser. And for the first time since her initiation on Exegol, Captain-Commodore Sabrond broke. She would not give the order.

Nor would she stop it.

Lieutenant Lenwith had the sense to understand what she was thinking, too, and ordered gunnery control to cease fire on the Vigilante ships. He could, without hesitation, do something she could not. And the Derriphan opened fire on the Invoker.

That was how the Eternal war machine would function. When one part failed in its duty, the next one down wouldn’t fret and worry about insubordination or disobedience when he gave his order. Because not doing anything at all was treason. ‘An individual may die, but the Sith are eternal’ were the first words the Academy trainer had said to the new recruits, to Sabrond when she’d first entered there. She’d expected to be at the top of her class, after all her preparation and studying to get into the most prestigious school on all of Exegol. Instead, she’d been beaten bloody, both literally and figuratively, and sent to the bottom like sediment on a river floor. She’d learned, through years of pain and hardship, that the only way to survive in the Eternal was to know how to work under pressure, in the most dire of circumstances. And she thought she’d conquered that weakness long, long ago.

So why did it come back to haunt her?

She hadn’t been the only one, of course. The entire reason, she believed, that this was happening, was because other members of the Eternal weren’t good enough. Loyal enough. Like that accursed Valitn, who’d dared to- no, she wouldn’t think of it. What he did was unforgivable, even by the standards of the most merciful commandants.

While she stood there, appearing to inspect the battle while grappling with her memories, two Sith troopers had come up on her side, apparently having noticed her odd behavior. “Sir,” one of them inquired, “is there a problem here?”

She did not let her failure linger over her. Couldn’t afford to. “No, troopers, everything is under control.” And to the gunners: “Maintain position and continue fire.” If she couldn’t give the order, she could at least support it once Lenwith had.

...

With the visual confirmation of hits across the Invoker, Sabrond could finally tear her eyes away from the viewports to face the two troopers that’d noticed her discomfort. How interesting, really- not one crew member, not even Lieutenant Lenwith, who’d served alongside her for years, saw anything out of the ordinary, but the troopers, with their flash-imprinted programming, had picked up on her hesitation. That really was quite remarkable, but not a fact she’d noticed up until now. Maybe, then, they didn’t have to defeat the Vigilantes to win? They could simply… quell the disloyal ones and imprint the rest?

She cursed herself for being so naive. Of course, someone in Eternal Command had probably already thought of this, and clearly they couldn’t just reprogram the entire galaxy like the clone armies of old. But she still held onto the thought, hid it away somewhere deep in her mind… because if they couldn’t liberate the galaxy, they could at least liberate Va- that traitor. He could be saved from that one brash decision he made in the heat of battle, to save the future Vigilante leader T’nali. This battle, though, might as well be lost. The Derriphan had disarmed the Invoker superlaser by then, and the engines were already damaged from Garta’s destruction. Commander Martins was still uselessly negotiating with a Vigilante commander, but he surely had the sense in that disloyal brain of his to keep the enemy fleet from escaping.

Sabrond opened a private communications channel with Martins, not caring about his supposed ‘rank’. “Commander. The Invoker threat is neutralized. Leave them alone but disable any engines or weapons they try to activate. I suggest you focus on the Vigilante capitals, as that seems to be the only thing your big guns might be useful for,” she spat. He did not *deserve* her respect, nor her obedience. She didn’t even know why the Emperor tolerated his filth in the first place.

His fleet was a disgusting parody of the Sith Army’s armored corps, not to mention a massive waste of materiel and men that should be loyal to the Emperor, not Martins. Individualizing a chain of command was a massive mistake since it’d first been made; should Martins fall in battle, his men would be less compelled to fight for something they didn’t believe in. How horrifically inefficient. On the other hand, she knew that if she were to die, Lenwith would take over her position and the crew would continue its work as if nothing happened. Some might call it inconsiderate. Valitn would’ve called it inhumane. But it was efficient, and what was the purpose of being ‘morally right’ if you were killed, anyways? And was Martins either of them? He was not efficient, and judging by his servitude to the Emperor, he wasn’t one of the ‘humane’ ones either. But she could find a way to quietly handle Martins later. Right now the focus was on the Vigilante intruders that dared to attack Kuat, and to capture a Xyston. They would pay for that in full, but not with their lives. That was not the command. Not anymore.

“Engine crew: thrust reverse at minus-fifty, and roll starboard at mark nine. Ready the hyperdrive.”

On her command, the massive battlecruiser began rotating on its axis as it maneuvered to a new position clear of Martins’ fleet and the Invoker. Several Vigilante ships showed that they noticed the repositioning, but it was too late for any of them to reach the Derriphan now. No one on the bridge asked for the reasoning behind what appeared to be a retreat, but Lenwith shot her one of those questioning looks that he didn’t quite understand the maneuver either.

“We’re leaving the system, Lieutenant.” He knew that, of course, but she had his attention now. “The situation has escalated, and I believe Eternal Command will change their orders- when we get all the information to them clear of interference, of course”, she explained. “Kuat’s communications were destroyed when the Vigilantes first came and used their EMPs. Commander Martins is under separate command,” though by ‘separate’ she meant ‘does whatever he wants until the Emperor says otherwise’, “and the Kuat garrison is lost. The Empire needs to regroup and sort out who’s still on their side and who isn’t. But we cannot aid in that, so I will do what every responsible captain must: get the commands of our superiors straight, and then we return to finish it.” What she didn’t mention was that the Vigilante fleet could easily escape if they weren’t held in place by any of their ulterior motives anymore; capturing the Invoker, among other things, had been one of them, but there wasn’t much use anymore from a battlecruiser without engines or weapons. If they decided to make Kuat a loss, that would be a victory for the Empire. The mighty shipyard could repair itself to be fully operational again within a week, and in another few weeks, all the lost ships would be replaced. Extra personnel would be conscripted, too. But that was still a loss for the Eternal.

What the Empire had failed to understand, in Sabrond’s eyes, was that this battle wasn’t just about defending a shipyard and winning some glory by fighting off angered Gartans or self-proclaimed freedom fighters. It was about finishing the Vigilante resistance, for as long as they were allowed free travel throughout the galaxy, the Empire appeared weak and tolerant of rebellion. That was unacceptable. Unforgivable.

The Vigilantes would not die.

They would be captured, their sympathizers found and apprehended as well-

And the Emperor would make an example out of all of them, out of those who would dare oppose the greatest power the galaxy had seen since Vitiate’s Sith Empire.

With the death of the Vigilantes, the Imperial era of galactic civil war came to an end.

With the death of the Vigilantes, the Final Order began.

*“Derriphan, do you copy?”* -came a muffled transmission from one of the Imperial-held ships. A Tartan-class patrol cruiser, desperately fighting off three Vigilante fighters that tailed it and hammered away at its fading shields. *“Derriphan, where are you-”* The transmission ran off into static noise, something that’d become commonplace during the Kuat siege. She regarded the cruiser with interest. The poor thing was already missing two of its turrets and one airlock had been blown off by what appeared to be a proton torpedo. And the captain clearly didn’t know what he was doing, otherwise he wouldn’t waste his time trying to reach an Eternal ship.

She looked to Lenwith, then back at the smoking form of what was left of the cruiser. Her failure to fire on the Invoker still hung over her, though she gladly would’ve strangled Ixeh in his sleep. She did not know why she failed, but there was no undoing that action. Only proving that it wouldn’t happen again.

“Destroy that cruiser,” she ordered. The bridge crew had been keeping an eye on that ship as she’d listened to its desperate comms, too, and so they knew exactly which one she spoke of. It was still an Imperial-held vessel, and Sabrond could almost imagine Valitn’s protests if he were on the bridge with her. *“You can’t just destroy an Imperial ship like that! It’s one of ours, and no one’s even boarded it!”*, he’d say. But she already saw it for what it was: a lost cause, going down in flames before the crew knew it. The Derriphan was only saving it from a slower death, and when it blew, it’d take the three Vigilante ships with it. For once, the battlecruiser truly lived up to its name.

Chaos ensued in the following moments. Already the comms were being flooded by several calls and one Star Destroyer captain angrily demanding to know what’d happened, questioning whether the Vigilantes had taken the Derriphan instead of the Invoker or not. Another two cruisers that’d been “guarding” the Derriphan from the safety of the tank fleet silently slid towards the battle, seeming to prefer to go unnoticed if the Sith cruiser fired again. *Good,* Sabrond thought, *let them be afraid.* These Imperials at Kuat could not be motivated by sheer loyalty- those who were assigned to a high-security, low-threat system that was the Empire’s largest shipyard were anything but loyal. They were assigned here because they were the most useless in the galaxy. But fear could motivate them quite well, as could the element of uncertainty. Was the Derriphan leaving, really, or would it only be back with reinforcements to face *everyone* in the system? That was what she’d leave the Imperial defenses with as the Xyston finished its last maneuvers and finalized the hyperspace sequence.

And with that turbolaser blast, the last functional Eternal starship left the Kuat system.

That Imperial cruiser had been ready for death. It had *deserved* to die, and Sabrond hadn’t had any trouble in saying so to her crew. What’d been that last incident with the Invoker, then? She just shot down an Imperial ship, was there really that large of a difference between Empire and Eternal? And once again, she had no answer to those questions. Nothing she could do to console her frayed mind. Of course, her memory served her clear as always, and she could almost hear Valitn’s response, see that accusing anger in his eyes. He’d tell her that she couldn’t shoot down the Invoker not because of the fact that it was a Xyston but because she saw too much of herself in Ixeh, in a fellow Sith captain who’d held the same loyalty and resolve, only less dedication. Or that he’d simply commanded the more damaged of the two battlecruisers when the Vigilantes made their choice, and she’d been the lucky one.

As her cruiser sped along through hyperspace, the first data packets had been decoded and filtered through to display the mess that was Kuat. The Vigilantes seemed to be in disarray even more so than the Imperials; while the Empire had lost several important admirals and commandants of the fighter forces, they still took orders from the shipyard controllers in Kuat’s artificial ring. The enemy forces, though, were practically divided in two, apparently having lost T’nali in the ruckus somewhere. So the Eternal *wasn’t* the only thing that couldn’t keep its hands on the strange man, it seemed. He’d abandoned his own forces, and for what reason, she couldn’t tell. T’nali certainly was an interesting individual, to say the least, and she could partially see why the Emperor had taken such a keen interest in him. His disappearance from the Citadel amphitheater had been what provoked every event leading up to this, yet now his disappearance from the Vigilantes’ radars, as well as the Empire’s, would be what made the situation still salvageable.

With a sudden shake of the command bridge decks, the Derriphan left hyperspace. She’d almost forgotten that the ship wasn’t repaired yet, and that its structural supports had destabilized when the second EMP went off. Not like that mattered- the Derriphan alone wouldn’t be taking on any Vigilantes anytime soon, not alone. She’d come here for the express purpose of contacting Eternal Command without the constant turmoil and threat of battle or interference from Kuat’s scramblers.

“Lieutenant?” She asked, “The Allegiant General has cleared our transmission, yes?”

*“N-not exactly, sir Captain,”* stuttered the comms officer. *“Not the Allegiant, but we have clearance.”*

Sabrond raised an eyebrow at the young man in surprise, then composed herself again. The newer members of the bridge crew probably hadn’t talked to someone of her rank before their posting on the Derriphan, let alone the *Allegiant General,* or any of Eternal Command for that matter. “Well then? Put us through, will you?”

And that, met with a muttered “yessir” right before the fool fainted on the spot. She eyed the rest of the bridge, looked at the man on the ground, then looked away back towards the viewports again. “Someone get a pair of medics here. Our Lieutenant doesn’t seem well.” What an oddity, there, that an Eternal officer might faint upon a hyperspace exit. Then again, it was at the bottom of the list of oddities that happened that day, because Sabrond just had another one to add onto: the new mandate from Command that she’d no longer be answering to them, but directly to the Emperor himself.