The Battle of Exegol

Exegol, Unknown Regions, 55 years after the Formation of the Galactic Empire

Second day of Ascension Week

The Sith Citadel

Captain Chesille Sabrond adjusted her cap and straightened her uniform before turning to face the fleet-wide transmissions center. Her first lieutenant nodded to her, and she took a deep breath, trying to look as professional as she could. “Soldiers and captains of the Sith Eternal,” she said. “Today marks a turning point in the history of the galaxy. For thirty-one years this galaxy has been engulfed by turmoil and war, between the fledgling Rebellion that now calls itself a galactic power, and the First Order whose sole purpose was to detain this new ‘Republic’. Thirty-one years we have had to wait before bringing our might upon those who would dare wage rebellions in freedom’s name, upon those who’d rather see anarchy than order. Our Emperor has given those rebels a chance, a decade by themselves, to finish the remnants of the old Empire and prove that they could run the galaxy in an efficient, orderly manner. They did nothing.” The Sith captain paused for emphasis. “It is because of them our Emperor had the wisdom to construct this fleet, this last Order we will impose on the galaxy. No more will there be wars. No more will there be anarchy. As I speak, the insurgents that have plagued us since the days of the Empire will be plotting against our Emperor. Something desperate, futile, a final stand they’ll hope to defeat us in. They have seen the might of our battlecruisers at Kijimi. They consider this day to be the last day they hold on to their precious ‘hope’. They will come, and we will at last be rid of the Resistance. Hold your banners high, men, and keep your cannons primed. Today marks the last day the galaxy will ever see in anarchy. Today marks the rise of the Final Order!” She thrust her right hand out forward, straightened in a rigid salute to the Eternal. There was no applause as the captain finished her speech, only the silence of their warships broken by the stomping of boots as the crew followed in her salute.

Skywalker’s fighter passed by the viewscreens of the Sith armada as its pilot made for the Citadel. The Resistance “fleet”, they knew, was only a bit behind, thinking that they really stood a chance against the might of the Sith Eternal. As their own fleet began the final stretch of repulsor-thrust that would take them to deployment altitude, the outermost scanners on the edge of Redspace picked up something- no, several somethings. Resistance ships, all inbound following the same route as Skywalker’s fighter did; only they would not be allowed as easy of a passage as the former had.

In a completely disarrayed and uncoordinated fashion, the remains of the Resistance fleet appeared above Exegol. Immediately, the order was given to pepper the enemy fleet with ion cannons before proceeding to turbolaser fire- a simple strategy that ultimately proved effective in wiping out half the rebels’ ships before the rest of them got to the Xystons’ altitudes. Sabrond turned to her Wing Commander and gave the order to scramble the fighters; who in turn relayed the command down to the double-hangars of the Derriphan, where the newly-minted interceptors of the Sith Eternal waited. “Keep the reactor on minimal power,” called one of the bridge technicians. “It will not overload as long as we keep it low.” Once the battlecruisers had ceased their fire, no Resistance craft was able to hit any of their cannons, much as several had tried. For a brief moment, the atmosphere of Exegol was free of laserfire as both fleets realized the futility of their actions and waited. Waited for the infantry lander to reach the Exegol beacon. Waited for the fighters to deploy.

The hangars doors slid open, in a manner repeated by the thousands of warships above the planet’s surface. All at the same time, the Resistance landing group swerved away from the beacon as it was shut down, having been transferred to a ship on the other side of the Final Order fleet- the Resurgent-class Steadfast. Fighters swarmed the skies, and soon Exegol’s atmosphere was filled by lanes of brilliant green bolts and flashes of red torpedo detonations. Sith fighters fell, but for every interceptor shot down, two more took its place, supplemented by the steady flow of ships from the farthest reaches of the Sith fleet, and all of them closing in on the measly remnants of the Resistance strike force. And still they persisted, the ground team now reversing its direction and making a steady vertical climb towards the Steadfast, their way to the First Order ship cleared by Resistance ace pilot Poe Dameron.

Irrevocably, inevitably, the Resistance ships fell one by one, colliding with the Sith warships or crashing down onto Exegol’s surface in a blaze of fire and smoke. It was an obvious suicide mission from the start- which puzzled the Eternal’s captains, as to why the Resistance came. To make some sort of “last stand”? Those fools. In a hundred years, no one would ever remember that there was a Resistance, or a Rebellion, or even a Galactic Empire. All that would be left was the never-ending, never-changing rule of the Sith Eternal. And as those overconfident captains focused on the battle at hand, eager to end it as quickly as possible in a display for their glorious Emperor, not one of them noticed the offhand quiet beeping of the Redspace perimeter scanners that warned the Sith fleet of oncoming craft.

Sabrond watched from her battlecruiser’s bridge as the last few Resistance stragglers were shot down- all that remained now was the rebels’ ground assault team and its escort. A sense of unfair victory filled the captain; the Resistance, it seemed, went out in more of a whimper than with a bang. And still, it was a great day for the Eternal. Their enemies had come crawling to their doorstep, removing the tedious need to hunt down dissidents and rebels after the Final Order deployed, and there was no fleet that could stop them. Even if the Resistance pulled off what they hadn’t at Crait, rallied rebel sympathizers from far and wide, never had in the history of the galaxy a fleet so large been assembled. The rebels could bring a thousand warships like they had at Endor, Jakku, but it wouldn’t matter. The Final Order was the largest fleet the universe had ever seen, and no other galactic power had ever created anything as powerful. No galactic power could rival the might of the fleet.

But it was not an enemy galactic power that came to face the Sith armada, on the eve of war.

It was not even a power at all.

It was people.

Civilian ships, ranging from single-man fighters to cargo cruisers, flashed into existence above the planet’s surface. Bounty hunters, with the groups they’d all worked for. Smuggler cartels. The Hutts. The Syndicates. Criminal organizations had all come to fight for their own reasons- but they came nonetheless. Somewhere further back, a Venator-class Star Destroyer followed in the tracks of a refurbished Separatist fleet, two mortal enemies united in a single purpose, to defeat the enemy they’d ultimately fought decades ago. Each and every ship came from a different system, near and far, unknowing that anyone else would go. That dawn, when Calrissian had flown by every sector, broadcasting his message to every free world, all of them had sent allies, someone, who would fight the Final Order.

In a drastic turn of events, the orderly chain of command of the Sith Eternal collapsed. The Allegiant General had fallen silent when the Resistance ground team made contact. The Emperor, too, hadn’t spoken a word to the fleet since the order to bring the Steadfast here, and so every Sith captain operated on their own, or with the few battlecruisers next to them, turning to face the new threat. All orders to keep the reactors on minimal power, on safe levels of power, were disregarded as each Xyston fired up its heavy turbolasers and began bombarding the citizens’ fleet, who in turn returned fire back at the Sith ships. Spearheading the citizens was the Falcon, more of a symbol than a true threat- the threat now was everywhere, and there was no one figure or ship the Eternal could destroy to end the battle. Everything now counted on outnumbering the enemy, and both sides fought viciously. The Sith armada fought with a refined ferocity seen not in the Empire nor in the First Order, fueled by their fanatical dedication and now the risk to their lives, while the citizens fought with the unyielding conviction of men defending their families. Both sides were evenly matched, yet more citizen ships kept piling in from the breach in Exegol’s defenses.

And then the Xystons stopped their ascension.

Members of both fleets stopped to look at the skies, where the smoldering remains of the Steadfast plunged between the lines of Sith star destroyers. The fleet was trapped, albeit temporarily- the beacon on the surface could always be repaired, or even rebuilt if necessary.

But the Steadfast’s fall was enough to give the citizens hope.

While the Sith Eternal fleet remained in its strict phalanx formation, the citizens’ fleet chipped away at the fighter screens as heavier ships moved towards the front of the positions and rallied with the force of a battering ram, hitting the first battlecruisers out of formation through sheer firepower. The next cruisers made an attempt to bombard the attacking ships, yet they parted like water and the shots harmlessly fizzled out in the far atmosphere. One of the Xystons fired its axial superlaser at a Mon Calamari liner, vaporizing the ship on the spot. A Venator-class returned fire with its SPHAt, destroying the Xyston in a similar fashion, but all around was waged a more important war: that of air superiority. Occasionally, citizen ships broke through the screens of Sith fighters and made runs on the armada’s most devastating superweapons, the superlasers carried by every battlecruiser in the fleet. No longer was the fleet safe from a mere few fighters; with their reactors working at full capacity, a few blows to each of their cannons was enough to down an entire battlecruiser. The Sutta was one of the first to fall, spraying its debris in every direction and damaging Sith and citizen ships alike. The next warship lost its reactor power as it desperately tried to raise its shields in Exegol’s atmospheric interference, falling down onto the cruiser below it and felling both ships. Casualties mounted, and the Sith armada found itself at a sudden disadvantage- while the few dozen battlecruisers closer to the citizens’ fleet were giving all that they could, the farthest ships were too far off the front to do anything useful but offer their fighters in support. Their strict, orderly phalanx formation, optimized for the fastest deployment, now played against them in the atmospheric war waged above Exegol’s surface, and it would appear that all was lost for the Sith fleet...