Authorman - I been playing rome total war 2 a fuck ton (It took 3 days to download with my god awful internet) in my spare time, lwk forgot its quite good, currently playing as Suebi larping as a gaulic empire.
Also been re-reading the amazing story by Sage1988 "The Legacy Of House Ordo" on fanfiction, its pretty fucking good I love it and suggest you all to read it. (His writing is better than mine lwk)
Patreon is now 5 chapters ahead -
patreon (.) com/Deluxee
**REZA POV**
I stood on the bridge of the Iron Reaver and watched the final readiness lights turn green across the fleet status board, every ship had reported in.
Every squadron was seated, every transport confirmed locked and loaded. The planning was finished, the arguments were finished all that remained was execution.
"All task forces," I said over the command channel, "this is Iron Reaver Actual, jump coordinates are locked. Staggered reversion into real space windows confirmed, we launch on my mark."
Around me the bridge crew worked with quiet precision.
Helm, tactical, communications, and flight control all moved through their final checklists without wasted motion. Through the main viewport, the assembled fleet hung in ordered formation above Elyria cruisers, frigates, corvettes, carriers, and the heavy shapes of the troop haulers waiting for the signal.
I opened a private channel to the governor. "All forces are ready," I reported. "We can jump on your order."
There was only a short pause before his reply came through, calm and clipped but more mature than his age would have suggested.
"Execute."
With that one single command I closed the channel and looked back to the fleet board. "All ships... jump."
The stars stretched.
Hyperspace took us in a surge of blue-white light, the familiar tunnel swallowing the fleet one formation after another. For the next sixteen hours there was nothing but the low hum of the ship, the soft chatter of status checks, and the constant awareness of what waited at the other end of the journey.
We kept getting updated reports from the scout droids on the enemy status, it seems they had a resupply since 3 large industrial freighters with the Rothana Heavy Engineering emblem on them which is kind of concerning since they are one of the corporations that stand on top of the galaxy on par with Kuat, Banking Clan and others.
The transit itself for the most part was spent reviewing contingency branches, force timings, and looking over all the tactical battle plans over and over, making minor almost miniscule adjustments.
Sixteen hours was long enough for tension to settle into the bones, but not long enough for anyone to grow comfortable.
The crew rotated through their shifts in disciplined cycles.
When the final countdown began, the bridge straightened as one. "Reversion in five minutes," Helm reported.
"All task forces report ready," Communications added. "Staggered windows holding."
I rested one hand against the edge of the command console and watched the timer fall away.
"Reversion in thirty seconds."
The tunnel shuddered and with it realspace snapped back into existence.
The abandoned system spread before us in cold starlight three dull planets, scattered debris fields, and the faint heat signatures of ships that had grown far too comfortable operating without fear of interruption.
Alarm codes were already lighting up across the enemy side of the board as their sensors registered the sudden appearance of multiple capital formations."All ships, form battle lines," I ordered.
"Task forces to assigned vectors. Fighter screens out. Close the exits."
The fleet moved at once.
Iron Reaver and her attached heavy elements pushed toward the main planet on the primary approach without a care in the world, at best their best guns can scratch the pain on its hulls at worse deeplete its shields.
Vesk's formation broke for the second vector while Auralis and her N-1s cut toward the third.
The Acclamators and reserve line sealed the fourth, in less than a five minutes the four hyperspace lanes were no longer open roads. They were kill zones waiting for anyone desperate enough to try them.
"Enemy contacts confirmed around the primary depot world," Tactical called out. "Mixed capital signatures. Multiple fighter launches underway, their comms while encrypted are pinging of wildly between eachother."
I watched the board resolve into clearer detail and felt the familiar narrowing of focus settle over me."Begin operations," I said. "All ships engage as planned."
The first turbolaser volleys lit the void,
The raid had begun.
****
The enemy recovered faster than scavengers should have I will give them that much.
That was the first thing I noted as the tactical board filled with accelerating signatures, whatever discipline they lacked in ship maintenance, they made up for in numbers and sheer desperation, probably expecting us not to take any prisoners and fleeing would result in their backer abandoning them and possibly hunting them down to keep them a secret.
Fighter swarms boiled up from the main depot world and from the larger converted freighters like insects poured from a broken nest, capital signatures that had been drifting in lazy holding patterns began turning hard toward our nearest formations, weapons lighting as they came around.
"All task forces, this is Iron Reaver Actual," I said over the command net. "Execute opening assignments. Close the lanes, and do not chase outside your vectors unless ordered to."
The four battle lines pushed forward in unison.
On the primary approach, Iron Reaver led with the two heavy cruisers forming a blunt spearhead. Enemy light cruisers and patched-together frigates tried to form a defensive screen in front of the depot world. They were too slow."Primary line, concentrate fire on the lead enemy cruiser group," I ordered.
"Frigate screen, cut off their lateral escape, flight control, deploy first fighter wave Z-95s and TIEs in layered intercept. Keep the bombers held back until we break their screen."
Turbolaser fire stitched across the void in brilliant colours of green and red sometimes with colours of orange and blue. The first enemy cruiser in the center of their line took a full broadside from Iron Reaver and visibly staggered, shields flaring white before collapsing in sections. Secondary explosions rippled along its dorsal ridge.
One of our heavy cruisers followed with a second volley that tore open its flank and sent it drifting, venting atmosphere and debris and its crew.
"Task Force Two, status," I called.
Vesk's channel opened almost immediately, the sound of distant impacts bleeding through the transmission. "We're on the second vector, enemy is trying to force a breakout with two light cruisers and a cluster of gunships. We're closing, boarding teams are standing by if anything looks worth taking."
"Pin them," I said. "If they turn toward open space, cripple engines first."
On the third vector, Auralis Free Wing was already cutting into the enemy fighter screen with surgical aggression. The N-1 signatures moved across the board like golden blades, breaking apart sloppy enemy formations and driving them into kill zones.
Sera Valen's voice came through clean and controlled. "Third lane is holding but they are desperate to escape to the point of trying to ram our ships, a pair of our fighters are damaged and needing to return to the ships lest they start drifting in space. Additionally, enemy bombers attempted a run on our light cruisers while the pair were retreating. Two other enemy gunships destroyed, multiple fighters down."
"Maintain pursuit pressure, but do not overextend," I replied. "For now your priority remains the exit vector, once most of the battle is done have half the N-1s to join the other vectors."
Task Force Four, built around the two Acclamators and the mobile reserve, reported in next. The Acclamators held the fourth lane like floating fortresses, their hangars already cycling additional fighter wings into the fight.
Patrol craft and CR90s screened their flanks while the remaining Nebulon-B2s formed a flexible second line ready to reinforce any vector that began to buckle.
The middle of the battle settled into a brutal rhythm.
Enemy ships tried twice to mass and punch through the primary line with both attempts failing.
Each time they gathered enough hulls to look dangerous, Iron Reaver and the heavy cruisers shifted fire and tore the leading vessels apart before the rest could commit while bombing runs were devestating their blaster canons.
Wreckage began to thicken across the approach to the depot world, forced into drifting curtains by the continuing exchange of fire."Enemy frigate attempting to slip under Task Force Two's cover," Tactical reported.
"Vesk, you have a runner," I said. "Intercept and disable and board that frigate seems unusually high tech, the readings and scans show it has an unusually big Ion cannon so watch your ships."
"Already on it." A moment later one of the enemy signatures on the second vector flared, then dimmed as it sputtered to a stop.
The fighter combat spread through all four sectors of the battlespace was not even a battle at this point, TIEs and Z-95s locked into swirling dogfights with scavenged starfighters and heavily modified gunboats both have higher manoeuvrability than anything the enemy has.
The rest of the bombers have finally received clearance to begin aggressive anti-ship once more fighters and point defence have been destroyed.
The bomber runs honestly look beautiful all synchronised and uniform and moved in under escort, their payloads tracking toward the larger enemy hulls that still retained meaningful firepower all on the backdrop of a massive space battle.
This is why I became a captain, this is proper ship combat. I love the thrill of it even if I might not show it, Mandalorians love the thrill of battle.
I love the thrill of naval battles.
Oh would you look at that...
One converted freighter serving as a makeshift carrier took three direct bomber passes and broke apart from the inside, spilling debris and dying escape pods into the dark, still the enemy did not break cleanly.
They fought like cornered rats disorganized, furious, and unwilling to accept their defeat. There is no shame in surrender, they will be interrogated but once that is done only 15-20 years of hard labour awaits them but they will live... Mostly.
A cluster of corvettes tried to force the fourth vector under cover of a dense fighter swarm, it seems they had a bit more fighters hidden on secondary planet, roughly 40 or so, but its the usual pirate trash.
The Acclamators answered with sustained battery fire while their fighter screens shredded the escorting craft.
Ironic. Acclamators shot down an ARC 170 that the pirates have managed to get their hands on.
One enemy light cruiser that honestly looks like someone stole from some gaudy noble and slapped some turrets on it exploded under the barrage.
While a carrack lost main power and continued forward on momentum alone until a CR90 put a final volley through its middle section almost severing it in twain after secondary explosions went off.
"All task forces, tighten the net," I ordered. "Push them toward the planets gravity wells. Do not give them an inch, switch from passive attack formation to aggressive manoeuvres, most of their capital ships and half their screens are gone, no reinforcements are in sight for them, push them to the brink, Watch the third planet in case they have some more hidden screens on there like they did on the second planet."
The fleet responded as one.
Across the system the four lines contracted, forcing the remaining enemy ships into denser and denser clusters while the positioning and manoeuvres began to be more aggressive and tanking shots instead of trying to evade.
What had begun as a scattered defensive response was being compressed into killing zones.
Every attempt to run was met by fighters and bombers, every attempt to mass was met by capital fire and every attempt to hide behind debris only delayed the inevitable by seconds not minutes.
I watched the board with both hands braced on the console, feeding corrections into the net as the battle continued to grind forward.
The opening phase was over, now is almost time for the land lovers to have some fun of their own.
****
The enemy's resistance did not collapse all at once. It frayed, after the initial exchanges, the surviving hostile ships began clustering tighter around the main depot world, almost completely abandoning the other ones.
They are trying to form a crude defensive cordon out of whatever hulls they still had under power and perhaps trying to take advantage of the sparse orbital cannons they have planetside.
Converted freighters, damaged light cruisers, and half-dead gunships packed themselves into overlapping fields of fire above the primary landing zones while what remains of their screen and other light ships were attempting to establish an anti fighter and bomber perimiter.
It was ugly, desperate, and just coherent enough to make a direct push costly enough for us that it would not be worth it.
I had no intention of playing that game on their terms.
"All task forces, maintain outer containment," I ordered. "Do not smash headfirst into their cordon. We peel it apart section by section, Task Force One will hold the primary axis under steady pressure. Task Force Two and Three, start cutting the edges, Task Force Four, ready to reinforce any breach and start slowly spreading outward."
The fleet adjusted.
Iron Reaver and the heavy cruisers kept the center pinned with disciplined volleys, forcing the strongest remaining enemy ships to stay fixed in place, on the flanks, Vesk's formation and the Auralis contingent began slicing inward, using speed and concentrated fire to isolate weaker vessels from the main cluster.
Every time an enemy ship tried to reposition, fighters swarmed it.
Every time a gap appeared, a frigate or corvette pushed in just far enough to widen it.
"Cordon is fracturing on the grid 9a to 12c," Tactical reported. "Multiple enemy ships losing formation integrity."
"Exploit it," I said. "Vesk, push through and roll up their line from the inside. Valen, keep their fighters off him."
The effect cascaded quickly. Once the outer edge of the enemy cordon broke, the rest began folding under its own disorder.
Ships turned into one another while lines of fire crossed and canceled out. A damaged frigate attempting to withdraw smashed through a cluster of gunships and sent them scattering into open space, where the Headhunters and A-wings finished them with clinical efficiency.
Within minutes the defensive shell above the main planet was no longer a shell. It was a series of disconnected knots of resistance, all isolated from eachother.
"Troop channels, stand by," I said. "Landing corridors are opening."
The twelve heavy haulers that had remained behind the main battle line began accelerating toward the cleared approach lanes. Escort screens of CR90s and patrol craft moved with them, forming protective corridors of overlapping fire.
Above those lanes, fighter wings shifted from pure pursuit to suppression, driving remaining enemy craft away from the transport paths while bombing squadrons started diving into the atmospheres of the three planets for initial attack runs.
"Transport group one through three, you are cleared for descent," I ordered. "Main depots and objectives on each planets first. Secondary and tertiary landings follow once initial beachheads on primary objectives have been established and are stable."
Acknowledgments came back in sequence.
I watched the first wave of heavy haulers and smaller troop transports and Komrks punch into atmospheres, their hulls glowing faintly as they carved down toward the depot complex.
Behind them, the orbital battle continued in a grinding cleanup phase isolated enemy ships still fighting, still dying, still unable to open a path to hyperspace.
Now came the ground.
I opened the joint assault channel.
"Ground command, this is Iron Reaver Actual. Orbital windows are viable, Begin landing operations. Torv, Jaster you are cleared to commit the first wave, initial bombings have softened them up for you."
Torv's reply was immediate and flat. "First wave descending. Beachhead markers locked, heavy armour at the ready."
Jaster followed a second later. "Mandalorian spearheads are on final approach. We'll hit the command nodes as soon as we clear the ramps."
On the tactical overlay, landing zones bloomed across the depot outskirts in three marked sectors. Stormtrooper units were assigned to the primary avenues and landing fields.
Militia formations expanded behind them to lock down the perimeter. Mandalorian teams angled toward the densest clusters of enemy infrastructure control towers, comm relays, and hardened bunkers."
Secondary world detachment, begin your run once the main force is committed," I continued.
"Tertiary sweep team remains on standby until we confirm no major orbital threats remain over the planets."
The first combat reports from the surface came faster than expected. "Contact at Landing Zone One. Light resistance, enemy forces are disorganized, presence of heavy firepower but its ineffective use, over."
"Landing Zone Two under fire from improvised emplacements and armoured assets. Pushing through behind our own armoured support."
"Mandalorian units have breached the outer depot wall, proceeding to priority targets."
I kept my eyes on the combined naval and ground displays, feeding adjustments into both layers of the operation as they unfolded together.
In space, the last coherent enemy formations were being crushed against the planet's gravity well and some have finally started seeing the futility of it and are sending surrender signals.
On the surface, the first waves on all three planets have established and stabilised the breach heads, the third planet though seems to not have much in their underground bunker and warehouses and the initial breach has mostly mopped up everything so the third wave and half the second have been reassigned to the heaviest fighting on the main planet.
"All commands," I said, voice steady over the net, "proceed to phase two, secure the landing zones and send in the rest, proceed onwards."
**JASTER POV**
The beachheads were already secure by the time I hit the inner ring of the depot.
That did not mean the fighting was clean, I moved at the head of my Mandalorian spearhead through a breached warehouse corridor, jetpack idle for the moment, Amban phase-pulse blaster tucked tight against my shoulder.
The air inside the complex was thick with ozone, scorched metal, and the sharp stink of overloaded circuitry, dust and rust.
Outside, through shattered loading doors and gaps in the ferrocrete walls, the wider battle spread across the depot like a storm given shape.
Stormtroopers advanced in disciplined lines down the main avenues, white armour flickering with reflected blasterfire as they used suppressing fire to advance on the entrenched defenders while militia units pushed behind them in heavier, less tidy waves, using cargo haulers and overturned crates for cover.
Every few dozen meters someone fell not with sprays of blood, but with blackened holes punched clean through armour and flesh, the wounds seared shut by the heat of the bolts, not each one deadly that's what the armour and energy dispensing bodysuits are for but still some did die or will die.
Bodies crumpled where they stood, armour plates cracked and smoking, the air filled with the harsh snap-hiss of blasterfire and the thud of armoured bodies hitting the ground, so far the ratio is looking 5:1 in our favour with more than half being wounded instead of dead.
My people did not fight like the others though.
Where the stormtroopers took ground and the militia filled it, the Mandalorians cut like a laser scalpel.
We moved in overlapping pairs and trios, jetpacks flaring in short controlled bursts as they leapt over barricades, dropped into enemy nests from above, and cleared corners with brutal efficiency using blasters, grenades as well as CQC techniques and if that was not enough then a solid jetpack rocket will do the trick.
A Kaleesh pirate in a decent Balmoral militia armour, probably stolen, popped up from behind a crate and managed half a shot before I put a bolt through the canter of his chestplate. The man folded without a sound, armor glowing faintly around the fresh hole.
"Left stack clear," one of his warriors reported over the squad channel.
"Move," Jaster ordered. "Command node is still three blocks in."
They pushed.
All around they see crates and stacks of supplies, food, minerals, blasters, fuel, spare parts. Most being the absolute lowest quality but its still a lot, we will not have the time or capacity to take most and it will all be probably bombed from orbit instead of it falling into the hands of any pirate or scum that will comeback to see what happened.
At an intersection, they linked briefly with a stormtrooper squad that was pinned behind a wrecked speeder.
The troopers were good better than most Imperial units Jaster had seen, afterall they were trained by us and the governor does not skimp out on the equipment, rations or training for his troops which 95% of governors would call his spending a waste.
But the squad was currently being held by a heavy repeater nested in a second-story window, Jaster did not bother with discussion.
Two Mandalorians launched upward on jetpacks, and smashed through the window and ended the gunner before the man could reposition by punching him in the mouth and throwing him out, the stormtroopers immediately sprung upwards and advancing towards the enemy even before the body finished falling.
Further in, a militia company was struggling to clear a cluster of storage silos held by a squadron of some IG Droids supplemented by some pirates.
The defenders there were desperate and poorly trained, spraying bolts wild enough to chew apart their own cover except the IG units, they mostly used the organics as a convenient extra blaster while they used precision to pin down or take out some of our own.
I diverted a small mandalorian fireteam from my own squad to break the deadlock by chucking an ungodly amount of electromagnetic grenades that fried the droids, even if they were a bit resistant to the first volley of grenades, the grenades also had a nice bonus of giving heavy electric shock to the organics after that they left the militia to finish the job.
As we continued to advance, my mind drifted in the strange half-detached way it sometimes did in the middle of combat.
Atii would have hated being left behind for this part of the operation but we had her stay with the governor as his bodyguard, with so much of our forces gone his life is vulnurable.
Besides, I do not wish for her to be in any harm, I know she was getting stronger, sharper, more disciplined, just like her mother was. But she was still young, still my one and only daughter. So, so young, just like the governor.
Two kids that young should be out and about, making memories, maybe pursuing some higher education or going into the galaxy to explore it and themselves. Instead they are holding up systems with us old folk instead of living their life.
The thought almost pulled a dry sound from his throat.
Kids being kids, I suppose. Different generation, different times. Except one of those kids was already making Moffs nervous, and the other was becoming the kind of warrior Clan Saxon would have tried to claim or kill depending on the day.
The Empire's occupation of Mandalore still sat in me like old shrapnel. Gar Saxon and the rest of those sell-outs had traded their people for favour and called it survival.
Maybe it was.
Maybe it was just cowardice dressed up in white armour and Imperial approval.
Either way, I had no intention of seeing another generation of warriors reduced to someone else's unwilling enforcers.
A bolt scorched past his helmet and snapped him fully back into the present.
"Contact front!"
The next courtyard was something alright.
Enemy fighters had dragged together makeshift barricades from shipping containers and vehicle wrecks, and for a moment the volume of fire forced even the Mandalorians into cover.
Bolts hammered the metal around them, leaving molten scars and filling the air with glowing spall. I snapped a pair of shots around the edge of my cover, dropped one Twilek shooter by melting half his face off, then launched upward with my jetpack.
From above, the defensive line was obvious and vulnerable. I and three others came down in the middle of it like a hammer.
Close combat was fast and ugly and something us Mandalorians excel at.
A hulking Duros pirate tried to club me with the stock of a rifle; but I caught the weapon, drove a knee into the man's midsection, and fired downward into the gap beneath his helmet.
Another enemy turned too slowly and took a bolt through the back, armor cooked while bodies fell with hard, final sounds while blood seeped out of the wounds made by gauntlets and knives.
By the time the courtyard was clear, the second wave was already deep into the compound and was pouring through the outer breaches and making more entry points, more stormtroopers. More militia. Heavy support weapons being set up on captured rooftops and snipers providing cover fire and designating high value targets for non-lethal takedowns.
The depot's outer defenses were no longer defenses, they were a collapsing perimeter.
"Push to the command centre," I, ordered.
They made the final run under covering fire from a newly established stormtrooper line the command structure was a squat, reinforced building near the heart of the complex deep underground.
Enemy holdouts tried one last time to keep us off the entrance, It bought them less than a minute.
My breaching team planted specialised charges that will set off a sonic blast disorienting the defenders inside, it was placed squarely on the main doors, with my Mandalorians stacking to the sides.
I nodded to the person who set it up, and with a nod back he pressed a button on his vembraces and the breeching charge activated and blew up the entrance inward in blast of smoke, shredded metal and the distinctive noise of a sonic weapon.
We went in hard. the interior fight was short and vicious.
Close corners, short-range bolts, one Zebrak got hit up close with SX-21 blaster rifle (scatterblaster AKA shotgun) and she was thrown into the wall violently as her head hanging limply to the side as it was only attached by a strip of muscle and flesh.
The smell of burnt flesh, screams and hiss and burn of armour made for a cacophony of dark violence.
When the last resistance in the main hall went down, the remaining defenders tried to surrender. I ordered my people to disarmed them quickly and shoved them against the wall under guard.
"Secure the data cores," I said. "Pull everything that looks like command traffic, shipping logs, or payment records, if it stores information, we take it, and prep the prisoners for extraction."
Mandalorians and attached technicians moved at once, tearing access panels open and slicing into the local systems. Status lights flickered as extraction programs began their work.
Only then did Instep back from the main console.
For the first time since the landing, there was enough quiet for me to hear my own breathing inside the helmet.
I reached into a sealed pouch at my belt and took out the small charm Elara had given me before the fleet left Elyria. It was a simple thing carved bone and metal, worn smooth in places from her own hands.
I turned it once between my armoured fingers and I let out a short, low chuckle under my breath.
Of all the things to carry into a place like this.
I closed my fist around it for a second, then put it away again.
Outside, the sound of fighting was already beginning to thin, the depot was falling and from the scattered reports on the network I am getting the second planet has already fallen and extraction of intel, prisoners and resources has already begun and the third planet is already 20% done.
We only have around 18-22 hours to get everything loaded and extracted from this cesspit, no doubt some brave scavengers from the local populace will attempt to get close and get some stuff of their own, we will have to watch out for them, we don't want to accidentally kill them or take them prisoner.
The network that had been bleeding their systems dry for weeks was being gutted from the inside
I looked back toward the technicians pulling data from the enemy systems. "Work fast," I said. "We're not finished until every one of these data cores is scrapped cleaned"
Then he keyed his comm and started calling out the next set of orders.
**KAEL POV**
The bed was the first truly comfortable one I had owned since coming to Elyria and of course I barely got to use it.
I had been half-asleep, face pressed into the new satin like cold pillow, when the encrypted holo in the center of the room chirped with a priority package.
For a long second I seriously considered ignoring it and going back to drooling on my pillow, but then another ping and the responsibility dragged me upright with a groan.
My body still felt heavy from the last two days the planning, the waiting, the constant flow of reports while the raid ran on a hard clock.
A day for travel, and then a day to fight and siphon anything we can from there.
An entire day was all we had, it was long enough to break the depot, strip what mattered, and get out with explosion behind them before anyone with real authority decided the chaos was an opportunity to kill this 'other' pirate fleet that appeared in the system.
I activated the holo and opened the after-action compilation.
The fleet was already in hyperspace on the return leg, that much was good.
They had taken what they could and destroyed the rest with a mix of planted charges and coordinated orbital fire. No fixed installation left standing worth reclaiming, no hangars, no intact fuel silos and no depot lattice that could be brought back online without starting from scratch.
Then came the losses, naval casualties were light.
No capital ships lost, one light cruiser had taken moderate structural damage and would need yard time. Two CR90s were limping with compromised shield projectors and engine strain and a handful of patrol craft had been destroyed outright, and several more were too damaged to be worth dragging home.
Fighter and bomber losses were more noticeable but still contained: twenty or so TIEs, fifteen Z-95s, three Y-wings, and two N-1s from Auralis but the N-1s are tough cookies and from what I get from the report they are fixable, it will take almost two months to do it and get all the spare parts from Naboo but it will be done.
Most of those pilots had ejected successfully, except the TIE pilots, standard configuration TIEs dont have shielding, not to mention ejection, I really need to invest into TIE defender program if Thrawn makes it because if I am right he had wanted to put shields on it along with ejection, but for now its a loss.
Crew injuries outnumbered deaths by a wide margin still though.
Ground losses followed the same pattern.
Killed in action remained low relative to the scale of the assault the injured list was longer burns, impact trauma, crush injuries from collapsing structures and close quarter combat and even a slughtrower injury there was the usual collection of near-misses that left armour ruined and people alive.
Militia numbers made up most of the wounded while Stormtroopers and Mandalorians had suffered fewer casualties, but not none, Mandalorians only had two critical injuries with one being paralysed from neck down after some hulking brute of an alien that I honestly never seen before crushed the mans spine when he threw him against the wall.
The alien looks like if a Yautja and four arms from ben 10 had an ugly baby and then dipped him in glue and threw him into a pile of chicken feathers.
As long as I dont encounter some Tyranids I am fine, anyways.
It seems that whoever was supplying them prioritised naval power over ground combat since most of the weapons the enemy had were utter dogshit, some of these weapons are dating back to ancient designs made by Czerka over six hundred fucking years ago, it is still in somewhat good shape though someone must have either restored it for museums and was stolen or its like one of those Afghan AK-47s from my world where they have been in constant combat, switching hands for almost half a century now.
Anyways...
I continued to scroll further down.
Enemy naval losses had been severe, Of the roughly one hundred and twenty ships estimated at the start of the battle, the majority were now wreckage, a handful of light capital ships and converted freighters had been disabled cleanly enough to capture.
Two light cruisers, one aging frigate, four corvettes, and a string of gunships and armed freighters were under tow or already being evaluated for repair.
Several more hulls were marked as possible salvage and given quick repairs and towed, a small number of enemy captains had surrendered once escape became impossible but only around 15 of them and nothing larger than a corvette and patrol craft.
Most had not.
On the ground the picture was uglier for the defenders, current counts estimated more than three and a half thousand enemy dead.
Roughly more than two thousand injured had been taken into custody with around 340 of them getting put out of their misery, the rest surrendered, when the command structure collapsed, some managed to escape into the settlements and abandoning their ships as they entered, they then blended in with the scared populace.
The slave count made me stop for a moment.
Just over forty-nine hundred freed captives had been recovered from holding pens, sealed cargo domes, and underground storage blocks. Mostly human, with a sizable population of Togruta and Zabraks, and a scattering of other species, not many of them were from the three planets.
Many of the slaves were in poor condition, around three thousand were children as young as three.
All of them were now aboard the returning transports, the locals were given a ride back to the local settlements and some credits.
Then came the material accounting, the list was long enough that the holo had to split it into categories.
Credits and fungible valuables came first: strongboxes of physical marks, encrypted credit chips, mixed planetary currencies, and a surprising amount of unregistered gemstones. Preliminary total already sat well into the low millions, and that was before full decryption of the financial nodes, but it will not be more than five to six million at best, especially the slaver accounts, it seems they were making a fucking killing out here, what angers me most is that the black suns were their biggest suppliers.
It seems when the situation stabilises I will have to have a friendly conversation with the Faleen bastards.
Weapons and armour filled the next section. Crates of blaster rifles, pistols, repeaters, and scavenged heavy weapons most of abysmal or outdated quality, whoever was supplying them really said "old ones go first".
Mixed armour sets ranging from battered plastoid scrap to a rather mid tier grade mercenary plate mainly of Caelli-Merced Syndicate make.
There were cases of thermal detonators, grenades, spare power packs, and military-grade ammunition some of which was expired and prone to explosion so they were carefully put aside and used with complement of our own explosive to destroy the compound, they were all mostly BlastTech and Baktoid.
Now, ship components and raw materials followed next, and since the pirates were mainly navy focused theres a lot and of good quality. Fuel cells, hyperdrive parts, shield projectors and hull plating by the ton.
There were even spare motivators and containers of refined durasteel, doonium fragments, coaxium traces in secure canisters, and bulk loads of lower-grade industrial metals.
There were also food stores, medical crates, stimpacks, bacta reserves of uneven quality and quantity, and a substantial stock of spice and other contraband locked in secondary vaults.
The depot had been exactly what it looked like: a crossroads for pirates, slavers, smugglers, and hired guns, it had the contents to match.
I rubbed both hands over my face and sat back on the edge of the bed, the glow of the holo painting the dark room in pale blue.
The raid had worked, and from the reports they have taken around 75% of all that was there, they had to run everyone rugged and even had the better off slaves help out carry all that.
The fleet was coming home with prisoners, freed captives, captured hulls, and enough material to matter and cover the costs of this campaign and still the most important part of the package remained unopened.
I dragged the next file set forward.
Data cores.
Preliminary interrogation summaries.
Captured communication logs.
The part that would tell me whether this had only been scavengers… or someone else's weapon aimed at my throat.
I opened the first file and started reading.