Star Wars : Tanya the Evil

"Put me on comms now." Dooku ordered, and his image was broadcast out to the Trade Federation fleet.

"This is Count Dooku, at the head of the Serenno Planetary Defense, as requested by Queen Amidala of Naboo. To all the ships currently illegally blockading the sovereign world of Naboo, you are hereby ordered to leave the system or you will be fired upon."

...

There was a long pause as Dooku waited for the reply. When planning this out with Tan'ya, both of them had agreed that the manner of victory was as important as the victory itself.

To escape legal reprisals when the battle was over, Dooku would have to convince the wider Galaxy that he was acting legitimately within the boundaries of the law, a task that would only be made harder by a surprise attack without warning, or worse, accusations that he had approached the Federation fleet while disguised as a part of the Trade Federation. Using the code cylinders he had to trick the Trade Federation into believing he was here to reinforce them was the sort of thing that might have been accepted in the midst of a vicious total war, but in peace time was unthinkable.

Dooku needed to be a liberator, not a common pirate of the Outer Rim.

Besides, both he and Tan'ya agreed he would be able to win even without such paltry tricks.

"Count Dooku, this is Commodore Utro. You're interfering in private negotiations between the Trade Federation and-"

"Commodore Utro, leave Naboo at once." Dooku interrupted him. "Your blockade is an act of war, and will be treated as such by Naboo's allies."

The Commodore looked frustrated and briefly confused, and Dooku saw an opportunity there. Reaching out through the Dark Side, Dooku began to gently stoked the feelings of frustration and humiliation in the Nemoidian.

"Now see here-"

"These are the acts of a common criminal."

"What, how dare you-"

"No, how dare you!" Dooku snapped. "The people of Naboo are starving, because of your corruption and incompetence."

Everytime Utro attempted to speak, he would be cut off and his face twitched with irritation. Gently feeding it was like bringing a fire back to life from hot coals. As he was doing it, Dooku began to develop suspicions on why it had taken him so long to see Sidious as the threat to his family that the Sith clearly was.

"You arrogant human scum!" The Nemoidian hissed, his exhalation so hard it forced spittle from his lips. His feelings of anger and hatred were pushing aside all other concerns, and forgetting that the Galaxy was watching. "You always band together to shut out legitimate competition! You have no business here! Leave! Final warning."

Dooku kept the smirk from his lips as he leaned back into his chair. "You are cruel and small minded." As he said it he gave one last little puff in the Dark Side against Utro's smoldering anger, and it burst into an all-consuming flame.

No longer needed to be fed by Dooku, Utro's wrath spread across his mind like a raging pyre, and all the Neimoidian could do was shrilly screech, "Open fire!"

Over the comms another voice said, "But sir-"

"I said, open fire!" Utro slammed his fist into his own thigh, eyes bugged out and lips bare. "Open fire! Open fire NOW!"

At last the Lucrehulks began blasting away, and the battle commenced, with it clear to the Galaxy that the Nemoidians were the aggressors. Dooku cut off communications, before giving orders to his own crew to return fire.

At the very front end of the Munificent class was a pair of bow mounted heavy turbo laser cannons. They were positioned in such a place that the ship had to be facing directly towards its target to fire, which made maneuvering somewhat awkward.

In this situation, the awkward position was to the advantage of Dooku, because it minimized the target profile of his ships, meaning the Federation had to hit a much smaller target then he did. In addition to that, the Lucrehulks were positioned just at the edge of Naboo's gravity well, which affected their ability to maneuver the already bulky and slow ships.

The Lucrehulk wasn't actually designed as a warship, but as a cargo transport. It was created centuries ago with the intention of being easy to load and unload cargo from multiple directions simultaneously. The Trade Federation had modified hundreds of the ships to evade the Republic's restrictions on the size and number of warships a governing body was permitted to own; a blatantly illegal act that somehow seemed to slip past the Courts unnoticed. Dooku scowled as he muttered, "The Republic," like a curse.

To transform each cargo hauler into a battleship, cargo bays were swapped out for Vulture droid storage, a powerful shield was installed with extra armor plating, and point defense lasers were strapped on alongside a pair of quad turbo laser batteries. None of the modifications made could ultimately change the fact that each Lucrehulk wasn't structured in a way that was well suited to battle.

Even with the expensive new armor plates and shields, the ship itself just wasn't shaped correctly for battle. Once those shields failed, as all shields do under sustained fire, the Lucrehulk's structure wouldn't be able to stand up to the pounding from the Munificent's heavy laser cannons.

Commodore Utro seemed to realize that a few minutes into the battle, when shots from all three of Dooku's Munificents smashed into his shields. They flickered and stayed strong, but no doubt he would be coming to the realization that even with the Lucrehulks outnumbering the Munificents three to one, the difference in their structure would mean his vessel was likely to be taken out of the battle in the exchange as well.

The flagship began to maneuver out of formation, starting to climb away from Naboo's gravity well, and began deploying its vulture droids. A moment later all the other ships started to do the same, drifting further apart from each other to force Dooku's fleet to make larger maneuvers to track each ship. It wasn't long until every Federation ship had deployed their fighters.

"Sensors, how many Vultures have they deployed?" Dooku asked.

"Each ship has deployed its full complement of one and a half thousand, from all four ships it's six thousand."

"Very good." Dooku allowed himself a small smile. He reached out, and turned on his comms, now speaking to everyone in the fleet. "Tactical, deploy our own vultures. Pilots, turn us around. We are now retreating in a panic. Engineering, start warming up the Hyperdrive. Navigation, prepare us to make a jump to site two. Captain Ventress, Captain Narec, you know what to do."

They did know what to do. The three frigates scrambled in different directions as though in a panic, as the vast swarm of vultures began to close in. At the extreme distances the two fleets had been blasting at each other from, it took the vultures a full ten minutes to close in with Dooku's own vultures. A brief fight ensued, as the horribly outnumbered Munificent fighter compliments were blasted to pieces in space, numbering less than a hundred and fifty in the face of a great swarm.

The Munificent's continued their retreat, and it was another forty minutes before the vast swarm of vulture droids caught up to them.

"Shield holding." Came the report from the ensign. "Deflector shield still at Ninety percent capacity. Ray shield is unaffected."

"Tell me when the Ray shield starts to wither." Dooku told him.

The Vulture swarm had broken into three parts, chasing each fleeing frigate. The droids fired endlessly, their small blasters were suitable for fighter engagements, but in the face of a much larger capital ship each individual blast was almost worthless. If there weren't so many of them, they'd have no chance of damaging the frigates behind their shields.

Even when the swarm began deploying its concussion missiles, each vulture only had a pair to fire, many of which were intercepted thanks to the Munificent's point defense lasers, and even those that did hit had minimal effect. Concussion missiles were effective against lightly armored fighters, but not a well shielded battleship. Maybe if they were a little closer to the Lucrehulks they would have time to rearm, but they would never get that chance.

Dooku's fleet received ten full minutes of fire before the ensign reported that the secondary Ray Shield was starting to be affected.

"That should be enough time." Dooku murmured to himself. He switched on the coms. "Ventress, Narec, go to hyperspeed and rendezvous at site two."

With the hyperdrive already warmed up and the calculations already made, it was only a matter of pressing a lever for Dooku's Frigate to vanish, leaving its attackers behind.

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Don't forget to throw some power stones ;)

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