Terran Year: 2203 GrS Year: 32,423 BBY: 3673 (For the simplicity I will be using our year, the great synchronisation year aka the cannon calendar in old republic and the BBY format so I and you people will not get lost, probably will since im new to this forgive me)
Five years had passed since Earth was nearly lost.
The scars of the Crimson War had not faded they had been reforged. Cities that once bled smoke now stood rebuilt, not as testaments to the past, but as weapons for the future. They called themselves Terra now, the last legacy of a fractured species forged into one. A single name for a single purpose.
Above the ruins of what had once been Washington D.C., New Avalon shimmered under a protective orbital shield, its skyline a blend of glass spires and armored towers. Flags no longer bore national colors. Instead only the Terran Sigil, representing unity, control, and the memory of the lost was etched onto every dome, every ship hull, every transmission signal.
The Dominion Council, once a coalition of desperate war leaders and corporate technocrats, had evolved into something more rigid, more doctrinal. Each member was unelected but battle-proven. Their votes controlled the direction of Terra's recovery, expansion, and more quietly… vengeance.
The capital wasn't the only thing that had changed.
Mars, once a red wasteland for speculative colonists and military black sites, now glittered with life. The Vallis Magnus Habitat Ring hosted nearly three million Terran citizens scientists, engineers, soldiers, and their families. Its atmospheric domes pulsed with soft blue fields, encasing gardens, hydroponic skyscrapers, and the polished gunmetal of defense platforms.
Terraforming had not been completed yet but what mattered was infrastructure. Mars had become a forge. Dozens of orbital docks spun in low orbit, connected to Terra's supply lines by solar-sailed cargo trains that flowed like arteries across the void.
Aboard Highdock Three, above the Martian equator, Chief Fabricator Lian Navarro stared out across the vacuum. Below her, sixteen drydocks assembled everything from stealth corvettes to armored long-range freighters.
"All this," she murmured to the young tech beside her, "from junk and stolen bones."
Her words were literal. Much of Terra's current navy such as it was had been born not from clean slates, but from wreckage, reverse-engineered systems, and ingenuity born of desperation. The Crimson Maw had brought fire and chains. They had also brought technology, hull fragments, and shield cores humanity had no business understanding.
They understood them now.
The shipyards across Earth orbit, the Moon, and Mars were filled with hybrid vessels. Many were converted from old mining haulers and deep-space freighters vessels never intended to fire a shot. Now they bristled with armor plating, modular railgun turrets, and point-defense laser nests. Fuel bays had become troop bays. Cargo elevators now held mechanized drop-pods.
The VSS Hammerlight, once a superfreighter for Pacific Agrotech, now flew under the flag of the Dominion 2nd Expeditionary Fleet, its cargo holds modified to carry mobile shield arrays and drop troops for zero-G assault boarding. It still creaked like a freighter, but the gunship escort welded to its spine said otherwise.
Back on Earth, the mood had shifted.
The people of Terra had not forgotten the years of occupation and betrayal. Entire nations had been subverted by the Crimson Maw, trading loyalty for power. Even now, Dominion media played reruns of resistance operations cities liberated in fire, traitors executed, ships stolen back from slave convoys.
A man named Lucien Taggart, former resistance commander turned Dominion Fleet Admiral, had become the public face of "Forward Containment." His speeches were clipped, severe, and always ended the same way:
"We are no longer Earth's children. We are Terra's sword. And no slaver will ever walk our stars again."
He wasn't the only one preaching that doctrine.
Education was now a priority across the Dominion. Entire schools had been restructured to teach celestial navigation, exo-combat basics, and alien silhouette recognition. Children were shown simulations of Maw raids. Teenagers memorized how to seal a hull breach before they learned long division.
On Luna, cadets trained under real gravity distortion. On the Ganymede asteroid field, field engineers practiced boarding and salvage under pressure, with little sleep and less oxygen. Everyone had a role. Because everyone had lost someone.
And amid this discipline, something colder took root the realization that rescue was only part of the mission. Terra would not wait for enemies to come again.
They were building a fleet to go hunting.
At the Mars shipyard's central command tower, Rear Admiral Yasmin Dakarai reviewed the latest fleet commission:
4 Vanguard-Class Strike Corvette
Classification: Corvette
Length: 90 meters
Complement: 28 crew (12 bridge/ops, 8 gunners, 4 engineers, 4 marines)
Primary Systems: Dual forward-facing slug accelerators (railguns), 4 lateral pulse laser turrets ,enhanced sensor disruption matrix
A sleek yet armored silhouette with heavy prow shielding and flared aft stabilizers. Reinforced for deep-space ambushes, it features exposed cooling pipes and reactive hull segments designed for rapid repair. Its reinforced forward wedge allows ramming in emergencies.
Its role being a mix between a high-speed interception and recon escort. Functions as the Dominion's long-range skirmisher, hunting slaver convoys and scouting future targets.
2 Hammer-Class Siege Hauler (Retrofit)
Classification: Assault Frigate / Drop Deployment Ship
Length: 280 meters
Complement: 88 crew (including 12 pilots, 14 engineers, 18 gunners)
Troop Capacity: 650 ground troops, 16 drop pods, 2 armored rovers
Primary Systems: Twin atmospheric drop thrusters 8 rotary flak launchers, full-deck grav-cage deployment bays
Engineered from an industrial hauler frame, this slab-like vessel has thick, visibly segmented hull plating and multiple docking arms. Its re-entry armor is layered over its old cargo surfaces, with retrofitted landing gear for atmospheric burns. Interior corridors are cramped, utilitarian, and reinforced for troop traffic.
Used to conduct full combat deployments onto hostile worlds, establishing firebases and frontline pressure. Ideal for anti-pirate operations, mass liberation missions, and boarding enemy habitats.
With some describing it as "No finesse. Just a flying brick with bad intentions."
18 Ironhold-Class Combat Freighter
Classification: Armored Freighter / Support & Salvage Transport
Length: 185 meters
Complement: 72 crew (40 ops/bridge, 20 engineering/logistics, 12 defense)
Transport Capacity: Up to 1,000 personnel (refugees, prisoners, or troops)
Primary Systems: 2 dual ion-bolt turrets, modular cargo containers (up to 32 per side-mounted rack), forward tow harness, magnetic docking claws
A lumbering industrial beast, covered in angular armor plating and rust-stained support beams. Four massive stabilizer fins protrude from the lower hull. Internal corridors are expandable with bulkhead-mounted bunks and cargo racks. Some variants carry mobile medbays or drone bays.
Backbone of Dominion liberation operations. Used to extract civilians, reclaim wrecks, or act as a mobile command-and-control post in recovered systems.
1 Specter-Class Recon Carrier (Prototype)
Classification: Stealth Recon & Covert Insertion Carrier
Length: 310 meters
Complement: 128 crew (64 intelligence/ops, 28 engineering, 24 special forces, 12 tactical AI interface units)
Auxiliary Units: 12 stealth drones, 4 compact insertion corvettes, 3 infiltration teams
Primary Systems: Adaptive EM shadow plating, passive ion-trail dampeners, concealed multi-bay internal hangar
Dark, seamless, and predatory. From a distance, the Specter has no visible profile just heat haze and distortion. Within, it features sound-dampened corridors, variable gravity decks, and encrypted blackroom command centers. Its crew rarely communicates outside closed Dominion Intelligence channels.
Special operations platform designed for subversion, assassination, recon, and post-battle evidence gathering. Considered a ghost ship by some outer sector worlds.
1 "Bastion"-Class Fleet Carrier
Classification: Heavy Carrier / Command Vessel
Length: 1,080 meters
Crew: ~4,600 (including flight crews, engineers, security, and command staff)
Complement: 72 Shrike-class multirole starfighters -24 Atlas-class troop landers 8 Vulture-class sub-orbital bombers Up to 3,000 deployable troops or passengers 400 support drones and service units.
Armament: 12 turbolaser turrets (broadside) 18 point-defense flak batteries 4 heavy railgun batteries (spinal-mounted) 6 hangar-shield emitters
The Bastion is an original Dominion design, built for pure war the biggest in the entire fleet, bigger even than Deep Crown, it is built like a fortress in motion flat, wide, and thickly armored with stacked hull decks. Its dorsal superstructure houses command towers and fire control nodes. Large ventral hangars glow red when open, protected by energy containment fields. Exterior hulls show clear retrofits, armor patchwork, and orbital stress marks nothing elegant, everything necessary.
The internal hangars are massive, built into long corridors with magnetic crane arms, refueling rails, and stacked flight decks for drone servicing. Maintenance crews work in 20-hour rotations. It's a war machine, not a diplomatic vessel.
Systems:
Quantum-linked fleet command node
Redundant shield reactors, compartmentalized hull sections
Basic medical bays, tactical AI chambers, and strike planning decks
Reinforced comm arrays to operate independently from planetary relays
The Bastion-class serves as the core of Dominion naval operations. It doesn't just launch fighters it coordinates multi-system campaigns, acts as a mobile base for assault fleets, and recovers wounded or rescued civilians.
"Shrike"-Class Multi-Role Starfighter
Classification: Interceptor / Strike Fighter
Length: 18.2 meters
Crew: 1 pilot
Optional Support: Dominion Tactical Interface Unit (DTI-AI) or integrated astromech core (R-Type modular socket)
Armament: 2 rapid-fire kinetic autocannons (nose-mounted) 1 underslung plasma burst cannon Internal bay for 4 micro-missiles or beacon pods
The Shrike is a rugged, sharply angular single-seater designed for fast turns and brutal exchanges. Its winglets angle downward for atmospheric stability, and the armor is sectional, with visible bolts and reinforced glass canopy. Dominant coloration is scorched gray with dark crimson.
Standard Dominion fighter, suited for dogfights, convoy escort, and close-range strike missions. Its interface system allows optional AI assistance for target acquisition or emergency return protocols.
"Vulture"-Class Atmospheric Bomber
Classification: Bomber / Bunker Buster
Length: 27 meters
Crew: 3 (pilot, bombardier, systems officer)
Armament: Dual underslung grav-bomb hatches, 2 wing-mounted rotary plasma cannons optional fusion lance array for ground-based beam strikes
Wide-bodied with forward-sloped armor and retractable impact gear. Its bomb bays are reinforced with drop-stabilizers and its armor is jagged, multi-layered. Turbulence trails it like smoke when diving into a run.
Used for spaceship strikes, orbital-to-surface strikes, planetary sieges, and heavy infrastructure denial. Often deployed ahead of Dominion landing forces to soften enemy defenses or in squadrons protected by fighters to deal with enemy spaceships.
"Atlas"-Class Troop Lander
Classification: Assault Dropship / Rapid Deployment Transport
Length: 42 meters
Crew: 4 (pilot, co-pilot, 2 gunners)
Capacity: 60 armed troops or 2 medium armored vehicles or modular mix of supplies and drone units
Armament: 1 chin-mounted twin plasma repeater turret (controlled by co-pilot or AI) 2 side-door autocannon blister turrets (each manned by a gunner) Retractable shield projection node (short-duration bubble during landing)
The Atlas is shaped like a flying wedge thick, blunt, and mean. Its vertical takeoff thrusters are armored and prone to thunderous landings. Rear loading ramp and dual side exits allow fast disembarkation. Scorched and oil-streaked, many bear unit designations painted in Terran Gothic stencil along the hull.
Deployed during high-risk planetary insertions, evacuations, or base assaults. Designed to survive re-entry, hostile LZs, and quick dust-off under fire.
The numbers were modest, compared to a galactic power, still more in production, more prototypes being tested and drafted. But what they represented was something new. Something focused, plus they still had the apparently God awful pirate ships, no wonder Crimson Maw was considered 3rd rate at best, how they managed to lift off their docks I have no idea.
It was all quiet. No public announcements. No military parades. Only whispers passed among command halls and encrypted transmissions:
"We will strike before they rebuild. We will recover what was taken. And we will burn every outpost that harbored them."
From the ashes of war, Terra had not built an empire.
It had built a knife and soon, the galaxy would feel its edge.
Unity had not come freely.
For all the banners waving the sigil of Terra crimson field, golden filigree, and the lone star above the chevron the truth behind Dominion unification was a crucible of backroom deals, silent purges, and engineered consensus.
The Terran Dominion now ruled with authority absolute but not without design. Each of Earth's continents was granted the right to elect a single Continental Representative to serve on the High Council, seated in New Avalon. These elections were managed, monitored, and controlled by the Internal Stability Bureau, ensuring only loyal candidates with proven military or state service passed scrutiny.
It was democracy in structure, but not in spirit.
Once elected, representatives served indefinite terms revocable only by Council consensus or a classified ISB audit. There were no political parties, no popular debates. Only policy alignment. Only loyalty.
What remained of Earth's old governments had been absorbed or discarded. There were no more senators or parliaments. Instead, there were Boards, Commissariats, and Directorates, all coordinated beneath the guiding pressure of the Council and enforced through civil obedience and strategic propaganda.
The Terran Commissariat of Expansion handled intelligence, scouting, and colonization logistics.
The Dominion Fleet Directorate oversaw ship production and deployment with martial efficiency.
The Internal Stability Bureau ISB monitored ideological cohesion and conducted quiet corrections.
To the public, these changes came silently. There were no riots, no crackdowns broadcast on TV or ever more popular holo streams. Only redirected narratives, restructured laws, and realigned curriculum. The word "nation" was phased out. The word "Dominion" was not.
Even the remaining megacorporations Pacific Agrotech, Borealis Systems, Orion Dynamics now operated as economic wings of the state. Their boardrooms were window-dressing. Their supply lines, shipyards, and AI networks answered to the Council and Fleet Command alike.
New Avalon – High Council Rotunda
In the circular rotunda beneath New Avalon's defensive dome, twelve seats encircled a tactical holoscreen each seat held by a Continental Representative, flanked by sector heads, military attachés, and ISB observers in black-uniform silence.
Admiral Lucien Taggart stood among them, voice low but cutting.
"Two Crimson Maw remnants detected staging movements beyond the Braxil Verge. One active, one dark."
Councilor Ilyana Zhou of the Pan-Asia Bloc leaned forward. "Population records?"
"Unknown," replied Taggart. "But debris scans show thermal signatures. Slave cages and mobile shield arrays. They're still moving our people."
Murmurs rippled through the chamber.
Councilor Davos Thorne of the Americas Union clenched his fist. "Are we authorized to engage?"
Director Alia Vecht of the ISB answered calmly. "Authorization is not in question. What matters is control."
Councilor Idris Makari of the African Continental Command added, "Make it surgical. No declarations. No signals. The galaxy will not rally for pirates, if they even hear of it."
"Then it's done," Taggart said, nodding. "We strike."
There was no vote. Consensus was a formality.
While the High Council maintained the façade of representation, true control rested in the Council Triumvirate:
Admiral Lucien Taggart, Commander of all Dominion Armed Forces.
Director Alia Vecht, Chief of the Internal Stability Bureau and research.
Minister Elena Vos, Overseer of Civil Integration and Media.
Together, they shaped policy behind closed doors, issuing directives disguised as High Council consensus.
Each Continental Representative maintained regional authority over civic law, trade routes, and local garrisons but only within parameters outlined by the central command. Any deviation triggered an immediate ISB review.
Freedom was a function of alignment. Resistance was quietly absorbed or erased.
Propaganda was now an art form. Dominion digital space featured sweeping visuals of rebuilt cities, newborns beneath orbital lights, and soldiers saluting beside flowering domes on Mars. The message was clear: the Dominion was peace through power, unity through pain, and hope through obedience.
In classrooms, children recited the Dominion Code. On ships, crews spoke in standard military cadence. Even the few surviving pre-war media programs were rewritten, often featuring posthumous retcons of heroes "realigned" to support Terra's doctrine.
Yet under the surface, a simmer remained.
On Europa, several mining communes quietly questioned the lack of communication with certain outer colonies. On Earth, old-world religious orders debated the morality of Dominion discipline. But no protests had ever gained traction. Not one had been televised. And none of the dissidents had ever returned.
In the words of Director Vecht:
"People say they love freedom, but absolute freedom is chaos, so they love the illusion of freedom while adhering to the social structure and laws."
And in the silence of every station and city that message was heard loud and clear, when new laws were passed increasing the Dominion power there were no riots, instead there was applause and cheering. That's how democracy dies on Terra, not through force of arms but in thunderous applause of many
Two months later
There was no declaration. No banners. No demands for surrender.
Only transponder ghosts and vanishing blips on dead orbital maps.
The Terran Dominion had initiated Operation Breakchain a classified campaign to locate and recover Terran citizens abducted during the Crimson War and to dismantle every Crimson Maw outpost within tactical reach. These were not full-blown battles. They were surgical raids. Covert extractions. Swift, brutal elimination.
No negotiations. No hesitation. Only silence and fire.
VSS Black Ember
The Black Ember came out of slipspace cloaked in scatter-echo and EM static. A ghost on the edge of known space.
Captain Rho Vargas stood over the command dais, her face illuminated only by the dim red glow of ops lighting. Every breath on the bridge felt calculated, every movement rehearsed.
"Visual on target," said her ops officer. "Crimson station. Six biosigns. Four cages are active. Heat trace is minimal."
Vargas nodded. "Engage."
Two precision slugs from the Ember's forward railguns split the station's hull along its weakest axis. A shrike wing followed, strafing the comm array and reactor cap. Within minutes, Dominion boarding units had pierced the breach.
Inside: 88 prisoners. All Terran. Half emaciated. None had seen sunlight in over a year.
The 6 pirates who operated the station were executed on-site. No trials. No hesitation.
Cargo logs were extracted. The nav-core was ripped from the central relay. The Ember didn't linger. No trace of the outpost remained after the detonation charges triggered.
Frozen Moon of Hadar Prime
The ice cracked as an Atlas-class lander pierced the storm front and hit the ground with thunderous momentum. Its engines vaporized nearby snow. Its ramp fell like a guillotine.
Sergeant Eda Sorrin charged first, her visor already pulsing with contact IDs and thermal overlays.
"Move! Clear the dome! Secure the stacks and slave pens!"
The Crimson Maw presence was minimal, but entrenched. Defensive turrets, trip mines, outdated droids. Nothing stopped Dominion exo-armor and precision strike fire. The depot fell in under ten minutes.
Within the structure, 67 individuals were discovered 29 Terran, the rest alien: Twi'leks, Rodians, even a starved Wroonian boy who spoke in broken Basic and clutched a talisman.
The prisoners were given oxygen, sedatives, and processed into evac dropships. The few who couldn't walk were stretchered over scavenged crates of Maw rations and fuel cells.
Sorrin watched as they lifted off silent beneath the hiss of melted ice and groaning metal.
There was no anthem. No announcement. Only one word spray-painted on the depot's bulkhead before departure:
REMEMBERED.
Deep Void Relay Station ("Ghost Chain")
In the void between sectors, where stars were few and signals weaker still, the VSS Hush glided into position like a phantom.
The station was a relic a half-functional Maw logistics node long forgotten by anyone but scavengers and slavers. But it still pulsed with life.
Operative Myrren Tahl deployed with six Dominion infiltration agents, each armed with EM-null breachers and psychotropic canisters. No entry alarms triggered. No screams carried far.
They sabotaged life support. They triggered hallucinations. The slavers turned on each other before the kill order was even issued.
The aftermath was clinical.
The data cores revealed Hutt syndicate dealings, auction logs, exotic cargo transfer points and biometric files linked to Terra-born civilians still listed as "Pending Sale." Some were children. Some were marked for experimentation.
The Hush left no trace.
Operation Breakchain Summary Report
Terran Year: 2203 GrS Year: 32,423 BBY: 3673
Raids conducted: 23
Total civilians recovered: 20,389
Terran origin: 1,536
Non-Terran civilians: 18,853
Of these, 2,303 are human, but not from Terra (e.g., colonials, slaves born off-world, or galactic humans) rest includes Twi'leks, Duros, Rodians, Wroonians, and others
Captured enemy vessels: 3 (light cruiser class and below)
Towable wrecks: 6
Crimson Maw outposts eliminated: 15
Confirmed slaver casualties: 238
Dominion losses: 47 personnel, 2 Ironhold-class freighters damaged with 1 being scrapped, 3 Shrikes.
Three weeks later
The nature of the raids began to change.
What started as surgical strikes against crippled outposts had escalated. The Dominion had confirmed larger Maw installations in fringe sectors asteroid shipyards, smuggler holds buried in planetary crust, and a known former command-and-auction node near the edge of a lawless corridor.
These targets were heavier. Armed. Worth the risk.
And behind them, patterns emerged. Routes. Logs. Transfers.
Each strike yielded data, and each dataset pointed to the same grim truth: tens of thousands of Terran and galactic civilians were still out there, lost in the Maw's shattered supply chains or worse, sold to neutral systems that asked no questions.
VSS Gravemind
Orbit of Celvax Minor Crimson Maw Relay Anchorage
A converted Hammer-class siege hauler, the Gravemind was armed with side-mounted siege mortars and forward breach bays. It hung like a blunt weapon above the atmosphere of Celvax Minor, a lifeless ball of storms and magnetic ice.
The Maw had repurposed an ancient satellite control network there. Below, on the anchor grid platform, slaver engineers monitored dozens of redirected drone vessels, still ferrying cargo from old Crimson contracts.
The Dominion wanted that network. And the prisoners inside it.
At 03:11 standard time, the Gravemind dropped all stealth protocols. Five Atlas-class landers launched simultaneously.
Explosions bloomed across the anchor grid.
Sergeant Elira Malko breached the main control dome with a thermite ram. Her squad moved in tight formation through the twisting halls.
Slavers fired blindly. Some tried to flee. Most died before they reached the outer lift shafts.
They recovered 181 prisoners, 64 Terran, 117 aliens crammed into auxiliary drone holds with no gravity and half-pressure air. Malko stayed until the last cage was cut open.
Before departure, engineers ripped out the Maw's long-range transmitter array and redirected it, converting it into a relay beacon tagged with Dominion encryption.
Dominion Carrier Group – VSS Bastion Prime
Deep Fringe Staging, Border of Wild Space & Outer Hutt Influence
Commander Thalia Rune stood over a glowing tactical display as battle reports flowed in from 3 separate strike teams. The Bastion-class fleet carrier had become a mobile war engine, its hangars full, its decks loud with steel and marching boots.
"Three outposts were neutralized this week," she said to her command staff. "Resistance is stiffening. They're coordinating again."
"Shall we pull back?"
Rune shook her head.
"No. We push harder. If they grow teeth again, we should knock them out now."
Behind her, Dominion techs worked in silence. Shrikes launched on patrol. Ironholds rotated prisoners and supplies. Vultures ran simulations of orbital-to-surface saturation.
They weren't just striking.
They were learning.
Each encounter was logged. Each target recorded. And every survivor human or otherwise was added to a growing database of potential allies, future threats, or useful assets.
Someone asked what happens to the saved non-Terrans
Runes voice cold as ice replied "They are not our people, we give them a working ship and tell them to go back, even if we wanted to bring them the people are still distrustful of aliens, afterall our first contact resulted in a planetary invasion." She paused before continuing with a slight weary tone "Maybe in the future when the wounds aren't fresh"
After a minute of heavy silence, Rune's voice echoed through the command deck.
"We are not here to play saviors. We are here to take back what's ours. Every Terran. Every ship. Every scrap of tech. They stole from us. Now we will strip them bare."
Terran Year: 2203 GrS Year: 32,423 BBY: 3673
Six weeks later
They called it Velis-Ka.
To the Crimson Maw, it was their final crown, a spiked fortress on the edge of nothing, orbiting a dying red star. An old mining world turned fortress-world, wrapped in orbital husks of scavenged wrecks, armor, and chained corpses.
To the Dominion, it was a cancer that needed to be burned from the stars.
And burn it they would.
High Command Planning – Operation FIREBREAK
The enemy had consolidated. Their remnant fleets were here. Their warlords, their auctioneers, their chain-masters all hiding beneath atmospheric defense domes and orbital flak webs built from the bones of lost convoys.
It was a death trap.
So the Dominion brought enough firepower to make a Mandalorian blush. There is no such way as not such thing as "enough firepower".
3 Bastion-class fleet carriers
14 Vanguard-class corvettes
8 Hammer-class siege haulers
34 Ironhold-class freighters (heavily armed)
112 Shrike multi-role starfighters
18 Vulture-class bombers
47 Atlas-class troop landers
4 Specter-class recon ships (blackout protocol enabled)
Thousands of crew and pilots and thousands more of infantry with hundreds of GAVs,APCs and other weapons from the war.
Operation FIREBREAK would hit hard and fast. No prolonged sieges. No messages of surrender. No parley.
There was no need for diplomacy when there was nothing left to say.
Outer Orbit of Velis-Ka
A hyperspace rupture bloomed with ships tearing into real space across the dark of the system's edge like jagged white scars. Then the fleet poured in.
The Dominion didn't arrive in formation. It arrived like a blade.
Bastion carriers emerged nose-first, already cycling through launch rotations. Shrikes launched before sensor shadows had even faded. The Specters flickered and vanished into the Maw's flanks, feeding encrypted visual data into every gunnery station across the fleet.
Moments later, the first railgun lances fired.
A Maw watch station, a bent, bulbous hulk welded onto a moonslug carcass disintegrated in seconds.
POV – Admiral Lucien Taggart, Bastion Prime, Command Nexus
"Release suppression wings. No mercy."
His voice was dry thunder. His eyes never left the visual grid.
Maw defensive platforms came to life. Hundreds of turrets and turbolasers extended on mechanical limbs from gutted cargo freighters. Slaver cruisers scrambled to escape orbit, dragging launch cables and plasma-fed cannon arrays online.
Taggart leaned forward, marking vectors.
"Begin the collapse."
Above Velis-Ka, the void writhed with violence.
Shrike fighter wings carved burning lines through the black, executing synchronized rotations in arrowhead formation 12 per unit, their targeting relayed by Dominion Tactical Interface. Maw defenders responded with blaster cannons salvaged from derelict warships, but they were outdated and overloaded. In the silence of space, the Maw's desperation was visible in the chaos of their movement, scavenged cruisers scrambling in panicked bursts, half-formed flak nets firing erratically.
Every moment I saw a new ship fall.
Dominion Vulture bombers broke formation and plunged into lower orbit like winged thunder, dropping grav-bombs that shattered massive gantries into shimmering clouds of debris. Each detonation sent secondary shockwaves across the wreck-laced orbital plane, scattering slavers into disarray. Crude defense platforms built from old fuel tankers and fused scrap fired in blind salvos, only to be ripped apart by railgun lances from Vanguard corvettes weaving through the smoke.
Specter-class recon ships danced at the battle's edge, unseen by most. Their virus-pulse mines silenced Maw communications, shutting down command chains and slave-control systems. Across the Maw network, confusion rippled, shackles deactivated, cell doors opened, and automated override systems jammed. It was not just war. It was psychological domination.
From the bridge of Bastion Prime, Admiral Taggart watched a Maw frigate veer off course, engines spiraling, and collide into its own dockyard. The impact lit the sky with molten fire.
The Maw wasn't surrendering; they were simply losing the ability to fight.
But they weren't without teeth. A cluster of six slaver capital ships regrouped above the planet's equator, forming a broken line and unleashing coordinated salvos. Missiles, pulse beams, and burst-pods streaked toward the Dominion fleet. The initial barrage caught several Shrikes mid-rotation 4 were annihilated, vanishing in flashes of blue and flame. A Hammer-class drop hauler was struck along its dorsal plating, venting atmosphere as it spun into a chaotic retreat vector, trailing sparks.
But the Bastions held the line.
Shield sector rotations absorbed the brunt of the assault, managed by the integrated AI lattice across the fleet. Where one ship took damage, another adjusted trajectory. Command calculations processed by the second. Returning fire came like divine judgment. Bastion Prime's twin spinal turbolasers locked onto a Maw heavy cruiser and fired lances of plasma.
Yet amidst the destruction, care was still taken.
Lt. Karra Wynn's Shrike spiraled through the battle's heart, dodging enemy fighters and flak shells. Her DTI-AI pinged an alert: slave cages were still visible along the central superstructure of the Maw flagship. She adjusted fire, dipping low, choosing her targets. She fired her autocannons into an exposed engineering deck away from the cages and watched the ship fracture along its spine. Slaves would not die for the mistakes of their captors.
By the 17-minute mark, Dominion superiority was clear. Smoke and wreckage clogged the upper orbital bands, Maw ships in full retreat or dead in space. Two slaver vessels attempted hyperspace escape but were intercepted and crippled. Another was boarded mid-rotation, its engines sliced open by Dominion marines using magnetic clamps and explosives.
With the space above Velis-Ka cleared and Maw comms in ruins, the command was given. The Bastions opened their ventral hangars, and from their depths came the roar of engines. Atlas landers surged into descent patterns. Hammer-class haulers followed, their bellies full of drop troops, armored crawlers, and urban pacification gear.
The time for orbital superiority was over.
Now came the descent and the war on the surface.
Onboard Bastion Vanguard, Commander Thalia Rune stood hunched over the tactical array, the war-scarred surface of Velis-Ka rotating in slow, steady resolution before her. Red contact markers dozens of them blinked across the display, denoting enemy flak towers, orbital hangars, power junctions, and defense tethers. The Maw had fortified this planet like a dragon nesting in its hoard, rotten teeth facing every approach vector.
Her eyes flicked between readouts, voice sharp. "Rotate Bastion-2 to flanking pattern. Move Hammer units into deceleration dive. Shrike formations: angle strike-paths through the eastern orbital plane and engage with minimum overspill."
Beneath her boots, the deck trembled, a railgun volley from the portside battery surged down its spine, then flared across the stars. One of the Maw's mid-range interceptors, a retrofitted mining cruiser, vanished in a burst of slag and shrieking plasma. The blast flickered across the hologrid, the red marker blinking out.
She turned to her comms officer. "Push forward. No hesitation. They don't have a center to hold."
The reply was cut short by a shockwave a nearby Hammer-class hauler took a glancing hit, shearing away its dorsal plates. The battered vessel spun, stabilizers flaring in emergency override. Its dropship payload scrambled to reassert control.
Thalia snapped back to the table, tapping her finger against a growing cluster of crimson signals near Velis-Ka's north orbital tether.
"Mark Sector Echo-7. Bring in the Vultures. That flak web is too dense for clean drops. We burn it out before the landers commit. If you can see it, destroy it."
She did not bark her orders; she delivered them like weights dropped onto iron. Every word calculated, focused. There was no panic on her deck. Just noise, data, and purpose.
From her vantage in the Bastion's fire control tower, she could see the ebb and pull of the fleet like a tide of steel. Dozens of Shrikes peeled off in pairs and rejoined strike wings. Ironholds maneuvered into recovery patterns, their magnetic clamps already locking onto drifting slaver wrecks. The stars themselves seemed to move, veiled in smoke trails and flickers of dying reactors.
Commander Rune narrowed her gaze as the orbital holoscreen shifted again. She didn't flinch as another Maw flak platform detonated in the upper atmosphere, its core shattered by a Vulture's precision bomb. She simply tilted her head.
"They're breaking," she muttered to herself, then louder, to her officers: "Keep the pressure. We are not here to test their walls. We are here to erase them."
Even as wreckage filled the orbital plane, Thalia kept her focus forward. The enemy still had teeth, and the battle for the surface had not yet begun.
Deep within the Maw's central command spire a twisted obsidian tower buried in the upper orbital array Overseer Karduun stood hunched over a malfunctioning display grid, the dim red glow of emergency lights flickering against his scar-lined face. The Dominion had arrived faster than anticipated, and with far more force than any of his scouts had warned.
Smoke curled from a shattered conduit overhead. Static hissed through every comm channel. Orders barked out from below panicked, contradictory, overlapping. He silenced them with a slam of his fist against the terminal, cracking the edge of the screen. Around him, officers moved like rats in a flooding tunnel.
"ARE YOU ALL FUCKING CHILDREN?l!" he bellowed. "Group the remaining capitals! Channel all power to flak dispersal grids and forward shields!"
Below the command deck, the remaining Maw fleet heeded his cry. Six capital ships crooked juggernauts patched together from looted freighters and stolen war barges aligned into a jagged phalanx, covering the last viable launch corridors. Their engines roared. Salvaged plasma arrays opened fire in wide salvos, painting the void with streaks of green and violet.
But it wasn't enough.
Dominion fire chewed through the gaps. One slaver frigate exploded in mid-formation, torn apart by a concentrated railgun barrage. A second was gutted at the engines, spinning into the upper atmosphere like a comet, its crew already dead or unconscious.
Karduun turned to his Miraluan comms officer. "Status of our planetary uplink?"
"Offline," she replied, pale. "Viral infiltration. Specter-class… it's already inside the net."
The Overseer knew then. This was no raid. No punitive strike. This was a final reckoning.
"Seal the spire," he snarled. "Prepare ground fallback."
And with that, he turned to face the holoscreen one last time watching the Dominion descend.
In the chaos above Velis-Ka, Lt. Karra Wynn danced through death.
Her Shrike-class starfighter twisted through the debris cloud of a burning Maw skiff, the flash of its reactor burst momentarily washing her cockpit in white. Shards of hull plating whipped past, bouncing off her forward canopy with hollow pings. She didn't flinch. Her eyes were already scanning for the next vector.
"Multiple hostiles, starboard," her DTI-AI chirped, voice calm amid the storm. "Trajectory intersecting slave modules on the Maw flagship superstructure. Confirm strike permission?"
Karra's thumb hovered above the trigger. Her heads-up display outlined the vessel's forward control decks armed, bristling with flak cannons and then highlighted the slaver cells beneath its spine. Thermal imaging showed faint life signatures. Dozens. Maybe more.
She released her breath.
"Negative. Adjust targeting. We're not blowing up prisoners."
"Understood. Redirecting to auxiliary power nodes."
She pulled the Shrike into a barrel roll, slipping just beneath a tumbling lifeboat. Her wingtip barely cleared a spinning girder, the fighter's stabilizers flaring red-hot as she corrected course. Her nose tracked a series of coolant vents along the enemy cruiser's flank. The moment they turned green in her reticle, she fired.
Twin autocannons rattled the frame kinetic slugs tearing into exposed metal, rupturing conduits in a fountain of sparks. A follow-up plasma burst ignited the feed line. The entire port section of the Maw vessel convulsed and blew outward.
"Confirmed cripple," the AI reported. "Slave sections intact."
Karra didn't respond. Her focus had already shifted. A Dominion Shrike two clicks above her was struck by an arc of flak spinning out in flames. A cry of static rang out through the open comm net, then silence.
She gritted her teeth, angled her Shrike into a tight loop, and shot toward the enemy position that had fired the shot.
Behind her, Velis-Ka's horizon loomed a stained and armored sphere of scars and fire, its surface already trembling from distant detonations.
But Karra Wynn wasn't thinking about the surface. Not yet.
She was still in the sky, still flying the edge between vengeance and precision hunting slavers in the dark, one burning wreck at a time.
The bridge of Bastion Prime was quiet now, save for the soft hum of filtered air and the distant rumble of stabilizer pulses correcting the carrier's slow drift. The forward viewport stretched wide across the command dais, revealing the aftermath: a graveyard of burning hulls and fractured debris fields slowly unraveling in low orbit.
Admiral Lucien Taggart stood with hands clasped behind his back, gaze fixed on the scorched remains of a Maw cruiser as it slowly broke apart, its spine folding inward like wet paper. A faint flicker pulsed on the tactical display beside him a casualty marker fading to black.
"Final numbers," said a voice behind him Commander Thessal, one of his war aides. The man held a datapad with both hands, knuckles pale.
Taggart nodded.
"Forty-seven confirmed Maw vessels were neutralized," Thessal began. "Twelve destroyed during withdrawal, three captured, two boarded. Civilian casualties—minimal. Shrike squadrons reported precision strikes only. High-resolution scans show multiple slave modules preserved and tractored for recovery."
"And our losses?" Taggart asked, his voice low and even.
"Seventeen fighters. Two Hammer-class haulers damaged 1 critically, better off as scrap. One Vanguard corvette ripped apart by concentrated fire, most of the crews evacuated. No capital-class losses."
Taggart gave no outward reaction. He simply took the pad and scanned the figures himself, thumb shifting slowly down the list. Names scrolled beneath his eyes ship codes, pilot tags, unit designations. He paused on one: Lt. Daro Venn, lost on approach after shielding a crippled lander.
He closed the report with a tap.
"Acceptable," he murmured, sighing heavily.
The ground beneath him gave a soft thrum a signal echoing through the ship's internal grid.
The drops had begun.
Velis-Ka's sky cracked open as Dominion landers pierced the cloud cover in waves, atmospheric engines howling. The shriek of re-entry set the clouds alight in orange trails. The first wave descended fast and low Atlas landers escorted by Shrikes in tight formation, weaving through the burning columns of anti-air fire still sputtering from ground emplacements.
Below them stretched a scarred world of fortress cities sunk into deep canyons, slaver towers jutting like broken teeth, blast walls covered in crude sigils and chains. Slave blocks clustered in industrial pens. Gun turrets swiveled up from makeshift towers. Sirens wailed. Every inch of Velis-Ka bristled with resistance.
Inside Atlas-09, Staff Sergeant Arlan Brask checked the seals on his drop harness and gave the squad a nod.
"Doors drop in 6. Keep tight. Follow me through or don't come through at all."
The red light above them blinked twice, then went green.
The ramp dropped.
And hell followed.
The first Dominion boots hit dirt under fire.
Velis-Ka's atmosphere was thick with carbon soot and the oily residue of industrial slagworks. The entire landing zone designated Grid Alpha-Six was a cratered expanse of blackened rock and rust-colored concrete. The Maw hadn't just fortified the world; they had corrupted it. Refineries burned constantly, casting oily shadows across the broken skyline, while chainlink walls and welded slave towers reached into the smoke like skeletal fingers.
Staff Sergeant Arlan Brask landed hard.
His boots slammed into the crater rim just as an autocannon burst shredded the air a meter behind him. He ducked low, shouldering his repeater rifle, HUD blinking with heat signatures beyond the smoke wall. Around him, his fireteam fanned out Dominion marines in reinforced breacher armor, matte gray and trimmed in crimson. Efficient. Silent. Lethal.
"Vox online," Brask growled into the comms. "Alpha-Six on the ground. Taking fire from the refinery east wall. Multiple bunkers."
Static hissed back. Then: "Copy, Alpha-Six. Reinforcements en route. Paint targets and proceed with caution. We are not here to level the slaves."
Brask signaled with two fingers and advanced.
From the refinery line, Maw defenders opened fire with 2nd rate rotary guns prone to jamming, mounted in reinforced dursteel pits and bolted onto scrapsteel. They fired wildly, arcs of green plasma hissing overhead, burning into the stone. Slavers in spiked armor barked orders and hurled explosives blindly. Many wore chains as trophies. Some used slaves as human shields, collars still blinking with flickering control lights.
Brask didn't hesitate.
He tapped his helmet. "Stunners, I want clean entries."
A ripple of semi-silent pops hurled the stunners from underbarrel launchers from three Dominion marines and the first slaver nest was rushed and in less then a minute went silent. Dominion did not waste time every shot counted and precise. Every room was cleared methodologically
Above them, a Shrike screamed past and dropped a sensor pod into the enemy trench network. It lit up the map with hundreds of red pulses. Too many for just Maw.
Brask cursed. "Slaves are armed."
"Correction," a voice cut in cold, female, detached. "They were armed. Command has confirmed mass override. Collars deactivated. Identification of friend-or-foe systems in place."
"Copy that," Brask said. "Let's hope they shoot the right bastards."
Elsewhere – Sector Delta-9, Barricade Spine
Private Ren Vorkov, fresh off his first orbital drop, knelt behind a rusted vehicle husk as beams of flak fire ripped through the alley ahead. He hadn't signed up for this. At least, not like this.
Slavers didn't fight like soldiers. They fought like wounded animals. Every corner hid an improvised mine. Every tower, a sniper. One of the Maw defenders had strapped a young alien child with plasma cells to and made him run towards ]the incoming landers before being disintegrated mid-run.
Ren had seen the legs fly up in the air.
"Move, Private!" barked his squad lead, Sergeant Kalesh, dragging the younger soldier from cover. "We take that control node or we'll have a lot more corpses and a lot fewer evac paths."
Dominion support drones buzzed overhead, using a variety of mounted weaponry and support systems to help the infantry. The trench lines ahead lit up with returning fire this time from former slaves. Emaciated, furious, many with trembling hands but firing still. One woman with coloured appendages and some marks on her face held a slaver's shotgun in one hand and a rusted vibroblade in the other.
Ren made eye contact with her as she screamed something in a language he didn't understand and charged into a trench, disappearing into the smoke.
He swallowed. Then followed.
High Above – Velis-Ka Atmosphere
Specter-2 ghosted silently across the sky, its adaptive plating shimmering like heat haze. Inside, Dominion Intelligence operatives watched the battlefield unfold across dozens of displays.
Director Alia Vecht watched in silence.
"Slave population has begun an internal revolt," said one analyst. "Estimated 30% have taken arms. Another 10–12% attempted to flee the zones. Rest are either in cells, unconscious, hiding or broken and fighting for the slavers still, not knowing they are free."
Vecht nodded slowly. "Broadcast Dominion identification beacons. Make sure our units can mark the difference between chaos and target."
"And if the freed slaves attack us?"
Her lips twitched, a hint of amusement but she said nothing.
Back on the Ground – Sector Gamma-2
A massive Maw warlord resembling a green pig with tusks, armored in plates with a giant axe, stood atop the barricade, roaring commands in guttural Huttese. Around him, loyal slavers formed a bulwark against advancing Dominion units. Rockets flared overhead. Maw banners burned.
But the wall wouldn't hold.
The Bastion's central railgun batteries spoke from orbit; a single hypersonic projectile slammed into the ground behind the Maw position, carving a molten trench through the rear defenses. The shockwave sent parts of bodies flying, at least those that did not vaporise, with dirt boiling into the sky.
And from the smoke came the Hammer-class landers.
Troop doors opened mid-air. Dominion heavy infantry dropped in powered armor suits, storming forward with grav-harnessed momentum, kinetic shields lighting up under fire. Every step forward was paid in blood.
By hour 4, Dominion forces had established hard control across 4 of the planet's 9 major slave zones.
Resistance was thickest around the planetary core, a towering fortress built into a mesa crater, housing Maw command and the largest slave pens. The deeper they pushed, the more brutal the fighting became.
But the momentum was clear.
Terra had come for justice.
And there would be no negotiations.
9 Hours After Initial Drop
The sky above Velis-Ka was a funeral pyre.
Black smoke poured from broken domes, and plasma scars rippled across the planet's surface. Dominion forces had carved a line straight through the outer defense sectors, pushing the Maw forces into retreat. But ahead of them, in the heart of a weather-scorred crater, the fortress rose a dark monolith embedded into the earth itself, built from the wreckage of enslaved civilizations. It was not elegant. It was not beautiful. It was power and it was dying.
Inside the forward command trench, Staff Sergeant Arlan Brask wiped a smear of blood from his visor, then knelt behind a pile of scorched concrete. Dominion flags were already being raised behind the lines, marking cleared sectors. But this, this was the endgame.
He turned to his comms specialist. "Get me a line to Hammer-5. I want a full breach column on the east tunnel mouth in 10. Bring the crawlers."
"They've mined the slope," the tech warned.
"Then tell the crawlers to smile and drive angry."
The Heavy Crawler Units or "Mules"
Classification: Armored Ground Assault & Logistics Crawler
Length: 26.5 meters
Crew: 3 (pilot, gunner, engineer)
Troop Capacity: Up to 14 passengers or modular cargo containers
Primary Role: Infantry support, battlefield transport, mobile fire support
The Mule is a low-slung, all-terrain armored crawler built for high-risk frontline deployment. Powered by a hybrid fusion-diesel drive, it rolls on six thick armored treads reinforced for mud, ash, and rubble. Its chassis is angular, boxy, and plated with reactive ceramic composite armor designed to withstand anti-personnel blaster fire and light anti-vehicle weaponry.
The front cabin houses a compact cockpit flanked by reinforced viewports and layered with overlapping armor plating. Side panels conceal retractable modular pods for cargo, medical supplies, or personnel seating. A rear ramp allows for quick loading and disembarkation under fire.
Mounted on a dorsal turret is a twin-barrel rotary autocannon (20mm), capable of suppressing infantry and light emplacements. Optional mounts include a grenade launcher or short-range anti-armor missile rack. Smoke dispensers and micro-drone ports offer additional battlefield utility.
Often deployed in groups, Mule Crawlers are used to follow up Hammer-class landings, providing mobile cover, battlefield resupply, and extraction under fire. They lack speed but excel in survivability and brute endurance.
Some have given them the nickname of "Walking Walls" – slow, ugly, and indestructible.
Overhead, Shrikes strafed the upper ramparts while Vulture bombers banked into their fourth attack run. The fortress's flak towers were still active, but dwindling each pass knocked out another. Precision drops by recon troopers had marked internal heat vents and turret nests. The railgun crews on Bastion Prime were already correcting their angles.
Behind the lines, Hammer-class siege landers touched down and released the crawlers they ascended the crater slope, ripping through obstacles. Plasma fire lit their paths. One crawler hit a mine and vanished in a sphere of red-orange fire. Two more pushed forward.
From inside the crater, the fortress began to howl.
The Maw had activated their sonic disruption array. It wasn't meant to kill, it was meant to confuse, deafen, disorient. Dominion comms fluttered, visors buzzed, and soldiers staggered from the feedback. Brask spat onto the dirt, ripped his helmet off, and shouted to his squad with his own voice.
"Push! Plug your damn ears and move!"
They surged forward armor scorched, weapons hot, adrenaline overriding nausea.
Inside the Fortress
Overseer Karduun stood in the central command hall, flanked by his final lieutenants. The chamber was cavernous, its walls made of cannibalized starship plating and the bones of old uprisings. Hundreds of slaves were still locked in cages not for work, but for leverage. Human, Duros, Twi'lek, Rodian, even Mirialan children all crammed into cells as living shields.
His voice echoed across the stone.
"Do you see them, you dogs? The Terrans come to take you to use you. You think they bring freedom? There is no freedom. There are only new masters!"
Some of the prisoners stared at him in silence. Others wept. One threw a rusted bowl at his feet.
He turned away.
"They want blood? Then we drown them in it."
The blast doors to the lower levels opened. Emergency reserves crimson-armored Maw berserkers, drugged and implanted with neuro-override shock collars poured from below, howling.
Breach Point – Eastern Wall
Sergeant Kalesh and Private Vorkov led the breach team through the shattered flank of the fortress. The crawler had detonated on impact, blowing a hole wide enough for four men across. Smoke poured from the opening. Flashes of light blinked inside like a thunderstorm.
"Vorkov! Left flank, eyes on that corner!"
They entered fast and hard suppressive fire first, grenades next. The halls were narrow, full of screaming. Not just Maw. Slaves were caught in crossfire, and the Dominion teams quickly deployed smoke barriers and shield walls, trying to separate combatants from civilians, some were ripped apart when a grenade was thrown amongst them and the civilians, bodies and pieces of them flying everywhere,
A slaver with bloodshot eyes lunged from behind a support beam, vibroaxe raised only to be tackled mid-air by a half-starved Wookiee wearing a broken collar and nothing else but blood and hatred. The two fell into the spreading fire below together.
Kalesh kept moving.
Fortress Upper Levels – Operations Command
Commander Thalia Rune had come to the planetside. Her black command cloak now hung tattered, one sleeve burned away by a glancing plasma hit. She stood at the base of the enemy's command tower, blood on her boots and a combat pistol in one hand.
She had led the storming team herself, no delegation, no drones.
The last of the Maw lieutenants fell at her feet. She looked down at him, breathing hard, visor cracked but still functional.
"Secure the uplink," she ordered. "I want full archives pulled. Every name, every sale, every chain link accounted for."
She turned to her comms officer. "And send the signal."
A moment later, a Dominion flare fired into the sky blood-red light carving through the clouds.
Fortress Lower Levels – Slave Pens
Brask and his fireteam made it to the pens last. What they found was chaos: hundreds of beings packed together, some in chains, others holding makeshift weapons, unsure whether the Dominion were saviors or slavers in new armor.
He raised his rifle, then slowly lowered it.
He took off his helmet.
"Terran Dominion," he said. "You're free."
The silence that followed felt like a wound healing.
Then the crying started. Then cheering.
Not all of them understood his words but they understood his tone.
13 Hours After First Drop
Velis-Ka Fortress: Neutralized.
Enemy Forces: Eliminated or captured.
Dominion casualties: 811 dead, 2,200 wounded.
Inside Bastion Prime, Admiral Taggart reviewed the numbers in silence. The list of the dead was long, but the number of the saved was longer.
He looked at Vecht. "Burn what's left. Glass the Maw symbols off this world. I don't want a single chain surviving."
Vecht nodded once. "As you command."
Outside the window, the orbital guns turned again this time, toward legacy.
And fired.
The firestorms had faded, but the scent of ash lingered in the air.
Velis-Ka's skies no longer burned, but its surface was scarred by orbital fury. Dominion recovery columns swept through cratered corridors and melted infrastructure, dragging wreckage from the soil and locating the last hidden pockets of survivors and resources. In the ruins of the slave pens, some still intact, others crushed by falling towers, the full scale of the Crimson Maw's operations was becoming clear.
Preliminary scans and biological tallies confirmed the staggering number: over 394,000 living slaves were recovered on Velis-Ka after the fighting. The dead, buried under rubble or lost to the orbital barrages, numbered in the tens of thousands more but even the survivors painted a grim picture of the Maw's reach.
Among them:
94,017 were Terran-origin humans, many abducted during the Crimson War from Earth and Luna along with small early scientific outposts.
300,210 were non-Terran civilians, including:
43,108 non-Terran humans.
Over 60,000 Twi'leks
49,000 Rodians
31,000 Mirialans
27,500 Duros
12,000 Cathar
6,800 Gran
84 Wookiees
And countless others drifters, orphans, outcasts from scattered systems, some undocumented entirely.
Also among them: 42 confirmed Sith Empire citizens, including a lower ranked logistics officer, whose biometric data confirmed Imperial affiliation, though now considered MIA.
Rear Admiral Dakarai herself debriefed the man. His name was Karven Trell. His rank was Lieutenant Commander under the Imperial Navy Logistics Corps, though he had been declared "disavowed and lost in a supply convoy raid" nearly a decade ago.
"I am no threat, you did the empire a favour by killing this filth." he said simply, he took a moment to reorient his thoughts before in a cautious tone with a hint of arrogance. "Should you let me and my fellow imperials go I will make sure to put in a good word for you, and should force allow your people to be protected under the empire."
Dakarai, kept an expressionless face before thanking him for his words and leaving the room.
Taggart reviewed his file. No known combat operations, pure logistics, no crimes against sentients. Bit arrogant for some low leveled logistics officer, even after a decade in slavery. After a quiet moment, he nodded.
"Give him one of the slaver transports. Let him and other imperials go."
Aboard the Bastion, the mood was not one of celebration but protocol.
Minister Elena Vos stood before a projection of species tallies and repatriation routes.
"Terran-origin citizens will be processed for reintegration. Full psychological and biometric review. Families reunited where possible. Children... will be re-educated," she said, pausing only to confirm the soft flickering of child profiles being processed by the Dominion's Civil Integration Network.
"And the non-Terrans?" asked an aide.
Vos gestured to the auxiliary screen.
A cluster of captured Crimson Maw shuttles and retrofitted freighters now floated in orbit, their holds packed with the alien survivors. Dominion engineers had stripped the weapons and rerouted life support. Fuel lines had been restored just enough for jumps within nearby sectors.
"They'll be returned," she said. "Or told to make their own way. They are not our problem."
"Even the Wookiees?"
She turned slowly, eyebrow raised. "Why, are they somehow special or something?"
There was a long silence. Then, "And the volunteers?"
Vos narrowed her eyes. "The what?"
"We've received multiple requests from Twi'lek and Mirialan civilians, even a Cathar teenager asking to stay. Serve. Fight."
Vos's tone turned completive. "Deny them, its still tense back home, any sort of alien could spur a ptsd riddled veteran into organising a lynching mob." She shook her head slightly. "We need time to let our people heal."
The aide didn't argue. Just recorded the directive.
On the surface, near Grid Delta-6, a group of Dominion marines watched as the first non-Terran shuttle lifted from the landing site. Its hull still bore the scars of its former purpose: slave cage clamps, stun ring attachments, and the faint outline of a Crimson Maw insignia painted over with neutral gray.
Inside, aliens sat in silence. Some watched the stars. Others held one another. A few cried without sound.
"Where are they going?" asked a new recruit.
Sergeant Brask stood behind him, helmet tucked under one arm. He stared at the retreating shuttle without emotion.
"Wherever we're not."
Back in orbit, Admiral Taggart stood before the open viewport of the Bastion. Salvage teams were still pulling debris from the gravity wells. Two of the captured Crimson Maw destroyers now floated under Dominion flags, their hulls undergoing field retrofits even as the fires below still smoldered.
"Mission status?" he asked, voice low.
Vecht replied without looking up from her datafeed. "All Terran citizens accounted for. Non-Terrans offloaded to Maw transport remnants. We've tagged the hulls no weapons, minimal fuel, limited hyperdrives. Just enough to get them off the map."
"And the Sith Imperials?"
"Gone, presumably back home."
Taggart gave a small, sharp grin. "Hopefully, this scores us some brownie points with them for not killing their people."
Below, Velis-Ka's fortress, once a monument to cruelty, had already begun its transformation. The Dominion had torn it down. Now they would build on its bones.
Not an empire. Not yet.
But a dominion of steel and fire and purpose.
Location: Outer Edge of Hutt Space Aboard the Personal Cruiser, Gorvul's Pride
Gorvul Besadii Dajel was not an ambitious Hutt.
Unlike his cousins who tangled with the syndicates and auctioned flesh on the moons of Nar Shaddaa, Gorvul preferred his distance. His interests were narrow: exotic fuel commodities, information brokerage, and above all his safety and comfort. His cruiser Gorvul's Pride was a barge of decadence; it was sleek by Hutt standards, armored to the teeth, but outfitted for speed and silence that is not typical of the usual Hutt loud power and might.
And from a cloaked perch in the Velis Drift, he watched something... unnatural unfold below.
Velis-Ka, the fortress world of the Crimson Maw, had long been an unpleasant reality in these fringe sectors. Gorvul had done occasional business with them, slaves mostly. The Maw had been useful in its brutality, a sharpened stick that kept smaller powers on edge. But now, the stick was broken.
And set on fire, and thrown in the black hole for good measure.
The battle had raged for hours. His ship's long-range optics caught every detail. It wasn't a brawl, it was a cold and methodical execution.
Massive blocky ships unlike any he recognized had dropped out of realspace in sharp formation, not lumbering like pirates or scattershot like Outer Rim militias. This was military. Not the Hutt Cartel, not the Republic strey patrol. Something new.
They swarmed like a machine that had waited too long to move. Carriers bristling with disciplined squadrons. Bombers flying in pre-plotted runs. Dropships descending under the cover of orbital flak lines that carved rings of flame across the planet's upper atmosphere.
Gorvul had watched the Crimson Maw ships scramble. He'd seen their desperation. He'd heard their emergency signals and their silence once the missiles struck. The Maw fleet hadn't stood a chance. Even their larger ships were gutted mid-burn, their remains spinning silently into orbit.
The ground war hadn't been much better. Infrared scanners and atmospheric filters revealed the flashes of bombardment, the slow crawl of firelines, then mass movement of personnel and what appeared to be refugee herding.
From his vantage point, it was all clinical. Terrifyingly so.
His protocol droid leaned closer. "Master Gorvul… should I continue logging the telemetry?"
Gorvul waved a flabby arm. "Yes. Yes. All of it. Send nothing. Speak to no one."
He sat in silence, watching the Dominion fleet secure low orbit. A trio of massive ships clearly command carriers maneuvered into a staggered triangle formation. One of them deployed drones in a grid pattern across the hemisphere. Survey drones? Recovery? Identification?
Too methodical.
Too fast.
Too... Terran.
He had heard rumors, of course. Most of the hutt space in north-eastern reaches have, of a world called "Terra," somewhere far in the Uncharted Reaches south-east of Zygerria and north-east of the Hutt space, and outside every official map. Stories whispered from shattered Maw convoys and deserters about savage humans who fought like machines and spoke only of retribution. Most had laughed. Primitive brutes with retrofitted trash ships. Barbarians, if even real.
Gorvul had just seen the truth. And it sobered him.
These were no primitives. These were not barbarians.
They were precise. Cold. Focused.
They had waited five years. And when they struck, they did so with the full weight of a state that had only one interest: revenge.
Gorvul rubbed one of his eyes slowly. The Dominion hadn't broadcast any claims. They hadn't hailed any ships. No declarations of war. No demands. They came, they killed, they left. The Maw was gone.
A corner of his mind considered the opportunity: move into the vacuum left behind. Seize abandoned Maw assets. Smuggle from the debris.
But another voice older, quieter urged restraint, the voice that kept him alive amidst the volatile Hutt politics.
If the Terrans returned, they wouldn't ask questions. They wouldn't recognize Cartel neutrality. They wouldn't negotiate.
Gorvul glanced once more at the Dominion fleet. A massive symbol was painted across the prow of the lead vessel. A six-sided crest: deep crimson, filigree gold veins, a lone star above a forward-pointed chevron.
The Terran Dominion.
He had seen enough.
"Prepare our jump," he said. "We leave. And we tell no one we were here."
Everyone in the room blinked in surprised, except the protocol droids, immediately asking "Not even the Cartel?"
"Especially not the Cartel," Gorvul muttered, retreating into the shadows of his chamber. "Let them chase ghosts if they must. I saw what killed the Maw. I won't be next."
However, one of the people inside looked at his communicator knowing he will be handsomely rewarded for bringing in information to certain information brokers, why sell the information once if you can sell it multiple times to different people.
Outside, the stars above Velis-Ka shimmered faintly with the afterburn of Dominion fleet thrusters, a curtain closing on a world erased.
And in that silence, a new fear was born in the outer rim.
A fear of something that had no name, but a flag and a purpose.
Terran Year: 2203 GrS Year: 32,423 BBY: 3673
2 Weeks After the Velis-Ka Offensive
The smell of scorched iron had faded from Velis-Ka's orbit, but in the data archives of the Bastion, the war still echoed.
In a deep chamber beneath the carrier's tactical command level, walls hummed with active terminals. Recorders stitched together battle footage, fleet schematics, and biometric tags cross-referencing what had been destroyed with what had been saved. The Dominion's Recovery and Analysis Division worked in silence, broken only by the occasional clatter of boots or the quiet beep of newly decrypted Maw files.
There was much to learn.
And even more to claim.
In the days following the operation, the numbers had been tallied and finalized.
From the surface of Velis-Ka, the Dominion had recovered over 394,000 living captives, most of them slaves drawn from dozens of species and systems. 94,017 were Terran in origin citizens stolen from Earth. Their return was marked by silent reunions, medical screenings, and the careful rebuilding of identities.
But 43,000 of those rescued were human and not Terran.
They spoke a different language, bore tattoos from frontier empires, and remembered homes far beyond Dominion charts. Many had never heard of Terra. Some had fought under other banners. A few remembered Sith or Republic uniforms.
The rest over 250,000 aliens of various species were quietly shuttled out on retrofitted slaver vessels, provided with just enough fuel and nav-data to return to friendly space, or at least, away from Terra's path.
From the ruins of Velis-Ka's underground fortresses, Dominion agents recovered over 12 petabytes of data encrypted manifests, slave market ledgers, tactical dossiers, and fragmented communication logs between Crimson Maw captains and distant allies, as well as other miscellaneous stuff, things that are common knowledge in the galaxy, but for Earth it was a treasure trove of information on different species, planets, history. Everything.
It was these final fragments that revealed the scope of what lay beyond.
There were names of sectors and systems not charted in Terran star maps. Mentions of syndicates. Ancient cults. Dark temples. Cartel trade posts. And scattered notes about "Imperial shipments" and "Republic interference."
But more than anything else, the data confirmed a chilling truth: the Crimson Maw was not a unique enemy.
It was a symptom.
And Terra had caught only the beginning of the galaxy's sickness.
Aboard Ironhold Prime, now stationed in a holding pattern over Mars orbit, Dominion high command gathered in full. The operation had concluded without terrible Terran loss of life, regrettable but acceptable considering the scale.
What they gained was more than survivors or territory.
They gained a message.
Admiral Lucien Taggart stood at the center of the council chamber, backlit by the holographic projection of Velis-Ka's surface. Red lines indicated captured zones, salvaged vehicles, and recovered intel. Blue highlighted orbital debris, some of which had already been repurposed for the growing Dominion shipyards.
Around him sat the Triumvirate.
Director Alia Vecht, pale and composed, tapped through prisoner records and asset logs. Minister Elena Vos monitored footage of the alien refugees departing in silence. Neither smiled.
"There were no foreign protests," Vecht noted. "No bounty placed. No transmissions from the Hutts. Only silence."
"We expected as much," Vos replied. "This corner of space isn't governed. Just exploited."
Taggart stared at the map.
"Then we exploit it better."
In the public networks of the Dominion, the events of Velis-Ka were never referred to as war. Official channels spoke of a "liberation campaign" and a "classified recovery initiative." Footage released to the public showed soldiers helping children human and alien alike aboard medical transports, engineers building shelters, and freed Terrans saluting the Dominion flag.
The reality was blood and ash.
But the people did not question. Approval ratings rose. Re-enlistment numbers surged. Volunteers flooded training halls.
And on Mars, new hulls were already under construction.
The fleet would expand. The outer raiding posts would resume. Systems once considered unreachable were now marked for recon. The next phase was underway.
Terra had returned from the grave.
Now it was building something far greater than vengeance.
It was building a purpose.
In a darkened conference chamber on Earth, as rains lashed the perimeter of New Avalon's shield wall, Director Vecht scrolled through the last translated datapad from Velis-Ka.
It contained a list of Crimson Maw trading partners, some active, some neutral, a few... disturbingly organized.