"Commander, it's time to board the escape pods."
"You go first. I'm the captain. I'll be the last one out."
"This is the Way."
Tracy Reeves had no intention of leaving.
"Warships are easy to replace. People aren't. The CEC of today—and us in the future—can mass-produce warships with ease. But no matter the era, training a competent captain is always brutally difficult."
"Cadets, you are the Navy's seeds. You are Mandalore's hope. Forget the Purrgil-class, forget the Gozantis— even if it were a battleship, even if it were a dreadnought, none of it matters more than you do."
"If a ship is lost, we can buy another, build another. If someone dies, they don't come back. When an emergency forces abandonment, the crew evacuates in reverse order of rank—that's the rule. You may leave last. But you are absolutely forbidden to pull some 'go down with the ship' nonsense."
That was what the Commander had told the very first Mandalorian pilot–captain class.
"I'm sorry, Commander. This time, I'm disobeying."
Tracy Reeves sat back down in the captain's chair, resolute. She was ready to die with her ship.
Talent was rare. Captains were rare. But at least that first class had twenty-four students.
The Commander, though?
He was one of one.
Commander… if anything happens to you—if you, the "captain," goes down—where does the Mandalorian ship sail then?
After launching every last escape pod, Tracy Reeves took manual control through the captain's override fire-control system, slaving the A and B heavy batteries directly to her station. She shut out everything else and began to aim.
One more shot meant one more sliver of chance for the Commander's breakthrough—and one more sliver of hope for Mandalore.
"For Mandalore!"
Tracy Reeves punched the firing stud.
Three lances of high-energy fire flashed past Max's T-6 shuttle. In the blink of an eye, a brilliant blue sphere blossomed ahead— the dual heavy turbolaser cannons had missed, but the heavy ion cannon struck true, slamming into an M12-L Kimogila heavy starfighter.
Max snapped his hands, yanked the stick, and stitched a short burst into the disabled fighter. With its shields stripped and systems dead, it turned into a fireball.
"BOOM!"
Vacuum didn't carry sound, but nothing stopped Max from adding his own.
"Great shot!" Aayla Secura's cheer cracked through the headset.
That blue sphere and the fireball—only Force-sensitives could really catch them at that distance. Now the enemy fighters were finally pushing into naked-eye range for non-sensitives.
"Tally! Bandit hot—front!" Max shouted.
Starfighters crossed distances at insane speeds. They had only just entered visual range—and a heartbeat later, the opposing fighters were already merging.
"Dank farrik… even fifth-gen jets on Earth don't dogfight anymore, and a starfaring civilization is still doing space dogfights?" Max banked left and barked at his wingmates, "Merge! Two-circle! Turn left!"
The fighters tangled together. Tracy Reeves didn't dare keep supporting with heavy guns anymore; instead, she retargeted the Hutt flagship.
Wide-Area Silence fired.
The Hutts' next salvo arrived.
"BOOM!!!" "BOOM!!!" "BOOM!!!" …
Explosions rippled across the void. The Hutt flagship, the Evona, erupted at the bow in a sheet of fire. A dozen or so concussion missiles punched through the close-in defense net, chewing the particle shield in that sector—still in the middle of recharging—down to its lowest values.
It still didn't breach, but the spectacle was more than loud enough. It finally enraged Kosak.
For the first time since the battle began, he rose from his throne.
These Outer Rim backwaters weren't dying quietly—they were actually fighting back?
The sheer audacity.
Then a shrill alarm blared, choking off the furious curse on Kosak's lips.
"Ah!" Kosak swept a small aquarium off its stand—one filled with live zeefrogs—smashing it to the deck. "Turn that damned alarm off!"
"Yes, Great Kosak!"
Kosak hadn't fully lost his head, though. Even in his rage, he demanded, "What is it? What happened?!"
"Report: enemy starfighters have appeared to our rear—forty-eight craft. They are closing at 100 MGLT. Estimated intercept with our ship in thirteen minutes."
"Fire! Shoot them down!" Panic finally slipped into Kosak's voice. "Recall the fighters—now!"
After juking to evade incoming capital-ship fire, the leader of the reinforcement group—Captain Griff Skirata of Army Aviation's Ardent Squadron—realized their approach was exposed. He immediately powered up active sensors and active comms, dropping silent running.
"All craft: target the enemy flagship's engine cluster. One concussion missile—fire."
At this range, precision hits on small targets—turrets, deflector generators—were difficult. But the engine block was a big target.
Sure, the missiles still had a high probability of being intercepted. But every fraction of enemy point-defense attention pulled toward missiles was pressure taken off the Z-95 Headhunters' run.
"T-6s, Kom'rks—on me. Pursue. Stop the enemy fighters from returning to reinforce." Max issued the order to Christopher Wren, Aayla Secura, and the Shriek-Hawk Squadron.
"Yes, Commander." / "Copy."
"Z-95s, Fang-class—our six is yours," Max continued. "We push forward. Keep our backs clear."
"Yes, Commander."
"Commander, your six is mine." The tail gunner, Wenban Jaren, came over the intercom.
"Copy!" Max grinned and shoved the throttle to the stops.
The M12-L Kimogila was a heavy starfighter—nearly thirty meters long—but it was still a single-seater, with no tail turret. Against rear attacks, it had only two options: maneuver, or trust its shields.
The armed T-6 shuttle and the Kom'rk fighters, on the other hand, carried tail turrets.
Max and his group could bully the retreating enemy fighters from behind—while simultaneously trading fire with any pursuers using their rear guns.
So the two swarms chased each other in a tightening spiral, rapidly closing on the Hutt fleet.
At this point, Kosak didn't dare give a "fire at will" order. If his own guns shredded his own fighters, then those forty-eight enemy craft coming from the rear would be uncontested.
"BOOM!!!" "BOOM!!!" "BOOM!!!" …
The Evona was hit at bow and stern almost simultaneously.
The strike at the bow came from the earlier volley of proton torpedoes fired by the Bespin–Corellia joint fleet.
The strike at the stern came from the reinforcement group's freshly launched concussion missiles.
This time, the bow sector's defenses failed. The proton torpedoes smashed through the depleted particle shield, punched through durasteel armor, and tore open several massive holes near the forward hull.
For a 1,200-meter warship, that damage wasn't fatal. You sealed the compartments and moved on.
But Kosak began to fear.
So the invincible Hutt warships… could be hurt after all?
PS:
Ion cannons fire ionized energy that weakens deflector shields and overloads/disables electronics. They do relatively little direct damage to armor and hull. However, high-yield ion weapons can still outright vaporize poorly protected targets.
PPS:
In Star Wars Legends, the ancient Hutt Empire destroyed the star of their own homeworld during a civil war. Over time, history became myth—destroying a star turned into "slaying a god."
That's why later Hutts came to view themselves as a noble species above the divine—and they grew extremely arrogant.
PPPS:
Clan Skirata is a Mandalorian clan that appears in Legends. They built a fortress called Kyrimorut in Mandalore's northern hemisphere.
In The Mandalorian Season 3, Kyrimorut was made canon.
-
-
-
-
-
🛡️🔥🌌 STAR WARS: THE RISE OF MANDALORE 🌌🔥🛡️
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🚨 FOR MANDALORE! 🚨
The clans are stirring.
The armor remembers.
And Mandalore will rise again.
Star Wars: The Rise of Mandalore has 100+ chapters ahead available right now on Patreon! ⚔️🔥
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🛡️ THIS IS MORE THAN A STORY OF SURVIVAL
⚔️ Mandalorian warriors🔥 Clan warfare🚀 Galactic conflict🌌 Star Wars worldbuilding👑 Power & leadership💥 Massive battles🛡️ The resurgence of Mandalore
The galaxy has seen Mandalore shattered before.
But broken does not mean defeated.
🔥 A people forged in war can rise from the ashes.
And Patreon readers are already 100+ chapters ahead watching it happen.
👉 Join Patreon and witness Mandalore's resurgence long before the public release!
This is the way.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🛑 MORE NOVELS ON PATREON:
🌃 Cyberpunk: Dogtown Legend🔥 Cyberpunk: The Relentless — 500+ Ahead👩👦 Cyberpunk: Lucy Adopted Me and I Got a System — 100+ Ahead🧠 My Cyberpunk 2077 Simulator — 100+ Ahead💘 My Girlfriend's a Cyberpsycho—Who Knew? — 100+ Ahead🌌 Star Wars: Relics of the Past — 100+ Ahead🏰 Game of Thrones: Secrets Beneath the Dreadfort — 30+ Ahead⚡ The Rebirth of Harry Potter — 100+ Ahead🌹 R18: Reincarnated in Her World
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🛡️ 100+ CHAPTERS AHEAD. JOIN THE CLANS.
🔗 Patreon: www.patreon.com/c/MrMagnus👤 Patreon Name: SrMagnus🐦 X / Twitter: https://x.com/SrMagnusBook
⚠️ The novels with the most Power Stones receive priority!
🔥 FOR MANDALORE!
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━