The beep of the alarm clock instantly jolted me awake.
Less than an hour left.
Oh boy.
I moved quickly — cold water to the face, a ration bar forced down more out of discipline than hunger. War didn't wait for comfort. By the time I stepped into the corridor, the *Terminus* was already humming with heightened readiness.
In the hangar-bridge access corridor, the captain's image flickered to life on a hover communicator.
"General."
I nodded once and continued forward. The bridge doors parted with a hydraulic hiss.
The clone crew was already in motion — officers at tactical stations, blue holographic panels hovering in layered arcs, sensor data cascading in controlled streams. No decorative transparisteel windows. No panoramic viewports.
Just armored walls and reinforced bulkheads.
A combat bridge.
Exactly how it should be.
"Five… four… three… two… one… hyperspace jump complete!" an operator announced in a perfectly even tone.
Stars snapped back into existence.
The system's primary sun flared across the holomap as our position resolved near the gravitational center. The bridge erupted into organized intensity — sensor reports, navigation confirmations, shield diagnostics.
"Planetary visual," another clone reported.
The target filled the main projection.
A reddish-brown sphere wrapped in a faint green atmosphere. Vast inland seas glimmered under sunlight, small ice caps visible at the poles. From orbit it looked almost peaceful.
Then the scanners marked the threat.
A dot resolved into structure.
The unfinished frame of a Lucrehulk-class core ship.
Magnified, outlined in blue scan tracings.
Construction scaffolds clung to its outer ring. Small transport craft moved in steady lanes around it. The most notable absence was the central sphere — the independent 400-meter command core — gone.
"Core module has descended to the surface," a scanner tech confirmed.
Perhaps early-war variations, I thought. Or an improvised conversion.
Either way, it was functional.
"Prepare forward artillery deployment," I ordered.
Within a minute, the two LAAT carrier variants assigned to the heavy weapons division maneuvered with precise coordination. The SPHA-T I was aboard was guided along reinforced rails and magnetically locked to the prow of the *Terminus*, mounted atop the forward hull plating.
The SPHA-T loomed like a mechanical cathedral.
Its articulated legs were braced against the deck. Reactor conduits pulsed along its armored spine. The main cannon extended through the opened prow aperture, aligned directly with the orbital structure.
Inside the gunnery cradle, clones moved with disciplined efficiency.
"Targeting system calibrated, sir," one reported. "Effective range exceeds standard engagement envelope."
I studied the feed. The optics were extraordinarily refined — long-range clarity comparable to high-magnification planetary telescopes. Intentional design? Or overengineering by Kuat's weapons division?
Either way, useful.
The hum of the artillery reactor deepened.
I placed my palm against the SPHA-T's inner control column and closed my eyes.
Breathe in.
The metal was cold.
Beneath it, the reactor core pulsed — a restrained star waiting to be unleashed.
Through the Force, I traced every conduit: primary reactor, auxiliary lines, heavy gas compression chambers, capacitor banks. I mapped them like a monk mapping breath cycles.
Memory rose.
Geonosis — heat, sand, blaster fire in every direction. The suffocating sense of being a single body against an endless mechanical tide.
Nepal — snow and steel. Lightning tearing through machine ranks while thunder rolled between mountains.
The arena.
The helplessness.
The fury of surviving.
I did not reject the anger.
I shaped it.
The Force tightened around me, dense and focused. Blue sparks crawled across my fingertips.
"Containment fields stable," Ethan's voice came through the comm, deliberately level. "Reactor at eighty-nine percent."
"Stand by."
I inhaled deeper.
The Code teaches serenity.
War demands dominance.
I allowed them to converge.
Lightning erupted from my hands — controlled, compressed into a single channel. It flowed into the SPHA-T's intake conduits, flooding through heavy gas cartridges and into the micro-reactor lattice.
The machine shuddered.
Capacitors whined as they absorbed the unnatural surge.
On the forward display, the cannon's emitter shifted from red to brilliant blue. A dense plasma sphere formed at its mouth, arcs of white lightning coiling through it like living veins.
Gravity inside the cradle felt heavier.
My muscles trembled.
Not rage.
Purpose.
"Maximum compression achieved," Ethan reported. "Recommend discharge within three seconds."
Enemy vessels began adjusting formation.
Too late.
I opened my eyes and looked through the forward viewport at the orbital ring.
Confident.
Static.
Unaware.
I exhaled.
"Fire."
The SPHA-T discharged.
A concentrated sphere of incandescent plasma wrapped in crackling lightning tore across the void like a caged star set free.
For a heartbeat, silence.
Then impact.
The energy sphere struck the Lucrehulk frame near its central structural spine. Shields flared once — then collapsed. Lightning cascaded along the ring's skeletal lattice, overloading unfinished reinforcement nodes.
The station split.
Segments of the massive "bagel" tore apart, the ring fracturing into burning arcs that spiraled outward in controlled destruction rather than chaotic explosion.
Inside the SPHA-T, reactor output dropped sharply toward nominal levels.
"Sir," the artillery chief said sharply, "two enemy Munificent-class frigates altering course. They appear to be preparing engagement vectors."
I frowned slightly.
Odd. The Force lightning itself only affected what I directed it toward. No chain interference.
Perhaps there were deeper techniques archived within the Sith holocrons. Knowledge for later.
"Target systems recalibrated," the chief continued. "Ready to engage."
I steadied myself and drew once more on the reactor's amplified core.
Two more plasma spheres formed in rapid succession.
"Fire."
The first struck the nearer Munificent along its midsection. Shields collapsed instantly under the overcharged surge. The crescent hull split cleanly into two drifting halves.
The second frigate attempted evasive thrust.
Too slow.
The third discharge impacted just aft of its command section. The vessel tore apart, fragmented by internal detonations as lightning coursed through its spine.
Silence settled.
The lightning faded from my hands.
I rested my forehead briefly against the cold control column.
The storm within quieted.
One breath.
Two.
When I stepped back, my expression was calm again.
To the crew of the *Terminus*, it was artillery superiority.
Only the machine — and the Force — knew the truth.
Less than two minutes into the engagement, twisted wreckage from the shattered station still drifted ahead, partially obstructing our path.
Half of the ring remained intact, rotating slowly like a broken halo.
"Is that so?" I murmured. "Well then, it's not meant to be."
I opened a channel.
"Deploy the five heavy tugs assigned from the Coruscant Logistics Corps. Begin debris displacement operations. Push the larger segments toward planetary descent vectors."
"Yes, General."
The tugs detached one by one, tractor beams lancing outward to seize fractured sections of the ring.
If the enemy had moved their core module to the surface, then answers lay below.
And I intended to find them.