Star Wars Fleet Battle: Piracy Doesn't Pay
Star Wars Fleet Battle Report #4
Filoni, with a shot to his engine, goes down in a ball of flames. As the Cruiser continues to fire at the Runner, Drek's Unit strafes Morad's Cruiser, firing Ion Torpedoes that disable the vessel. As crewmen scramble to get the ship operational again, Zillani is able to escape onto the planets surface and delivers the supplies.
Hello, once again! I am back, after a very long time, to bring you another battle report! I would like to apologize for how long it has taken to make this one, its just that life has been super busy. This report will stray a little away from the Rebel Cell we have been following, so this one won't really play into the story.... yet. Enjoy!
Story: After Tren's victory over the Rebels, he was assigned to become the Sector Commander of the Tallahrn System. His first task as Sector Commander is to stop the ruthless smuggling activities of the young Zabrak known as Zillani, a Smuggler and Pirate. Commandeering a Blockade Runner known as the Wolverine, he has been sited delivering supplies and information to a pirate, and possibly Rebel, group on the planet of Sylcara. Trens objective to to stay on stand bye until the smuggler returns, before springing a trap on him.
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Leading our Smuggling Operation today is the Zabrak Smuggler Zillani, commanding the Blockade Runner Wolverine. He will be accompanied by an escort of 9 X-Wings (Because I have no other fighters), lead by the Pirate Commander known as Drek.
The Imperial Blockade surrounding the humid and fungal planet of Sylcara is lead by Commander Morad aboard the Customs Frigate, The Seraph, along with Corporal Leersh, who will direct operations from The Seraph's hangar. Along the Morad is Captain Osprey, who is heading up the frigate, Intervention.
The stage is set for our battle. Zillani and his Pirate escort from the planet are ready to breach the blockade and make it back off again. The Rebel Objective is not only to reach the planet and deliver the supplies, but also to escape the blockade and blast off into Hyperspace. The Imperial Objective is to both stop the shipment, as well as to prevent Zillani from escaping again. Special abilities included in this round are mainly from Zillani, who has the ability to put a cloaker on and disguise his ship from Imperial Sensors by deploying Decoys. The other main ability would come from Corporal Leersh, who has the ability to deploy additional TIE Units once all other units on the battlefield are destroyed. While Empire has numbers and superior firepower as an advantage, the Blockade Runner, is faster, has the ability to deploy decoys, and has two Shield Generators equipped (Which allows the Runners shields to regenerate twice as fast)
The Imperial Blockade is surrounding the planet (Represented by the stones), while our Smugglers enter the restricted area. Upon entry, Morad immedietly alerts Imperial High Command, and alerts the TIEs.
The Pirate Force moves first, just slowly heading towards the blockade along the left side. The Imperials send their TIEs to intercept them, while maintaining their cruiser positions. Osprey, however, does move up towards Morads Cruiser.
Whether the Pirates even had a strategy was debatable, but whatever it was, they needed to enact it in able to face the swarms of TIEs closing in on them
The Fighter part slightly in order to make some room for the Runner, who's guns are primed for battle. Yellow 7 (Filoni) delivers the first kill as he destroys a TIE Fighter, with the Wolverine eliminating another TIE from the same unit. A TIE, however, was able to take out Yellow 9 (Thrane) during that units attack run.
Zillani uses the time to deploy his decoys. Three in total, all going in separate directions. While the decoys will confuse the cruisers, the Runner cannot fire (as that would reveal the ships position). To reveal which is the real ship, a TIE group has to strafe the decoy marker, and thus reveal if it was a decoy or the real ship. 3 more TIEs were taken out by the Pirates this turn.
The TIEs strafe two decoys before finding the Wolverine, and firing into its starboard side, effectively taking its shields down. With the X-Wings preparing to turn around and reengage the TIEs swarming over the corvette, Morad and Osprey fire on them with Turbolasers. While the inexpirienced Osprey misses Yellow 4 (Kallani)'s squad, Morad is able to destroy Yellow 8 (Hidalgo)
The Wolverine, upon its cloak being taken out, fired all it's guns onto the TIE, completely destroying a TIE unit as it attempts to enter the planet. Yellow 6 (Brutus) is shot down by a surviving TIE, as Morad's cruiser moves in to intercept the Smuggler, his turbolasers taking out what remained of Zillani's shields.
Filoni, with a shot to his engine, goes down in a ball of flames. As the Cruiser continues to fire at the Runner, Drek's Unit strafes Morad's Cruiser, firing Ion Torpedoes that disable the vessel. As crewmen scramble to get the ship operational again, Zillani is able to escape onto the planets surface and delivers the supplies.
While Zillani is dropping the supplies off onto the planets surface, Admiral Trens exits hyperspace, having been alerted of the Smugglers return by Morad. Deploying two squadrons of TIE fighters, and having been alerted that Zillani has escaped to the planets surface, Trens immedietly gets to work as he tries to block off Zillani's escape. The Zabrak would not escape the Empire again.
As Morad's Cruiser recovers from the Ion blast and turns, he fires on, and destroys, the rest of Yellow 6's unit. Zillani, realizing he is being trapped, panics and reactivates his cloak. He does this at a poor time, however, as his decoys are quickly swarmed by TIEs and the Frigates in close pursuit.
The Wolverine was found almost instantly, with TIE fighters pounding the engines of the now shield-less Runner. With its speed reducing by almost half, Zillani starts to truly panic. He pushes onward, hoping that he has enough armor and speed to be able to get past the Trens and make his jump.
He almost makes it. Morad, however, would be what ends him. He fires again at his engines, taking out two more and halving his speed again. With his ship drifting helplessly next to Trens Star Destroyer, not even a turn goes by before the Corvette is destroyed.
The battle officially ends as Drek, the Pirate Naval Commander and Fighter Leader, watches as Trens fires an endless barage into the Wolverine, the runner breaking apart and exploding. No escape pods were launched from the ship, with the only Pirate survivor being Drek and a fellow pilot in his unit, who would then be captured by Trens and be brought aboard his Destroyer for interrogation.
This battle was.... interesting. I purposely made the Empire outnumber the Pirate force in a test to see if the Rebels really could pull off a mission while outnumbered. Considering that they didnt have to worry about destroying the bigger ships, they almost got away with it. Zillani came so close to fully winning this match, its almost sad to see he didn't succeed.
Next Time: With the destruction of what was left of Desmond's Cell, he has come over to join Kareda's group, under the command of Admiral Salira. The Cell learns of an Imperial Intelligence Cruiser that was stranded and broken down in a near bye Asteroid belt. Salira believes this to be the perfect opportunity to launch a mission to recover some information from the Cruiser, and get some valuable information.
They need to act quickly, though, as the Empire is already en route to rescue the crew of the Cruiser....
