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The nudge to his shoulder brought Harry back to the here and now, and he listened as Master Dooku outlined his simple, but hopefully effective plan, which actually did, to Harry's relief, go beyond the "jump out as close as possible and hit them hard" concept. "Knight Vos will first lead Naboo's two squadrons of starfighters in a single wave. We only have two squadrons of them, but that is a large enough threat to hopefully pull out all of the mobile defenses our enemies can call upon. Precisely an hour afterwards Master Fay and I will lead in the main fleet."
Calling their forces a fleet was a misnomer, it was more of a small flotilla. The Republic Navy had sent eight combat-modified Consular class ships. These were the mainstay of the Republic Navy at this point, cheap to build and maintain, easy to modify/upgrade, and with both decent speed and shielding for their size. Their offensive punch consisted of several turret mounted quad lasers and two forward facing turbolasers most of the time, though the RN ships had targeting software for concussion missiles or proton torpedoes, though few had the actual weapon systems.
In contrast to that, both the Kuat designed starfighters and the Naboo designed ones had homing missile systems. The two Naboo starfighter squadrons were bolstered further by three more starfighter squadrons piloted by the Sorenno starfighter corps. This meant that not only was this battle to crush the source of the pirate infestation, but it would serve as a testbed for the starfighter-heavy concept that the counts had decided to attempt.
Master Fay stood up, gathering the attention of the crowd of officers and starfighter pilots with an ease that Harry always found astonishing from his soft-spoken master. Even the most rowdy of the pilots in the back of the room, who hadn't really been listening to anything said so far, stopped speaking and paid attention. "Some of you may know how we Jedi use the Force to do what we do," she said, smiling sweetly at them all. "One of the things Jedi can do that most people do not know about is that we can coordinate jumps through and into hyperspace to a far finer degree than that of even the most advanced computer systems."
Without a gesture or other sign of a signal, Aayla stood up, moving from where she had been sitting next to Harry to stand between Master Fay and her own master. Her shorter stature in comparison to the two adults should have brought some mutterings from the crowd, Lily reflected later, but most people didn't see a Jedi's age. They saw the robes and the lightsaber, and that was it.
"With the aid of padawan Secura, myself and Master Dooku will be able to feel out where Knight Vos is in relation to the rest of the target star system. With that knowledge and with our own abilities, we will be able to calculate a hyperspace jump into the system directly on top of the defenders."
There were some shouts of surprise at that, and Aayla felt Harry's sudden intense interest in the conversation, as if he had just realized something, sharing it with her a second later. He had heard about this part of the plan before, of course. He had even seen the Explorer do that kind of thing at a time or two, and they had certainly done it over Tatooine. But suddenly it came clear to Harry what that ability could mean in terms of tactics and strategy. Going to have to do something nice for Master Dooku at some point. His lessons on tactics and strategy are beginning to make an impact on how I think. The idea that he had simply not been mature enough before leaving with Master Fay on their journey to understand such things didn't actually occur to Harry, as it never did to the young.
One of the light cruiser lieutenants was slowly shaking his head. "I'm still worried about the lack of capital ships, Sir. If they have more capital ships, then we could be in trouble."
Harry spoke up for the first time, shaking his head. "I realize why you are saying that, Captain," he said, making no sign of having seen the man straighten as Harry got his rank correct, which few outside the navy did. His real rank was a lieutenant in the Republic Navy, but any officer in command of a ship was automatically called captain regardless of actual rank.
"However, I think you need to read about what happened over Naboo recently. Starfighter pilots can bring more power to the fight than you might be aware of, and sometimes even more than capital ships, such as is the case here. Yes, traveling through hyperspace is still an issue for many starfighter designs, but as you can see from the fact that all of our starfighters are actually here, it is no longer an insurmountable one."
There was some muttered laughter at that, and more than one of the starfighter pilots banged their fists on the seat beneath, them grinning impishly at their opposite numbers among the light cruisers. For his part the lieutenant who had spoken up only nodded thoughtfully. "I'll read up on that battle, Master Jedi. It's true I don't know much about starfighter doctrine since the RN has so few starfighter squadrons of its own. But that brings up another question. What is our ROE in this operation?"
Master Dooku fielded that question easily. "Our rules of engagement are simple: our fleet will defeat anything in space that has a weapon on it with extreme prejudice. I am not interested in taking any prisoners at the expense of our own lives." There were some mutters of appreciation for that, a few overdone but mostly heartfelt. "However, when we move to land ground troops we will need to be aware that we might run into noncombatants, specifically the Nabooan citizens who were taken en-masse recently."
He had to stop for a moment as a growl of anger rose up from the Nabooan starfighter pilots. Though their society was a pacifistic one, with most of their limited tactical doctrine based around the idea of defense first and only, these pilots were still soldiers.
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