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The defenders broke in turn, the fighter squadrons breaking up into groups of four or five racing after each of his starfighters as the capital ships slowed, lobbing fire almost lazily towards the one starfighter still streaking towards them.
A moment later Quinlan felt a shiver of the Force, the faint touch of Master Fay and Master Dooku's minds on his suddenly becoming far more present. At the same exact second the rest of the attacking force suddenly came out of hyperspace.
The effect was immediate. The cruisers began to open fire on their opposite numbers; the corvettes and frigates began to pound on one another. But the speed of the incoming forces was telling, forcing much of the defenders' fire to miss while the attackers had the advantage of a few seconds surprise to move through their enemy's formation, spinning around before the attackers could recover from their shock. The dreadnought, however, took their best attacks and simply fired back calmly, not even trying to dodge, trusting in its powerful shields and armor.
While the capital ships dueled, the incoming starfighters pounced on their opposite numbers, coming out as they did in groups, several flights breaking up and turning to hunt down the heretofore confident pirate starfighters, who were caught utterly flatfooted with most of them too far away to aid one another. They had no chance to reform into their squadrons as their original prey turned on them, catching the slaving scum between two firing zones. One of the new starfighter squadrons stayed together, attacking the two medium sized, refitted freighters. One of these freighters was already sitting listless in space, its side blown out from some exterior explosion.
As he was wondering what had happened there Quinlan's systems finally locked onto the dreadnought he was still racing toward. "All ships of Task Force One, fire torpedoes!"
Behind him his starfighter pilots all let loose of fusillade of torpedoes. They were locked onto his, as if his torpedoes were tracers acting to guide them in. They did, though, come in from a wildly scattered arc, since they had not reformed yet, with each wing-pair firing from a different point in the somewhat sprawling battlefield.
Many of the torpedoes didn't even follow their predetermined lock on, instead locking onto enemy ships all around them. Yet most followed their pilots' plans, smashing into the target from all sides, not as an unstoppable blow as Quinlan had hoped, but as a wave. The dreadnought's shields rippled and died in segments, then the last few torpedoes hit, smashing guns flat or blasting its armor to pieces.
The cruisers immediately took advantage of this, moving in a line over the most wounded side the dreadnought and pouring fire in. the dreadnaught fought back, and more than one of the cruisers' shields died, damage beginning to accumulate. It also rolled, but the cruisers moved with it as fast as they could, continuing to hammer the damaged sides of the ship.
Eventually the dreadnought's shields failed utterly on that side, and soon after it lost the weapons systems facing its enemies. A second later its engines shattered, turning a barrel roll into an uncontrolled twist, and Quinlan winced. That had all the signs of the ship's internal gravity machine going, and while the ship wasn't going fast enough to make that immediately fatal, it certainly wouldn't be pleasant for the individuals aboard. A second later, the ship's generator exploded under either the strain of combat or accumulated damage, shattering the entire ship into four pieces.
Quinlan looked around, somewhat astonished as he realized how complete and how quick the destruction of the defenders had been. Surprise really counts for that much in naval battles? He had not been involved in any kind of naval battle before this. The nearest experience he could compare it to was a dogfight he'd had with a few pirate ships as a padawan. This had been something else altogether.
In fact the cause of the attackers demise was only partially surprise. The Corvettes and makeshift frigates simply didn't have the defenses they should have had. Like most pirates this group had simply added as many weapons systems as they could to their ships rather than weapons and shields in equal measure. It had come back to haunt them now, making them unable to match ships that, at least for the dreadnaught and "light cruisers," they should have been able to overwhelm.
At the moment, however, Quinlan had no way of knowing that. More to the point besides a few starfighters wildly evading their fellow starfighters, the defenders' mobile fleet had now been dealt with. That left the star fortress in orbit, and whatever weapons the base below could bring to bear on orbital targets for them to deal with.
However Quinlan's innovation had shown them the way forward. After informing Master Dooku of what he had done, the light cruisers of the Republic Navy moved in, taking long-range fire from the fortress as a few starfighters of the Serenno star force went with them, having proved slightly better in computer simulations in picking off concussion missiles, though they didn't have to do that often. Concussion missiles and proton torpedoes were expensive, and were almost impossible to get in large quantities on the black market. Still, the long range turbolaser fire was bad enough, and again the cruisers' shields began to fall, failing in some places as damage added up.
While they took fire from the star fortress, the Republic's sensors reached out, discovering everything they could about the space fortress. Then with all the starfighter computer systems locked to their own, they fired. These Consular class ships didn't actually have any homing weapons, but they had the targeting computers for them, and the starfighter missiles once again lashed out.
It took two volleys from all the attackers to get through the star fortress's shields and batter its defenses down. Whoever had designed the space fortresses had done a much more thorough job than the pirates had on their actual ships. Their systems were better too, killing many of the proton torpedoes before they could enter sprint range. But it wasn't enough to halt the weight of the torpedoes.
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