Dark Mirror (AU, Luke, Mara, Jacen, Han, Leia, Jaina, Pellaeon, Thrawn, others, COMPLETE)

Harry Turtledove is to Alternate History Fiction as Gandolf the Grey is to Alternate Universe fiction.

Ohh, and up.

 

Wedge, you're making me blush! Harry Turtledove is one of my favorite authors.



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Grand Admiral Pellaeon stood straight-backed and proud on the bridge of his flagship, the Black Dragon. It was Sovereign class, and capable of engaging whole fleets on it?s own, and emerging unscathed.

Not that Pellaeon would be engaging entire fleets in a matter of minutes. Far from it, the planet on the other side of the portal powering up less than a hundred kilometers away was only a frontier research base. And an Imperial agent had already cut off their communication.

In front of them lay the portal, over ten kilometers across. It was a great ring in space, and it generated the field, which they would soon be passing through. The field shone dully, leaden like clouds, but reflecting the fleet in front of it like a dark mirror.

It was Pellaeon?s duty to capture the planet, and establish a firm forwards base, a toehold in enemy territory. At his disposal he had his flagship, as well as a small fleet of Excalibur Class ships.

He looked out the forwards view ports, able to recognize the ships by sight after long years. The Barlog, the Chimera, the Manticore, the Basilisk, the Hydra, and the Doppelganger. In his opinion, the finest of all ships the Imperial fleet had to offer.

~Of course, that?s a slightly biased opinion, ~ thought Pellaeon with a slight smile which did not show on his face. They had been part of his personal fleet for seven years now, and he was as familiar with each vessel and it?s captain as he was with his own flagship.

Around the massive Star Destroyers, numerous smaller ships slowly moved into formation. Ares class Corvettes, and Hades class Escort Carriers. TIE Defenders and TIE Champions swarmed around the larger vessels. He had enough firepower at his fingertips to turn any world to slag.

He had come a long way in forty years, having joined the navy in a flash of youthful patriotism during the clone wars. His upper middle class education led him to the rank of ensign on graduating from the Academy, and joining the fleet.

Courage under fire took him to the rank of Lieutenant before the war was over. Afterwards though, lacking political connections, his promotion slowed. When Palpatine died, he had been the first officer of the Chimaera, still a high feet for someone of his social position.

When the captain mutinied against Emperor Skywalker, turning the Lord Vaders fleet towards Coruscant in an attempt at a countercoup, Pellaeon had led a counter mutiny. He had seized the Chimaera, and then the Executor, and presented them to his new lord. For him, it was not a matter of opportunity, but of doing the proper thing.

The Emperor had given him the small Barony of the planet Bespin, and promoted him to Admiral. Using the Chimaera as his flagship, he had fought under Thrawn in the unknown regions. During the second battle of Yago, he held off vastly superior forces while the base evacuated, inflicting horrible casualties on the enemies of the Empire while taking only minimal losses to his own fleet. Soon afterwards, he had received his promotion to the white.

He heard even footsteps on the deck behind him, and turned to see one of his fellows. Grand Admiral Fel nodded to him, and then turned away as a Champion flew close to the bridge, nearly grazing the shields. It bore the distinctive blood stripes marking it as one of the 181st.

?Hotshot. He?s going to get himself killed,? said Fel, under his breath. Pellaeon heard, and was unable to keep his mirth entirely hidden. Fel was still the greatest pilot around, but his son Jagged, very likely the pilot of that TIE, was very close, and getting better all the time.

Jagged was flying one of the newest ships to be found. The TIE Champion was an incredible fighter. It was faster than the TIE Defender, and carried more energy weapons. Its shields were just as strong, and it?s only real flaw was that it carried no torpedoes or missiles. So far, only elite squadrons and some Star Destroyer

 

oh, oh, Jagged Fel! Another great character! Great post Gandolf, I loved it when he said to play the Imperial March over the intercom. Couldn't help but think of what it said in the Han Solo Trilogy, how his heart swelled when he heard it.

 

Whee, thanks. I love not having to wait long for more posts.

And what I said is true. Your AU is good. I feals different from others, not that others arn't good either, I just like the way this feels.

Yeah... that dosn't sound right. Whatever... keep it up.

 

Yes, I agree. The Imperial March is certainly an inspiring piece of music.

Great post. The invasion is under way! Keep it coming!

 

That was a great post. I've always liked Pellaeon, despite his dedication to the Empire. At least he is smart, though not a genius like Thrawn. I was laughing when the order went out for the Imperial March. Great idea, though, and very fitting. I think this will be worse than the Vong.

 

Woo-hoo!!

Brilliant!

Now *this* is Star Wars!

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Holy cow!

Enough firepower to slag a planet? An Imperator-class Star Destroyer can do that. This sounds like enough firepower to turn a planet to asteroids! Especially given the low-powered superlaser a Sovereign-class carries.

As for the TIE Champion. . . how many guns does it carry? A TIE Defender has the most weapons of any 'fighter in the EU, with four lasers, two ion cannons, and a pair of missile launchers. MORE energy weapons? I'm scared. Somebody ought to tell the Republic's pilots, "Sucks to be you."

Herman, you're right. Go Dark Side!

 

Something else I just noticed. The star destroyer Barlog. Don't you mean Balrog?

 

Oh aye... one thing that bothered me... did you say GA Solo's _Falcon_ had Star-Destroyer type main TLs?! The biggest TLs on an ISD are about Falcon-sized... smaller ships can normally only carry lasers...

And Wedge88, what does the OED have to do with Vader?

- The Imperial Ewok

 

You know, Darth Real-Life is nothing compared to Darth Typo. Or Darth Underresearch.

Info post (read on if you want to see me try to dig my way out of a couple holes, and explain some of the technology):


TIE Champions pack four ion cannons and four laser cannons, for greater punch in ship to ship fighting. In hyperspace, they're as fast as a XJ-Fighter, while in real space they go about half again as fast, and are twice as manuverable. They carry no warheads at all. Their shields are slightly weaker than those of a XJ-Fighter, but it's only about a 5% difference. Champs have 4 wing's, and look like a cross between a TIE Defender and an X-Wing. They're incredible in dogfights, but lack punch to take out bigger targets. That's why Defenders are still used.


Hmmm... I suppose the Falcon doesn't have the main turbolasers after all. But as Imperial Technology has advanced, the turbolasers have gotten smaller. The Falcon packs turbolasers as powerful as those on the old Imperial Class ships main batteries, but shrunken. Newer ships obviously have more powerful batteries, Falcon sized.


Soveriegn Class Ships are not quite the same as those from Dark Empire. They lack the Superlaser. The Emperor dislikes them, believing that blowing up planets almost always is more trouble than it's worth. Instead of a superlaser, they have more room to carry snubfighters and turbolasers. They're about 10 kilometers long, two kilometers longer than the Excecutor.

 

Good story!! Looks like I'll have to stock up on popcorn!

 

Another fighter to consider is the X-1 Missile Boat. In the TIE Fighter simulator game, Thrawn developed them specifically to be a counter to the TIE Defender after Zaarin captured the TIE Defender technology. It's been a while since I played the game, but if I remember right, Missile Boats packed two missile launchers with 20 missiles each, two multi-purpose launchers that could fire any type of warhead and had a similar capacity, and a single laser cannon for shooting mines and the like. The missiles it carried were especially powerful, it could destroy a fully-shielded Defender with two simultaneous hits. It's performance and shields were only slightly less than the Defenders, at the cost of armor. It would be a great complement to the TIE Champion. Of course, if Zaarin's little coup attempt was never attempted, it wouldn't have been developed. Or would it?

Just a suggestion.

 

Mayhap thrawn developed the missile Boat anyway as a little personal project. Maybe he will use them when his 'fleet' comes in to invade.

What about World Devastators? At least they produce a useful by-product at the same time as they destroy a planet's surface.

If you want, I developed an idea for a starfighter called the TIE Phantasm, which is based largely on Maul's Infiltrator, cloaking system and all. Just a thought, it would give something else for the NR to worry about.

Anyway, GREAT STORY! Can't wait for more.

 

"A TIE Defender has the most weapons of any 'fighter in the EU, with four lasers, two ion cannons, and a pair of missile launchers."

Correction (from a certain point of veiw):

The Reborn Emperor's Shadow Droids from the Dark Empire comics have more fire power then the TIE Defender. They are equiped with an ion cannon and a repeating blaster cannon on the right wing, two dorsal laser cannons above the fuselage, an electromagnetic pulse gun on the left wing, and a concussion missle launcher as well as a proton torpedo launcher below the fuselage.

Its desputed if the Shadow Droid can be considered a fighter though. It uses a droid brain controled by the human brain of the Empire's best dead pilots with acssess to the Force. Sense TIE/D's and Trade Federation Starfighters and the Ssi-Ruuvi Battle Droids are considered fighters... then the Shadow Droid would as well. It is small for a fighter though (as are most droid fighters), being a little bit larger then a binary load lifter.

Whatever, this isn't really the place to have this discussion and I'm just being an @$$.

Ohh and I'm not sure was an OED is, but I assume you are refering to my signature. I was just being stupid. I picked weird phases and words and made my sig. It's meant to be confusing and stupid.

Ohh, okay, back to the story now.

 

Rokangus:
Did you ever play Rebel Assault II? The Empire developed a TIE fighter called the TIE Phantom. It had a cloaking device that rendered it completely invisible and undetectable. In the game, the Rebellion destroyed all but one of them and the factory where they were made, then took the last one back to reverse-engineer it, only to have the Empire use a remote-destruct system to destroy it. Also, the jamming beam system in X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter can do the same thing to electronic sensors, but can't do anything to hide from human eyes.

Wedge 88: The Defender still has more weapons. Six guns, two launchers, and a tractor beam for a total of nine. If I read your post right, a Shadow Droid has seven. But I concede that they can be considered fighters.

If you still want to talk starfighters, where should we move to?

 

Yes, I am aware of the V-382, however I always thought of it as the 'Clutch' from I, Jedi plus the cloaking device of course.

My TIE Phantasm uses the Infiltrator's hull shape and adds more meapons. The cloaking technology has obviously been downsized (TIE Phantom) so that would leave the area in the nose of the craft free for more weapons such as missles or torpedoes like the missile boat. I always envisioned the Phantasm as the heavy-hitting cousin of the Phantom. The Phantom worked well against other fighters, and I intended the Phantasm to go up against capital ships. So in a way, the Phantasm is like a cloakable TIE bomber.

Anyway, thanks for calling me on that. I didn't want to cause any confusion.

 

Thats why I said from a certain point of veiw. The Shadow Driod has a greater variety of weapons. Ones for every job. And the discussion really should be in misc. or lit.

I know quite a bit about ships and stuff, but they arn't my favorite aspect to talk about. So, lets just drop the subject.

And get on with the story.

 

UP!

 

Very short post here. I'm trying to make Danni (this chapter) and Jacen (next chapter) stay true to their charactors from Vector Prime and the NJO, without them sounding boring or whiney, and it's tough going by times.

There should be a big post either later today or tomorrow.

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Danni was watching the energy field with visual instrumentation only when the field seemed to organize itself. It went flat, forming a solid plane of energy. Danni?s breath caught.

She knew only the slightest bit about astrophysics, and could tell the energy field had been incredibly strange to begin with. But with what the field was now doing, she was able to realize that the field was artificial.

~But what?s causing it?~ she wondered in awe. It was putting off more energy then a Super Star Destroyer.

And then her questions were at least partially answered.

From out of the field came a ship, and then another, and then countless ships. Star Destroyers, Corvette?s, Cruisers, and snubfighers. An armada such as the galaxy had almost never seen.

?Statler! Get that communications array up ~now!~? Danni shouted. She looked at the ships, and for a moment took them for Imperial. After all, the Remnant was close by. But these ships were obviously far more advanced.

On emerging from the portal, the ships began to go to hyperspace, towards the planet. They flickered out of existence, and then returned seconds later as they touched the planets gravity field. From orbit, they began to send down shuttles.

The control room had gone silent. Danni realized they were all looking to her. She realized she really should have left earlier. And she realized there was only one thing she could do.

?Statler, do we still have local communications?? she asked.

Statler nodded jerkily, her short red curls bouncing on her forehead, and swallowed at her fear.

?Try to signal them? said Danni with a sigh. ?Tell them we surrender.?

 

Yeah, the missile boat from the TIE Fighter game was awesome. I loved missions where you had time to hit the reload shuttle. There's nothing better than wading through a Rebel Fleet and laying waste to Corvettes and Cruisers.

Having the fleet play the Imperial March was a nice touch.

 

This does not bode well at all, but that's what dark AU fictions are for. Very good writing, and if this AU Danni is willing to give up, she must really be scared. Please post more very soon!

 

Awesome, can't wait for more!! Also, didn't Fel have more than one kid?

 

Good post!

Master Halcyon,
In EU I think Jagged had an older brother that died in battle. Who knows what Gandolf has planned here. I'm not even going to try to guess!

 

Whoa, good posts... I can't belive I missed those! I love the way this is going Gandolf... MORE!