Abyssal waypoint

[Commander Natherax]

On the 'Northern' Pole of the dead star, where the largest of the surface fissures scared the frozen star, rose the arms of the Abyssal Fortress. Built around the gaping ravine the majority of the base was hidden within, construction of new ships had begun, the maw easily big enough to fly all but the Dragondorf itself into. Not capable of holding everything at once there where a few of the ships clustered near the tops of the Fortresses highest trusses.

The Naysayerr was one of those on the exterior, along with the Epic One.
Has Natherax sat in his command seat he gazed out into the blackness, having nothing to enhance the view at the moment only the dark sky was before him. The Naddist clean up crews had been most efficient in clearing up everything that wasn't part of the star to begin with, it was practically a miracle that they had in fact cleared it all. He mused over this a while, when from behind he heard the door open and close again.
What.

There was a silence at first then a throat clear, the raspy voice of Naddist sorcerer spoke.
Natherax..
They never gave him title, it annoyed him.
You asked to be informed of any further issues concerning the progress of the Starbase.
Slight pause.
The Pantor dens have been completed, we have already begun to seed the Sithspawn through out. Though. It will be another month before they are even cubs, without the parental units aboard the Dragondorf, their growth will be slowed. You must request a shuttle from High War Lord Freedon Nadd, bearing the mothers.

Natherax sighed.
So I will. Now go, and don't report anything else unless it pertains to something.. urgent..
He sighed. Tomorrow he would take a task-force and hit another system, this idleness grew boring.

[The Corellian Navy]

[38 minutes after hyperspace exit]

"Getting our first readings now, low band mostly. Plenty of fuzz from Gekk-4045. Adjusting for blue shift, models suggests the degeneration started a few weeks ago."

"Anything suggesting our target is there?"

"No active sensor sweeps yet, and we're still too far out for any resolution on the CGFS."

"Very well. Continue surveillance. Navigation, folder status."

"Spun up and ready captain. Output is 53 TJ."

"Keep them spinning."

"Aye captain."

"Sir....is it wise to keep the folding drives jump-ready?"

"We have 50 hours, give or take, 'til charge saturation, Mal. And if they're going to sniff us out, it's going to be in the first handful of hours. If this is a cake walk, we'll store to capacitors. If not, we'll be gone before they can even jump a welcoming party in."

The Chistori male clacks his teeth, his snout twitching, indicating his unease.

"Don't worry, Mal. Even at periapsis, we still have a good distance between us and them."

"As you say, captain."

"Sir, getting something on longwave radio.....encrypted, profile and frequency suggest ship-to-ship communication."

"Well well well......get us a decryption, Reynard."

"Already working on it."

[The Corellian Navy]

[2 hours later]

"Captain Serat, I have a decryption key. It's.....it's port chatter."

"What?" Aldir asks, clearly picking up the simulated agitation in the AI's voice.

"Unmistakeable, sir," the AI assures him in its almost Rylothian-accented Basic. "Docking procedures, flight paths, tug and support vessel duty allocations...."

"What the hell is going on here...."

"Captain, the first pictures from imaging." The Chistori XO inputs the data from Sensors into the tac map on the command platform. It is a composite of several sensors layers: Full spectrum electromagnetic, communications intercepts, GCMS and radiological data all immediately compiled into a larger, visually-relateable whole by one of Reynard's dedicated subroutines.

Several icons indicate ships on patrol in the system, and their relative positions to the Monomi's current orbit. Each of them has been designated with tags classifying them by size and apparent role, as IFF data was something Reynard was still in the process of decrypting.

The dominant feature of the holographic readout was the star itself.

Reynard's avatar shimmers into being near the readout, a boy of 15 or so dressed in a medieval tunic and wide-brimmed, feather-capped hat, his most striking feature being a mop of rust-red hair.

"Your attention, messrs."

Reynard extends an arm, and the view zooms into the the star's northern pole. Image resolution quality suffers as a result, but other data layers remain.

What becomes clear very quickly is that, behind the screen of capitol ships gathered at the northern pole, some sort of facility has been hewn into the dead star itself. Tags indicating smaller support craft moved in and out of what appeared to be a cooling fissure.

"What in the seven Corellian hells....."

"It appears that the target has built a facility directly into the star in a very short time, captain. Judging by the make-up of support vessels, it appears to be, in part, a construction yard."

"It seems we are dealing with something more advanced than a simple group of pirates."

The captain attempts very hard to mimic his Chistori's XO's cool, reptilian poise. It was difficult, sometimes, for Aldir to maintain that unshakable confidence that came to Malifine so naturally.

"No doubt about it now, Mal. This is a serious operation.....cutting a facility out of a black dwarf isn't something any mining corp I know of can do."

"No, sir. Furthermore, the-"

"Cronau burst at 37.57/63.75/85.84 relative," Reynard interrupts, pointing at the location on the holomap. A new tag winks into existence between the Monomi's current position and the star. "Scanning now.............completed. Drive output and sensor profile matches the flagship of the raiding party that attack Rendili."

The tag became augmented as Reynard added additional layers of information to it, with the last bit being a wiremap outlining the incredibly large ship.

"Well, now we know we're in the right neighborhood....."

[Commander Natherax]

It had been fifteen standard hours since Natherax had found his next target, he had mobilized the best of the fleet into space and had made all the battle plans. They were to hit a series of small Imperial bases and end at Dubrillion with the Dragondorf. Where they would then set up the already crushed planet as another base of operations.

The first three stops included factories, instead of taking away from the Abyssal Waypoint's own construction team, they would simply steal another.
Dash and smash raids, had proven to be fun in the past month with unexpected multipliers in the equation.

When it came time he gave the orders and his battle group winked back into the streams of hyperspace.

[The Corellian Navy]

[18 hours into observation]

Captain Serat, his naval coat unbuttoned at the shoulder for comfort, has spent the good part of the day analyzing spectrometric data that continued to stream in via the Monomi's sophisticated sensor suite. As soon as they had moved into a range that allowed a safe margin of certainty on the resolution, they had begun crunching numbers on the ships near the burnt out star, classifying them by type, armament, drive output and signature, and so forth. Not only were they building case files that would be used to identify these ships later on, no matter where they went in the galaxy, they were also testing them for weaknesses: Building models and running simulations against similar models of Corellian naval vessels for hundreds and thousands of engagement iterations.

It had become plainly evident that whoever led this growing power base was intent on expanding their dominion. These weren't simple pirates, who generally were content with a small slice of the galactic pie. This was a major military operation at the very beginning of a penultimate strategy of command and conquer.

And for the past 30 minutes, he was getting more and more agitated, as the activity on both comms and movement had spiked.

His XO, Cmdr. Malifine Obresian, had joined him at the tactical holomap after being roused from a light nap in the ready room towards the rear of the bridge level. He was buttoning his own, significantly larger, naval coat when Serat asked him "What do you make of that?" while pointing at a three dimensional representation of a cluster of ships.

The Chistori XO clicks his saurian teeth in thought: "It looks like a jump formation, sir."

"Moreover, everything in that formation is bristling to the nines, which means they're getting ready for another raid."

"And we don't know the when or where," Reynard, ever present, completes the thought.

Obresian eyes the both of them, reality finally dawning on him.

"I know what you're thinking, and I remind you that CENTCOM didn't give us leave to follow any outbound ships."

"No, but they also didn't expressly forbid it. Our only mandate is to maintain operational cloaking and to not engage unless engaged. And personally, I'd very much like to know who their next target is going to be, 'cause it may be us."

Obresian stares at his superior officer, not offering a reaction aside from his nictitating membranes flitting across his eyes. Serat, however, had known his second in command long enough to know that he was already resigned to this approach.

"Glad to have your approval, Mal. Rey, have they made this easy for us by broadcasting a slave jump to their battlegroup, or are we going to have to do this the hard way?"

"As a matter of fact, I just finished decrypting their FLEETCOM channel, and they are indeed slave jumping."

"Good, makes our job that much easier. Pipe it to FTL and the helm and let's get a countdown up on the board. And make sure we synch speeds....don't want to arrive before they do."

"Aye captain, countdown to jump is T-minus a minute thirty-seven. AI to helm, new heading for immediate hyperspace jump. Coordinates to your console....now."

Shortly thereafter, the Monomi begins it's surreptitious journey alongside the Naddist battlegroup towards Dubrillion...