Four days later.

The capital: Lessu.

Maxwell Bay

Maxwell straightened his white dress uniform and then folded his hands behind his back. The Admiral was standing in front of his ferry in the courtyard of the state house, waiting for his brother and sister in law.

Once again they were late and Mawell was pretty sure that it wasn't Yela's fault. Then heard the thundering of an approaching LAAT.

A few seconds later the gunship soared into view. Maxwell saw that one of the pilots had drawn a dancing Twi'lek on the side of his bird. Although he was quite sure that it wasn't really appointed considering that they were on Ryloth but decided not to write a formal complaint.

The gunship landed nearby and the doors opened.

Yela and Alex stepped out of the crew cabin as the LAAT powered down its engines. She seemed to have managed to force her husband into his midnight blue dress uniform. His general's stars were pinned on his collar and he also had a respectable number of medals pinned to his chest including the Medal of Valour.

Yela was wearing a long blue dress with a modest cleavage and bareback. In one hand she was holding a handbag, with her other hand she was clutching her husband's arm. "It's about time. You look beautiful Yela."

The Togruta winked at her oldest friend. "It's his fault we are late and thanks." 

At this Alexander grumbled something under his breath.

Maxwell couldn't understand what he said but it didn't seem to be anything constructive because Yela jabbed her elbow into her husband ribs.

"Greetings dear brother. So, should we get going? There are people waiting for us."

"Why not," Alex replied glumly.

"So Alex, I believe it is time I introduced you to the exciting world of politics. Try not to shoot yourself...or any of our hosts for that matter."

Alex said nothing. The three-headed onto the state house and joined the crowd of Twi'leks and foreign dignitaries.

One week later.

Alexander Bay

Yela, stood next to Alex as the two of them inspected the damaged village. They had received a distress call and by the time they got there the attack was over and the Raiders had fled. Now they were busy repairing essential buildings and providing medical care.

Alexander was in a very good mood considering everything. He and Yela were spending time together on an unprecedented scale.

The General found himself watched a group of Twi'lek children playing on an AT-TE walker. He was slightly impressed by their capacity to let go of trauma and just play on a tank.

Alexander himself was hoping to have children in the near future but of course, hadn't told Yela about those plans yet. 

"Ahm, sir. Is that supposed to be like that?" Boss asked dragging Alexander out of his daydreams.

"What?" The Commando pointed at something behind the General.

Alex turned around and his jaw dropped. In the distance, maybe fifty miles away a warship descended through the evening sky trailing a storm of fire hundreds of miles long.

"That Boss is a Separatist frigate. Yes, it is supposed to be burning, and no it is not supposed to be here," Yela snapped.

Alex exchanged a look with Boss. "You should listen to her, she is a professional."

The village was deathly silent as everyone watched the burning frigate streaking over the sky and then disappearing over the horizon. A few seconds later a bright flash of light lit up where the ship had disappeared.

"That is one big explosion," Boss remarked.

"Max must be engaged in some sort of battle up there," Yela realized.

"Yeah, sure as hell looks like that. Let us wrap this up and recall all our teams. This can't be good." Alex ordered. 

Yela was staring up at the sky with a thoughtful expression on her face.

-------Line breaker--------

The moment he arrived at the HQ, Alexander jumped into his starfighter and powered up the engines. Moments later he was zipping through the atmosphere, gaining altitude as quickly as possible. Finally, the atmospheric drag disappeared as they rapidly won on altitude.

What was the hell going on up there? Then he spotted the Pride in the distance along with three separatists frigates of the separatists. Two more Separatist warships had already been reduced to burning wreckage and were slowly descending down towards the planet where they would find their end.

Flashes of light lit the space around the ships as they unleashed their rage against upon each other. Gritting his teeth Alex opened up the afterburner and accelerated towards the battle.

He opened a channel to Yela who was waiting back on Ryloth. "Hey beautiful. My brother seems to have started a party without inviting me."

"What are you talking about?" Yela asked sounding slightly annoyed.

"Well, in short, the Pride is there and there are these Separatist ships. They are all shooting at each other. I think the hangar is open, just tell the boys to join me here." He quickly closed the channel.

He needed to concentrate.

Alexander noticed that the hangar doors of the Pride seemed to be jammed half open so he turned toward it, ignoring the separatists that were by now also shooting at him and dove towards the hangar.

Considering that he was moving into the Pride's firing solution and that all her guns were blazing away it came close to a miracle that he didn't get blasted out of the sky as he descended down towards the hangar.

While he approached the Pride he could see that the ship had received quite an extensive amount of battle damage, with countless small fires burning everywhere on her hull where the armored plating had been breached.

Blue and red streaks of plasma hurled back and forth outside the canopy of the cockpit.

He somehow managed to slip past the half-opened hangar doors and also past the force fields and crash my starfighter into a parked ARC- bomber. When Alexander collected his senses he realized that there was also a battle raging in the hangar.

Maxwell Bay

Maxwell stood at the front of his bridge glaring Separatists frigates. One of the ships seemed to have technical issues because she wasn't shooting anymore and the third ship was retreating in flames. The fourth frigate, however, seemed to share the same opinion of his ship that he had of it because she was stubbornly shooting at the Pride while Maxwell was returning the favor in kind.

"Rogers, get those shields back up! Now!" Maxwell ordered evenly.

"We are recharging the generations, sir," one of the young officers reported from his console down in the pit. Maxwell's first officer was down in the main hangar overseeing the defense against the boarding party so it fell to Max to oversee all the battle stations.

"We have hull breaches from deck twelve to deck nineteen, section thirty-four to sixty-five!" Another officer yelled. "Evacuate and seal the bulkheads. Then vent the atmosphere, we don't need explosive decompressions."

Considering the odds in numbers the battle was going rather well. The Pride had lost two of her main gun turrets on her port side and her paint job was ruined. "Helm, new heading two-one-zero by three-seven- two, dead slow ahead. Keep firing and try not to shoot at their armor plating. Let's make as much damage as possible."

"Aye, sir."

The Pride listed to port and slowly started turning, protecting the more damaged side of the hull. "Sir, Harper is reporting in. He says your brother is down in the hangar."

"Understood." Maxwell didn't even look to check who had spoken and didn't bother to ask how his brother had gotten on board. With all the debris from the battle, it wasn't hard for a single fighter to slip past undetected.

"Okay, shields are back up." Someone yelled. "Okay good. Let's fight this out." Over the next few minutes, the fight turned in the Republic's favor as the Separatists frigate slowly crumbled away under the onslaught of the Pride's blazing guns.

When secondary explosions tore through the ship Max turned his attention to the powerless frigate. "Get that ugly thing out of my sight, fire all weapons. Full Salvo from the main batteries."

"Aye aye, sir. It's actually fun when they don't shoot back," Nina announced.

"Well, what are you waiting for." The Pride turned toward the drifting ship and opened up with all her remaining turbo blaster batteries. Blue streaks of plasma tore through space and impacted the dying vessels hull.

"Admiral, I have a dozen gunships on sensors. Transmitting transponder codes. Confirmed, they are allied. Sir, I think they brought tanks."

Maxwell nodded slowly.

"Okay, try to get those hangar doors open and please don't shoot at them. Plot course for the running ship when you are finished with this pile of junk, I need to visit damage control."

Alexander Bay

Alexander der was standing behind a barricade with a platoon of Clones trying to contain the attacking droids. His blaster was empty so he was forced to resort to his lightsaber which he was currently using to block blaster bolts while the Prides clone troopers were putting as many shots downrange as possible.

Privately Alex preferred his green lightsaber crystals to his brother's blue one.

"General, look there." One of the clones pointed out to the hangar doors. At first, Alex couldn't see what he meant but then realized that the doors were opening. That didn't make much sense seeing as were engaged in combat but then a dozen LAAT gunships poured in a second later and landed behind his defensive line, two of them carrying AT-TEs.

"Ohh great. Let's get ready to rumble." Alex pointed his lightsaber at the approaching droids and jumped over the barricade and charged. While he hadn't been paying any attention the droids had advanced a lot more than Alex would have thought possible and suddenly he found himself surrounded by them. Faced with this problem he did the only sensible things. First, he used a force push to send half a dozen junk droids flying and then he started hacking his way through the separatist's ranks, for once putting aside his aversion to the force.

Maxwell Bay

The Admirals mood had improved considerably since the beginning of the battle seeing as he was now running down the last separatist's warship. He knew that his ship was trailing debris and flames but didn't care.

"All engines, answer ahead flank!" he ordered.

The entire ship shuddered as the Pride's thrusters starting pumping out thousands of tons of thrust. He was still waiting for a report from the hangar bay. He hadn't heard anything since his reinforcements had arrived.

 But, judging by the fact that they still had the power to run the ship and air to breath it was safe to that the borders had been contained.

"Range, thirty miles and closing," Nina Foster yelled. "Open fire as soon as you are in range!" The wisp of a grin curled his lips.

"Hello, Maxwell," an all to familiar voice greeted him.

The Admiral glanced at Yela who entered the bridge unnoticed and now stepped next to her friend. He hadn't sensed her approaching which troubled him but in my defense, he hadn't been paying attention, in fact, he had been a bit preoccupied.

"So, you here too! How are things going down there?"

"Just great I think. I had Boss bring along two heavy walkers to even out the odds. Alex sent me up here. He said you need my help but I think he is just overprotective" the Togruta growled, obviously annoyed. 

"If only he knew..." the Admiral whispered. A grin appeared on Yela's lips as she remembered the high-risk ops they had pulled off over the last few months and something gave Maxwell the suspicion that Yela hadn't shared that part of her job with Alex who seemed to have convinced himself that Yela had a safe office job.

That would stay their little secret for now.

"Ready to enjoy the fireworks? You missed most of the fun?" Maxwell asked. 

"With pleasure." Yela rested her hands against the edge of the window and leaned forward in anticipation. 

"We are in range!" Nina announced calmly. 

"Fire at will." The thing that happened between the separatist's warship and Maxwell's Venator-class was beautiful but was also over way too quickly as the battleships batteries opened up again and massacred the last ship. Half a minute later an explosion tore through the frigate as it's core overloaded.

"Stand down to yellow alert. Bring us back into a standard orbit and give me a full damage report."

Just then the doors opened and Alexander stomped in. Max's brother was covered in grime and seemed to be a bad mood. Blood trickled down from a scrape on his jaw.

"How is the weather down there?" Maxwell asked feeling rather pleased with himself. He could tell from the way Yela was leaning forward that she wanted to embrace her husband but she kept it together and stayed at my side with her hands folded behind her back.

"We wrecked the rest of the droids. What the hell happened?" Alex asked and staggered slightly to the side and was caught her by Nina who happened to be walking by. Maxwell realized that Yela wasn't currently needed so he decided to play it nice.

"Yela would mind escort General Bay to the med bay. He is dripping blood all over my floor."

The Admiral turned around and looked back out of the front door.

Yela Bay
Yela could have hugged Max to death for letting her take away my husband and emotional outburst wasn't exactly typical for her. Of course, she made an exception for her favorite boys. Yela clutched my husband's arm and dragged him over to the turbo lift and off the bridge. Of course, she knew that if she were of any use to Max on the bridge right now, Alex would have to get his own ass down to med bay but it was still nice of him. He tried to hide it, but he was capable of being nice.

As soon as the door of the turbo lift closed Yela rounded on Alex. "Are you alright?" she asked and palmed his cheek. 

"Yeah, do you know what is going on? Why is everyone shooting at us."

"Because they are bad people." He glared at Yela, catching along. "Not nice. I mean why are the separatists here?" 

The Togruta stayed silent, already lost in thought. That was a very good question and she intended to find answers to, she was also more than sure Maxwell would be asking the same questions.

"Relax, Yela ordered." The door of the turbo lift opened and she led Alex through the ship. Clones were running around left right and center, there were ceiling panels lying around on the floor and bundles of fiber optic cables were hanging from the ceiling. She dragged Alex over to the overfilled med bay.

Winter Wolf & Lengendary95 over and out.