Project Ares

What's the next move?

Lakeside home - Naboo

It had been 5 days since the events on Coruscant and so far there was no sign of Palpatine, the GAR or any trouble for that matter. Padme had given birth to twins with the help of the Royal nurses supplied by the Palace. The twins, Luke and Leia were not even a week old and already showing signs of being strong with the Force. Kix, Midas and Jester were of course all over Senator Amidala and the twins, meaning that essentially each of them had their own personal doctor that watched them like a hawk. Ahsoka also helped out where she could but was for the most part very occupied with spending time with her captain.

Anakin and Obi-wan had walked off into the fields a few hours after Luke and Leia were born and vanished for three days. In those 72ish hours, Obi-wan allowed Anakin to truly open up about his fears of losing Padme like he did with his mother. How the constant ignorance and lies of the Council angered him so much that it basically drove him right to Palpatine's arms. But most of all, Obi-wan comforted his brother as Skywalker had to process the guilt and gravity of what he had done.

With Fordo leading all the scout missions with his ARC troopers and Thorn in command of the fleet, the rest of the clone commanders had come to Naboo so that they could plan their next move given the intel Blue Team recovered from the Senate building. All the Jedi Masters came along as well, mostly because some of them wanted to see the babies but also to see what Anakin had to say for himself. Unfortunately, Windu was still in a coma and was being closely guarded along with the younglings by Jocasta Nu and the remaining Temple Guards.

So while the Jedi all gathered to discuss the actions of Skywalker, Chief along with all the other clone officers met inside the Forward Unto Dawn where they had setup a makeshift intel room. Large screens decorated the walls with statistics and intel regarding the last known fleet positions of both GAR and CIS forces. But most of all, Static and Canny, a 212th slicer, were decrypting and organizing all the top secret intel that Static got on Coruscant.

While all this was happening, Blue Team was taking a semi-vacation while maintaining security around the Villa. Essentially they were on standby should any of the motion detectors Gears had setup went off, but given that the chances of that happening, it was very common to see most of them walk around with only their bottom half of armour on or even in civvies. Fives and Hardcase had gone on a recon mission inside Theed to see what effects the newly proclaimed Empire had installed.

Back inside the Dawn, the commanders were currently getting a detailed inventory of everything they had in their arsenal. Starting from the top down, they had:
- The Pillar of Autumn, a superheavy battlecruiser that could probably fight off a small fleet in terms of firepower.
- 2x Venator class cruisers, the Intrepid and Triumphant
- 1x Arquitens class light cruiser, Phoenix
- 4x Consular class cruisers including the Spirit of Fire
- 8x Nebula class attack shuttles in addition to the Forward Unto Dawn
- 80x ARC-170 starfighters
- 40x Y-Wing bombers
- 80x V-Wing interceptors
- 150x V-19 Torrent starfighters
- 80x LAAT / LAATV gunships
- 30x AT-TEs
- 6x AT-OTs
- 80x AT-RTs
- 20x AV-7 heavy artillery guns
- 15,000x 501st troopers
- 12,500x 104th Wolfpack troopers
- 300x 212th Attack Battalion troopers

If this was in any other situation, the commanders would feel pretty confident in their numbers. They had certainly made do with less, but given the force they were facing, they were so far outnumbered and outgunned that there wouldn't even be a point in trying to do the math.

"Chief, I think you and the commanders would wanna see this." Static called from his station, coming over 117 gazed over three project names; Longsword, War Mantle, and Orion. Opening the first one, the soldiers looked on the big screen as blueprints appeared for a large triangular shaped warship. Designated as the Imperial Star Destroyer, or ISD for short, it boasted a weapon compliment that could directly rival the Autumn in a head-on fight. However, the good news was that it looked as if its starfighter compliment was only 72 and it was made up of the inferior TIE fighter design, likely to make up for the immense cost of the project.