I am clone

Chapter 8

Invasion-

Alarms blared as the battle group began to return to real space, entering enemy territory. The loudspeaker blared All pilots to the flight deck, all grade pilots to the flight deck.

Nonessential personnel keep your heads down, gunners to weapons prep for combat. Engineers to stations, repeat all to stations.

The alarms continued and the air became quite tense as everyone prepared for the worst, crewman scrambled to their stations, and the ship began to shudder as the forces of time and space once again pressed against it. Arch monitored the command netband for activity and found far too much. Arch's ship "The Gauntlet" was giving a report to the rest of the battle group

We have sighted two providence class cruisers, along with a sizeable support fleet of frigates. Launch fighters, with orders to target enemy support craft. All cruisers focus on their provinces. Arquitens support our fighters.

The fleet now had its orders and Arch could feel the ship move to combat speed, as hundreds of gunners tensed to fire the second they came into range of their targets. The whoosh of the first volley was distinctive and every living soul on board held their breath, waiting for any indication of how bad the enemy's counter would be. The Gauntlet shuddered and those who weren't holding on to something were tossed aside. Arch was slammed into a bulkhead, and quickly scrambled back to his feet, the command comband began to transmit

This is the Gauntlet shields are holding steady for now at 73%, enemy providence's shields are down, all batteries open fire, torpedoes prepare to fire volley.

A second later, hundreds of laser cannons and launch tubes began to fire, letting off a booming sound each time they fired. The comms were filling with screams and yelling, when a calm voice came on

The dauntless has lost shields, hull damage is severe. Dauntless personnel prepare to abandon ship. Another voice responded

Negative we can make it, all hands hold faass...

There was a massive boom and shock wave knocked down every clone in sight. Arch's ears rang for a moment and his vision blurred as he and his men were thrown across the room. The loudspeaker yelled

All non essential personnel to engineering we have taken damage.

The clones didn't hesitate and quickly filed out of the room in formation and scrambled to the engineering room. On arrival they were given repair tools and surrounding computer screens displayed the damaged that had been taken. The screens displayed the following information.

Structural integrity at 84%, shields offline, engines damaged, shield capacitors overloaded, venting oxygen on deck two, two hull breaches detected airlock doors on lockdown.

The Gauntlet was in bad shape but still able to fight, he only hoped that the fleet survived what remained of the space insertion, which his last check mentioned one heavily damaged Providence and a mostly wrecked support fleet. One could only hope the Separatist retreated before they managed to destroy another cruiser and take one of the battalions with them.