The Destruction of Paks Planet
Year 1 of the Empire, June 2. Three days after Chardaan Planet was destroyed.
Chardaan's ashes were still cooling in space when Paks's doom arrived.
Skrand Sharp-Bick stood on Eternity's bridge, his four eyes betraying no emotion.
On the holographic tactical star map, the enormous lightpoint representing the Death Star was slowly, inexorably approaching Paks Planet. Sensors showed that the Death Star's superlaser had entered its final stage of charging.
On Paks Planet, Skrand Sharp-Bick had already done everything he could.
He had assembled a second sub-fleet, likewise consisting of a thousand Grey Horse-class escort carriers and even more drones. Eternity, the Endless-class Super Carrier, and those twenty Protoss Carriers remained in the fight.
Under three consecutive days of harassment from his fleet, the Death Star's hyperspace jumps had been delayed by a full seventy-two standard hours.
The same old tactic as always—low-grade drones stretched the formation, high-grade drones controlled the airspace, and finally, Asteria Spectre fighters covered transport aircraft as they directly deployed Interdictors onto the Death Star.
Skrand Sharp-Bick truly deserved his reputation as an expert in carrier warfare. He had pushed the advantages of fighter craft to their absolute limit.
Furthermore, after the successful interception battle at Chardaan Planet, the escort fleet available to Wilhuff Tarkin had suffered heavy losses, while its fighter formations had nearly been wiped out.
After reaching Paks Planet, Wilhuff Tarkin requisitioned all the carrier-based fighters from the Star Destroyers and Light Cruisers in the escort fleet and transferred them into the Death Star.
Yet even so, they still could not stop the Protoss Interceptor drones from slaughtering the TIE fighter formations!
Among the Galactic Empire's fighters, apart from the TIE Avenger and TIE Interceptor, which could still put up a token struggle, every other model was utterly