Second battle of Cularin

The Battle of Cularin was a battle that was fought in the Cularin system, near to the end of the Clone Wars.

Prelude
Following the declaration of Order 66, an order that called for clone troopers to kill their Jedi commanders, Jedi Master Darrus Jeht prevented the clones who served under him from learning about the order, by disabling the long-range communications aboard his ship, the Maelstrom. The Maelstrom arrived in the Cularin system and there, it's sensors revealed that two Republic warships, the Primal and the Undaunted, were firing on Jedi starships that were fleeing the planet Almas. Jeht told his crew that the two capital ships had been taken over by the Confederacy of Independent Systems and planned to attack them, using the Maelstrom.

Jeht's deceit
Jeht sent a short-range signal to the Primal and the Undaunted, informing them that the Maelstrom had been ordered to hunt down targets in the inner regions of the Cularin system. The two ships parted to let Jeht's ship pass and when it was between them, it opened fire. The two warships were taken by suprise and the Undaunted began to leak plasma from it's engine decks, and listed to the side. The Primal was less damaged, but still had it's weapons arrays brought offline.

The Jedi Master ordered starfighters to launch from the Maelstrom. His astromech droid, R-0, began broadcasting false CIS binary control signals in the space surrounding the ship, leading Jeht's clone troops to believe that the starfighters from the Primal and Undaunted were being controlled by battle droids. The clones then detected that the Maelstrom was the source of the signals and came to the conclusion that the Confederacy was trying to take control of the warship's control system. Jeht ordered them to lock out all external communications and to bring down the primary communications array, supposedly to stop the CIS signals.

The Maelstrom took a hit on it's starboard side, then turned around and fired on the Undaunted, causing the stricken vessel to explode. The Primal had brought it's weapons back online and fired on the Maelstrom, causing damage to it's port main thruster. Jeht told his crew to turn off the Maelstrom's engines and overburn the vessel's bow thrusters, even though the thrusters were not designed for use in the space. The effect of this was to flip the Maelstrom over while propelling it forward, and it took the crew of the Primal by suprise. The Maelstrom fired all of it's forward guns and the Primal exploded.

The arrival of the Shadowblade
With the battle seemingly won, Jeht planned to leave in his starship, the Legacy, before the clones learned Order 66. However, his plans were interupted by the arrival of the Shadowblade, a Separatist superweapon that Jeht had believed to have been destroyed. The Separatist vessel was on a course towards the planet Cularin, the system's primary world and Jeht determined to stop it. However, the Maelstrom was unable to fire it's main guns, because their cores had been shattered by firing just after the ship's reversal. With no other option left, Jeht decided to attempt to destroy the Shadowblade by ramming it with the Maelstrom, in a suicide attack.

The Shadowblade headed through the Cularin system asteroid belt enroute to Cularin. To try and catch up with it, Jeht brought the Maelstrom through some secret, asteroid-free routes through the belt, details of which had been given to him years earlier, by the crime lord Nirama. He also told R-0 and Millinae Untaire to leave the Maelstrom and flee aboard the Legacy.

When the Shadowblade emerged from the asteroid belt, the Maelstrom's crew lost their sensor lock on it, due to the presence of time rifts, which were left over from when the Darkstaff had caused the Cularin system to disappear from the galaxy for ten years. Jeht ordered his crew to fire torpedos at the Shadowblade, even though they had little chance of penetrating the CIS ship's shields, or being targeted effectively, due to the Shadowblade's cloaking device.

None of the torpedos caused any damage to the Shadowblade, but they alerted it to the presence of the Maelstrom, so the superweapon changed course, to intercept the Republic warship. Jeht wanted to lure the Shadowblade towards the Maelstrom, so that he could cause it to pass through one of the time rifts, preventing it from attacking Cularin. The Shadowblade opened fire and caused severe damage to the Maelstrom with it's first volley. It then fired a second volley, causing seven of the Maelstrom's decks to vent out into space. However, the Maelstrom then activated it's tractor beam and pulled the CIS vessel towards a time rift. Both ships plumetted through the rift and disappeared.