Space Battle at Kuat

"This is the Kuat shipyard. We have come under Rebel attack. Requesting assistance." "This is the Tyranny. Your satellite defenses should be adequate to deal with any rebel fleet.  Activate them!"

- An Imperial shipyard officer being refused assistance from the captain of the Tyranny

The First Battle of Kuat was an operation performed by Captain Raymus Antilles to lure the Imperial I-class Star Destroyer Tyranny away from Fresia, where four prototype T-65 X-wing starfighters were being stored.

Prelude
During the early days of the Galactic Civil War, the Galactic Empire decided to nationalize the independent Incom Corporation, as it had already done with other organizations before. However, much of the design and research teams of Incom strongly disagreed with this decision, to the point where many of them decided to defect to the Rebel Alliance.

It was through these defectors that the Rebellion learned of the Fresian facility holding the four prototypes of Incom's newest starfighter design: the T-65 starfighter, later known more commonly as the X-wing fighter. In dire need of a new starfighter design to replace the aging Z-95 Headhunters that were in common use throughout the Rebellion at the time, a force led by Captain Raymus Antilles was immediately dispatched to secure the prototype X-wings from the Empire.

However, a serious complication arose when Antilles and his taskforce entered into the Fre'ji system and detected the Star Destroyer Tyranny in orbit around Fresia.

Battle
"There's no way we're getting past that Star Destroyer. You'd think the Fresians would have warned us!" "It's not their fault. The nationalization wasn't announced.  The Emperor likes his surprises." "So what now?" "If the Tyranny is here, it's not at it's normal station&hellip; and the Tyranny is normally stationed at&hellip;" "Kuat! The Imperial shipyards?" "Yes! I think we can get their attention&hellip;"

- The pilot of the Sundered Heart, speaking with Captain Raymus Antilles

Antilles, in his modified corvette the Sundered Heart, led four flanking Corellian Corvettes to perform a hit-and-run raid on the orbital shipyards of Kuat in order to lure the Tyranny back to its usual station. Many gas containers were carelessly strewn around the half-constructed ships; destroying them caused the resulting explosions to take out much of the shipyards.

The Tyranny belatedly returned to the area after much damage had already been done, refusing several times to respond to distress calls from the shipyard communications officer. When the last shipyard was destroyed, the officer activated Emergency Code 0. The small Rebel raiding force was able to escape with light damage, but not before causing damage to the Tyranny, whose careless commander had allowed to come out of hyperspace with the shields down. This would allow them to later assault Fresia without its interference.

Aftermath
With the devastation of the Kuat shipyards and the damaging of the Tyranny, the Rebels figured that they then had a clear shot at attacking Fresia. However, before the Tyranny had returned to Kuat, it had apparently deployed numerous sentry drones to lock down the Fre'ji system in its absence. When the Rebels detected this, it seemed certain that the mission to retrieve the prototype X-wings would have to be canceled.

Fortunately for the Alliance, the protocol droid C-3PO was able to devise a plan that would allow the Rebels to slip past the Imperial defenses undetected. C-3PO proposed that they use his companion R2-D2 to slice into an Imperial uplink station on Wayland to register their ships into the log of participants in the Incom nationalization ceremony, so that when the Rebels arrived, they would be cleared to the surface of Fresia and not have to fight through the Imperial sentries stationed in orbit. Antilles agreed to this plan and immediately dispatched both C-3PO and R2-D2 to Wayland with a large ground force to escort them.

Appearances

 * Star Wars: Empire at War