Evacuation of D'Qar

"Prepare to evacuate the base. Use every shuttle, and take only what we need."

- Captain Typhuss James Kira

The evacuation of D'Qar, also known as the siege of D'Qar or the attack on D'Qar took place in 2387, in the days that followed the Battle of Starkiller Base during their war with the Der'kal Empire. Having destroyed the Der'kal Empire's newest superweapon, Starkiller Base, the Federation feared reprisal attacks now that their position had been revealed. Therefore, they were forced to abandon their base on D'Qar in order to find a new base of operations.

Prelude
"&hellip;the Federation must be destroyed.''" "We have their location. We tracked their reconnaissance ship to the Ileenium system." "''Good. Then we will crush them once and for all. Prepare the weapon."

- Supreme Leader Vur'naa and General Armitage Hux

The Federation sent a reconnaissance team to discover the location of the superweapon and report back to the Federation at their base on D'Qar. The Der'kal Empire tracked the reconnaissance ships back to D'Qar, thus discovering the location of their enemy forces. On the orders of Supreme Leader Vur'naa, who wanted to prevent the Federation from winning the war, General Armitage Hux prepared the weapon to destroy the Federation.

Before the Der'kal Empire could unleash the weapon, the Federation sent a small strike force&mdash;Captain Cassian Jeron Andor, Major Jyn Erso, and Captain John Martin&mdash;to Starkiller Base to disable the shields preventing the destruction of the base. Meanwhile, Commander Poe Dameron led a fighter force to Starkiller Base to destroy it. The ground forces succeeded, and the Federation fighters destroyed the base.

The Federation fighters returned to D'Qar, celebrated their victory, the Der'kal Empire, while reeling from the destruction of their weapon, still nonetheless had the location of the Federation base.

The evacuation
"This is where we snuff out the Federation once and for all."

- General Armitage Hux

Shortly after Starkiller Base was destroyed, the Federation began evacuating their base on D'Qar. In orbit around the planet, Vice Admiral Holdo commanded the Federation fleet from her ship USS Raddus (NCC-741247).

The escape was interrupted by the arrival of a Der'kal fleet consisting of three Resurgent -class star destroyers and one Mandator IV-class Siege Dreadnought, the Fulminatrix. The dreadnought opened fire on the Federation base almost immediately, but the base had been fully evacuated just in time. To buy time for the Federation Puddle Jumpers to escape, Dameron attacked the dreadnought in his T-70 fighter despite Holdo ordering him not to attack the dreadnought, eliminating its surface cannons and clearing the way for a squadron of Federation bombers to attack despite counterattacks from the dreadnought and its TIE squadrons. As the Fulminatrix began to aim its orbital autocannons at the Raddus, Federation bombers began to approach the dreadnought, defended by fighters to block TIE fighter attacks. The resultant assault successfully obliterated the Fulminatrix, but at a high cost. All bombers were lost along with four of their escorting fighters, and after the first attack on the fleet, however, Dameron's attack bought enough time for their fleet to jump to warp.

Aftermath
"They can't get away, Supreme Leader. We have them tied on the end of a string."

- General Armitage Hux to Supreme Leader Vur'naa

The evacuation's high cost led to Vice Admiral Holdo giving Commander Dameron a formal reprimand in his service record, as he had disobeyed her direct order not to press the dreadnought assault after neutralizing its defenses. The Fedration was unable to fully escape the Der'kal Empire due to the latter's new technology that could track ships through warp. Eventually, after a nearly 18-hour long pursuit and with power levels critically low, the Federation slipped away and headquartered themselves in an old Der'kal outpost on the mineral planet Crait. This escape was detected by the Der'kal Empire, however, and led to the subsequent Battle of Crait.

Even though the Federation manged to escape, Der'kal officers who were not present for the battle were told that the Federation had been destroyed.