Chapter 143: Operation Icarus
Chapter 143: Operation Icarus
Izuku was both pleased and annoyed to finally be down on the ground of Geonosis. Pleased, because he was closer to the action as he helped organize the ground assault from the field command post, no longer truly needed to handle the space assets. Annoyed, because he still wasn’t part of the assault, and would only take part in combat if the locals somehow managed to reach the field command post. Something which would take a lot of doing, given the multi-layered defenses around it. Despite the role he’d cast for himself by forming the League in the first place, he was still primarily an individual of action, and being relegated to the rear simply due to his importance irritated him fiercely.
Still, at least he could do something down here. The Fleet had too much dominance in orbit and the air to really need him putting his thumb on the scales at this point any longer, which is why he was now down on the surface. Even if large scale ground battles weren’t really his area of expertise, he could still use the Force to help steer the fight. Via Battle Meditation in part, of course. Even more than that, however, was the fact that, at this range, he could get essentially perfect intelligence from the local Force on what the enemy was doing. Where they were strong, where they were weak. Where they were up to something tricky and where they were panicking.
It was the whole reason no one had protested him being down here, working alongside General Ichov. It was the General who was actually in charge, but Izuku was constantly feeding the command systems the information he was getting from the Force, using it to update the tactical map for the General to make his decisions with. Or, at least, that’s how they planned to have it work, as the assault wouldn’t actually begin for a few minutes yet. At the moment, the various assault formations were lining up, while a few commando teams slipped forward through gaps in coverage that Izuku had identified. Most of his attention just now was still on them.
Those teams wouldn’t be able to ghost all the way into Robi Hive the way they’d managed with the initial three Hives. Not with the Hive now at full alert. Instead, their goals were to eliminate specific artillery and anti-air groups that Izuku had detected concentrations of. The new J-1 Proton Cannons were very concerning, now that they’d managed to pull more data regarding them out of the archives they’d captured. Thankfully, the design was so new that the bugs didn’t have very many of them yet, but their output was alarming.
Depending on the ordinance loaded, they could either throw up explosive shells of energy that would act as flak that would devastate fighters and bombers…or fire a much more potent shell that would likely erase a gunship or severely damage even one of their support corvettes. Concentrated fire from them could, by their reading of the blueprints, likely even bring down a frigate if it was in low enough orbit. Needless to say, given that they were relying heavily on maintaining air superiority as a way to offset the numbers advantage of the locals, the three dozen J-1s that the Geonosians had managed to build so far were a high priority for sabotage. They, along with a pair of dense clusters of artillery that had been deployed almost at the edge of the Hive shields, were the primary targets of the commando teams. With any luck, most of them would be taken down before the fighting truly started.
Speaking of which…
“Commandos in position, General. But they won’t remain undetected long. It’s now or never.”
General Ichov nodded, eyed the state of the other preparations one last time, then gave the command.
“All Units…Execute opening phase of Operation Icarus.”
Izuku sent his own orders to the commandos at that, even as artillery opened fire, tanks and mechs began to move, and the Fleet overhead shifted to begin battering the Hive shields. The latter wouldn’t work to bring them down anytime soon, but would prevent them from diverting shield power to other defenses. ‘Keeping the enemy honest,’ as it were. One way or another, they were committed to their new course of action, and Izuku eyed the other Hives carefully. Sooner or later, the two closest would act to flank their assault. He needed to be on top of detecting that moment so that the General could cripple their efforts as planned…
… … …
Zavra cackled at the explosion that resulted from the charges they’d planted. The charges alone wouldn’t have been so spectacular, but the fact they’d planted them on the ammo stockpiles of a dozen J-1 Proton Cannons had certainly amplified the effect! As in, the entire ridgeline was gone, rather than just the droids on it. The rest of the sissies in her squad had hunkered down behind cover and were staring at her in a little alarm at her cackling, even as she simply used the Force to split the shockwave around her.
That was okay. If they stuck with her, they’d learn the best time to cackle!
Sure, it wasn’t a Jedi Approved activity, but the Champions weren’t Jedi, so that didn’t matter. She would make sure to put them through the Intro to Cackling that Korriban had run one semester, when the standards of evil and mad cackling had fallen abysmally low. Sure, it hadn’t been an approved course, and Zavra had needed to sneak onto the world to run it personally, but she knew her Empress had secretly approved of the much higher-quality cackling of the new generation of young Sith! After all, her Mistress had awarded her with three back-to-back suicide missions that came with orgasmic rewards right afterwards!
Truly, it had been one of the best sets of missions ever!
Ignoring the, clearly unrelated, shiver of horror that that passed through her Champions, Zavra hopped off the rock she’d been using to observe their work. Beaming hugely at them, she reminded them that they still had work to do.
“Come on, you sissies! It’s time to sow more chaos and destruction while we still have the chance! Once the Army gets here, it won’t be fun any longer!”
With a skip in her step and a happy hum on her lips, Zavra led her squad on. They still had much to learn about the glories of explosives and chaos, and she was more than happy to teach them!
… … …
Aayla nodded in satisfaction as the dataspikes her team had managed to insert into several of the HAG-M tanks that served as the major Genosian artillery platform went to work. Suborned droid brains and tank systems activated, turning their aim on other artillery parks within the shield dome and opening fire. As the Robi Hive was, in fact, producing the HAG-M in serious numbers, merely wiping out a single grouping of the droids wasn’t enough.
Instead, they’d abused the fact the locals still hadn’t quite understood they were dealing with an enemy capable of tactical cloaking, and snuck into some of the tank-like droids. Dataspikes, prepared by their slicers after a few days of studying the code base they’d gained by taking a factory intact, had quickly allowed them to hijack this entire artillery park of HAG-Ms from the overall droid control net. Given that they were still able to read from that control net, even if they’d been isolated from it, they had exact coordinates of other artillery assets on demand. Now, they were systematically targeting other artillery units and wiping them out, and would keep doing so until they were destroyed. Which, since they were still broadcasting the correct IFFs, wouldn’t happen until the Geonosians either manually overrode those IFFs, or sent in sentient forces to disable the mortar tanks.
By then, and particularly given that Aayla’s was not the only team to have pulled this trick, a significant percentage of the enemy artillery would be wiped away. Which, of course, wasn’t even counting the fact that League heavy mechs were already charging the front lines as well, forcing the enemy to split their attention. Likewise, still more sabotage was wiping away key assets and positions all along the native’s defensive lines.
Turning to her Champion team, Aayla channeled just a bit of Zavra into her smile as she got them up and moving.
“Come on, you lot of lazy bones! Time to go cause more chaos for the enemy! The more disarray we can put them to, the better for our boys and girls hammering the front door in!”
The amount of glee that answered her back was probably a little concerning. Eh, she’d make sure and sit down to meditate with them after the battle, to make sure they focused on a ‘job well done,’ rather than the number of people they’d killed. They needed the Champions initiative to be a success, not a dangerous failure that would cause members to fall to the Darkside, justifying Jedi paranoia…
… … …
Commander Mora eyed the chaos ahead of them grimly, even as her column began to take fire, for now being absorbed by the combined shields of the heavier mechs. The sabotage teams had outdone themselves again, that much was obvious. Yet, this time, all their hard work wouldn’t be enough to prevent this from getting ugly. The Hive shields kept them from using their air superiority just yet, though the shields were already shrinking to maintain themselves against the fire from the Fleet overhead. Worse, those intact shields also meant intact heavy weapons emplacements that were already chipping away at the trio of heavy assault columns pushing toward the Hive itself.
Still, with the enemy artillery in disarray, she was confident they would manage to punch through the shield umbrella and position their own heavy artillery to start hammering those emplacements. Better, they could potentially start hitting the shield generators themselves with some of their longer-ranged particle and missile weapons. Those generators would be very well protected by anti-missile systems and such, but it only took a few lucky hits gained through saturation to take one offline, and doing so would let both their air superiority and orbital control start to tell.
For now, she hunkered down in her command Liger, watching as the Lancers stuck true to their name, punching ahead and wrecking the day of fixed defenses. The things were still ridiculous, being 8-meter tall humanoid mech frames. Yet their heavy shields let them close right up to what should be hard-points, where that bloody Kyber-based plasma-lance of theirs then proceeded to make a hard-point a soft-point. Generally, they got a bit chewed up in the process and needed to pull back, but the new Mark IIs built on the lessons learned from the Hutt Crusade had detachable armor segments. Pull them back and, in fifteen minutes or less, their support crews could completely swap out a full armor set and have them back in action.
She supposed it wasn’t truly ridiculous if it worked…
… … …
Izuku’s fingers danced as he input dozens of commands that highlighted weak points, rallying or cowering troops, broken droid control nets, and more. Deep in the flow of the Force, trying to manage the massive real time information flow it was providing him and forward the most relevant bits, he was only half-aware of General Ichov barking orders. He was even less aware of the two dozen men and women under the General passing fragments of those commands on, making the League Army units execute the plans the General was modifying on the fly, based on Izuku’s information.
It was all working, with two of the three heavy columns fully breached under the Hive shields by this point, hammering away with heavy fire from the Tiger, Liger and Phalanx Mechs. The fact that they’d deployed several new surprises, ones they hadn’t used even in the initial planetary assault, was causing additional chaos as well. One of those, EM scrambling and jamming packages deployed by missile, was causing a particular headache for the locals. They utterly trashed any attempt to keep the droid control net up, let alone organize the natives’ own units, and would normally have been a double-edged sword. Except, of course, that the League military had fully integrated QEC comms down to the squad level at this point. Which meant their own coordination wasn’t hampered at all, while the enemy was being rapidly reduced to hard-lines and runners.
Even as Izuku input a sudden weakness of the defenses around Shield Generator 3, another bit of information came through from the Force, causing him to stiffen. It was a bit of information he’d been waiting for, and he immediately lifted his voice above the back-and-forth of the rest of the command post, speaking for the first time since the engagement started.
“Hives Ghiria and Yiva are mobilizing. Five minutes to their first deployment on Western and Easten flanks. As expected, very few droids. Mostly warrior caste Genosians. Highlighting their attack vectors now!”
Izuku did exactly that, with two large arrows immediately popping up on the tactical map. More data flowed as fast as his fingers could move, adding detail to what was being deployed and how. The vectors alone had been enough for a victorious-sounding General Ichov to start barking his own orders.
“Contact the Fleet! Prep Starfall at the following coordinates!”
Izuku lost focus on the world as a whole again as the string of coordinates was rapped out, once more lost in the overwhelming amount of data he was getting from the local Force with his filters almost entirely down…
… … …
Asmotiv Te Ichov was a grimly happy Dubravan at the moment. His homeworld was one that had benefitted greatly from the rise of the League of Free Stars, despite not having been within Hutt Space itself, if only by technicality. Located in the narrow band between former Hutt Space and Wild Space that had been something of a no-man’s land the Hutts deliberately maintained as a buffer, they’d still been more or less under the thumb of the Cartels. They had also, however, been well-positioned along the Triellus Trade Route to interest the League as a major transhipping stopover point on their way into Hutt Space once the Crusade had begun.
The result for his people had been incredibly positive, since the League were a rare government that weren’t dickish about managing those that fell within their remit. The fact his home was a swamp world had only helped, as the Gungans still made up a significant portion of the Leage Army at the time, and had gotten along well with his people. Technically, they still got on well with his people, but the massive influx of different races into the military since the League properly formed meant the Gungans were no longer so prominent. Even if many of them were still in high command and liked to vacation on his homeworld…
Asmotiv, like many young Dubravans, had taken the chance to get off world by signing up with the League, and had done extremely well for himself. As evidenced by General T’sun personally recommending him for this undertaking. Thankfully, it was going well so far, though he had to admit that was as much because of his ultimate boss and the sheer bullshit his magical powers were. Still, he wasn’t going to judge and was going to take full advantage.
Just as he was doing now, as he watched with satisfaction. Starfall was a gambit he, the big boss, and the boss’s lady had come up with to make use of the B2 stocks and production capacity they now had. While a great many resources had come down from the Fleet to the surface, that had left a lot of lift capacity that would have headed back up to the fleet empty. If not, that was, they hadn’t decided to stuff all the drop pods they’d used in the initial assault, plus enough B2s to fill them, into that lift capacity.
Now, those pods were being fired at the planet again, hammering straight into choke points the flanking Hives would have to cross through, and releasing thousands of B2-series Super Battle Droids. Unfortunately for the natives, those droids were heavily armored, and their armor was particularly good at shrugging off the sonic weaponry typically used by Geonosians. Without much in the way of droids of their own, having not been supplied many as they were merely subordinate minor Hives, those droids were going to slaughter the forces attempting to flank.
Then what was left of them would be bombed into bug-splatter, since they’d had to move out of their own shields to make their attack attempt. Given how bloody-minded the locals were, he wouldn’t be surprised if they committed their second and third waves despite an utter slaughter of the first, but if they did it would be just as bloody. There was a reason he hadn’t been overly concerned about those minor Hives jumping them, once they’d had more data available.
Turning his focus back to the main battle and the much more dangerous Hive Robi, Asmotiv noted the shield flickering, then constricting, with interest. Clearly, one of the…ah Generator 3. The Hive’s Generator 3 had gone down, forcing them to pull the overall shield back even farther. He stepped forward into the scrum again and began snapping orders for a bombing run to take advantage of that fact before the Hive ground forces could pull back…
… … …
Aayla grimaced as she pretended she was Izuku. Specifically, she was duplicating his combat style with a series of rock slabs. She’d discovered early on, in the fight for Sartol Hive, that the sonic weaponry of the natives couldn’t be easily parried by a lightsaber. It wasn’t impossible…if you were willing to throw your lightsaber a good meter from your body to disrupt the containment sphere of the shot so the sonic pulse didn’t hit you.
Not exactly the best way to deflect repeated shots.
Thankfully, she did have a workable example of an alternative, having fought Izuku enough over the years to be capable of mimicking his style. The slabs of rock she was using weren’t as good as his phrik shields, but they worked perfectly fine to intercept the shots aimed at her and her team, working as mobile cover. The Champions were all trained with blasters as well as their light-weapons of choice, so that mobile cover was working out well to let them advance against individual hard points and take them out.
It was grueling, dangerous fighting, compared to the precision sabotage they’d been used for before now. Yet she hadn’t lost anyone so far, and she didn’t intend to if she could help it. They were also still making a difference, managing to hit and destroy spots that were giving the advancing heavy columns trouble. Given they’d almost made it to the Hive, and said Hive’s shields were faltering, they only had to push on for a little bit longer…
… … …
“Woooohooo!”
Zavra whooped in delight as she jumped off the Geonosian she’d been steering by forcefully controlling its wings, letting it splatter against the optical sensor of a ground-bound Vulture that had been trying to provide fire-support for a group of mixed natives and B1s. The splatter didn’t do much but momentarily blind the droid, but that was enough for Zavra to land on top of it and quickly cut through the ‘neck’ of the droid, resulting in it sputtering and dying.
Not content with just that much damage, she used the Force to pick it up from underneath her and throw it at a trio of tanks, falling to the ground where the Vulture had been. The natives, clearly stunned and awed by her immense beauty and talent, hesitated and gaped for a full three seconds before they started to fire at her! Laughing, she easily wove between that fire, lifting bits of debris with telekinesis to intercept the few shots she couldn’t dodge, gleefully soaking up all the attention~!
Which, of course, let her Champion squad, who had properly gotten used to her amazing tactics by now, jump them from behind!
Mind you, they took the boring approach of having hijacked the rare droid STAP or, in one slightly more fun case, a hovertank that was being aided along to move faster with the Force. Zavra marked out that pair of Champions as her new favorites, particularly when it proved they’d somehow gotten the gun working and fired a round right into the enemy commander.
Good initiative!
As her team fell on the bugs from behind, Zavra stopped playing decoy and darted forward, picking up one of the Vulture Droid’s legs with the Force to use as both cover and a bludgeon. It wouldn’t take long to wipe out this particular group of foolish natives, and then they could move on and pick another random place the Force told her someone was trying to rally troops at! Onward, to glorious chaos!
… … …
“That’s gotten it done sir! Sector J-17’s shield is down and not coming back up!”
General Ichov nodded sharply, then snapped out his own command.
“Contact the Fleet. I want the Weasels to run that section, followed by a bomber squadron! Commit the rapid action units to reinforce the flank of column three, and tell them to punch forward as fast as they can. The sooner they smash into the defenses after the bombing run, the better! We need to get into that base and start doing lasting damage.”
Pausing for a moment, he added another command almost absent mindedly.
“Recall the commando teams that are still out. I want them resupplied, fed, and with a short rest. Then redeploy them forward to help wedge the door open once we crack the Hive. They proved how good they were at breaking down the internal defenses already.”
The General got ‘yes, sirs’ from multiple officers, who immediately shifted to following up on his new orders. Ichov himself shifted to look over the tactical plot again, noting that at least one other shield sector was in danger of failing. It was tempting to just orbitally bombard the place, with those shields coming down. Unfortunately, the fact that the factories were so massive and entirely underground meant it would be impossible to confirm their destruction if they did that. No, they’d have to fight down to at least the factory levels, and if they were doing that far, taking out the Queens too only made sense.
“Rotate in the Lancer reserves to help crack the Hive defenses. If they can get into the factory proper, let them have fun carving it up too. Best give the defenders something to focus on, rather than letting them have the chance to be clever.”
Another ‘yes sir’ answered him and he nodded, focusing on the latest data the Sovereign was supplying to the tac-net. Hmm, it seemed the natives were trying to tunnel under column two. Better do something about that…
… … …
Izuku slumped as the final report came in, confirming they’d killed the Queens of the Robi Hive. Unfortunate that they’d refused to surrender, just like the others so far, but it was mostly expected at this point. One way or another, the bulk of the fighting was done, the assault having taken two and a half days, during which he’d barely eaten and hadn’t slept. Still, that was damn fast, all things considered, and he knew it. Unfortunately, they’d played out most of their remaining tricks to achieve that speed, meaning the fight against the Stalgasin Hive would be worse.
At least they wouldn’t be facing artillery to their rear and flanks, though. That wasn’t nothing.
Nor was the upcoming destruction of the fourth Droid Factory. That wasn’t a done deal yet, the factory massive enough that their engineers would need a few hours of setting charges to be sure the whole thing came down. Once it did, though, they’d have cut 4/5ths of the droid manufacturing on the planet, and more of the subordinate Hives were already abandoning Stalgasin. They’d need to slug it out to get the last factory, and he had a feeling it would be far more of an even fight than the two they’d engaged in so far.
It needed doing though, so the League would get it done.
As for him, he needed some rack time before they went through a debrief and laid out the next phase of the plan. Even the General had cycled out once, to catch a few hours, letting his staff handle a slightly less critical part of the Hive capture, once they’d been in and secured the most critical areas. Rest, mental recovery, then planning for what they hoped would be the last push before they could shake the dust of this ugly planet off their boots and move on…after setting suitable skymines around it so the bugs weren’t tempted to leave, of course.
Then they’d have to track down those three Hives that had left for other planets. Ugh. Another thing Izuku wasn’t looking forward to, though still possibly better than whatever political fuckery would pop up once he was available to take calls again…
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A/N 1: What Izuku is doing in this chapter isn't reliant on Battle Meditation. Instead, and the reason I'm adding this author's note, is that it's reliant on his specific weirdness with the Force. Because he, for lack of a better way to put it, is plugged straight into the backend information stream from the Force instead of needing to 'translate' it like most Force Users do, he can pull a ridiculous amount of detail in real time. His limit is how much he can handle of that information flow without it overwhelming him. So he pulled his filters that kept the information stream more manageable down, and focused HARD on inputting a ton of information on enemy positions and status in as close to real time as he could. Giving the General a major information advantage.
A/N 2: Zavra remains fun to write, pretty much always. Manic Pixie Dream Sith is just entertaining...
A/N 3: Interestingly, in writing these chapters, I realized a bit more of why the Jedi got their shit kicked in on Geonosis. It WASN'T the droids. It was the damn natives. The sonic weapons they use would NOT be friendly to being blocked by lightsabers. All that would do would be to break the shell of energy keeping the sonic energy together, basically setting off a grenade right in your face.