Chapter 57: Assault on Nal Hutta

Summary: *Epic Music Intensifies*

Warning! Chapters 56-58 were all posted back-to-back! Make sure you don't miss any!

Chapter 57: Assault on Nal Hutta

- Orbit of Nal Hutta –

Izuku had been taught an important lesson by one Shota Aizawa. The underground Hero had needed to knock sense into more than one overly chivalrous fool that thought grandiosely about giving Villains a 'fair fight.' Aizawa had, brutally at times, thumped into the head of every single student of his a truism that Izuku had learned to embrace fully.

If you aren't cheating, you aren't trying.

It was, of course, important to know when to apply the concept. Cheating on a math test wasn't the right time, no matter how bad you were at math. But when it came to saving lives? There, it was a truism that always applied. If you weren't cheating, if you weren't up to every single dirty trick to stack the odds in your favor, then what the fuck were you doing pretending to be a Hero? Izuku had learned it, he'd embraced it, and he'd applied it when it came to planning the opening strike of what could only be called an outright war.

Izuku had Jedi. Better yet, Izuku had an entire group of Jedi, recruited by Aayla as they'd been kicked out of the main Jedi Order, who basically possessed droid bodies. Droid bodies that he had gleefully had Mei personally upgrade for them to the point that they were a living, not-actually-breathing, cheat. Jedi could, if they had a half-decent grasp of the trick, make a hyperspace jump with far more accuracy than any droid. As it turned out, the Iron Knights, provided with droid bodies that could already handle navicomputer calculations? Yeah, it turned out they were really good at cheating-like-a-bitch and dropping an entire fleet, in formation, right on top of a planet. Far within the gravity well that would have stopped other people from performing the same act of nonsensical space magic.

Izuku also wasn't in the mood to negotiate. Not here. Not with these people.

Also, Nal Hutta was heavily defended by both surface emplacements and orbital defense stations. So stopping to negotiate would have been really stupid.

Instead, Izuku, fully embracing Battle Meditation even as they dropped out of hyperspace, began barking orders.

"Divisions 1, 2, and 3, open fire on the preplanned targets. Division 4, divert fire to sweep the following coordinates…"

Izuku rattled off the numbers, the captains of those divisions already responding even before he finished. Battle Meditation was weird. He'd spent an hour in preparation, linking himself into a gestalt with the Iron Knights and the few other Jedi present. For much of that time, he'd allowed another to lead the gestalt, as the Iron knights used it to guide their jump. Moments after emergence, however, their leader had shifted the hold of the gestalt to Izuku and his awareness had expanded as he engaged his Battle Meditation in full.

He connected, communicating on an unconscious level, with his entire fleet. He couldn't actually give orders this way, or compel anyone into action at range. But he could boost the collective whole. He could bolster the greenest pilots with the far more finely honed instincts of the veterans, or bring the attention of one ship captain to something another had already noticed. It made every pilot a veteran, every commander was pulled up to a higher level, every gunner was just a little bit faster and more accurate with their reflexes and aim. Even more disturbing in a way, while he still needed to give orders, they snapped into place so fast for the receiver that he barely managed to get those orders out before they were already moving to act of them.

That came into play now as he flipped seamlessly between a dozen different channels, rapping out rapid orders to one group or another. His first diversion from their original plan had caused one Division of four Heavy Cruisers and eight frigates to divert from an orbital defense station he'd sensed wasn't even powered at the moment, likely under repair or down for overhaul. Instead, he'd redirected them to sweep fire through a region that was apparently lousy with defense satellites that they'd missed in their surveys. Those satellites were passive things, completely running on droid brains, and possibly centuries old. It was little wonder that they'd missed them in their careful scouting of the planet's 'static' defenses.

Other orders changed pre-planned directives. They'd caught the Hutts without a single shield up, the cheap bastards likely not wanting to pay in power and maintenance time to keep them up continuously. The initial orbital defenses were dying far faster than they'd anticipated, barely even managing to fire back. He ordered two additional divisions to break off, racing over the planet's horizon line to engage defenses on the other side of the planet that had gotten a chance to come online. The longer they had to do so, the more dangerous they would be, and putting them under the crunch of an assault while trying to overcome their surprise was the best option. So his Battle Meditation was telling him, anyway.

Cynically, his half-distracted mind noted how utterly the fistfuls of fighters the Hutts were getting up from ready squadrons were being owned. Every fighter Izuku had was hyperspace capable, meaning they'd launched out in the dark space between systems before the Jedi-managed micro-jump had dropped them all here. His carriers had been packed overfull, squeezing five squadrons into each of them. Three of N-3 fighters, two of H-7 bombers. Just to add insult to injury, each of his Cruisers held another four fighter and two bomber squadrons, and every Frigate had two fighter squadrons of their own.

The result had been the arrival of 3,024 starfighters and 1,056 bombers. The Trade Federation could have equaled those numbers in Vulture droids with just a few Lucrehulks. But Vultures were a sad comparison to the N-3s and H-7s. Both of which had gone through massive upgrading since Mei and the Starfighter designers formerly from Naboo had gotten their hands on both the designs and an extremely generous budget. Even keeping a third of the fighters back as a screen, the planet itself had gotten jumped from the start by so many fighters that its ground defenses were…pretty much fucked sideways. Nal Hutta was a stolen world, with the native Evocii largely banished from their own homeworld millennia ago. Enough of those Evocii, combined with enough disgruntled slaves and easily bribed employees, still lived on Nal Hutta in service to their masters that the League had a very good idea where the majority of the ground defenses were.

Someone down on Nal Hutta, likely a tactical droid of some sort, was responding to the threat. The Hutts hadn't skimped entirely on their own protection, and the planet did have a planetary shield. Pity for them that they didn't keep it on at all times, assured that no one would or could attack them, and over a thousand bombers had gotten in under it before the shield could flicker weakly to life. Those bombers, along with their fighter escorts, hammered every Shield Generator and Air-Defense System with wild abandon. In doing so, the enemy got the first horrifying look at a new torpedo system that Mei had created.

Null Torpedoes.

The new weapon, one of several his fleet was equipped with, were the result of Mei's original research in how to follow Izuku into this reality. Instead of a nice, stable portal, the Null Torpedoes created an unstable opening into the void between realities. Thankfully no more dangerous to the fabric of their reality than all the Hyperspace holes people regularly punched in it (Izuku had worried a lot about that, thank you very much, this was Mei), the effect of that unstable rip was devastating. Whatever was inside it simply…ceased to exist, shredded and ejected into the void. Against shields, it only ripped holes in their energy matrix, but in the seconds before more energy could rush in to fill the gap, more torpedoes could get through. Since the bombers were set to fire them in a staggered format, the second torpedo simple erased whatever defensive installation it slipped through to hit.

All without the fire and death of secondary explosions! Good job Mei!

Of course, only a set amount of energy was captured by each Null Torpedo tear. Which meant that stronger shields, like those on the Orbital Defense Stations that were about to take the first wave of Null Torpedo hits from his diverted capital ship divisions, wouldn't develop a hole with just one strike. A single Null Torpedo still took a bigger chunk out of a shield than a traditional proton torpedo, but they actually should have been somewhat inferior overall. The way the energy left a vacuum behind it made the shield easier to restore, with physics wanting to fill that hole with something. A good way to drain a shield, but not bring it down quickly…

If, that is, the larger Null Torpedoes of the Volition-class had been meant to be used alone.

They weren't.

Instead, even as Izuku watched in riveted anticipation, one of the other weapons Mei had come up with was fired right along with the torpedoes. There were only four Graviton Beam Emitters on each Volition-class cruiser, situated at the front of each 'wing' of the ship and taking up a hell of a lot of space and power. All for what should be a useless weapon, as the beam of concentrated Gravitation it fired was actually quite easy to deflect. It barely even strained a standard deflector shield to do so, the monstrous beam actually doing less damage to their integrity than even a light, civilian grade turbolaser would manage. Not worth the space and power…if not for the Null Torpedoes.

The Graviton Beam Emitters were just that. Beam emitters. They were continuous…and thus, as Izuku held his breath, they did precisely what they were meant to do. As a fusillade of torpedoes hammered the shield, the Beam slipped through in the instant that so many hits created a gap. That gap didn't last for more than an eyeblink of time…but it didn't need to. As Mei had explained it to him, the Graviton Beams literally pushed atoms away from them as they struck something. Nearly pure energy like a shield was minimally affected. But solid matter like armor? It might as well not have even been there as the Beams struck, coring a precisely circular hole clear through the station. Worse for the station, when the atoms collapsed back together, they tended to do so rather explosively. Enough so that a third of the station went dead from just the first few hits.

Izuku pumped a fist in victory…then returned to snapping out orders as those two divisions proved they would be more than enough to utterly rip the other side of the planet's defenses apart. The planetary shield had faltered and failed already, too many of its power station links and emitters destroyed by the bomber squadrons. A quick sweep of the skies around the planet showed an utter lack of resistance, even as the handful of ground-to-space batteries still online on the surface failed to bring down the defenses of the rest of his Volitions as they rotated through which ships were taking the brunt of the fire. It was very professionally done, and he'd barely needed to help with Battle Meditation to pull off the well-practiced maneuver. He reminder himself to congratulate those captains for all of their hard work and training paying off.

With a little probing of the Force, he nodded decisively. It was time for the next phase. He dialed the correct comm, a hypercomm link this time, though a short ranged one. The moment he had a connection back to the ships remaining at the staging point just outside the star system, he snapped an order.

"Phase II is Green Lit, Captain. Bring the assault ships in!"

Getting a quick response from the captain who'd been left in charge of their hundreds of landing craft, Izuku leaned back and waited for them to arrive. They might have pulled the Hutt's teeth in space, but he had little delusion the ground battle would be nearly as easy. Thankfully, they had quite a few new bits of equipment to test out on the Hutt's mercenaries as well…

... ...

- Orbit of Klatooine –

Aayla sighed sadly as she watched the first of the mammoth freighters they'd purchased and refitted as minelayers work. Klatooine had possessed formidable defenses. Nothing like the density of those around Nal Hutta, of course. But unlike the Hutts, the Klatooinian species were warriors through and through. Even caught off guard, they'd put up a nasty fight, costing Aayla and Commodore Sail'ada over a dozen corvettes and a pair of frigates, along with literally hundreds of starfighters and bombers. The losses were painful, particularly as those were only the destroyed ships, with dozens more needing serous repairs. Even two of her Volition-class were going to need serious yard time after this.

The losses had also been necessary.

The world she was now in orbital control of had been identified early on as one of the three most problematic in the entirety of Hutt Space. The Klatooinian species had willingly enslaved themselves to the Hutts over 25,000 years ago. As in, prior to the Republic even existing. It was easy to forget, given how they were now a loose collection of criminal syndicates. But the Hutts had once been a warrior race with their own Empire. One that they'd willingly folded up themselves, when they decided it was actually easier just to play shadow puppet with other powers, making themselves both too useful and too dangerous for anyone to take them on. A policy that had admittedly seen them thrive even during times where the majority of the galaxy burned.

Unfortunately, the Hutts weren't idiots. Far from it, in fact. The species was extremely long lived, and a lot of their arrogance was unfortunately justified. Until Izuku, no one, not even the Jedi Order, had seriously contemplated taking on the Hutts. And the Klatooinians, Vodrans, and Nikto were one of the biggest reasons why. All three species had been completely enslaved prior to the formation of the Republic, and they provided a near-infinite supply of foot soldiers for the Hutts. All three species were militaristic in their own right, and all three of them numbered in the billions.

With the Hutts being able to call on all three species to fight for them, all while carefully maintaining several large fleets of mothballed ships that could be brought back online in a hurry, the idea of taking on the Hutts was daunting. Or, well, it should have been daunting. But Izuku had said 'nope, fuck that' and cut the biggest problems off at the knees right from the start. With literal years of preplanning, he'd built up their spy network and used it to locate all of the major mothballed fleets the Hutts possessed. While there were undoubtably more squirreled away, the Hutts were nothing if not paranoid bastards, the three largest concentrations of mothballed ships had been targeted in the opening phase. Even before she hit Klatooine, Admiral Lin hit Vodran, and Izuku hit Nal Hutta, those fleets had…ceased to exist. Either destroyed or, where deemed worthwhile, stolen.

With all three fleets having deployed heavy jamming the moment they left hyperspace, it was unlikely anyone even knew that their target worlds had changed hands. Sort of. Only Izuku was actually attempting to take the world of Nal Hutta, and Nar Shaddaa with it. That would be a slog, which is why he had the vast majority of their ground troops and General T'san to help him. It was also why his fleet wouldn't be breaking up just yet. It was nearly certain to come under outside assault from other Hutt assets, along with undoubtedly needing to deal with numerous attempts to run their blockade in both directions.

Aayla and Rana, on the other hand, had only slagged the hell out of the local orbital and ground defenses. Afterward, they were both doing the same thing…seeding the planets with tens of thousands of Sky Mines. Aided by a few defense stations that would be built in the near future in orbit of each, and a strong picket force of two divisions of Volition-class ships and their screens, the planets were just being cut off. They were effectively being quarantined from the rest of the galaxy, until the League could chop up and deal with the rest of Hutt Space. Meanwhile, Aayla and Rana would be joining forces with each other, combining the rest of both their fleets and moving on Kintan, the homeworld of the Nikto.

Kintan would be a more ticklish proposition than the other two. Kintan and its Nikto population had actively rebelled against the Hutts at least once in the past. Successfully. Sadly, the Hutts had returned in greater numbers, with mercenary armies, and crushed that rebellion. Despite how long ago that had happened, the fact that a third of the population was dead by the time the Hutts fully regained control meant that not all of Kintan had forgotten said rebellion and the results. Offered a chance, and shown a Fleet powerful enough to ward off the Hutts, there was a very real possibility that the Nikto would decide not to fight. Depending on how the internal arguments of the race went, they might even outright join in the efforts to free Hutt Space. It was why they were moving with such a massive fleet to Kintan, carrying proof that they'd already dealt with the Hutt's other two main enforcement species.

Aayla really hoped they at least decided to stay out of it, even if they didn't join in. What they'd had to do to the Vodran and Klatoonine left a bad taste in her mouth, even if she had agreed it was the only logical solution short of glassing the planets. Turning away from the sight of yet another load of sky mines being dumped, she sighed and started looking over the casualty lists…

... ...

- Landing Site – Minboosa District -

It had been the better part of twelve hours since the initial space operations against Nal Hutta. Nar Shaddaa had needed handling after Nal Hutta itself, and had actually proven the more problematic of the two due to lack of surprise. Enough Hutts made their homes and bases of power on the smuggler's moon that said moon did, in fact, have decent defenses of its own. No orbital defense platforms, thankfully, but a fully functional shield generator and quite a few ground-to-space weapons. Its labyrinthine depths were also impossible to map entirely, meaning that they'd had far worse intel on the moon than what they'd had to work with for the planet.

Not that it had stopped them.

After all, the problem with filling an entire moon with ne'er-do-wells, cutthroats, thieves, and mercenaries, whose only real motivation was enlightened self-interest? It meant that your entire moon was filled with ne'er-do-wells, cutthroats, thieves, and mercenaries, whose only real motivation was enlightened self-interest. When things were very obviously not looking good for the Hutts, at least locally, it was hilariously easy to simply buy saboteurs. Thousands of them. It was even easier when you'd spent the time and effort to plant your own operatives in the population who could act as seemingly-neutral intermediaries.

It honestly hadn't taken long for the shield to come down in patches, and for over half of the defensive guns to fall silent from sabotage. After that, they'd made their intentions plain by only launching assaults on Hutt palaces or businesses. They would be after other things, specifically the slave trade, once they had control of the moon. But despite quite a few people being able to put two-and-two together, the majority of the world didn't care. Once they'd announced that they had no intention of coming after most of the other businesses, that they wouldn't keep people from leaving, and that this still isn't Republic space so your bounties can fuck right off? Most of the moon hadn't bothered to resist the takeover.

It had still taken time to handle, and ultimately actually cost them more ships than the far superior defenses of Nal Hutta had. Mostly fighters, bombers, and a few corvettes, it had to be said. But the defenses had managed to maul a couple of frigates and a single Volition-class as well. None of them badly enough to destroy them, but enough that they'd be in yard hands for repairs for at least a few weeks. Possibly up to a month and a half for one of the frigates. Since it was one of the Munifex IIs, they might just scrap it and use the crew for a new Siege-class. Sentient crew was still something that they struggled to find enough of, mostly because it took time to train them. Still, that was all for later.

Right now, Izuku stepped off the Nyork-class that had brought him down with a fresh batch of droids, ground troops, and assault vehicles. He could see one of General T'san's aides waiting patiently for him and Asora, but he paused for a few long moments once he was properly out of the way of the unloaders. The camp was neat, and orderly…and big. This was the first time he'd really seen what Mei's more land-based accomplishments were like out of isolated demos when she wanted to first show them off. They were impressive. As was the bits of Gungan tech that had gone into building the army and forming part of its doctrine, for that matter.

The most obvious thing about the base, of course, was the shield dome. A Gungan-built theater shield, upgraded with tech from a dozen sources after they'd first gotten their hands on one, then passed back to the Gungans to make an even better version. The generators were now strong enough that, even if something on planet had been able to get through their control of the airspace, it would take dozens of missiles or hours of sustained artillery fire to even make it flicker. Each of the fourteen landing sites that the General had secured and fortified while Izuku dealt with Nar Shaddaa had a shield just like it, giving them secure beachheads outside the major 'districts' scattered around Nal Hutta.

Given that they'd landed over 50,000 sentient troops and over ten times that number of droids, and only half the army was down so far? Well, it should be pretty damn obvious to the locals by this point that this was no raid and run. They were here to conquer Nal Hutta, and given the Hutts themselves had ensured that there was no unified fighting force to stop them? They had a very good chance of managing it. The fools hadn't let too much organization of ground forces build up, since each clan or syndicate was afraid of the others taking them over. There were likely five times the number of ground troops down here on the planet as what they'd brought with them, even counting the droids. But when you added how divided they were to the fact that the League's forces had total control of both the orbitals and the planet's airspace? Those numbers weren't as bad as they seemed.

Particularly not when Mei's particular brand of genius was so visibly on display everywhere.

The most visible of the many visible examples were the Giant Robots. Well, mostly mechs. But Mei insisted that as a 'good Japanese mad scientist,' she had to call them giant robots. Also, that she had to make them a thing now that she had a chance to do so. Thankfully, Mei was a shockingly practical engineer once you got past her eccentricities. Meaning there were no utterly nonsense skyscraper sized bots running about. Instead, the largest of the humanoid mechs was only just over 8 meters (26'3") tall. Large yes, and Izuku had a slightly hard time keeping a straight face since Mei had gone to the effort to make it look very anime style, but…vaguely reasonable. Particularly since there were only four of them present and they were mostly intended as tip-of-the-spear monsters to break defenses with.

Literally tip-of-the-spear.

As in, Mei had pulled a Mei and created giant plasma-tipped spears that were one of the Lancer model's primary weapons. It turned out that lightsabers were so fiddly because of their size. Building a kyber-boosted plasma blade at such a small scale required the same sort of utterly insane precision as the micro-jump the Iron Knights had performed to drop them on top of Nal Hutta. But, when you upscaled that weapon, at least to a certain point (going too big was as bad as too small), the math and tolerances actually got much more reasonable. To the point that those 'spears' that the Lancer model mechs were wielding were essentially giant lightspears. Producing the same cut-virtually-anything insanely hot plasma as lightsabers, but doing it as a 2.5 meter 'spear tip.'

Honestly, Izuku hadn't been sure if General T'san wanted to cry because they looked a little silly, or cry because they were stupidly effective at wrecking their way into fortified positions. After all, the mechs long-legs made them fast, and they were big enough to support a damn powerful shield generator of their own. It would take an insane concentration of fire to bring one down before it closed with your base…and once it did, getting in under any shield you might have, it could carve virtually any armor up like it was opening a can of tuna.

Izuku was just glad that the rest of Mei's creations were a little less...extra. Not a lot less, it was Mei after all. But enough that they at least looked like more serious military hardware. The actual largest mech, of which there were a dozen around the field, was a four-legged cat-like heavy artillery unit. General T'san and others had tried to call it a 'walker,' only for Mei to get very insulted and insist it was a mech. Though he hadn't taken a side, Izuku privately had to agree with Mei. He'd seen the 'walkers' made by various militaries in this galaxy, and they were sort of an insult to common sense. There were a handful of decent smaller ones. But most of the larger sort were painfully slow, lumbering targets-on-legs with very little going for them beyond being able to navigate a decent range of terrain. Seriously, a butt-naked human at a run could out pace a lot of them, and humans weren't exactly fast by most standards.

Mei's 'Battle-Liger' was a different breed. Twelve meters tall and twenty-six long, it and a significantly smaller variant called the Tiger were both built to be shockingly nimble for their respective sizes. There was a reason Mei had built them on a frame that looked like a giant cat. Their complex but robust internal frame, which Mei had needed to cheat a bit by making some limited amounts of super-materials for with an IES, made them less head and shoulders above most walkers…and more a different class all of their own. Hence Mei's insistence they were Mechs, not Walkers, despite the fact that they filled much the same role as a walker in most Republic militaries did. The Liger was pure heavy artillery, with the smaller Tiger instead being something closer to the tank-artillery hybrid most walker designs seemed to be.

The Ligers and Tigers were more abundant, moving around as they prepared to deploy, and several more Tigers had been on the transport he'd come down on. They were not, however, the most abundant mech that Izuku could see moving around the base camp. That honor belonged to a smaller, vaguely humanoid mech that was honestly closer to power armor in some ways. The only reason they didn't class it that way is because actual power armor units, also a Mei design, were floating around in numbers as well. The smallest 'mech' therefore, was only about 2.5 meters tall. It was a single-person mech/power armor hybrid that was honestly pretty damn scary. A rotating fusion gatling made up one 'arm,' while the other had a proper 'hand' capable of either holding another gun or pulling the magnetically secured folding fusion-pike from its back to wield at short range.

Add in a forward-shield screen of the Gungan style, jump jets, and the fact it was easily fifteen times the strength of your average human? Squads of those things had already proven themselves against slaver bases. The only one of the mechs they'd deployed previously, in a bid to blood enough pilots to give every unit of them at least one combat veteran. The latest model of the Striker mech even had a micro-missile defense mechanism that the onboard AI could and would use to shoot down missiles, torpedoes, or RPGs. Meaning the previous 'easiest' way to take them out was now no-sold most of the time. It only got worse that they worked in close conjunction with infantry trained in the use of Mei's actual power armor. The power suits, as they tended to be referred to in a bid to avoid confusion, were less bulky than even most vacuum gear. No more bulky than heavy body armor really, and they had their own nasty surprises. Three times amplification of the strength for the wielder, a built-in rapid-fire blaster in a thick gauntlet around one arm, and trauma plates made out of phrik.

The power suits were, essentially, now what commando and other elite teams used, instead of the original armor design that Izuku and Aayla still had. Making enough phrik to properly make suits like their original elite teams used was too much of an added strain to equip very many teams with the design, particularly as they had to be extremely custom. The power suits were almost as protective, and their design allowed for most smaller humans and near-humans to get a comfortable fit out of a mass production model. There was a strict upper size limit on who could comfortably use them, which made a disproportionate number of their power suit operators female, but the suits only stood at an even 2 meters in height and had a quite streamlined design. Meaning they could fit into just about anywhere the average sentient could. Fantastic for raiding bases and boarding enemy ships alike.

The power suit commando teams and smallest mechs were among the first troops that had landed, for good reason, and there were nearly 2,000 of the mechs and 5,000 of the power suit users on the ground. Only nearly, since they'd taken some losses despite how tough their equipment made them, but those losses had been pretty minimal so far. Part of that was because they'd also landed tens of thousands of combat droids in the same drops that had put their forward elements down. But that was by deliberate design. All of their forces, space and ground alike, followed the same two philosophies.

Quality not quantity and mixed units.

This was no small campaign. They were after the entirety of Hutt Space. Period. They'd known, from the start, that they'd never start this crusade with the billions of standard troops required to pull something like this off. Which meant that none of their troops were 'standard.' Even their most common foot soldiers were equipped with arms, armor, and training that would make the best the Republic's judicial forces could field cry bitter tears of envy. Then there was the massive deck stacking they'd done. Not just with the power suits, mechs, and ships, but with providing innovative tech at every level. Mei's equipment was hardly all that was present. The Gungans had come up with and mass produced an extremely good hovertank, single-trooper scout platform, and variable configuration APC.

Gungans being Gungans, all three were capable of aquatic maneuvers. But they'd captured, studied, and learned from the equipment the Trade Federation had invaded Naboo with. They'd built superior versions of the sorts of tanks, APCs, and the scout platforms the TF used, all matching the more streamline and bulbus designs the Gungans favored. Only a fraction of those were being built on Naboo, with BullbaBong having invested a lot of their profits in the opportunity provided by the rapidly expanding industry on Tythe. The environmentally-conscious factory setups that Tythe required by law appealed to the Gungans…and their biggest client was now the military arm of the League of Free Stars. They'd made back their investment many times over, and the League was more than happy to buy as many of all three of their military production lines as the Gungan company could build.

Add in Gungan shield tech, a Mei-design anti-air platform, meta materials originally created by Quirks that Mei had brought enough information about to reproduce, and a dozen other things? The army they'd built was better equipped than any single known force in the galaxy. The ancient Mandalorians, back when they'd been a proper Empire of their own, might have matched it. But no one currently out there could claim the same, so far as they knew. It had been expensive, but that's what the massive and sprawling business empire Izuku had built up was for. He wasn't looking to get rich himself, but to funnel the vast majority of the wealth it generated into building and operating the army and fleet that was now proving itself so effective.

That was the Quality not Quantity mantra at work.

The mixed unit policy was, of course, the answer to the other half of the equation. Yes, quality was great. But you still needed a significant quantity of it, no matter how much better your tech was over the average enemy. Izuku had recruited millions of people. Ex-slaves, poor and disenfranchised, idealists, and others just looking for opportunity. There were over 30,000 Naboo in just his military apparatus, and well over 150,000 Gungans. Twi'leks, one of the most common species aside from humans in the galaxy? Well over a million of them just in his armed forces. The galaxy was a huge place, and Izuku hadn't been shy about siphoning large numbers of people no one would even miss, from across the breadth of it.

Millions was a drop in the bucket to what you actually needed to run a campaign like this.

Which is why, from the very start, they'd embraced the concept of Mixed Units. Every starfighter squadron was a 50/50 split between sentient and droid…and that was the most even split literally anywhere in the League's regular forces. For every regular ground trooper? There were a minimum of twenty combat droids. Combat droids which followed the same Quality maxim that the rest of the forces did. These were not the built-by-the-lowest-bidder droids of the Trade Federation and Techno Union. They were purpose-built dedicated platforms built to high standard. To Mei's standard.

They weren't universal either. Naval droids differed from combat models, and both differed from logistics droids and more. They'd kept the number of types reasonable, but they hadn't shied away from embracing specialization either, and the result was an extremely good set of droids that were only made better by being specifically programmed to operate in conjunction with sentients. Droids, non-sentient models of course, were the first through every breach, soaking the initial damage from defenses and reducing sentient casualties. Not at all incidentally, the mixed units meant that far more sentients lived through their first few combat operations, accruing the experience and tactical acumen that made them dangerous.

Izuku had taken a long, hard look at the historic benefits of droids versus sentients, asked the very serious question of 'why the flaming fuck does no one ever seem to combine them properly,' and ordered his people to figure it out. They'd done it…probably. The concept had been tested over and over again by the Shattered Shackle as they hit slaver rings and pirate operations over the past several years. Better yet, virtually all of the League's commanders had been blooded by cycling them through the Shattered Shackle. But, even so, this was the first time all of the pieces were being employed in massive scale.

Which meant it was past time for Izuku to stop staring and follow the now-impatient looking aide to meet his top General. The Assault on Nal Hutta's orbitals had been a runaway success. The Battle to take it away from the Hutts forever was only just barely under way…

... ... ... ... ...

Chapter 57:

A/N 1: Okay, this is where I rant about numbers. I'll try to keep this short...but the numbers given in the Star Wars films for Clones are utterly, complete, bullshit. There are over a million troops under arms just in the United States military, let along over the whole planet...and many of the Core Worlds of the Republic have FAR larger populations than Earth's measly 8 billion. If you take the Clone Numbers as given...they wouldn't be enough for a decent war over a single major world, let alone actually spread over the galaxy. It wouldn't be 'The Clone Wars,' it would be the 'Clone Minor Skirmishes' and no one would CARE.

The only saving grace is that the Clones are listed as 'Units' and you can skirt the issue by saying 'oh, a unit must be a 1,000 soldiers!' Or something like that. Even then, the numbers are BARELY enough for the Clones to be the Elite tip-of-the-spear against the CIS. Which would fit, sort of, with them being led by Jedi. The vast bulk of the Republic War Assets would still be planetary armies and system defense forces, though.

I made a point to highlight here that Izuku is aware of the numbers issue. Hutt Space is only around 500-1000 worlds, not the hundreds of thousands of the Republic. But it's still a lot to chew on. Which is why he's pushed so damn hard to have superior quality AND to mix droids and sentient forces. Even then...

A/N 2: ...Don't think they are going to sweep all of Hutt Space easily. What we saw here? Sucker punches. Preplanned opening Alpha Strikes that were intended to give the League any chance AT ALL. They still have an uphill struggle ahead of them, as the Hutts react and start pushing every button, pulling out every Ace, and proving why no one has done this before. Izuku managed to level the playing field from the start. But that's all he really accomplished. They are still going to have to slog through to the finish line, and it won't be quick.

A/N 3: I used a lot of Legends content regarding Hutts and Hutts Space. But the majority of what I included IS Legends canon. The Hutts really have been around longer than the Republic, really did used to be a warrior race, and really did have those three entire species enslaved as enforces since before the Republic even began.