Chapter 62: Clearing the Way

Summary: Some space combat, some reinforcements, and some hints about more tech in the League's future.

Warning! Chapters 59-62 were all posted back-to-back! Make sure you don't miss any of them!

Chapter 62: Clearing the Way

—Orbit of Nar Bol Sholla - 1 Week into the Invasion of Hutt Space—

Admiral Rana Lin tsked in mild annoyance as she viewed the active reporting from the scouts she'd sent into the Nar Bol Sholla system. One of the less obvious developments to come out of Mei Hatsume's imagination, the Toru-class scout ship was nevertheless one of the most tactically and strategically important in her own mind. Cloaking technology was one of several tricks that had been thought virtually lost in the last great round of galactic-scale wars. Less, it had to be said, because people had forgotten how to make the previous versions and more because sensors had gotten too good for previous versions of cloaking tech to work very well.

As she'd done with a lot of things, the insane genius that was Hatsume had turned that equation on its head. Apparently having studied a unique mutation of the person the ship class was named after in the past, the crazy inventor had put that knowledge to use to improve a set of very old stealth designs she'd gotten her hands on. The result wasn't perfect. Not yet. But the pinkette had ruthlessly tackled spoofing all of the common sensors that could detect ships at long range. Up close and personal, several relatively common sensor systems could defeat the current generation of cloaking device on the Toru-class. But at ranges greater than half a light second, the ships were the next best thing to a hole in space.

All of which meant that Rana never had to enter a system that she didn't have at least a good set of passive scans on. Something which meant she had plenty of time to consider what she wanted to do about the sizable fleet that was waiting for her in the Nar Bo Sholla system. The fleet in question was ragtag, haphazard. It was, without question, the first results of the Hutts throwing unholy amounts of credits at everyone with a ship and demanding they put them in the path of destruction. There was a wild lack of uniformity among the 'fleet' she was faced with as a result, but there were a lot of them. Several hundred ships of varying sizes, with the largest being an aging Dreadnaught-class cruiser and a pair of 307-meter Kaloth-style battlecruisers. Mere frigates, really, despite the name.

Not exactly menacing in heavy ship, this fleet. But that was partially made up for by the fact that there were well over a hundred and fifty corvettes and small gunships. Complicating the fact still farther was the fact that Rana was down to about three quarters of a single fleet. Taking Nar Kreeta and Sleheyron had gone well. But Second and Third fleet had taken some losses, had cripples that weren't battle worthy, and had needed to leave sizable defense forces in each system they'd taken so far. They'd known in advance that was going to be the case, and part of the reason they hadn't worried too much about not having a proper commander for Third Fleet was that they'd intended from the start to divide that fleet up into the needed defensive elements. There were also plenty of replacement ships that would already be trickling into Hutt Space to bring First and Second Fleets back up to full strength.

They had to actually connect back to Nal Hutta for that to happen first, though.

Thankfully, they'd also known from the start that they were technically performing a deep strike with their opening blows, and they'd prepared accordingly. She had the logistics to fight at least another couple of battles, including the one in front of her. She still had far more firepower than that fleet did, even if she only used half of her ships. Which didn't give her leave to be reckless with them. They were in this for the long haul and needed to preserve their fleet strength as much as possible. Which meant she had to take that ragtag mess in the Nar Bol Sholla system seriously.

So, how was she going to do this with the least amount of losses possible? Slowly, a plan formed in her mind and she nodded. She'd need to talk to Aayla before she finalized it. The other 'Admiral' had folded her personal division into second fleet to replace losses, another thing planned from the start. Gifted as she might be, Secura had too many other roles to get stuck leading a fleet for the long haul. Right now, however, Rana needed to know if they had enough trained Force Users to pull off what she had in mind…

... ...

Aayla was half in and half out of a battle meditation gestalt as she carefully observed the real-time feed from their scouts. What Admiral Lin had proposed was a good plan, though one that would be tricky to pull off without Jedi to handle the precision jumps. Thankfully, Izuku had included enough such Jedi in the Second and Third fleets to make emergency 'detours' off the known hyperlanes if things went wrong enough. Which meant that they did, in fact, have enough to pull off what Rana had suggested.

Barely.

Admiral Lin had only taken one third of the combat ready fleet with her, dropping out of hyper well clear of the planet with that group. It had taken far longer than it should have for the enemy to react in anything like a cohesive manner, but eventually the scrambling and fumbling attempts of the ragtag fleet waiting to 'ambush' them had reacted. If Rana had jumped in with the entire fleet they had present, it was highly likely that their enemies would have either run or hugged the planet for what little help its stationary defenses could give them. As it was, Admiral Lin had pared back her fleet strength enough to make it at least seem like it might be a good idea to go out and attack it.

It was a tactic that made the fleet a tempting target. Made all the more so for the mercs and pirates by several of Rana's ships playing 'wounded,' with fluctuating drive signatures and uneven shields that must look like repaired battle damage to the collection of ragtag enemies. The fact that the Admiral had retreated from them, into the mass shadow of a gas giant with dense rings they must think she wanted as cover, only egged them on and the disjointed fleet had accelerated enthusiastically.

Which was about to cost them horribly.

Sensing just the right moment, Aayla snapped a mental urge down the gestalt link with the rest of the Jedi, whose ships were spread out into two outsized divisions. Aboard six of the twelve Volition-class ships in those divisions, five other jedi and Aayla herself executed Force-guided jump sequences. They and their escorts all jumped as one, spent less than ten heartbeats in Hyperspace…and then exited almost perfectly on the flanks of the trailing elements of the ragtag merc fleet, right as they entered the mass shadow of the gas giant. Not to coincidentally, they appeared only seconds after the lead elements of the same haphazard fleet entered extended weapons range of Admiral Lin.

Dropping fully into battle meditation, she barely had to speak the words of her commands as officers and Jedi alike shouted targeting priorities and orders to fire. The enemy were caught completely flat-footed as the perfectly aligned firing arcs of twelve heavy cruisers, eighteen frigates, and dozens of escorts opened fire and utterly obliterated the trailing third of the 'fleet' in less than two minutes of sustained fire. Many of the rest of the mercs tried to break off, but Admiral Lin's own division had surged forward, and Volition-Class ships had a brutal forward firing arc. With so many ships pincering them from three different angles, there wasn't a snowballs chance on Mustafar of even a single ship getting away…and that's exactly the fate that played out over the next five minutes.

A few ships did successfully surrender, being targeted only with ion cannon as a result. But the vast majority simply died, and not even so much as a starfighter escaped the trap. Better yet? Not a single ship larger than a fighter on their own side had been lost. A few corvettes had minor damage caused by panicked pirates and mercs trying to claw their way through the weakest ships to escape, and a bare handful of Rana's deployed starfighters had been destroyed. But that was it. Several hundred merc ships and it had amounted to nothing more than a few bits of blaster scoring on their armor and a handful fewer fighter jocks.

Aayla still regrated the deaths of those pilots. But kriff if the plan hadn't worked near flawlessly. Though she supposed a more disciplined fighting force would have at least fought back more effectively, even if they hadn't seen the trap coming. Smiling widely, she let the battle meditation fall away and focused on the planet they still needed to capture. This one was only a minor trade world, so maybe they could talk them into surrendering without firing a shot? She doubted it, since there would inevitably some panicked Hutts down there. But a girl could dream, couldn't she?

... ...

–Tythe Central - 12 Days After Invasion Begins–

Izuku was more than a little annoyed to be back in orbit over Tythe. His action-oriented instincts wanted him to be back on the Front Lines. If not physically on the ground in the places the army was deployed and working to pacify, then at least commanding one of their fleets. He had, at least, done a bit more of that before leaving Hutt Space. Or, rather, while in the process of leaving Hutt Space. While the capture of Circumtore had technically secured them an entrance to and an exit from Hutt Space on its own, that particular route led through a Republic world with extremely strong Hutt ties. Daalang was, after all, the traditional trade route that Republic traffic most frequently used to enter Hutt Space. It was a Republic world, rather firmly. But one that catered to the exact sort of corruption and vices that the Hutts peddled.

As such, Izuku had taken the chance of needing to leave Hutt Space at all to secure a second access point that would be more advantageous to them. Doing so had been on their list of objectives, and First Fleet had been relatively untouched by its initial operations. He had cut down the Kaaga run, capturing Carnovia and Nar Kaaga, the homes of the Vermilic and Shell Hutt clans, respectively. This secured them another vector into and out of Hutt Space, though it took them through Bothan space to do so. That honestly wasn't ideal either, but the route they really would prefer would have taken too long for him to secure. The Bothans, at least, were basically only out for themselves and could be bought if necessary.

More importantly, Carnoiva and Nar Kaaga had been easy to take, only requiring a few days between them. That might have surprised people, given that they were the base of operations for two Hutt Clans, but both clans were minor ones. Moreover, Carnovia had been the location of one of several slave revolts that they had engineered. The planet had been practically in control of the slaves by the time Izuku arrived, and he'd mostly just needed to sweep away the minimal orbital defenses and drop off a relief ship to help dechip all the former slaves.

Nar Kaaga had been a bit more ticklish, as it was technically a border world for Hutt Space. But the fact that the Bothans were basically Hutt's in a fur suit, who focused more on espionage, information brokering, and betrayals rather than spice and slaves, had made that a 'soft' border for centuries. The defenses at Nar Kaaga hadn't been up to really slowing him down, and most of his short stop there had been to get the ball rolling on a ground assault that would take the only real major city on the planet.

He also understood that, strictly speaking, the next stage of the campaign in Hutt Space was in better hands than his. Admiral Lin had arrived at Nal Hutta with Second Fleet only two days after he'd left, and she and Aayla were more than capable of handling any immediate decisions. Nor was he truly out of the loop, as Mei's studies of the Kwa technology base had produced a single critical development that they'd been abusing the hell out of from the start. Specifically, she'd discovered that the Infinity Gates used a type of Quantum Entanglement to communicate with each other. Since Mei had already had a chance to work with QEC tech on a small scale with Izuku's armor and the small quantity of entangled particles Momo Yaoyorozu had produced for her, it had been one of the few pieces of the Kwa tech base she'd puzzled out completely.

Well, completely enough to duplicate in small scale, at least.

The QEC comms meant that none of his ships were tapping into the galactic holonet for communications between each other. In fact, their navy ships only ever contacted the holonet through a massive QEC relay situated deep underground on Tythe. One of the few legacies of the original corporate owners of Tythe was a hefty connection to the nearest holonet relay, which the Tythe government had only upgraded further after Izuku took over. It easily had the bandwidth to support relaying to a few thousand QECs in real time, preventing anyone from tracking the communications to anywhere but Tythe. Digging straight down below its building and hollowing out a huge space for a QEC relay that could link with the holocomm relay above was one of many steps they'd taken to turn their fleets into ghosts, unless you actively had eyes on them.

Still, despite the fact that he knew he wasn't strictly needed. Despite the fact that he could sit in on any meeting he wanted to via a secure QEC holoprojection. Despite the fact that he knew the many tasks waiting for him here at Tythe Central were important. Despite all of that…he really would have preferred to be at the tip of the spear, helping to execute the war against galactic slavery and its primary movers that he'd poured so much blood, sweat, and tears into preparing for over the last six years.

Unfortunately, Izuku was still effectively their Head of State, and there were approximately five million things that needed doing. He had been and still was putting many of them onto other people's shoulders. Esa Rotsino and her dozen or so aides actually did far more of the 'political' work than he ever had or ever wanted to. Other members, new and old, of the Liberty Council were also taking up most of the slack created by the fact Izuku wasn't really interested in the whole 'ruling' thing. He only kept the top position officially as a means to make sure the entire movement stayed on the up-and-up, instead of getting coopted by someone power hungry. He, frankly, eagerly looked forward to the day that they had enough momentum and people for him to give up the big chair entirely.

Until then, however, he was still stuck with a certain degree of political wrangling. Esa Rotsino had made it very clear that he needed to change his plans and be here in person to meet with Senator Amidala. For a whole host of, sadly legitimate, reasons. Not only was it a serious escalation of their original plan for the political side of things, but anyone less than him meeting with her wouldn't give Padmé the exclusivity they needed her to have, in order to pole-vault her ahead of the pack screaming about him in the Senate. Add in the personal connection from having met with the woman multiple times while she was still Queen of Naboo, and there was no real way to argue that he needed to be here. Nor was he stupid enough to try and drag her to him, inside Hutt Space. They might be in control of a handful of important worlds, but their best estimate of Hutt Space put it as having in excess of 750 populated planets.

That they knew about.

It was probable that the number was significantly higher, as the Hutts weren't exactly in the habit of reporting colonies and outposts even to each other, let alone to outsiders. Nor did that number account for worlds like Tatooine, whose entire sector had been virtually a detached island of Hutt Space. Still was, to some extent, though the fall of Tatooine and the death of the Hutts there had dealt a major blow to Hutt operations in that sector.

No, asking the Senator to meet him behind enemy lines would be the sort of thing only an asshole would do. Which meant he needed to be here. Even if she wouldn't arrive for another two days, at earliest. In the meantime, there were quite a few other groups that wanted to speak with him, and some of them were important enough to be able to demand his attention if he was here…

... ...

"We are agreed then. Those of you who are willing will undergo familiarization with our own doctrine and be added to the primary campaign, but will remain a separate unit. Anyone too impatient will, instead, be provided transport into Hutt Space, with the goal of helping with the various slave revolts underway. That way, they can get immediately into directly freeing slaves and fighting Hutt forces, and those revolts are still getting logistical and technical support from us anyway. Your warriors will be well supplied, and the locals can certainly use the help."

The Wookiee across from him made a wordless chuffing noise that translated to nothing, nodded, and firmly pressed his thumb to the ident-pad that digitally signed his name. With that signature, much to Izuku's initial surprise when his talks with the Wookiee began, came the direct approval of the Wookie Council. Said Council was the governing body of Kashyyyk, and the Wookiee across from Izuku was an outright Ambassador-at-Large. The agreement didn't have the official approval of Senator Yarua, but Attichitcuk had assured him that Yarua had been instructed to take the firm stance that extra-Republic wars were not within the Senate's mandate to interfere with. Which was a fantastic stance, as far as Izuku was concerned.

The greying Wookiee wasn't going to be taking part in the fighting himself, having cheerfully admitted he would leave it to his son Chewbacca to fight in the family's name. As well as to his daughter, Kallabow, who was among the more technically inclined Wookiees who had arrived. Not to fight, in their cases, but to see what their technical skills could do for the various R projects under way. If this had been any species but the Wookiees, Izuku might have been a little leery of them attempting industrial espionage rather than just wanting to help. But, while he was sure they'd learn a lot in the process, Wookiees simply didn't think that way, for the most part. Instead, they were here legitimately wanting to put their skillsets to use, and he was perfectly happy to let them dive in on some of their less restricted projects. They could always use talented techs and engineers for those projects.

"The Council will be pleased with the agreement. We would have fought only as volunteers. But your willingness to make sure Kashyyyk is repaid with a better ability to defend ourselves is appreciated. It shows you are just as honorable as the rumors declared. May the Hutts deeply regret that fact."

The eloquent speech hadn't sounded anything of the sort, of course. Wookiees were incapable of speaking Basic and typically used translator droids. Izuku, however, not only knew how to draw on the Force for translation, but had taken the time to copy Shyriiwook from someone who had a decent understanding. Attichitcuk had been pleased by not needing the translator, and even more pleased when Izuku presented him with the idea of providing payment for the services of the now 9,437 strong force of Wookiees that had arrived in system.

The Wookiees would be paid individually as fighters or techs, of course. But Izuku had insisted on also repaying the government of Kashyyyk. At first, Attichitcuk had disliked the idea. Until, that was, Izuku had explained what he intended. As Kashyyyk had gone out of its way to show official military oriented support, he would respond with his own similar form of support. Specifically, blueprints for the construction of a small but efficient orbital shipyard and a small number of Mei's Droid Construction Ships loaned out to help them build it.

Along with a license to build a decent number of Defender II's for the Kashyyyk Defense Force, it would be an appropriate return gesture. One that would greatly help the Wookiees in their continued efforts to keep Trandoshan Slavers from raiding their planet. Since it wasn't outright payment, it didn't offend the Wookiee sense of honor. Meanwhile, it also gave them a measure of return support and respect in same rough sphere, that of military and anti-slaver operations. The respect, in particular, was important to the Wookiee culture, which is what had quickly turn Attichitcuk's mood towards 'repayment' around.

It was, they both thought, a quite satisfying deal…

... ...

Shil Tervo looked like hell.

"Izuku. Boss. Manager of the Demon Lady of Invention. You have got to visit Mei while you're here and distract her or something. She's gone invention-crazy! Sure, she's producing some insanely good stuff. But there's no way we can keep up! And Nikkila isn't helping this time, since she's super into a couple of the projects!"

Izuku blinked, sighed, and nodded.

"Okay. I have another couple of meetings still, but I promise I'll visit Mei before I head back to the front and get her to calm down a little. Now, do you have the report on…"

Tervo slapped a high-security memory disk into the holoprojector of the table between them, even as he sagged with relief at Izuku's promise. A moment later, he took a deep breath, clearly focusing himself as Izuku eyed the ship that had appeared via the projectors after the disk had been checked. The ship was one of two prototypes still in the final testing phases. Ones that he was hoping would play a role in their war with the Hutts once they were properly finished. The first was actually almost done with the builders trials for its initial production prototype. A proper battleship class that would become command ships for each of their fleets.

While important, that wasn't the ship on display now.

No. This one was something he considered far more important, strategically. Particularly given the Hutts known propensity for the smuggling profession. If they didn't do something about that, they'd end up fighting guerrilla actions on every world they captured, as said smugglers were paid to slip mercs and bounty hunters onto captured worlds. Not to mention the possibility of the Hutts themselves escaping via similar methods. If the Hutts managed to just pack up and leave, with their wealth intact, they would be a perpetual problem for decades at minimum. Possibly more like centuries or even millennia, given their species' long lifespan.

No, they needed the ship he'd had Tervo personally working on, and he looked the vessel over now. For all that the design was six hundred meters long, she was relatively lightly armed. Well, lightly by their standards, at least. The design would still have given any good Republic defense force either a bit a jealousy or a fit of panic. Twenty quad laser canons made for extremely good point defense, but they were joined by just four heavier ion cannon batteries and a dozen torpedo launchers for 'offensive' punch. That mix wasn't by accident, as this ship was never met for the crushing spear tip of an assault force. It was meant to be screened in any sort of heavy combat by other ships, including the four starfighter squadrons it supported. No, its purpose lay entirely on the four spherical bulges on bottom and top of its hull.

Gravity well projectors.

"The projectors are working at last?"

Tervo had gathered himself while Izuku examined the ship. The hologram wasn't just a visual of the new ship class. It was an engineer's model that had been marked carefully with systems and their current stages of testing. The majority of the ship was the green of successfully tested systems, including the projectors. Which hadn't been the case the last time Izuku had seen it.

"Yes. Finally. I swear, despite having the blueprints for that ancient model you dug up somewhere, making modernized iterations was a nightmare. They've been halfway between outright lost and simply illegal for over a thousand years, you know. If I didn't know what you were planning to use them for, I might have refused to make them."

Izuku nodded. That was reasonable. While interdictor vessels were theoretically quite useful for police actions, the risk of them falling into pirate or other malcontent hands was generally enough to make the Republic as a whole try to suppress them. The Dark Age had wiped out most records of working designs anyway, so it hadn't been that hard to accomplish. Though Izuku was quite sure a fair few institutions out there still had the theoretical knowledge to make them, if they'd really wanted to. In their own case, it had been made possible because Revan's own flagship had been a Republic-built Interdictor-class cruiser created for the Mandalorian Wars. Of course he'd loaded it's blueprint into the Star Forge and, thus, into the Infinite Engine Seeds.

Like virtually everything else in those databases, the designs had needed updating badly. Mei and Tervo had both been horrified by some of the choices the original creators had gone with, as well. Which had meant only really taking the know-how from the ancient design and building a new ship around them. Between that and general changes in technology, it had proven harder to properly replicate them than anyone had expected. Izuku had originally hoped to have a few of them available before he launched his attack on Hutt Space. But he hadn't felt confident they could hide the fleet buildup much longer, and thus had gone ahead and committed them to starting without them.

Now, however, it looked like Tervo's team had cracked the nasty math involved in getting the projectors to play nicely. Izuku's grin grew just a little malicious as he started asking more questions about how testing and production was going. Poor evil slug monsters. They already failed at hiding. Now they weren't going to be able to run, either…

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

A/N: I'm still trickling in some of the tech advancements they've made. I have these all pretty much outlined, but didn't want to shove them down everyone's throat all at once. Hence why things like the QEC systems weren't mentioned during the fleet and ground force detailing.

A/N 2: Chewie showed up! At least in a mention :-p. I discovered while doing my research that his father had been a negotiator during the mess between the Wookiees and Trade Federation over Alaris Prime. I couldn't help using him here as a result, since he both fit and it allowed me to sneak in a little cameo mention of a main character...

A/N 3: Interdictors are a major advantage. Just like stealth ships. I wanted to show in both cases that these are things that they haven't totally worked out yet. Yes, they have some major talents working with them, but they aren't able to work on everything they want to, as quickly as they'd like. Nor is Mei's existence handwaving away every tech difficulty.

Her perspective is HELPING them slowly improve certain tech, but she's not totally breaking everything ;-). More just providing new eyes, from a different tech base, to look at and point out places where something really stupid has become common. Honestly, only the Null Torpedoes and QECs are really major departures from existing SW tech capabilities. And even there I think they fit with the sort of bleeding edge R&D we regularly see in the universe...

A/N 4: Yeah, you probably know this once by now. Once per release, I point out that I have a Page with Early Access content. In example, I just released chapters 63-65 of Displaced Hero there, adding just over another 16,500 more words which will remain in early access until next month. Similarly, there are at least a few Early Access chapters there for ALL of my stories, though NONE of them are ever permanently paywalled. All fanfiction content I make ends up here (or on Fanfiction.net and Questionable Questing) eventually, as new content for each story is released. Typically, there are around 45-60,000 words of additional early access content for patrons. As well as chances to vote in polls that influence content.