Chapter 68: Playing Pirate
Summary: If you aren't cheating, you aren't trying hard enough...and the same applies for being sneaky too!
Warning! Chapters 66-70 were all posted back-to-back! Make sure you don't miss any of them!
Chapter 68: Playing Pirate
—Deep Space—
Izuku was pleased that his plan was working out so far. It had needed a bit of rapid workshopping and some slightly risky orders for their Scouts, but it was looking like there would be an excellent chance of it paying off exactly how he'd hoped. They had started by creating a small fleet of mixed units, just two Volition-class ships and a half dozen Munifex II frigates, combined with an unusually heavy screen of smaller ships. In truth, he might have left the Volitions behind entirely, if he hadn't needed their brute power for one of the later stages of the operation. He didn't want to weaken the rest of the Fleet which Admiral Lin was still using to drive forward in areas they'd actually had plans for, after all. His own effort was chasing an unexpected and useful opportunity, rather than a vital push.
With the relatively small force, at least by the standards of the war so far, he'd leaned on the Iron Knights again to help him calculate a safe slingshot around Diyu. Technically, as Admiral Lin had recently proven, it was possible to do that with nothing but navicomputer calculations. But Admiral Lin had possessed a much larger number of powerful navicomputers to check and triple check the maneuver. A necessity, given that the Hutts weren't exactly sticklers for having perfect hyperspace data for their systems and surrounding space. On the contrary, they tended to actively discourage such detailed mapping for their own many and varied reasons. Not least of which was a desire by the various kajidics to sneak around each other on a frequent basis.
Somewhere in the Core, it would have been a far simpler maneuver, but that was neither here nor there. Izuku and a pair of Iron Knights had been more than capable of using the Force to better even what the navicomputers could manage, after all. They had carefully used Diyu's gravity as a tether to slingshot around the system, without ever actually entering it. In doing so, no one in the heavily industrialized system, with its excellent sensor net, had seen them pass by.
The next system along the route between Diyu and Ylesia was, thankfully, an empty and unnamed system. In the hyper catalog, it was nothing more than a number, the smallish star and its only planet having nothing to really draw interest of any sort. What was of interest was that the system did have plenty of asteroid material. Quite large bits, actually, given that the material in the system had failed to clump into additional planets at any point in its past. Those large bits were exactly what he'd needed, and the sole reason he'd brought the pair of Volitions along. The two recently re-designated Battlecruisers had been more than up to the task of spearing two large chunks of asteroid and drawing them in close enough to keep their gravity wells from interfering with a short hyper jump.
Technically, the trick Izuku was intending to pull could be executed by ships as small as a corvette. Pirates, in fact, used the trick all the time. They would tow a chunk of rock with a large enough mass shadow into a relatively narrow point of a hyperlane, causing any ship traveling it to be pulled out of hyper by their navicomputer's safeties encountering a gravity well that shouldn't be there. Those pirates, however, would take a week or more to pull off the trick, as the chunk of rock they were moving was usually significantly bigger than the corvette itself. Obviously, they couldn't enter hyper with it tractored to the towing vessel, requiring them to move the asteroid at sub-light speeds. Typically, no farther than the edge of an existing solar system. They generally settled for bringing a ship out of hyper early, rather than properly in the middle of nowhere.
Izuku hadn't had a week.
The window of opportunity for the somewhat complex operation he'd planned had been less than three days. Which was why he'd needed to bring a pair of Volition-class ships along. The Battlecruisers were big enough that, between them, they could tow a pair of asteroids that would equal the mass needed, through hyper. It wasn't easy, and it was another feat that required the help of the Force via a gestalt of him and the Iron Knights. But they'd pulled it off without losing either ship or destroying their drives. The engineers of the ships were pretty pissed at them, given the sheer amount of hours they'd taken off the hyperdrives lifespan, but such was an acceptable result if this worked out. It's not like the League didn't have a plush number of spares, at least for now.
The end result of their foray into a pirate-style ambush was them being able to drop a hyperspace shadow right in the middle of the hyperlane between two systems along the Shag Pabol trade route. Cruder than their future interdictors, the effort would still work to pull the convoy of heavy freighters that were bringing thousands of mercs along that route toward Diyu. Mercs that were intended to put down the revolt there with suitable ruthlessness.
A convoy of freighters that their Scouts had reported should be passing along the route any minute now.
All that remained was the waiting, hoping that their calculations about the amount of mass needed was right. There was always a chance, if these vessels belonged to smugglers, that they'd lowered the standard threshold of their safeties to ignore tricks like this. It wasn't uncommon for individual captains to do so, as it allowed them to plot tighter courses and avoid notice by skimming gravity hazards legitimate shipping would avoid. Something like two thirds of all 'smuggler's routes' the galaxy over consisted of exactly that sort of trick. Doing so also required extremely well-tuned drives, though. Which explained why so many of the galaxy's best mechanics could be found aboard smuggler's vessels or in shadow ports that specialized in doing the required modifications and frequent tune-ups.
Thankfully, it also wasn't likely their targets had the modifications in question. Smugglers used almost exclusively medium freighters and smaller for reasons closely related to the trick in question. The larger the ship, the harder it was to make a hyperdrive work as delicately and precisely as needed. Even more critically, the larger the mass of the ship, the more vulnerable to being disrupted it was. A fighter, assuming it had a hyperdrive, could actually ignore mass shadows far more easily than even a light freighter. There was even, apparently, a crazy Jedi on the Jedi Council who was capable of calculating jumps so precise that he could take his fighter through a planet via hyperspace.
Thankfully, that nut wasn't here, and the half dozen ships carrying their mercs were all bulk carriers. Ships that could carry hundreds or thousands of troops, plus all of their equipment. They were much too big to be attractive for smuggling modifications of the hyperspace skimming type as a result. Even here in Hutt Space, it was likely they would be vulnerable to this little tri…
"Emergence! Hyperspace emergence! Twelve degrees port, thirty-seven up! Ships…six heavy freighters, sir!"
Izuku had sensed them, via the light battle meditation he was maintaining…but he needn't have bothered. He'd already given orders when they'd set the trap, and those orders came into play now. The Defenders and Munifex II frigates he'd brought along had been carefully fanned out in a modified encirclement of the hyperspace trap, aiming to make sure wherever their potential prey came out, it would be under the guns of the ships.
Specifically, under the Ion Cannons.
Izuku hadn't brought only Munifexs along just because they were less capable than the new Siege-class. A ship which, despite barely being 50 meters larger than the Munifex, had been reclassed as a Cruiser now that the war college had started getting feedback from engagements. Instead, he'd brought the frigates along because they, unlike the Siege-class, were equipped with banks of ion cannon. Fourteen each, in total. Combined with the thirty ion cannons of the Volition-class, and the medium ion cannon of each Defender-class corvettes, aided by yet more ion canons from the H-7 bombers they'd deployed, they had a stupidly high density of the disabling weapons on hand.
The H-7s were the bomber class that had been developed for the League fleet based on Nubia's Scurrg H-6 plans, and two squadrons of them were the fastest to jump the new arrivals. In fact, the capital ships barely got a shot off before the squadrons of bombers had disabled the freighters. Ah well, it might have been a little overkill to bring all those ion cannon along. But there hadn't been any certainty of exactly where in real space the ships would drop out. Bringing so many had allowed him to make a net from which there had been no chance of escape. Now, he had some ships to take, prisoners to deal with…and some ships with completely legitimate Hutt IFFs to fill with own people.
... ...
Cham Syndulla, Captain of the Lylek Breakers, smirked in satisfaction as the space traffic controller for Diyu gave their ships landing clearance without any fuss. Why shouldn't they have, after all? They were a completely expected arrival of six heavy freighters carrying mercenaries to help put down the local slave revolt. They had, thanks to slicers from his own Lylek Breakers, a sub unit of the Shattered Shackle, pulled all of the proper clearance codes from the freighters databanks. Scans undoubtably showed the ships loaded with lots of people and weapons…but that was exactly as expected for this arrival, so why would that concern anyone? Signaling the other ships, he took them down on their assigned flight path, even as he keyed his comm to speak to the Alion Nova Guard Commander in the hold.
"Syndulla here, we've got clearance. As expected, we'll be landing at Fryall Spaceport, which is the primary mustering center for the efforts against the locals. The droid controlled trio of suicide freighters will slam into the primary air defense for the city seconds after we land, so you'll have a window of total confusion to sweep the port. You already know your goals. My unit will be splitting off to link up with the locals, while the Echani move to take control of their own targets."
The response came promptly.
"Excellent. So far, your people are proving to be quite competent. It is a nice change of pace for the Nova Guard. I do hope it continues."
Cam rolled his eyes, but didn't take offense. He'd gotten a solid briefing on the Nova Guard when he'd been assigned to this operation. Militaristic culture. Tended to be genuinely shocked by the lack of military skill in most of their opponents. The commander was being nothing but honest about this being a pleasant change of pace for his people. Said people were also very, very good. Less famous than the Mandalorians, but apparently of pretty comparable in general skill as a culture. Between the surprise destruction of the defenses, the Nova Guard taking the port, and the Echani hopefully taking or destroying various command posts, there was a good chance they'd control the critical infrastructure of the city by nightfall.
It was only one city out of five on the planet, but it was the only one with a dedicated spaceport, and there were several thousand reinforcements ready to land and help them hold it once the ground emplacements had been silenced. Without those, the orbitals would fall easily to the small taskforce Admiral Midoriya had left to help insert the reinforcements and hold the system afterward. It was a little annoying that they were mostly getting more irregulars to keep grinding away at the planet afterward. But he understood the logistics at work. Diyu was an unexpected bonus, rather than a major strategic objective. So it would have to be taken mostly with allied units that were equally surplus to the original war plans.
He honestly approved of the move. Something he could say in general about his ultimate boss. He hadn't once regretted joining up with the Shackles after learning that they were connected to the same movement that had revitalized Ryloth. It was fulfilling work, even if it took him away from Eleni and little Hera too often. Better yet, between the extremely good pay that a Captain in the Shattered Shackles got and the solid pay Eleni herself got working a part time desk job back at the new Ryloth Shipyards, little Hera was going to grow up into a much better life than he'd once imagined was possible.
Shaking off the smile that thought brought to his face, Cam forced himself to focus on the job at hand. He couldn't give his little girl the best life if he disappeared from it, after all. So, time to make sure he and his came through the latest round of fighting with as few losses as possible. What was that pithy quote the boss had said once? That the goal wasn't to die for your cause, but to make the other poor bastards die for theirs? Something like that, anyway…
... ...
Izuku had left one of his Volitions, along with two of the Munifexs and a suitable screen, back to support the operation on Diyu. Just like Ylesia, Diyu relied far more on ground emplacements than orbital defenses, and that combination would be more than adequate to sweep the remaining orbital defenses away so long as the initial ground combat went their way. He'd also, of course, left plenty of ground reinforcements to join the first wave down.
Three more clans worth of Wookiees, ones that had shown after the deal with Attichitcuk and had been willing to wait for him to return to Hutt Space to see where they'd best be put to use. Between them, they had another 2,300 some fighters. Added to that were a few smaller groups, such as a group of some 200 Barabel. That particular saurian species outright revered the Jedi Order, and considered the entire invasion of Hutt Space to obviously be a Jedi supported operation. Not…entirely wrong, in a way. Even if it was more about individual Jedi than the Order. Regardless, he'd managed to gather up just over 7,000 additional irregulars, then paired them with a single heavy battalion of League Army units.
That battalion would add muscle in the from of mechs and power armor, giving a solid show for the League in the efforts. But a single battalion was also cheap for the price if they could end up taking an heavy industrial planet with no more troop commitment than that, plus the irregulars and locals. Heck, even if they needed to be reinforced later, just gaining a solid foothold and capturing a single city would justify the move. It was a good use of the irregulars, while potentially being valuable in the long run if they could take even a fraction of the world's industrial facilities intact.
All of which did have a downside in that, by the time he reached Ylesia, his small detachment had been reduced to just the Knight Errant and a quartet of Munifex IIs for heavy capital ships. He'd retained a solid number of Defenders and ES-24Cs, both of which the fleet had no shortage of. Despite their need for ships, they were even still outright selling certain models of the Defender II. Corvettes were small enough to be built on planet, unlike larger classes of ship, so they'd been able to ramp up production of the model far beyond their ability to crew them. Likewise, between the new yards over Ryloth and the much-expanded Evolution Shipyards, they had a plentiful supply of the carrier variant of the ES design.
All of which meant that he did have enough combat power to take Ylesia. But he didn't have so much of it on hand that he could be ham-fisted about the attempt. Ylesia's defenses might have been built to see off raids, but the Hutts had considered that those raids might well include up to frigate weight craft. The planet had been a major spice processing plant for millennia, after all. Meaning its defenses had been designed in an era were raiders might have access to much heavier ships than you were likely to see in pirate hands these days. The fact that this portion of Hutt Space was also pretty near the border of Wild Space had only encouraged the Hutts to actually maintain the old defenses, sadly.
All in all, there wasn't anything on or over the planet that could match the Knight Errant itself. However, if he was stupid about this, he could well lose quite a few of his Defenders. Even, possibly, one or two of the Munifex IIs, as the frigates weren't nearly as tough as the designs created from scratch for the League. Since this was an extra expedition, outside their original operational planning, losing a significant amount of tonnage would make the fight not worth it. Which was, of course, why Izuku had dropped his remaining fleet out of hyper well short of the system to consult the Scouts he'd sent forward, feeling out the system in order to better craft a plan.
He blinked as a new notice popped up on the feeds coming from the system.
"Wait. What? Trotter, run that IFF that just hit the system down!"
His Lieutenant had already been acting, seeming as confused as Izuku himself was, but it still took almost two minutes to get a result. An extreme amount of time for a system as powerful as the Flag Bridge computers of the Knight Errant. When the result finally appeared and Trotter sent it to him, Izuku shook his head with a bit of incredulity. The result had come out of the copy of certain files Aayla had quietly pulled from the Jedi Order's archives. Specifically, from the archive of Jedi emergency transponders.
Every Jedi, or almost every Jedi, carried an emergency beacon that would let them alert other Jedi to their presence. The codes for the beacons were useless unless a Jedi turned their unique, highly-encrypted locator device on, but the encryptions were each utterly unique. They paired one-off keys that were never used for anything but single beacons with an exotic transmitter that wouldn't show up on most scanners. They also, notably, didn't have comm capability. The side-stepping of the normal broadcast band limited the amount of data they could send. Instead, they squeezed the most potent emergency beacon possible into a tiny device a Jedi could hide on, or even in their body. Then made sure that Jedi knew only to use it when they were sure they needed to. Aayla had only grabbed a fully database copy of existing keys on the idea that numerous Jedi might join in on their Hutt Space operations without bothering to make official contact unless something went tits up.
"Jedi Knight Ky Narec. Missing and presumed dead for nearly twenty years. So, either fled from the Order, became a wandering Jedi, or got stranded somewhere? The first isn't likely if he's retained his emergency beacon and turned it on at this juncture. Unless it's a trap, I suppose. We are pretty damn close to wild space, though. If he's been operating out there, its entirely possible for either the second or third options to be plausible."
Trotter cleared his throat, sounding suspicious as he added his own two credits.
"It could be a lure, sir. The Hutts could have killed him and kept his beacon. They know a lot of Jedi are working with us, so using it as a trap…"
Izuku shook his head.
"It isn't outright impossible, but it's pretty unlikely. Those beacons require a biometric check and the Force to activate, the combination is a good way to make sure the Jedi in question is still alive. It's remotely possible they had him in carbonite or something and pulled him out as bait. But it's probably less probable than him having fallen and setting the trap on his own. Which is, in and of itself, an unlikely outcome. Fallen Jedi tend not to have much self-control and end up getting caught after lashing out, high on the Dark Side and their own supposed 'power.'"
Izuku could feel his aide's doubt. That was fair enough, though. Trotter wasn't Force Sensitive, which meant talks of Light and Dark sides didn't mean much to him. Something only made worse by the fact he was an extremely logical, by-the-books oriented, soul. Speaking of the Force, though, Izuku reminded himself to not be silly and fell into a half-trance. He wasn't too surprised to feel the two Iron Knights and the Altisian Jedi he'd brought along already reaching out with the Force in a gesalt…and almost rolled his eyes as he felt a presence reaching back out from the Ylesia system.
Without the gestalt of the three Jedi in his small battle group, the outreaching presence wouldn't have managed to make contact. With the gestalt reaching back, Izuku could sense that the Jedi felt them. Only faintly, most likely. But there was a feeling of delight that came through clear enough from the return 'ping.' The man was pleased to have encountered other Jedi. Given that no warning, either from Ky Narec or the Force, came with the contact, he could probably dismiss the 'trap' idea. Falling back out of his own half-trance, Izuku thought for a moment, before addressing his aide again.
"Trotter, get me a comm to Knight Masana, then get the Fortune's Son and her crew prepped. I think it might be time for a little bit more subterfuge. It does seem to be the theme for this particular outing so far, after all."
His aide nodded and got on both tasks, even as Izuku flicked through a series of possible targets for the plan that was forming in his mind…
... ...
Callista Masana had not been a Jedi Knight for long. Even so, she fully understood why Admiral Midoriya had picked her to sneak down to the planet aboard the Fortune's Son. The ship itself was one of several Clandestine Ops ships that had been pulled in before the fighting to serve as a different type of scout. A smuggler-modified freighter, its undercover operations specialists had been operating it inside Hutt Space for years.
Occasionally, it helped move escaped slaves along. More often, it had just acted as a secure courier and intelligence gatherer, taking 'legitimate' Hutt contracts and building up a reputation with the slugs. Even under the current circumstances, as they'd be bringing in a load of weapons the locals would be all over, they wouldn't draw attention. Doubly so as they'd taken advantage of the smuggler-modified hyperdrive to skirt around the system in hyperspace, in order to come back in form the Ziugen jump point on the far side of the system.
As for Callista, her job was to sneak in and make contact with the Jedi who was on the ground here. Admiral Midoriya's reasoning for sending her had been obvious and sensible. Specifically, Djinn Altis was a name that Ky Narec would most likely know. Given when he'd vanished, he likely wouldn't be aware that Master Altis was no longer part of the main Jedi Order, which was something she wouldn't be bringing up just yet. For the moment, she would be a friendly face who would be more familiar-seeming than either of the Iron Knights would have been. Particularly given that the whole Iron Knight thing had happened before Narec vanished. So he might not react to them overly well as a point of first contact.
It wasn't a deception she was overly happy about.
It was, however, one she more or less agreed with. Assuming Narec hadn't gone rogue himself, he would hopefully at least provide on-the-ground intel that might let the Commando Droid teams also sneaking on planet aboard ship take out some of the targets the big boss had selected. If Narec was actually up to causing a little chaos personally, then she and he might well be able to take out another such installation as well. If they could either take over, disable, or destroy just a few critical ground emplacements, then the potential losses among the fleet would plummet. Either way, she knew Ylesia would be taken. But doing so with the smallest loss of life possible was a worthwhile goal…
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
AN 1: So, the whole towing asteroids thing to pull people out of hyper is at least Legends canon. It, frankly, doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. The mass shadow of a battleship should be enough to do the same thing if that sort of nonsense was going to work at all. BUT, it's a THING. So I at least tried to make the thing make as much sense as it could, despite being horribly illogical overall.
AN 2: Cam Syndulla! So, for those who've watched the Clone Wars cartoon series, you might recognize him as the resistance leader of Ryloth during the Clone Wars battles on that planet. His personality is very military and a bit belligerently so from what I remember. Given Ryloth's improved position and access to the Shattered Shackles via several of Izuku's companies being behind that improvement? He seemed a logical canon character to have gotten involved with the Shackles. That he was a talented military mind in the Clone Wars means that the Hutt Crusades here can season him into a major ground forces general/higher command dude for the League's senior command for the Clone Wars.
A/N 3: Callista Masana! Some of you might know her name, if you're familiar with the EU books. Though you might more quickly recognize her name as Callista Ming, not Masana. Masana was her original name, before the Eye of Palpatine mess and hijacking someone else's body after said person kicked the bucket. None of that has happened yet, and I was surprised to discover she was one of the Altisians when I went looking for names we knew were part of that group. There's some...oddity in the timeline, there, though. The date she supposedly joined the Altisians does not match up well with her rank during the Clone Wars. At all. So I've made some tweaks. Essentially, just making it so that she was part of the main Order first and broke off with Master Altis. Probably as a Padawan to another member of his group. As a result she's been in training long enough to actually be the Knight she's listed as during the Clone Wars.