Chapter 69: Conquering Paradise
Summary: ...looook attt all the pretty cooolooorsss...
Warning! Chapters 66-70 were all posted back-to-back! Make sure you don't miss any of them!
Chapter 69: Conquering Paradise
As Izuku watched the local defenders scramble, he took note of something he hadn't really quite processed before, a fact that lanced a sort of dull shock through his system. Ylesia was gorgeous. In fact, it looked remarkably Earth-like to him, though he knew from his brief skim of the details regarding the world that it was somewhat more tropical than Earth had been. It was nevertheless somewhat hauntingly reminiscent of his original home…which created the shock as he realized that he'd somehow gotten used to not really paying attention to what planet he was landing on.
He hadn't even noticed the resemblance until this very moment, and there was a part of him that marveled at how completely he'd adjusted in the years since his arrival. Another part was, instead, rather melancholy for a long few moments. Melancholy that he'd barely thought of 'home' in years, and equally disappointed that much of the wonder that he'd first felt in visiting alien worlds had worn off. Not entirely, he supposed. The idea of just exploring for the sake of exploring quite appealed to him still, reminding him of the days after he'd first met Aayla. Still, part of that he knew was little more than nostalgia for a less complicated time. Maybe someday, the monumental task he'd picked up willingly would be over. He rather doubted it, though. This crazy thing he was doing was of the sort of scale that consumed both lives and life times with equal ease.
Leaning on the Jedi school of emotional focus for once, Izuku let the momentary distractions filter out into the Force, leaving him clear-headed enough to properly examine the defenses as they closed with the planet. Its defenders weren't eager to come out to meet him, and he didn't exactly blame them. The largest ships in the small swarm that had launched were a few large freighter conversions. Ships that scanned as heavily armed for their size, but weren't proper warships. Pocket corvettes, really. Not an atypical choice for Hutt worlds, and there was a solid half-dozen of them.
Combined with an entire wing of mixed starfighters, it was overkill enough for raiders that he was virtually certain it had already been 'reinforced' since the start of their little crusade. Likely less than half those fighters had originally been present, along with perhaps three or four of the pocket corvette freighter conversions. That, combined with the admittedly impressive ground emplacements around the two cities with proper spaceports, would have been more than enough to discourage raids. The rest of the planet had only wildly scattered settlements, mostly for slaves and kept deliberately low-tech as an easy countermeasure against revolts.
Roughly a quarter of the nearly 200 million population, the majority of the quarter not enslaved, lived in the two cities. Few slaves were allowed there, with the rest of the population being dispersed in those relatively primitive settlements, watched over by guards who had the only guns. Guns which were also the only defense against some admittedly rather dangerous wildlife, in places. That bit of planning had, in fact, kept his own people from attempting to create a slave revolt here. There was simply too little access between the spice processing slave settlements and the main spaceports to facilitate it. Now, however, it was going to come back to bite the Hutt clan that owned the planet, as it meant Izuku really only needed to capture those two cities.
It was the larger and better defended city that his small fleet was burning toward now, which must be confusing for the locals. While they likely realized he could smash his way through the defenses if he had to, taking on the ones that would give him the most hurt first would likely seem an odd choice. The cities were on opposite sides of the planet, which meant that hitting the smaller and forcing the mobile defenders to try protecting it was the most logical approach. Hitting the larger city while those mobile elements still existed might actually given them some small smidgen of a chance to drive him off. The city even had a single large Ion Battery that could genuinely hurt the Knight Errant, after all.
Pity for them they didn't know that the ground assets they'd slipped in had decided to take refugee in audacity. Ah well, they'd be finding out shortly what that meant…
... ...
For the first time in a while, Callista had to admit that the Orthodox Jedi might have a point about some emotions being dangerous. Mostly because she could see the unholy glee she felt as she impatiently fiddled with her detonator being, potentially, slightly addictive. Who knew that the chance to blow up several million credits worth of spice, along with several hundred thousand credits worth of weapons, was something that gave one a rush? The fact that they'd been able to arrange to vent the fumes from that spice straight into the main mustering area, was probably something that shouldn't have added to the glee.
That Asajj girl of Knight Narec's was a delightfully devious woman.
It was probably a bad sign that Callista found the idea of the entire garrison trying to fight an invasion high as fuck on the Hutts' own product funny as fuck.
Ah, well. The big boss did make sure they were all aware of the mental health services plan. She could talk to a councilor about this later to find out if she was a horrible person or not. For the moment, she simply did her best not to be too giggly about the idea as she watched the small terminal that showed the intentionally obvious approach of the Knight Errant and its escorts. The fleet was just about at the point she was supposed to trigger the surprises!
Right…
About…
NOW!
She flipped the cap off the detonator with a deft flick and jabbed down with her thumb. There was a tiny instant of delay as every explosive they'd prepared, much of it stolen from the Hutts' own stores, armed. Then there were a series of immense shakes, roars and visceral thumps as three critical weapons emplacements and a pair of spice warehouses just a bit too close to the spaceport went up in flames. Moments later, she smirked as a ding signaled that the Knight-Padawan pair that seemed entirely too gifted at makeshift chaos had done their own part.
The quick and dirty modification to the emergency venting systems in those warehouses would cause them to suck the spice fumes in and down into the tunnels connected to the spaceport's main landing fields. The tunnels normally being a high-security method of moving spice from the warehouses to the port. And the spaceport's landing fields just so happened to double as the mustering point for the local garrison. An obvious and logical choice, admittedly, since the port was the most likely place for raiders to be trying to put down assault craft. It was, perhaps, just a little bit of karmic justice that said landing fields were about to be flooded with enough burning spice to give a rancor a contact high!
Honestly, Callista was pretty sure she liked that Asajj girl. Maybe, if she could find herself a Padawan like that, she wouldn't be entirely against the idea of taking one…
... ...
Izuku's lips twitched, despite his desperate attempt to keep a straight face. The battle in space had very quickly turned against the locals when the primary defenive guns had exploded right before their task force came into range. The mobile defenses and a handful of smaller emplacements, ones that couldn't even reach out of atmosphere properly, hadn't been nearly enough to slow them down. Combined with his own Battle Meditation and the sheer surprise, they hadn't lost a single capital ship. Not even among the Defender IIs. They'd lost a handful of fighters, but even there only two of the fighters lost had possessed living pilots, and one of them had managed to eject and be picked up successfully. In total, in space they'd lost less than twenty people. One of their lowest casualty figures of a space battle since their crusade began.
Now, he was fighting outright laughter as he was informed of what had happened on the ground. The plan suggested by Knight Narec's Padawan had proven quite hilariously effective. Something like sixty percent of the total mercenary defenders of the city had been caught up in the smoke pouring out onto the landing fields they were using as a muster point. Ninety plus percent of those caught had, in turn, ended up so stoned out of their minds that they hadn't fought back against the droid-and-power-armor troops that had landed to secure them. There had been a few deaths from overdose. But, honestly, compared to how many defenders would have died in a traditional battle? It was a tiny body count even for the enemy.
Better yet, the fact that the assault team hadn't even needed to slow to get into the city proper had meant that they'd caught the remaining defenders off guard. There had been shockingly little proper fighting, most of the mercs surrendering outright when power armor they weren't ready for swarmed out of the spaceport. There had been a solid amount of shooting involved in taking the only Hutt currently on world, and Izuku wasn't particularly sad that said Hutt had become a casualty of the limited fighting.
He suspected it hadn't exactly been an accident. But he wasn't going to look too closely, given they'd found a torture chamber that this particular Hutt liked using for 'misbehaving slaves.' At least it wasn't a Rancor Pit. Hutts had a disturbing fetish of some kind for feeding sentients to rancors or other predators. Seriously, almost the whole species were sociopathic. He was, at least, glad it wasn't truly universal. Hopefully those Hutts he'd found and sent Fay's way would prove it was their culture that was the problem, not the species itself.
Honestly, Besadii City had been taken far more easily than he'd anticipated. They might have a bit more trouble with the smaller city, forewarned as it now was. But its defenses weren't up to holding his ground forces back, particularly with his fighter wings now in control of the planet's airspace. As there weren't any Hutts there, it was quite likely the locals might even surrender outright. Of course, that presented its own problem of what to do with the prisoners. Which was increasingly becoming a logistics issue for their own forces.
Hmmm…on second thought, taking Ylesia might just have been a more important step than he'd originally thought. All those slave settlements, once empty of slaves, could easily house some of the PoWs that were starting to become a logistics issue for the League. For that matter…Ryll, at least, had completely legitimate medical uses and they now had excellent relations with Ryloth. A few modifications to make the refineries here a bit less ethically dubious and a bit more suited for medical spice processing, and the PoWs could be made to pay for themselves.
Izuku worried over that thought for a moment. It was…potentially a slippery slope. On the other hand, they did have some outsiders demanding to see how PoWs were going to be treated. Having observers on hand that would call them out might help keep that slope from being a dangerous one. Shaking his head, he decided it also wasn't a decision he needed to make personally. He'd kick the idea over to the Liberation Council and let them make themselves useful by sorting out the possible ethical and moral ramifications.
For now, he had the remainder of a planet to secure…
... ... ... ... ... ...
AN: I refuse to believe even a Light Side Asajj isn't chaos incarnate. Honestly more so than the Dark Side version, where she became more of a blunt tool, which was an honestly poor match for her. Ergo, devious plans for those poor, poor mercs...