Chapter 78: Complications

Summary: The momentum of the Crusade begins to stall out...for now.

Warning! Chapters 75-78 were all posted back-to-back! Make sure you don't miss any of them!

Chapter 78: Complications

-Orbit of Nar Haaska – Seventeen Days Post Battle of Tisht-

"Here they come!"

Captain Fich's comment wasn't needed, but Admiral Lin wasn't about the tell him that. While the man had seen action before or he wouldn't have been given the Paladin, few in the entire Fleet had yet seen action on this scale before. Rana had been entirely correct about where the Hutts would choose to strike, but she'd only been half correct about how they would do so. While there were quite a few unknown ships, including more of the nasty frigates from that race of crazy cyborgs she'd run into before, the core of the fleet now boring in on her was from another source entirely.

The Centrality.

The Centrality was, much like Hutt Space, an independent political entity that existed in the buffer of non-Republic space between the Outer Rim Territories and true Wild Space. Originally founded by colonists looking for freedom from the Republic, it had eventually developed into an insular coalition of trade worlds…and then into a repressive central regime. Like many such regimes, it had begun to suffer economic issues in the few decades since the transition. Something that should have clued the idiots in charge onto the idea that tightening their fists and cutting themselves off from the outside wasn't sustainable. As usual with such idiots, that hadn't happened, and they'd been steadily going down the toilet since.

Except, of course, that repressive regimes needed an iron fist to keep themselves in power.

In hindsight, the relative vicinity of the Centrality to Hutt Space, combined with said repressive regime's desperate need for credits, made for a predictable result. The Hutts had massive amounts of credits, more than enough to buy the services of the Centrality Fleet, and she was stuck dealing with that fact now. While there wasn't anything more modern than some sort of local Dreadnaught-class knocks offs and almost two dozen Kaloth Battlecruisers, the opposing Fleet genuinely out massed her in sheer tonnage.

They'd started out with at least triple the tonnage, in fact.

Worse, they'd clearly had a very good idea how the Null Torpedo/Graviton Beam weapons of the Volitions worked. At least from the practical, tactical point of view, if likely not from any technical perspective. Not well enough to properly counter them, but well enough to engage in some basic counter tactics. The enemy capital ships had started rolling the moment they'd come into range, playing merry hell with their own firing solutions, but also making it extremely difficult to target the gaps that Null Torpedoes opened in shields with follow up Graviton Beams. Combined with someone getting entirely too clever and using tractor beams to move freighters stripped of everything but shield emitters and generators around as a sort of mobile shield cover for those gaps? It was a very imperfect but annoyingly competent counter for the Null Torpedo and Graviton Beam combination.

Not enough of one to prevent them from getting kills, of course. But enough that the enemy Fleet had managed to properly engage them in a passing broadside that had outright destroyed two of Admiral Lin's Volitions, along with brutally savaging a good chunk of her screen. If not for the fact that the Paladin's main gun was proving just as hideously lethal as expected, this might have turned into the first outright loss of the war. As it was, the Particle Beam that the Paladin housed had lived up to every expectation so far. It had a low cycle time, certainly. But every single time it had fired, one of the enemy cruisers had died before it stopped.

Now, reduced to less than half its original tonnage but still game to fight, the Centrality fleet and its auxiliaries had formed up and were coming back in for another pass. Unfortunately for them, this time the single, 80 percent completed Plus-class orbital station above Nar Haaska, had managed to get into position to help. The station had been out-of-position for the first pass, it's half-completed maneuvering engines not up to getting it around from the far side of the planet in time to weigh in on the first engagement.

"Have the station engage at maximum optimal range, Captain. No point holding our cards close to our chest if it means losing the system. Those remaining two Dreadnaught's are primary targets. If those fall to the station before reaching our own engagement envelop, prioritize those pocket battlecruisers. Pull the remaining Volitions into behind us this time, too. Let the Paladin take the brunt of fire from whatever of their fleet makes it into range. Get the fighter screen out forward of us, though. Those freighter conversions can't have many missiles left, but they have some, certainly. The fighters are on point defense duty against them."

Her Flag Captain snapped out an acknowledgement even as the distance between the two fleets started to fall. Per her previous orders, her own fleet was falling 'back' toward the planet, appearing to give ground but really just dragging the enemy fleet into range of Haaska Defense 1, the first mostly-completed defense station. While the Plus-class might not be the Ultra-class which orbited solely around Tythe and a few of the League's hidden shipyards, they still have a maximum firing range of damn near 55 kilometers. Which, given that even modern capital ship turbolasers generally capped out at 20km for cruisers, meant the stations could outrange pretty much anything else in space other than a mass driver.

Of course, her own fleet was a good 25km outside proper orbit and slowly sinking back toward the planet. Which meant that Haaska Defense 1 wouldn't be able to open up until roughly 10km outside the enemy cruisers own range. Given the Paladin's own Particle Beam had a range of only 22km, barely better than the turbolasers on a enemy Dreadnaught classes, they might yet take some fire from the remaining two enemy heavies if the defense station couldn't kill them before they reached range. Despite her Flag Captain's tension, Admiral Lin doubted it, though. Both of those ships were already damaged and the Paladin was thus far untouched.

She watched with a grim eye as the range fell, saw the few remaining starfighters of the enemy trying to form up to take on her screen…and then saw Defense 1 open up with it's Particle Beam. Its crew, mostly technicians at this point, had jumped the gun just slightly, likely out of nerves. But the shot still did quite a bit of damage as it slammed into the closer cruiser's shields and ripped them apart. Those shields had been all-forward, the enemy fleet commander having learned the hard way with the death of his other Dreadnaughts that it was the only way to survive even a few seconds under the Paladin's main gun.

The shields being full forward had soaked most of the damage, the leak-through not enough to do more than strip the armor of the cruiser, causing Rana to tighten her hands on her command chair's armrests. Defense 1 fired again before the range closed enough for her own shot, this time popping the weakened shields and ripping hell out of the Dreadnaught. The particle beam stabbed deep and, after a few seconds, a secondary explosion ripped the heavy cruiser apart. Seeing that and knowing the Defense Station wouldn't cycle before the other charging cruiser got into range, Rana barked her orders.

"Target the second Dreadnaught! Status of bombers?"

She saw the targeting for their own particle beam highlight the second heavy cruiser, but professionally hold its fire until the last second. Good, she was happy with the gunners so far, despite how wet behind the ears they were with the system. Even as she felt the ship shudder with the beam weapon carving out to pop the shields and core the second heavy cruiser, she got an answer from her Wing Commander.

"All bomber wings report ready!"

Nodding sharply, Rana made the call.

"Split them up. Send them out to pincer from the flanks as soon as the Kaloth's reach beam range! Target them on the remaining frigates."

Her wing commander acknowledged her and started barking orders, Rana watching as the H-7 bombers and their escorts accelerated, sweeping out in a curve that would end in them hitting the flanks of the enemy fleet. The enemy starfighter screen was too ragged to follow, keeping its focus toward where it was closing with her own screen several kilometers out from both fleets. She quickly discarded the starfighter battle. The first pass had already shown that the mixed fighter squadrons of the enemy were no match for the N-3 she'd deployed, let alone the brand-new Hero and Sidekick squadrons that had already proven themselves in the first engagement.

Instead, she kept her eyes locked on the capital ships as the second Dreadnaught was rendered space junk by the Paladin's particle beam. The weapon would be cooling for a solid thirty seconds now, its sheer power paid for in the form of a nasty cooling cycle. That was alright, though. It had already done its job. The largest remaining ships were the so called 'Kaloth battlecruisers.' In truth, the ships were a light cruiser at best, barely over 300 meters in length and with only 4 turbolaser batteries a piece. To their credit, those turbolasers were just as heavy as the Dreadnaught's larger numbers had been, meaning they opened up at almost the same time as the Paladin's more traditional guns did.

Of course, along with those traditional guns were eight sets of rapid-fire Null Torpedo launchers and their Graviton Beams. Unlike traditional missiles and torpedoes, Capital Grade Null Torpedoes were big enough beasts to fully match the range of a turbolaser, and they mounted enough basic ECM to give point defense nightmares. A few of them were shot down, a few more were intercepted with suicide tactics. But enough got through that two of the six remaining Kaloths had their shields ripped to pieces by the Null Torpedoes and their hulls utterly ravaged microseconds later by the Graviton Beams. At the same time, of course, the Paladin herself came under fire.

But the Paladin was a Battleship.

Worse, she was a Battleship that had been designed with a redundant, layered shield system that made it able to soak a truly insane amount of fire. Their engineers had built a Battleship that could, if asked, fight their own weapons. Meaning it had enough brute shield power and redundant shield layering to weather fire from their own Particle Beam weapons or the Null Torpedo/Graviton Beam combination respectively. The enemy had failed to even scratch the hull plating on the Paladin during the first engagement, and Rana had been kicking herself for not abusing the hell out of that fact earlier.

She hadn't understood just how big of a jump the Paladin was from her Volitions.

Now that she had a proper grasp of just how tough her new command ship was, she rammed it straight down the enemy fleet's throat. She blatantly dared them to throw all the fire they could concentrate at her flagship, even as the Volitions behind her found the range and began to add their fire to that of the Paladin's. The remaining Kaloths dropped like so many flies under the combined pounding, and the bombers she'd sent out swept in just as the last 'battlecruiser' died, hammering the frigates that had so far largely been unworthy of attention. The enemy commander was clearly dead at this point, the fleet fracturing and attempting to flee.

Not so much as a single fighter made it…

... ...

-Knight Errant – Orbit of Nal Hutta – Three Weeks Post Battle of Tisht-

Izuku groaned as he flopped down and rested his head on Aayla's lap. His love made an amused noise, even if she was looking just a little ruffled and rough around the edges herself. Her hands quickly took to carding through his fluffy hair, a practice she both personally loved and which she knew soothed him somewhat. It was a long few minutes of peace before either of them spoke. Finally, it was a reluctant Izuku who broke the silence.

"How bad do you think the central Jedi Order is going to react to what they decided on?"

Aayla hummed. She knew what he was talking about, of course. Master Altis, Master Aqinos, Master Thorla, and shockingly enough Master Ven'nari too, had taken the lead in hashing out what to do with all of the new Force Sensitives that now existed after the battle of Tisht. As the person with both the potential resources to handle the issue, as well as the one to whom most of the soldiers involved owed loyalty, Izuku had been forced to be involved. He'd done his dead level best to not be the one making decisions, given the potential repercussions down the line, but he had certainly been involved.

The majority of those that were dealing with a sudden Force Awakening had been, interestingly enough, relatively easy to deal with. Not without complications, mind you. But still relatively easy. The reason for that fact was that, simply put, quite a fair few of the newly 'awakened' Force users hadn't been interested in learning more than basic tricks that would help them with their own areas of expertise.

The Iron Knights were entirely happy to teach some tricks involving using the Force to work with machines. Bant Eerin and her healers had been entirely pleased to have a cadre of Force Sensitives who were only interested in Force Healing. Likewise, a few of the more flexible Knights had been more than happy to form up small commando teams of Force Sensitives, with the idea of teaching them how to make use of a little bit of danger sense and precognition as combat enhancers. Since all of the effected individuals were adults, whose stability had been ascertained during training to be part of the League military, simply making sure that they had a decent foundation of what not to do and a few places to focus their limited interest was enough.

Well, so long as someone kept at least a loose eye on them for a while, anyway.

Regardless, those groups represented the bulk of their new Force Sensitives. There were some odd long-term implications in knowing that they now had a significant number of Force Sensitive technicians, medics, commandos, and others. But they were a minor issue, at least comparatively. Specifically, comparative to the seventy-three individuals who wanted to pursue farther training in the Force. While the Iron Knights and the Altisians had added enough to their numbers that they technically had almost that many Force Users that were officially part of the League, it still represented a rather large problem. In fact, if not for the fact that the Iron Knights, Altisians, and Almas Academy Jedi all three had experience in handling multiple learners per Jedi, they might have been up shit creek without a paddle trying to organize training for so many at once.

As it stood, they were in a position that the various masters, including Master Ven'nari, had argued absolutely could not be accidental. They just so happened to have possibly the three most experienced Jedi-adjacent groups with the relevant experience, all in one place, at exactly the time this had happened. Not even Izuku, who was still a bit leery of a cosmic energy intentionally influencing the lives of a galaxy worth of people, could deny that the whole thing had 'Force Shenanigans' written all over it. All the more so when he couldn't help but hear the words of Ood Bnar and Master Fay from half a decade ago echoing in the back of his mind. About how it might just be possible that the Force was busily arranging a contingency plan that involved them creating a new group of Force Users.

It really didn't help that they'd recently had contact with Ood Bnar and the ancient Jedi Master had finally restored the Great Library to a state he felt was fit for 'use.' What use he hadn't said. In fact, he'd simply enigmatically stated he felt he'd be having guests soon. Which had added serious fuel to the fire when Izuku had felt he had to explain Ood Bnar's survival and the restoration of the Great Library of Ossus to Master Altis and Master Aqinos, who hadn't been in on that particular secret just yet.

The entire thing had clicked together far too cleanly to be an accident and now, as of just an hour ago, there was a new Force Academy in the planning stages. One with teachers provided by multiple groups, and students provided via the seventy-three newly awakened souls who wanted to lean deeper into learning the Force and its ways. For the time being, the Academy was a secret. But only an idiot thought they'd be able to keep up that charade indefinitely. Hence his question to his lady love.

"It's honestly difficult to say. Technically, the Altisan Jedi were a splinter faction that was allowed to exist in peace. But there were less than two dozen of them in total when they first split off. Even assuming we don't add any more to the numbers, which I think is probably a fool's assumption given that we keep running into esoteric Force using groups in a way that I now doubt very much was coincidence, this Academy is going to be large enough to be competition."

Aayla paused, clearly considering what else to say about that. She still considered herself a Jedi, after all.

"That doesn't always draw a nasty reaction from the Jedi Order. There are plenty of known groups, such as Guardians of the Whills on Jedha, or a number of species-specific Force traditions, that remain on good or neutral terms with the Jedi Order. Unfortunately, the one thing virtually all of those have in common is that they are passive. They generally don't interact much with the galaxy. Aside from the Jedi and the Sith, that's been the way of things for…always? There have undoubtedly been exceptions, but I'm not enough of a historian to know them. The Jedi Lords, perhaps, might be the closest example, and it's a poor comparison."

Izuku sighed, having been entirely too certain that Aayla's answer would be like this. That, in fact, it would boil down to 'I don't know.' The Masters, when he'd ask, had said much the same, though cloaked in asinine statements like 'It will be as the Force wills it to be.'

"Best guess? Based on how the order is now."

Aayla shrugged.

"Love, even my best guess might be wildly inaccurate with how stirred up the Jedi Order is at the moment. I think a lot of it will come down to when it comes out. If we manage to keep it quiet until the League is more fully formed? Then the Order might be willing to treat is as an allied party, possibly. Recognizing the split as a political need as well as a doctrinal one would help with that. The Jedi Order is tied heavily to the Republic, after all. The League having a home-grown variant, so long as it's Light aligned, might fly. Maybe."

Aalya's voice turned wry as she continued.

"Or, you know, they might all go stark raving mad and scream about it being dangerous and how they might become the Sith since they aren't under the 'guidance' of the Council of First Knowledge. Meaning they might be willing to dig into things that First Knowledge had banned research and study of and on."

Izuku frowned, then shrugged and sluggishly sat up. He didn't really want to leave the warmth of Aayla's lap, but there was still work to be done.

"Well, what is done is done. The New Ossus Academy is going to be a thing, and we'll just have to deal with the fallout when it comes. For now, I suppose there's more than enough other work to be getting on with. Like the Fleet Rana is supposed to be here working up but which she dumped on us instead."

Aayla chuckled at how disgruntled Izuku was about that. Not that she didn't understand. On the other hand, they both agreed with Admiral Lin's choice. Her recent shattering of the Centrality Fleet the Hutts had aimed at Nar Haaska was proof that she'd been right to order the Paladin there to hold the system. It was just irritating to have more work on their own plates. Shaking that thought off, Izuku changed the subject.

"How is Asajj doing?"

Izuku and Aayla both liked the rather snarky and sarcastic Padawan. She wasn't that much younger than them, nineteen to their twenty-four, and the young woman had latched onto Aayla after his lover helped her past the first stages of grief over losing her Master. She'd become a somewhat regular sparring partner since then, along with Shaak Ti, who had hung around for reasons Izuku was suspicious about. Speaking of…

"She's doing fine, or at least as fine as is possible, and you were spot on about Shaak. She just made the offer to Asajj today to 'finish her training.' She made it clear that she honestly feels that Asajj is nearly there, a Knight in all but name. With just a little bit of polishing on soft skills needed, rather than any work on her combat skills."

Izuku nodded, agreeing with that assessment and knowing Aayla did too. Asajj had acquitted herself extremely well in the fighting, and both of them had assessed her in spars. Her combat skills were excellent, perhaps expectedly so given how she and her former master had spent her formative years. Her Force skills were a bit weaker, in need of a bit of polishing, but hardly bad. The real area she needed help with was a bit of education Ky Narec simply hadn't been able to give her on Rattatak. Basic diplomatic and negotiation skills, for example, hadn't exactly been much called for there.

They were something that was being called for during their Crusade, though. Quite frequently.

Every rebel cell on a Hutt world, every surrendering merc unit. Not to mention the slowly forming planetary governments that were struggling to become real enough to join the League. There were a lot of chances to learn and flex negotiation and diplomatic abilities, and Shaak Ti happened to be a veteran of such work. Considering that she was also extremely gifted with Force usage and an excellent duelist, she was honestly a good fit to round out Asajj's training. Something only made more true by being well-thought-of by the Jedi Order as a whole. If Shaak Ti finished Asajj's training and vouched for her, it would help the young woman be accepted with her original Master now gone.

"Did she accept?"

The problem, of course, was if Asajj was in place that she could accept that yet. Thankfully, Aayla nodded in confirmation.

"Yes. Shaak handled it perfectly, approaching her as a near-equal instead of a Padawan. I think Asajj had been worried about it, honestly, given how quick she was to agree." Aayla's tone changed, something a bit odd filling it for a moment. "Shaak has also asked if they can stay aboard the Knight Errant, or more specifically attached to your command, while she works with her new Padawan."

Izuku blinked, that bit catching him by surprise. On the other hand, he didn't see any reason to deny the request. Whatever oddness had been in Aayla's voice was absent from their bond now. There had been a brief blip of confused something, but it hadn't been a negative something. In fact…ah. It had felt a bit like attraction. Apparently, Aayla still had a bit of a lingering thing for Shaak. Not that Izuku couldn't see the appeal. Putting that observation aside for potential teasing later, he addressed the half-asked question.

"I don't see a problem with that. It's a logical enough decision, given that I'm going to be pulled into negotiations on every level entirely too often as the war progresses. That will give them plenty to observe…and I suspect that Shaak would be invaluable as a negotiator if we can convince her to serve as one. Particularly in forming up the new planetary governments. She just got done doing something similar with Karazak recently, after all."

Aayla snorted, then smiled.

"She might hate you for that, since I think she was looking forward to not being involved with anything like that for a while. Then again, you also got her into an epic fight and our track record says there will be more, so maybe she'll forgive you."

Izuku chuckled, then stretched and rolled to his feet.

"Speaking of having enough of something, that's enough serious talk, and more than enough about negotiations, thanks. How about we sneak in a quick spar before dinner? I know I could really use a chance to do something more physical after the last few days being stuck figuring out the whole Academy thing."

Aayla popped to her own feet with a grin that told him she was perfectly happy with that idea. Izuku hadn't been the only one stuck with entirely too much paperwork, after all. With him cloistered sorting out what to do with all their new Force Sensitives, it had really been Aayla that had shouldered the burden of piecing together the new 4th Fleet that was slowly building around Nal Hutta.

"Kriff, yes! Come on! And maybe after dinner we can make time for something else physical~!"

Laughing as his lover threw a sway into her hips before practically rushing out towards the training room, Izuku followed after happily. That did sound like a good evening to him, even if he was half sure something would interrupt them sooner or later…

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

A/N 1: So, we're starting to see the League genuinely under pressure. For reference? If Admiral Lin hadn't shifted the Paladin there, they would have outright lost Nar Haaska. I've said from the start that their Crusade isn't going to be entirely one-sided. The Hutts are starting to get back on balance, which is going to mean additional victories will be much harder...and they might outright lose a few battles or systems here and there.

A/N 2: Alright! This is a big one! So, I HOPE I've done a good job of weaving in all the breadcrumbs from, oh, the last 50 chapters. From the start, one of the things I wanted to have happen was a new order of Force Users to come together. HOWEVER, I hate it when other authors make that just...spontaneously happen at the drop of a hat. So I laboriously created the building blocks and circumstances for this starting clear back around chapter 19-20. All along the path they've taken, slowly but certainly, the right people wove into the right places. Ood Bnar and his Library, the displaced handful of Almas Jedi, a collection of Shan-family holocrons from Tython, the Iron Knights and Alstian splinter order, connections with a few other unaligned Force traditions, and an unattached supply of Force Sensitives. The whole edifice finally comes together here, or at least starts to, as the New Ossus Academy begins to become a thing...

A/N 3: A note on weapons ranges. Yes, I KNOW they are dumb. Unfortunately, I'm actually stretching canon and legends both a LOT to make the ranges even that long. Do to the desire for cinematic dogfights and such, Star Wars has it backed into lore that the ranges for ship weaponry are extremely short by space standards. Even under the 'best' numbers in Legends: Fighter weapons max out at 2.5km for missile with lock on, or 14k total without lock on, and only get around 250-750m for their blasters. Capital ships don't hit the edge of their weapons envelop until right at a fighter's maximum missile range, so 1-15km for even capital ship guns. Exception only for Turobolasers, which are a special category of two-stage weapons that only larger ships have. Even after extensive research in the Imperial era, however, Turbolasers maxed out at 30-40km for HEAVY emplacements on REALLY big ships. Meaning I'm stretching the heck out of the ranges I used. I don't like it, but unless I want to rewrite the entire Star Wars space combat paradigm, that's what we're stuck with.

A/N 4: Yeah, you probably know this bit by now. Once per release, I point out that I have a  Page with Early Access content. In example, I just released chapters 79-82 of Displaced Hero there, adding just over another 14,500 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 45,000-60,000 words of additional early access content for patrons. As well as chances to vote in polls that influence which stories are updated, pairings, and other such things.