Chapter 85: Managing the Rear

Summary: Not all war is bombs and tactics. Logistics matters too...

Warning! Chapters 83-87 were all posted back-to-back! Make sure you don't miss any!

Chapter 85: Managing the Rear

As much as Izuku had found himself somewhat enjoying the break from the war that was the last few days, mostly due to Padmé and her Handmaidens being pleasant company that made the politics go down less nauseatingly, there was much that couldn't be left to slide for long. As a result, after a few hours of more casual conversation after the fun at the Virtual Delve, he'd handed off the rest of the political wrangling to the appropriate minions.

Now, he and Aayla had commandeered one of the conference rooms of Central Command that had Mei's reconfiguration tech, using entire walls of custom screens to get a handle on what they'd missed. Aside from them, Lieutenant Trotter and Knight Agai'i were the only others present. Shaak Ti would have been, but she'd left to investigate Geonosis just a few hours previous. Now that it had been brought to their attention, it was apparently itching at the back of both her and Aayla's mind just as it had his. Another sign that the Veil was involved in actively concealing whatever was going on there. She and Asajj had been given a Toru II stealth vessel that had just cleared trials, along with a skeleton crew for it, to make sure they weren't spotted while checking the planet out.

"Trotter, is this right? Five separate attacks along the Triellus Trade Route and three on the Kaaga Run? All in just the last week?"

Trotter snapped to a sort of sitting attention at the console he was manning, helping feed data or pull up information for them as they went through the reports.

"Yes sir! All three on the Kaaga Run failed, since we run heavier ships through that route, the ships themselves usually being part of the 'delivery.' Two of the Triellus Route raids were partial successes for the attackers I'm afraid, sir. They destroyed three cargo ships between the two attacks, and cost us heavy damage to the escorts. The escorts were beefed up in time to repel the last attack cleanly, but there's a chance the enemy will escalate in turn, given their successes so far."

Izuku scowled. Those two routes were the only realistic ways to get ships and supplies from Tythe into Hutt Space. All the convoys hit on the Triellus Route had been logistics groups too, not new warships. Which meant the 'pirates' either had spotters somewhere in the systems along the route that could alert their comrades in time to either hit or avoid a convoy, or the League had a security problem somewhere in the pipeline. Unfortunately, it was far more likely the latter than the former. Holonet access was rough out as far was the Triellus Trade Route, as it was basically Wild Space. Not technically, since it was too thoroughly explored for that. But the systems along that route, such as Gamorr, were all unaligned. They existed in the thin shell of space that separated Hutt and Republic Space from true Wild Space.

"Damn. I assume Aharo is already looking for a leak?"

Trotter nodded.

"Yes, sir! The leak on the Kaaga Run was quickly identified as a Bothan and…dealt with. Though given that particular species' culture, it likely won't be the last. He's still looking for the Triellus leak, if there is one. He thinks it might just be a listening post of some kind, though. Lots of old posts all along Wild Space that used to point out during times like the New Sith Wars. If someone converted one to look in, they could be picking us up and using a localized hyper beacon to signal go or no go on attacking any given convoy."

Aayla was the one to point out the problem with that.

"Shouldn't we pick up any beacon like that, too? If that's the cause, why haven't we noticed it yet? Beacons aren't exactly subtle."

Trotter shook his head.

"Not usually, ma'am. But if they converted an old war-time outpost there's no telling what sort of tech it might have had. If it doesn't use modern hyperbands, or if it uses something more esoteric than a beacon, we might not pick it up."

Izuku tapped one of the systems on the route. Gamorr, home of one of the most stereotypical brute minion species in the galaxy. One, as it happened, favored by the Hutts.

"It might be simpler than that. Gamorr has been in Hutt hands on and off for centuries, if not longer. What if this is another situation like the Poytta – Tisht hyperlink. A lane that no one knows exists except the Hutts. If the Hutts have an outpost in the Gamorr system, and a link to somewhere in Wild Space, or even to the parts of the Hollastin Run we don't control yet…"

Aayla caught on immediately.

"If that route has fewer jumps that the Triellus Route, they could get ahead of the convoys and let the attackers know if it's a viable target or not. Kriff, that makes too much sense to ignore. There's no way the Hutts don't have better navigational data for this part of space than literally anyone else. It wouldn't even need to be a proper route, either. A smuggler's route would be more than enough for a simple courier run."

Izuku nodded sharply.

"It's something we're going to have to remember inside Hutt Space, too. We think we have them pinned in. But if we actually don't, they could hit a system that we thought they couldn't touch, with more ships than whatever we left to defend a 'safe' world can handle. Trotter? Make a note for someone to look into that. As well as for our teams on captured Hutt worlds to start pulling Nav data from everything Hutt. Especially private Hutt vessels that might have used hidden routes."

Trotter did his half-snapping-to-attention trick again.

"Yes, sir! I'll get right on it, sir!"

Sighing at the way his military aide just could not seem to relax, Izuku went back to reviewing more data. The containment fleet at Varl had been seeing off probing attacks from inside the Boota Hutta subsector, and there were some sort of buildups going on a Chalacta and Ubrikkia. All three of those spelled trouble, though the fact they all seemed aimed at different points might well spell that the Hutts still hadn't all gotten on the same page yet.

That could be good, or bad. The Hutts failing to concentrate their Forces to one front was good for the League…but multiple opponents made the entire battlespace brutally hard to predict. Shaking his head and ordering the new Ray-class Corvettes to be shifted to patrol the Triellus Route for now, he moved on to considering where else they could hurt the Hutts.

Admiral Lin would be striking out at Ulmatra soon, her new Fleet already heading that direction. But, in light of his own thoughts that the Hutts might have other routes they didn't know of, there was a serious need to try and do more than just isolate the slugs. Yet…where could they sow some more havoc without weakening their efforts to digest what they'd already taken? Humming as he abruptly remembered a specific set of individuals who had joined their efforts, he turned to Knight Agai'i.

"Tresten? Just what are Captain Kirthos and his fellow Wardens up to at the moment…"

… … …

"Kriffing finally."

Izuku couldn't agree more with the sentiment as he provided his biometrics as a final approval for the list of promotions that Aayla and he had been going through. One of their more critical issues from the very start had been a lack of senior officers. Technically, the promotions he was counter-signing wouldn't fully fix said issue. Their fleet was still rapidly expanding, after all, and finding new mid-rank officers capable of handling individual ships or small detachments was going to become increasingly difficult. What these promotions did do was finally flesh out the upper echelons with a handful of Commadores, Rear/Vice Admirals, and Generals of various stripes. For the Navy and Ground forces respectively, of course.

"We're still going to have to keep an eye on them for a while. None of the new batch have more than one or two battles under their hat. Some of the Commodores not more than a few skirmishes and raids, really."

Aayla nodded but also waved the comment away dismissively.

"Yeah, but having to keep an eye on them is a hell of a lot better than having to micromanage multiple fleets and flotillas personally. Not to mention that at least thirty percent of these are rear-area promotions that we don't need to watch that closely. The commandants for the various academies, for example. Or the new head of military R & D. We can trust people like Tervo and Admiral Ringo to watch the R side for anything extra-level stupid, and Mei's outside the system entirely for a good reason."

Izuku nodded. It was nothing but the truth, after all. Those positions were important, but more administrative than combat-facing. He and Admiral Lin had outright refused to promote anyone to those levels who didn't have at least some ability to command in combat, since there was always the chance they would be called upon to do so. Yet they'd been able to settle for a number of officers who were only middling at battlefield command, yet were extremely good administrators, to fill a number of important slots.

"Well, hopefully it will make some of this other formwork go away, once they are up and running in their new commands. But for now, I'm afraid we still have a lot more of it to swim through."

Aayla groaned, but didn't abandon him to his fate, instead picking up yet another dataslate and setting to work again…

… … …

Aayla abruptly laughed, causing Izuku to blink out of the half-fugue state that he'd been in, processing all the new budget addendums linked to their captures of various planets. Some of them were proving to be bigger credit-sinks than expected, simply because the populations on those worlds were in such bad shape. Thankfully, their main medical ships, the now-officially-dubbed Mercy-class Mon Calmari MC80 variant, were extremely well equipped for mass medical treatment. The fact that most of the sixteen ships of that class they possessed now also had at least one Jedi Healer aboard, and were seeing a steady trickle of volunteers from the more peaceful planets of the Republic, was helping blunt any tragedy. It was still an expensive proposition, but one Izuku didn't hesitate to fund from his purely personal assets instead of war funds.

His love's laugh had certainly jerked him out of a somewhat morbid state of mind, though he was confused what had caused it, given that Aayla was looking over reports of her own. Given how much she hated this sort of work, laughter was the last thing he'd expected to hear from her while they were grinding away at it. Hoping whatever it was would make for a nice break from the grim reading he'd been doing, he spoke up over her continued giggles.

"What is it, love?"

Seemingly helpless to get words out, Aayla flailed a bit at her dataslate, finally managing to send him a file. Curious just what had her in stitches, he opened up the file…and stared. For long, long moments all he could do was stare. Then, he managed to read a few lines of the report…before breaking down in laughter himself. The dataslate slid from his fingers, taking with it the images of what could only be Mei-sourced chaos of the most unexpected kind. Somehow, in some way that no one had noticed it until it was too late, Mei had added crude bi-color holo-sheaths to the droids assigned to help guide and protect the various 'observers' that were filtering in from select Republic worlds.

Every single one of the custom HI-Mk5 commando droids intended for the purpose had been repainted a friendly pastel pink, and given a personality makeover beyond just the planned protocol uploads. Now, whenever activated, they used the primitive, half-translucent holo-sheath to project an image of a brightly smiling Japanese Miko with a hyperactive and hyper-friendly personality to interact with everyone. Including, as it happened, the three times so far that locals had tried to attack an observer. Which had each resulted in the droids doing a color shift from pink and white to a deeper blood red and white. Followed by them crying out cheesy lines about Justice straight from a kid's anime…as they brutally beat down the assailant with violently neon-pink stun sticks that let off completely pointless sparkles.

Izuku didn't know how, let alone why Mei had done it. What he did know was that it was amazing, and he was absolutely breaking out her portal tonight to reward her for the well-timed laugh. Or, actually, they were all in the same system…so perhaps they could make time to physically go and reward her? There were still some upgrades that needed to be made to her chastity belt/portal panties, after all, and Mei had been stuck with the initial version long enough for the lesson about thinking things through to stick properly. At least for a little while. That lesson never stuck for good with her.

Nodding to himself as he considered that idea, he made a note to make the time. Aayla hadn't seen Mei in even longer than he had, and she was part of their relationship too…

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

A/N 1: War is paperwork, and so is leadership. This chapter was needed to highlight a few things, and hint at a few more. I did try to lighten it up with Mei sneaking in a bit of her own brand of chaos, though...