Chapter 86: Grinding Away
Summary: Of course, war also does use bombs! Not to mention other, sneakier things...
Warning! Chapters 83-87 were all posted back-to-back! Make sure you don't miss any!
Chapter 86: Grinding Away
Commander Luenn Tyew, formerly Gungan Grand Army and currently League Liberation Army, cursed in his native language as mortar fire came whistling out of the forest. He, along with everyone else, immediately scrambled under the cover of the shield being projected by the single Battle-Tiger mech that was with them. Most of his people made it, thankfully, but not all. Worse, a fair few droids were caught up in the attack as well. Again.
"Bravo Squad! Get in there and flush them!"
He honestly hadn't needed to shout the order, even if it made him feel a bit better to have done so. Bravo, one of the two squads of Powersuit soldiers they had, were already moving. One of the two was constantly assigned to that exact reaction at this point, even as the other squad and their four Striker Mechs kept tight to the Tiger and droids. Any second now…
Almost as if summoned by his thoughts, streaks of shoulder-launched missiles erupted from the forest around them. The point defense micro missile clusters on the spread-out Strikers quickly went active to intercept as many of the launches as possible. Their enemy already knew about the Strikers, at this point, though. Which meant that they had fired in waves and there was no choice but for some of the commando droids to deliberately intercept the attacks with their own handheld shields. Something that saved the more squishy sentient troops, but whittled away farther at their droid contingent.
Which was the whole point, he'd long since realized.
This was the seventh near-identical ambush that had their column has suffered through while moving through the forested areas of Aylayl. Unfortunately, they hadn't reached this world until after it had gotten a ton of materials and mercenary troop reinforcements via the relatively small hyperlane connection to outside Hutt Space. That connection, the Hollastin Run, had now been cut off at Tsyk, but that move had come too late in the Crusade to stop the initial rush of manpower and equipment into Aylayl. A fact which was rapidly turning the ground fight here into a grinding, attritional affair they could ill afford. Thankfully, he'd recently received some very specific assistance he was glad of. Now, if that assistance would pay off or not…
There were abruptly sounds of heavy combat coming from inside the tree line, and not from the direction Bravo team had headed out in to force the mortars to pick up and move again. Said sounds were accompanied by roaring, which made Commander Tyew grin savagely.
"Alpha! Into the trees! You know what to do!"
They did, with a solid half of the remaining droids attached to his command fanning out around his other squad of Powersuit troops as they charged into the tree line. They barely took any fire as the missile teams that had been throwing tens of thousands of credits of heavy ordinance his way were currently a bit busy. Pleased that his idea was working out, he began barking more orders to get the column moving again.
Truly, there was nothing like a few dozen Wookiees to make anyone else regret trying to fight in the forest…
… … …
Lieutenant Pimi, of the scout ship Ghost Watch, bit her lip hard enough to draw blood as she watched the pounding the defense forces over Illos were taking. The system joining of its own free will had stretched the defenses along this corridor of their externally-facing defenses thinner than originally planned. Ships had needed to be posted here from the Nar Kreeta fleet, and they hadn't yet been able to get any of the Plus-class defense stations put together in orbit. While they still had plenty of those stations in reserve, the crews to put them together were busy assembling planned-for stations elsewhere.
Unfortunately, that meant that they hadn't been able to put as much of a defense up over Illos as they could have wished, and the Hutts had somehow realized the weakness before it could be fixed. Another pirate fleet had jumped in from the Chalacta system, the defense here in Ilos only warned in time because her own ship had been assigned to watch the border.
Unfortunately, even with the warning she'd provided via Quantum-comm, the defenders were obviously losing. All she could do was watch, and continue to keep up the datafeed for the forces of Nar Kreeta that were responding. It was going to be a pod-race to get anything here in time to act, and she just wasn't sure if it was going to…
Abruptly, her sensors updated, and she blinked at the new contacts. A trio of Volitions in tight formation had just appeared right behind the pirates. Well inside the gravity well! How the kriff had…no, wait. It had to be Jedi, didn't it? She'd heard that they had the ability to pull off completely bullshit astrojumps like that. It also explained why it was just the three Volitions, with none of their usual screening ships. Those ships must have been the only ones available with Jedi aboard.
Thankfully, it was obviously going to be enough.
That realization began unknotting the tension from her shoulders. The defenders might have been losing, but they'd been giving much better than they'd taken, only being overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of the pirate ships. But the Volitions had immediately started emptying their hangars, including producing some gunships that they must have ditched their normal shuttle complement to squeeze in. With new fighter squadrons, the gunships, and the heavy hitters that were the Volitions themselves, this battle was clearly already over.
Unfortunately, it had also cost the defenders. She'd seen at least two Siege-class cruisers outright explode, and three more were dead in space. The sole Volition that had been anchoring this fleet had taken a hell of a pounding too. Not enough to destroy it, but enough that it would need weeks of yard time before returning to service. Ice ran through her veins at the realization that the attackers had, as far as the Hutts were concerned, probably won this fight.
After all, they'd only been pirates, ones the Hutts didn't even need to pay now. Whereas the League was down several heavy ships, with more of them needing yard time. All while they were already stretched a bit thin holding this corridor.
Damn.
Taking a deep breath, she hoped that the big brains up top knew what to do about this. As she set course to return to watching the border, she was glad it was well and truly above her pay grade…
… … …
Sasha Belphont smiled as she poured another drink, putting on her best utterly vapid expression even as her training helped her file away the contents of all the conversations going on around her. Several of which contained tidbits of important information. Many former slaves would have been horrified to be where she was, with a collar around her neck, her tits out for the viewing pleasure of her audience, and pouring drinks in a 'club' of dubious repute but exclusive clientele.
Sasha wouldn't blame them, the slaves that felt that way that was. Theirs would, honestly, be the normal response. She was well aware that she was an oddity, if a very useful one. Despite her relatively human name, the legacy of a Master who'd hated trying to pronounce her original, she was a Twi'lek from Ryloth. An extremely rare Lethan Twi'lek, at that. Even more than the blue skin of a Rutian Twi'leks, her own crimson red was what had doomed her from birth. A lot of Twi'leks weren't captured into slavery, but sold into it by their own clans, and Sasha's literally one-in-a-million coloration had ensured her own clan had seen her as little more than a vault of credits waiting to be cashed in.
It was why she'd never bothered to reclaim her original name. It meant nothing but pain for her. Ironically, her Master had been far kinder to her than her clan had been. Mind you, he'd only valued her as a pretty bauble to be shown off. She'd spent thousands of hours in just as little clothing as the short, half-transparent loincloth that was all she had on now. She'd danced, she'd sung, and she'd poured drinks. Yet, for all that many in the galaxy would pity her, she knew she'd been lucky. Insanely lucky.
After all, her Master had been gayer than a Kunti Nobel flying a powder blue star yacht and screaming 'harder daddy' at anyone who was willing to spank his petite ass. She'd know, since her master had, in fact, had a series of flings with that very noble, and at least the noble had visibly appreciated her tits. Her very nice tits, thank you very much. Her Master, on the other hand, had never looked at her with lust. Instead, he'd only ever viewed her with the sort of appreciation you'd give to fine artwork.
Something that had ultimately protected her twice over.
Not only hadn't he 'sampled' her himself, but he'd been harsh to anyone that tried to take liberties with her body. They might sully her looks if they handled his fragile art, after all. Kriff, so long as she'd kept herself looking good and never complained, her Master hadn't even cared that she'd read extensively from his personal library. Making her one of the most well-read slaves she knew of.
The net result was that Sasha had been remarkably untraumatized by her six years as a slave. Not that she hadn't been ecstatic to be freed by a sting operation of the Shattered Shackles. But she'd hadn't been overly in need of help to 'recover from her ordeal,' either. She'd also, as it happened, utterly lost anything resembling a normal nudity taboo. She hadn't owned a single pair of panties since she was sold as a slave at fifteen, and a costume much like her current one had been her former master's favorite way to display her.
That combination, along with her ability to act more like a living decoration than a person, had brought her to the attention of the League Intelligence Service.
LIS might be relatively new, but most of its top people had been either connected to the Underground Hyperlane or previously involved with corporate espionage circles. They were also lavishly equipped, hilariously well-funded, and encouraged to be creative in how they gathered intelligence. Which, as it happened, is how she and a handful of others had been seeded into the 'slaves' of a high-profile club deep in Hutt Space. It wasn't the sort of place that catered to the Hutts themselves, of course. The Great Slugs largely stuck to their own palaces and personally-owned businesses. What it was, though, was a place that catered to the top advisors to the Hutts.
The Naked Nymph was the place to go to be surrounded by beautiful women and calm. None of the loud, chaotic mess that most Hutts preferred in their Throne rooms. Just extremely gorgeous and mostly nude girls and boys of a dozen species, incredibly good drinks, and extremely tight security. The suppressors over her ear-cones were even supposed to render her deaf to whatever the Hutt minions were saying.
They even worked, most of the time, and would respond to scans proving that fact.
She and the other planted agents could disable them at will, though. Anything as crude as a recording device would have inevitably been found by one of these paranoid (rightfully, to be fair) bastards. But the suppressors simply occasionally turning off? Even the most paranoid wouldn't notice that, particularly given how well trained she'd been in not reacting to anything she heard. That, along with tricks of memory enhancement, were what her primary training had been from LIS. Along with the ability to lip and body language read two dozen or so species well enough to know when it was a good idea for the suppressors to 'fail.'
Now, as she listened to the complaints about which mercenaries were demanding more money so that they would join this fleet or that, which Hutt was paying for it, and where it was all aimed? Well, she didn't regret getting recruited into LIS. She would help bring more slavers down, and it wasn't like she was actually a slave. The owner of the club was another LIS agent, after all, and they had a reliable extraction method if things got ugly unexpectedly. So all she had to do was shake her tits and listen in without anyone noticing, and she'd strike a blow against slavers everywhere.
Didn't hurt that the LIS agent running the club was cute, either. After years of not getting any despite being a 'pleasure slave,' she was intent on getting rid of that pesky virginity on her own terms. She thought he would do quite nicely…or maybe one of the other girls? She wasn't picky, really. Just horny, darn it!
... ... ... ... ... ...
A/N 1: As I've mentioned previously, the Crusade isn't all one sided. The Hutts have already hit on one of the most effective ways they can fight the League. Just...keep throwing an endless supply of bodies at them to whittle away at their assets. Attrition favors the Hutts, much as it will/would favor the Republic in the Clone Wars. Something that more than one War College is going to make note of while watching all of this...
A/N 2: Sasha's viewpoint might seem random. It isn't. For now, I'll just say it highlights (along with Palaptine's reflections in 87) another aspect of war. There is more to it, but anything else would be spoilers...