Chapter 92: Preparations and Resistance

Summary: Snippets from the Warfront.

Warning! Chapters 88-92 were all posted back-to-back! Make sure you don't miss any of them!

Chapter 92: Preparations and Resistance

Captain Riel Kirthos had to admit that the challenge he was faced with at the moment more than made up for the last couple of months being a bit lackluster. Oh, they hadn't been bad, exactly. It was just pretty obvious that the League hadn't exactly known what to do with the few Wardens of the Sky that had decided to throw their efforts in with the Crusade. Which, to be fair, was sort of understandable. Members of his order, if you could even call their organization such given it lacked any sort of central authority, almost never openly identified themselves. Typically, they simply went about their business quietly, acting as perfectly ordinary, if extraordinarily talented, pilots and navigators.

Yet, for Riel and a handful of others, the Hutt Crusade had simply been too perfect of an opportunity.

The core belief of the Wardens was that everyone had the right to travel space, and that it was their duty to use their knowledge of navigation and the Force to ensure space remained free. He didn't care at all if you burned the land or boiled the sea. It was only when you tried to take the Sky from people that he and his cared. Which, of course, had been the temptation of the Crusade for them. Smugglers were meaningless. In fact, Wardens had a tendency to help smugglers, as they represented that very freedom in the skies.

Pirates though? They all, universally, hated pirates.

Pirates, and slavers too where and when the two weren't the same thing, were the antithesis of free skies. They were scum who actively tried to suppress freedoms! A major chunk of what the Wardens did was deal with pirates, and the Hutts were the single largest sponsor of piracy in the galaxy! Heck, the sheer number of pirates that the League had already eliminated, as the Hutts paid them to throw themselves at League Fleets, made the Crusade the single greatest anti-piracy operation in centuries! For that fact alone, the League of Free Stars would have a lot of good will from the Wardens for decades, assuming they themselves didn't turn oppressive.

Captain Kirthos didn't think they would. Even now, they'd already allowed a certain amount of free trade to begin moving between their conquered planets and the Republic. Sure, it was far more heavily customs checked and policed, but that was completely understandable given they were in the middle of a war. The fact they were allowing it at all, despite said war, was a good indication they weren't inclined to oppress the space ways.

Which was really neither here nor there for the moment.

At first, aside from having the Wardens help with Force-based navigation for various fleets and scout vessels, it had been pretty clear the League powers that be weren't exactly sure what to do with them. Now, though, they'd clearly realized that they weren't fully utilizing the fact that the Wardens specialized in Force usage that allowed them to navigate space. Yes, they all had solid unarmed combat training and a fair bit of practical knowledge of the underworld, but their real expertise was in mapping.

Which is exactly what Captain Riel Kirthos and his crew were now engaged in.

They'd been ecstatic when they'd been contacted with quite the challenge. The League wanted a new hyperlane into Bootana Hutta! That subsector was one of the absolute worst offenders to the Wardens. An entire subsector of space that was denied to everyone but the Hutts and Hutt slaves. Virtually no outsiders, and no ships at all that didn't belong to the Hutts, were ever allowed within Bootana Hutta. Even the Wardens had very little knowledge of the subsector. At least, the Wardens he personally had contact with. Again, no central organization meant he couldn't exactly tap into a library of 'Warden Knowledge' or something.

Very little wasn't none, though. The Wardens he did know, had at least a crude knowledge about the general locations of star systems within the subsector. Even the names of a few Hutt throneworlds were available, though not many. The challenge was doable, and Captain Riel Kirthos was going to do it! Already, they were making progress, charting a quite possible route from Cyax into one of the unnamed (at least to them) systems within the subsector. Their feelings in the Force were telling them this was the best option, and so far it was playing out. It wasn't going to be good for sneaking anything larger than a few frigates at a time into the region. But that was a good start, and a great use of the Wardens.

Concentrating on the task at hand as the Force warned him of an anomaly, Riel smiled happily and plotted how best to bypass it…

... ... ...

Commodore Sail'ada scowled as he saw the massive fan of Vulture Droids spread out from the pair of Trade Federation Lucrehulks. The ships themselves were hanging back, thankfully, and a quick check had shown they were of the independently-owned variety. A lot of people that weren't properly informed tended to think of the Federation as monolithic, a single Megacorp like Kuat Drive Yards or the Corellian Engineering Corporation.

That, however, simply wasn't the case.

Oh, it was partially the case, as the organization had slowly become a Cartel, one which extremely large chunks of were controlled by specific groups. The organization as a whole had, in fact, become dominated almost entirely by the Neimoidians at the top level, for example. However, there were still some…oddities…that were holdovers from the original structure of the organization. One of those oddities was that only some of the ships used by the organization were controlled by the organization itself, while a significant number of others were owned and operated by their Captains.

Unlike KDY or CEC, those Captains either wholly or partially owned their ships, and could use them more or less how they wanted. They made their own deals, chose their own cargos, and had a degree of independence from their central organization that a true Megacrop just flat out wouldn't have. Something which was, unfortunately, now Commodore Sail'ada's problem, as the two Lucrehulks out there were of that latter type. Ships owned by individual Captains, who simply operated under the Trade Federation umbrella. A simple query to the public database for the Federation had proven that, with the TF as a whole making that information readily available public knowledge so that the Federation as an organization didn't get sucked into trouble that their independent captains caused.

Unfortunately, that meant that the Hutts had been able to throw enough money at this pair of owners to convince them to act as carriers for a fleet. These were the original Lucrehulk designs, not the awful monsters of Battleships that had been found at Nimban, but that wasn't much of a comfort as he watch a swarm of three thousand Vulture Fighters swarming out in front of the heavier ships that had come with this latest attack. His ships were already falling back to the orbit of Ilos, and the only reason he wasn't running for it was the fact that they'd made the decision to push most of Nar Kreeta's defense force out here. With the addition of five Plus-stations assigned here having just fully come online days ago, he had a chance of stopping this attack.

It was just going to hurt and force them to reveal a few more of their own tricks.

"Alright. Captain Faliem, get our own response in space. I damn well still don't like it, but I'm glad we have the option right now."

The Captain, connected to him via the Flag Bridge's impressive comm setup, started immediately barking orders. The Flag Bridge on the command variant of the Volition-class cost it a minor amount of missing consumables space, but it was absolutely worth it for controlling a Fleet. The Flag Bridge had many of the same hard-light holo systems that Tythe Central did, though with plenty of normal consoles as backup in case of damage or power loss. The system was currently set to project dozens of floating flatscreeens that linked to small droids on other ships. The unobtrusive micro-droids were barely thumb sized and flitted around to keep a tight focus on each Captain as they moved about their own bridges, issuing commands.

Of course, there was also the far more impressive tactical holo at the center of the Flag Bridge, which is where Commodore Sail'ada was focusing right now as his order came into effect.

Captain Faliem was in charge of the very first of their own Lucrehulks, one that Sail'ada was extremely grateful had been forwarded to him less than a week ago. It was not a ship he wanted to take into battle just yet, given its crew was the next best thing to actively reading manuals as they did their jobs. Heck, if not for the B-1s, they couldn't have even moved the thing just yet. No, taking it into the fight would be a last resort, even if it did have an impressive amount of point defense that would be useful against that fighter swarm.

Thankfully, he didn't need to take it into battle. He just needed it to do the same job as the enemy Lucrehulks were doing. Something that he watched in action now as 780 of their own fighters poured out of the highly unprofessionally named LSV Bitten Donut. He'd really wanted to order the crew to rename the ship when he'd seen it, but knew they'd consider it bad luck. Instead, he'd shot a message about naming standards needing to be better defined up the chain of command and let it be.

Those fighters, sadly, were both only a partial complement and weren't normal squadrons. While there were 12 normal squadrons of mixed pilot/droid N3s, making up 144 of those ships, the remaining 636 were all droid controlled. Worse, very few of them were the droid model of the N3. The majority were the older N2 model, with 72 of them even being the far older Liberator II's that had originally served the Shattered Shackle before the big boss had acquired the N-Series production rights. The entire conglomeration of fighters had been pulled out of storage to rapidly fill a handful of their new windfall of Battleship/Carriers to at least to a 50 percent level.

It wasn't a bad plan, honestly.

After all, those fighters had just been parked in various out of the way places, held in reserve in case things got desperate. Sticking them into the Lucrehulks and using them as a counter to exactly the sort of swarm tactic he was facing had been a brilliant idea. It did, however, complicate his life. The droid brains in those fighters hadn't been meant to be used in swarms like this, and the non-standard mix of fighters would farther throw off any attempt to use them. Worse, even the Liberators were technically more expensive than those Vultures, so throwing them away was less than ideal and offended the tactical sensibilities he'd developed as a League Officer.

Still, needs must when the Hutts drive.

Flicks of his fingers on the holo sent the new cloud of fighters swarming out ahead of the others from his fleet. Combined, the fighter element of the entire rest of his Fleet in the system, even with some additional squadrons from the planet, only totaled 1,800 fighters. Though those squadrons were all an appropriate mix, and even included a six-squadron set of the new Hero/Sidekick fighters that were likely the best space superiority starfighters currently in existence, despite some flaws in the design that were coming to light. Even combined, the 2,580 total fighters he had couldn't match that Vulture-swarm, let alone when you added in the additional 483 fighters that were mixed in with the heavier ships. On the plus side, though, his own were much better quality than the Vultures, at least.

Honestly, despite what his enemy had clearly hoped, the fighter matchup was going to be a bit of a wash.

Unfortunately, it would work to strip him of his fighter screen and even tie up most of his gunships and corvettes dealing with the fighters. Which left his 8 Volitions and 16 mixed frigates to deal with the heavier elements of the attack. Heavier elements which proved that the Hutts hadn't run out of places to pull ships from just yet. The lead ship of the heavy element was, of all things, an Invincible-class dreadnaught. Its energy profile showed it had been heavily upgraded, but the identifier was from a 1,500-year-old ship thought to have been lost in the New Sith Wars. It was pretty obviously an actual Hutt ship, instead of the rabble they'd used before. Which begged the question of how the hell they'd gotten it to Ilos without being spotted.

The why was easier to sort out, of course.

After all, those TF Lucrehulks had to have come from outside Hutt Space. As did the six Dreadnaught Heavy Cruisers and dozen Munifex Frigates. This was, by far, the single most potent force that the Hutts had thrown at them so far. Enough so that, despite the fact Sail'ada was fairly certain the support of the Plus-class Defense Stations would carry the day for them, this battle was going to hurt in a way that none up until now had.

Oh well. That much was something that couldn't have been avoided forever.

"Division One, I want all four of you on that Invincible the moment it comes into range. I'm going to have the Plus Stations open up on the heavy cruisers to strip them away, as I don't think they'll be able to punch out the Invincible's shields. Instead, we're going to…"

As he began to outline his battle plan for the various Captains, Sail'ada hoped that higher command's plans to get another offensive started kicked off soon. This attack was uncomfortable evidence of what could happen if they gave the Hutts time to really start pulling together a serious fleet of their own…

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

A/N 1: I doubt many of you managed to connect one of Izuku's comments from the last update to the Wardens :-p. I only mentioned Kirthos and the Wardens once, VERY briefly, when Aayla met up with one of the Jedi groups at Junkfort Station. This is, in addition to simply wanting to weld more Force Factions and their unique takes to the League, why I included them.

A/N 2: The Hutts are getting dangerous! Sort of! Just because Celeste and her teams got all of the Mothball Fleets they could find, doesn't meant they got ALL of the Hutt warship reserve. And the Hutts have now had a few months to try and bring some heavier firepower online.

A/N 3: 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 93-96 of Displaced Hero there, adding just shy of another 16,000 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.