LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 37: Assault
Summary: In which some slavers discover pain, and I drop obscure ship names/classes again.
Chapter 37: Assault
Izuku took in what he was seeing, both out the front viewport of their captured freighter, and on the scanners, with just a touch of disbelief. A decent smattering pride, too, at what they had accomplished so far being shown in such a way. But there was no question there was a dose of surreal disbelief under it all. There were, after all, over a dozen ships out there…and that number was technically still increasing as fighters disgorged from the pair of modified ES-23 medium freighters. With access to the original designers of those ships, it hadn't been too hard to bully them into creating a carrier variant that could both hold and rapidly launch two full squadrons of starfighters.
The basic design of the ES-23 had made for an extremely easy refit into carriers. Though they were still lightly armed enough that only an idiot would want to take them directly into combat, despite actually being larger than their new Defender II corvette class. Still, that wasn't the point of a carrier, and all of their current starfighter models were hyper capable. Hence simply using the carriers to move them to a system near their target and deploying them before the final jump. Two squadrons of those fighters were Liberator II-bs. The rework of Mei's original drone fighters that she'd made after accruing combat data against pirates and slavers over the last year. Now roughly on par with a squadron of well-handled Z-95s, they were joined by a squadron of Liberator II-is and a squadron of piloted Fang starfighters.
The former were an alternate configuration that exchanged the Liberator II's concussion missile launcher for a moderately powerful ion cannon. Moderately powerful by starfighter standards, at least. Though they were a pale imitation of the capital grade ion canon in the Defender II design. Despite that caveat, the II-i model of the Liberator had been critical in intercepting all of the 'legal' slavers heading back into Republic space. After all, their ion canons allowed ships to be disabled without risking the slaves aboard. Meanwhile, the Fang starfighters had been acquired with considerable difficulty from Mandal Motors, as the best option they could currently get their hands on for the Shattered Shackles pilots. The vast majority of that starfighter model were sold only to Mandalorians, and even getting a pair of them to then clandestinely copy had been hard. They also weren't overly sustainable to copy without drawing the ire of said Mandalorians, so an alternative was still being sought.
Aside from the fighters and carriers, the small flotilla of remaining ships was just as eye-catching. The Chain Breaker, the lead ship of Mei's new Defender II class corvettes was the biggest draw. Crewed by the Shattered Shackles group they'd formed, it was currently serving as that 'mercenary company's' flagship. Joined by the Wandering Fate and Shades of the Past, they and the fighters offered quite a major punch to knock out the space forces and ground defenses they were expecting.
"It feels a bit wrong to be here, with the Wandering Fate in someone else's hands."
The observation got him a shrug from Aayla, who was watching the same view from the pilot's seat next to him.
"Hey, at least it's in good hands. And you'll get to punch some slaver faces directly as part of the ground team."
Izuku snorted but couldn't deny both of those observations. The Fate was being handled by one of the Almas Jedi who had, extremely unexpectedly, turned up on Ossus two months after the joint anti-piracy raid in the Niian system. The very same Jedi healers and pilots that had volunteered to take the slaves they'd rescued Coreward had turned up, following like lost ducklings behind Master Fay, with a bit of a surreal story. They had attempted to return home to the Cularin System, only to discover that the entire system had vanished in their absence. After a month of utter failure to figure out what had happened to their home, the distraught Jedi had been found by Master Fay, who had brought them to Ossus.
Given the way Almas was looked at by the High Council, none of the Almas Jedi were eager to integrate into the main order. One of them, the most senior, had gone to Coruscant to report about the disappearance, but the other seven had remained with Izuku's slowly building faction. His goals, not to mention the radically different perspectives provided by Celeste Morne and Ood Bnar, had attracted the group of now-directionless Jedi. Their four healers were aboard the liners, along with other medical staff and droids. Meanwhile one of the Almas pilots was leading Liberty Squadron, the Fang Fighter group which was otherwise loaded up with Shattered Shackles personnel…all of whom had been trained by the Jedi in question. The remaining two Jedi pilots had been entrusted with Wandering Fate and Shades of the Past, both of which had been tweaked for use by those with Jedi reflexes.
"Looks like the fighters are just about ready, and the gunships have already given green lights."
Aayla hummed and nodded, beginning to input commands to calculate the jump that would set their raid in motion. Meanwhile, Izuku returned to surveying the last of the ships that were readying themselves. Less flashy but no less important than their new corvette, they were a quartet of upgraded Turbostorm-class Gunships. They had outsourced the upgrading of the slightly out-of-date Sienar Fleet Systems design to Anash on Esseles, and the Cathar had done them proud. She'd added a Class 2 hyperdrive, some better shielding, and general upgrades to a modern standard. It had decent enough armament, and a troop drop capacity of 24 troops per ship. Currently, there was only one 8-man squad of Shattered Shackles 'mercenaries' aboard each ship. But they were backed up by three squads of HI-Mk3 combat droids.
That droid, the Hatsume Industries Mark 3 combat droid, was Mei's current answer to being highly offended by the poor quality of such droids in the current Republic. She'd started with the NS-13 Guardian Droids they'd acquired on Nar Shadda, then upgraded them with a mix of older-but-better designs from the IES libraries and her own considerable robotics knowledge from working on UA's bots. The result was some truly quite excellent commando droids that were explicitly designed to work with organic commandos like the Shattered Shackles. The Mark 3's, in particular, took advantage of the recently-acquired portable plasma shields they'd been able to established trade with the Gungans of Naboo for. Those riot-shield like attachments meant they could be ordered to deploy and hold positions, breech high-danger zones before the organics, and more. All with a pretty damn high survival rate.
There were a handful of others ships around as well, but those were all Koqus-Class liners that wouldn't come in until after the fighting was over. Their own vessel, however, was the lynchpin of the entire operation. A slaver-conversion Action IV transport…that until very recently belonged to the Karazak Slavers Cooperative. Originally, they hadn't intended to hit quite so big a target for their first major offensive, post scouting operation on Manpower Station. Specifically, they had originally planned to hold off because the holding facility they'd identified had a pair of corvettes protecting it for the well-organized Slaver Guild. Mei's new Defender II had changed the equation, since it was better armed and shielded than either of the slaver corvettes.
They fully expected a squadron of Uglies, patched-together fighters common in the Outer Rim, to be on hand to defend the staging area as well. But their own fighter support, plus the admittedly rather heavily armed Wandering Fate and Shades of the Past, left them confident they could take out the slavers' overwatch forces. Besides, if all went to plan, the Uglies would never get a chance to launch. That, plus gaining the general element of surprise, was the whole reason why Aayla and Izuku, along with Celeste Morne, Allaya Djo, Master Tholme and a squad of Shattered Shackles commandos were all aboard the tackily-named Iron Collar. As the last of the fighters launched, Izuku focused on the task at hand and called back over his shoulder from the co-pilot's seat.
"Alright! Fighters are away and prepping for jump! Time for us to get going! Any important last-minute additions or thoughts?"
There were a series of no's from the various team leaders. Which meant, in this case, Celeste, Tholme, and Adrian Quinn, the leader of the commando team. Izuku hadn't expected any other response but was still pleased that no last-minute problems had been spotted. Hopefully, that meant there wouldn't be any.
"Alright! Aayla, if you would do the honors?"
Aayla grinned at him and punched in the final commands needed for their jump. Reaching forward, she spoke even as she eased the hyperspace lever into action and the ship shuddered, the lines of hyperspace abruptly shimmering into existence through the viewport.
"This is a short hop, everyone! ETA is only 15 minutes! Miss Djo, be ready on the comms. You've got the most critical part to play in this little charade."
The Dathmori woman nodded, preening a bit before preparing herself. Subtle chanting came from her as she drew the Force into a 'spell' to create one of her own people's specialties. One that only Celeste and Tholme had managed to replicate so far. And neither of them was as good with it as Allaya just yet. Over several minutes, they all watched as a Force-born illusion enveloped Allaya, replacing her normal appearance with that of a female human named Aethi Kreit. Kreit had been this vessel's captain and was now being held on one of the carriers under close guard.
"Emergence in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1!"
Hyperspace vanished around them as they appeared deep in the unlabeled star system where the Karazak Slavers had put in a staging area. Part of that group's standard procedures, such staging areas were planted near their current target systems. Which, at the moment, was the Naps Fral Cluster. The cluster, a set of systems in the Ferra sector, sprawled over the main hyperlanes between Ryloth and Nal Hutta. The slavers had been preying on both the Twi'leks and Hutt-space trade traffic for some time, to admittedly mixed success. It was an extremely rare opportunity to hit the slave trade while actually having the Hutts be happy about it, so annoyed were they with the disruptions the Slaver Guild was causing. That made this an even more attractive target as, despite fully intending to eventually take on the Hutts, they simply weren't ready for that yet.
The Iron Collar had emerged deep in the system, something allowed for by the relatively weak gravity wells that had caused the slavers to select the nameless star system in the first place. It was no surprise, as such, when they were challenged less than five minutes after entry into real space. The comm signal came from one of the corvettes they were already approaching, and was promptly answered by the disguised Allaya. The illusion she had woven was no mind trick, but a full manipulation of light that left it physical enough to transmit accurately across the full visual feed that was being requested. The human man on the comm screen nodded at her as she answer his call.
"Agent Kreit. I assume your trip went without complications?"
Allaya's voice matched the visual illusion as she answered, something that neither Celeste or Tholme could get right yet, and the primary reason Allaya was playing Kreit's role.
"The acquisition team had fewer slaves than hoped for and has taken higher losses. But there have been no additional issues on my side."
The man glowered and nodded.
"That's been the story on almost every run. Our operations in the cluster have been much more poorly handled than usual, and I'm quite sure the Central Committee is going to call someone on the Acquisitions side to account for it." The man's expression shifted to a cold smirk. "Still, no skin off my or your nose. Transmit your landing codes and we can at least process what they did get."
Allaya gestured, even as she nodded at the screen, and Izuku transmitted the codes. The real Kreit had attempted to lie about them, giving them a false set intended to alert her compatriots something was wrong. But that hadn't exactly worked out for her with Jedi on hand to detect the lies. She'd refused to provide the real set…only to be thwarted in her resistance when Izuku managed to pull the passwords for her ship with his psychometry. He'd gotten much more precise at using it, and it had paid off this time as they'd been able to bypass the admittedly impressive failsafes on the ship's computers to access the Guild's codes directly.
"Codes…confirmed. You're clear to land, Iron Collar."
The man rather rudely terminated the connection. But that was fine. Aayla was already shifting their course to follow the landing coordinates which they'd also pulled from the computer. Celeste, meanwhile, had closed her eyes and was busy bringing up her own illusion. She couldn't maintain them as long as her 'student,' nor make them half as precise. But that was fine. Kreit's second in command was a bulky Trandoshan known to be taciturn and quiet. As a consequence, Celeste could simply project his appearance around her, without needing the skintight focus the Dathmori witch was using for her own disguise.
The rest of their crew moved to their places as Aayla and Izuku set them down. Moments after touchdown, as they began working through the shutdown sequence for the ship, a tiny light indicating a rear emergency escape hatch opening lit on the control board. That was Tholme, who would even now be using his own nascent ability with illusions to cover the squad of Shattered Shackles commandos dropping out of that hatch and sneaking deeper into the base. The longer the rest of them could give that team to find either the slave pens or the security room, the better.
The first several minutes were bought easily, as it took that long for any sane spacer to go through their complete post-flight check and shutdown. After that, they delayed for another minute before Allaya and Celeste lowered the boarding ramp and went down to meet with the base representatives, dataslate of 'captured slaves' in hand. In this, the surprisingly organized nature of the Karazak Slavers Cooperative proved an asset, as they had an entire set of Standard Operating Procedures. Procedures which included going over arriving slaves with the staging area commander before handing them over. Still, they were on the clock now, and Izuku helmeted up and quickly double checked his gear.
"You know, if you were a proper Jedi, you wouldn't need armor~."
Izuku snorted as his suit booted up, his lover watching him with faint amusement. Despite his best attempts, Aayla had thus far resisted anything more than a lightweight under-armor layer she was already wearing. Izuku thought that was stupid and was working on getting her to accept his version of the armor Mei had come up with for the Shattered Shackles. But it was a work in process.
Said version of that armor was green-black, unlike the blue-black that the mercenaries used, and had some extra features enabled by the quantum link taken from his Hero Gear. But the core design was the same as that of the commandos. It was lightweight, tight-to-the-body, highly articulated armor plate that barely affected his movement. Made with a thin layer of phrik, underpinned by an impact-resistant, non-Newtonian gel layer, and covered over by a weave of modern armor composites.
Despite being much more streamlined than most armor used around the galaxy, the combination of materials meant it could absorb quite a bit of impact. All while also being able tank multiple shots of blaster fire to the same spot before failing. The downsides that kept everyone else in the galaxy from using similar armor were abated entirely by having it produced by IES-Alpha on Ossus. Normally, such an armor design would cost more than a starfighter, and it had to be custom fit to the precise measurements of every wearer. Even for them, making so much phrik from nothing would eventually become untenable. Meaning it would likely eventually be relegated to elite commando squads. But for now, the entire Shattered Shackles ground forces were equipped with it, and so was Izuku. Even Aayla had a couple of carefully placed trauma-plates of phrik in the underlayer he'd talked her into.
"Ah. Times up. Celeste is leading a team up the ramp. Game time, Izu!"
Izuku gave Aayla a thumbs up and mentally linked them up. They waited just five more seconds for the thumping boots to slow to a stop as the slavers started to realize someone was wrong, then Izuku keyed the command for the squads of HI-Mk3s aboard ship to deploy. Two dozen of the commando droids began swarming out of every emergency hatch and docking access point, even as a dozen more dropped from concealment under false-ship-panel extensions that had been rigged to hide them on the lower hull of the ship. Aayla and Izuku acted in the same moment, in perfect sync, stepping from concealment behind two crates and gunning down the half dozen slavers around Celeste with a pair of carbines on full auto.
Celeste herself didn't hesitate, dropping her illusion and igniting her lightsaber, combing Force Jump and Force Speed to cover the distance back to her student. Said student had ignited her own lightsaber, a recent edition Celeste had half-reluctantly started to train the Dathmori witch with. Said witch had cut down the base commander and his aide, but was starting to take fire from the slavers that were quickest to realized something was wrong. An instant later, Aayla and Izuku both dropped their blaster carbines, ignited their own sabers, and lept into the fray.
Celeste and Allaya were weathering the initial, scattered firestorm just fine, with Celeste handling the bulk of deflecting it. Seeing that, Aayla and Izuku wasted no time in zeroing in on the two biggest clumps of enemies who were already reacting. Aayla landed among one group with a brutal, omni-directional telekinetic burst that scattered them. Meanwhile, Izuku took a more physical approach, ripping into the poor bastards he was faced with in a fluid, full-body kata that combined his training from Miruko with his lightsaber. All while he telekinetically picked up two more opponents from the upper catwalk and used them like wrecking balls to knock several of their fellows off that same elevated platform.
Miruko had labeled it his 'beat a motherfucker with another motherfucker maneuver,' and he had to admit he'd grinned every single time she called it that. Even if it was a bit of a mouthful.
Alarms were going off and more slavers were pouring from the base into the hangar bay now…but Celeste was on the move and the commando droids had deployed fully during the chaos. Trios of droids, two with their Gungan-made energy shields out and a third firing full-auto from the gap between those shields, were hosing down the incoming slavers. Celeste, meanwhile, cut her way into the security booth and took local control of the hangar doors so no one could get cute and vent the atmosphere on the barren rock the complex was carved into. Allaya, Aayla, and Izuku did their own party, crisscrossing the hangar at high speeds, cleaning up the remainer of the original personnel as they tried to take cover. Then Izuku paused almost mid-stride to deploy the armored shields from his back, intercepting fire from a pair of mounted turrets as they finally whirred to life. Aayla and Allaya took advantage of the momentary cover to send their lightsabers spinning forward, slicing the turrets right off their ceiling mounts.
Within three minutes, the Hangar was theirs. The Uglies within never having gotten a chance to scramble.
Within five minutes, their space forces had arrived and were ripping the two slaver corvettes apart, despite one of them attempting to flee when it realized they were outgunned.
Within ten, Tholme and the commando team had taken the base security center and locked everything down.
After that, it was just a matter of mopping up. A process which would only be made easier as the first wave of reinforcements arrived via their gunships. It would take time, given there was suspected to be upwards of three hundred slavers here. But with security under their control and the slaver space forces defeated, the result was already a foregone conclusion…
... ...
Mop up operations had taken far longer than the initial assault. The more combat-oriented slavers had been remarkably unwilling to surrender, for the most part. Though quite a few of their support personnel had done so when given a chance. Those that did had been chained and, with irony that wasn't at all accidental, loaded onto the Iron Collar with it's convenient 'secure facilities.' This particular guild of slavers had a reputation for going the extra mile to recover their people. But that was why they would be taking the slavers Coreward, all the way to Alderaan. They had more than enough proof of these people taking Republic citizens as slaves. And Alderaan had both good enough planetary security, and sufficiently incorruptible courts, to make it very hard for the Cooperative to spring its people.
As for that aforementioned proof, that came in the form of nearly seven hundred slaves that had been awaiting processing and transportation at this staging area. Some of those slaves were from Hutt space, and thus not actually citizens of the Republic. But something like seventy eight percent of them had turned out to be Twi'leks. Since Ryloth was a Republic world, even if one with a poor reputation when it came to slavery, nearly every single one of the Twi'leks had Republic citizenship. Since these Twi'leks had all been taken by force, rather than under the 'indenture contracts' that covered legal slave exports from that world, they had 536 total cases against the captured base personnel. More than enough to put them all away for life.
Of course, there were rather a lot of Twi'leks who were already expressing a desire to be taken anywhere but back to Ryloth. Not all. Some had family there. Others had jobs with transport companies they might well be able to go back to. But, so far, it was looking like over half of the rescued Twi'leks, as well as virtually all of the rescues from Hutt Space, were wanting transport elsewhere. With a significant number of them showing interest in the various programs that the Shattered Shackles representatives were telling them all about.
Izuku was seriously thankful he was no longer doing that part himself.
Double so since he was stuck helping to organize as rapid an evacuation as possible.
They'd brought eight Koqus-Class liners in once the space battle was over, and their version of those liners had been optimized for their new role as rescue ships. Each could take eighty ex-slaves comfortably, along with their crews, which accounted for the vast majority of the 687 slaves they'd rescued. The rest could easily be divided up to the ES-23 carriers, the Wandering Fate and Shades of the Past.
Getting everyone sorted to which ships they should take, in a rapid fashion, was a logistics nightmare, however. One that wouldn't be implemented perfectly, as it was unlikely they'd end up with exact numbers to match up with who wanted to go where. But so long as they got everyone off quickly, they could always take care of that with multiple drop offs. For the moment, the main priority was making sure everyone got out before the slavers could mount a response to the raid. As well as ensuring that families, at least, stayed together…
... ... ... ... ... ...
A/N 1: I admit, this chapter is a bit more of an info dump than I'd have liked. Even after reworking it a bit from its original writeup. At the same time, I'm trying not to get us too hung up on all the little details. Which means compressing information into info dumps just a bit from time to time.
A/N 2: The ships named all exist (excepting the E-23). You can find pictures of the N-1 and H-6 with pretty easy searches. Technically, a picture of the Munifex-class also exists. But I refuse to accept it, since the picture doesn't remotely match its listed size and armaments. Also, the vanishing of the Cularian system is a thing that happened, even in the current canon I think. I believe its reapperance is mentioned off hand in some of the Clone Wars cartoon stuff. Though I can't swear to that. This time, it just happened to happen while some of the Almas Jedi were away...which wasn't the case originally, so far as I know.