Can One Displaced Hero Save a Galaxy?

(Chapters 143-145)

Novus Peregrine

Disclaimer: I am, very tragically, not in charge of Disney. All rights to Star Wars belong to Disney (so far as I'm aware). Likewise, My Hero Academia is the creation of Kōhei Horikoshi, not me.

Chapter 143: Operation Icarus

Izuku was both pleased and annoyed to finally be down on the ground of Geonosis. Pleased, because he was closer to the action as he helped organize the ground assault from the field command post, no longer truly needed to handle the space assets. Annoyed, because he still wasn’t part of the assault, and would only take part in combat if the locals somehow managed to reach the field command post. Something which would take a lot of doing, given the multi-layered defenses around it. Despite the role he’d cast for himself by forming the League in the first place, he was still primarily an individual of action, and being relegated to the rear simply due to his importance irritated him fiercely.

Still, at least he could do something down here. The Fleet had too much dominance in orbit and the air to really need him putting his thumb on the scales at this point any longer, which is why he was now down on the surface. Even if large scale ground battles weren’t really his area of expertise, he could still use the Force to help steer the fight. Via Battle Meditation in part, of course. Even more than that, however, was the fact that, as this range, he could get essentially perfect intelligence from the local Force on what the enemy was doing. Where they were strong, where they were weak. Where they were up to something tricky and where they were panicking.

It was the whole reason no one had protested him being down here, working alongside General Ichov. It was the General who was actually in charge, but Izuku was constantly feeding the command systems the information he was getting from the Force, using it to update the tactical map for the General to make his decisions with. Or, at least, that’s how they planned to have it work, as they assault wouldn’t actually begin for a few minutes yet. At the moment, the various assault formations were lining up, while a few commando teams slipped forward through gaps in coverage that Izuku had identified. Most of his attention just now was still on them.

Those teams wouldn’t be able to ghost all the way into Robi Hive the way they’d managed with the initial three Hives. Not with the Hive now at full alert. Instead, their goals were to eliminate specific artillery and anti-air groups that Izuku had detected concentrations of. The new J-1 Proton Cannons were very concerning, now that they’d managed to pull more data regarding them out of the archives they’d captured. Thankfully, the design was so new that the bugs didn’t have very many of them yet, but their output was alarming.

Depending on the ordinance loaded, they could either throw up explosive shells of energy that would act as flak that would devastate fighters and bombers…or fire a much more potent shell that would likely erase a gunship or severely damage even one of their support corvettes. Concentrated fire from them could, by their reading of the blueprints, likely even bring down a frigate if it was in low enough orbit. Needless to say, given that they were relying heavily on maintaining air superiority as a way to offset the numbers advantage of the locals, the three dozen J-1s that the Geonosians had managed to build so far were a high priority for sabotage. They, along with a pair of dense clusters of artillery that had been deployed almost at the edge of the Hive shields, were the primary targets of the commando teams. With any luck, most of them would be taken down before the fighting truly started.

Speaking of which…

“Commandos in position, General. But they won’t remain undetected long. It’s now or never.”

General Ichov nodded, eyed the state of the other preparations one last time, then gave the command.

“All Units…Execute opening phase of Operation Icarus.”

Izuku sent his own orders to the commandos at that, even as artillery opened fire, tanks and mechs began to move, and the Fleet overhead shifted to begin battering the Hive shields. The latter wouldn’t work to bring them down anytime soon, but would prevent them from diverting shield power to other defenses. ‘Keeping the enemy honest,’ as it were. One way or another, they were committed to their new course of action, and Izuku eyed the other Hives carefully. Sooner or later, the two closest would act to flank their assault. He needed to be on top of detecting that moment so that the General could cripple their efforts as planned…

… … …

Zavra cackled at the explosion that resulted from the charges they’d planted. The charges alone wouldn’t have been so spectacular, but the fact they’d planted them on the ammo stockpiles of a dozen J-1 Proton Cannons had certainly amplified the effect! As in, the entire ridgeline was gone, rather than just the droids on it. The rest of the sissies in her squad had hunkered down behind cover and were staring at her in a little alarm at her cackling, even as she simply used the Force to split the shockwave around her.

That was okay. If they stuck with her, they’d learn the best time to cackle!

Sure, it wasn’t a Jedi Approved activity, but the Champions weren’t Jedi, so that didn’t matter. She would make sure to put them through the Intro to Cackling that Korriban had run one semester, when the standards of evil and mad cackling had fallen abysmally low. Sure, it hadn’t been an approved course, and Zavra had needed to sneak onto the world to run it personally, but she knew her Empress had secretly approved of the much higher-quality cackling of the new generation of young Sith! After all, her Mistress had awarded her with three back-to-back suicide missions that came with orgasmic rewards right afterwards!

Truly, it had been one of the best sets of missions ever!

Ignoring the, clearly unrelated, shiver of horror that that passed through her Champions, Zavra hopped off the rock she’d been using to observe their work. Beaming hugely at them, she reminded them that they still had work to do.

“Some on, you sissies! It’s time to sow more chaos and destruction while we still have the chance! Once the Army gets here, it won’t be fun any longer!”

With a skip in her step and a happy hum on her lips, Zavra led her squad on. They still had much to learn about the glories of explosives and chaos, and she was more than happy to teach them!

… … …

Aayla nodded in satisfaction as the dataspikes her team had managed to insert into several of the HAG-M tanks that served as the major Genosian artillery platform went to work. Suborned droid brains and tank systems activated, turning their aim on other artillery parks within the shield dome and opening fire. As the Robi Hive was, in fact, producing the HAG-M in serious numbers, merely wiping out a single grouping of the droids wasn’t enough.

Instead, they’d abused the fact the locals still hadn’t quite understood they were dealing with an enemy capable of tactical cloaking, and snuck into some of the tank-like droids. Dataspikes, prepared by their slicers after a few days of studying the code base they’d gained by taking a factory intact, had quickly allowed them to hijack this entire artillery park of HAG-Ms from the overall droid control net. Given that they were still able to read from that control net, even if they’d been isolated from it, they had exact coordinates of other artillery assets on demand. Now, they were systematically targeting other artillery units and wiping them out, and would keep doing so until they were destroyed. Which, since they were still broadcasting the correct IFFs, wouldn’t happen until the Geonosians either manually overrode those IFFs, or sent in sentient forces to disable the mortar tanks.

By then, and particularly given that Aayla’s was not the only team to have pulled this trick, a significant percentage of the enemy artillery would be wiped away. Which, of course, wasn’t even counting the fact that League heavy mechs were already charging the front lines as well, forcing the enemy to split their attention. Likewise, still more sabotage was wiping away key assets and positions all along the native’s defensive lines.

Turning to her Champion team, Aayla channeled just a bit of Zavra into her smile as she got them up and moving.

“Come on, you lot of lazy bones! Time to go cause more chaos for the enemy! The more disarray we can put them to, the better for our boys and girls hammering the front door in!”

The amount of glee that answered her back was probably a little concerning. Eh, she’d make sure and sit down the meditate with them after the battle, to make sure they focused on a ‘job well done,’ rather than the number of people they’d killed. They needed the Champions initiative to be a success, not a dangerous failure that would cause members to fall to the Darkside, justifying Jedi paranoia…

… … …

Commander Mora eyed the chaos ahead of them grimly, even as her column began to take fire, for now being absorbed by the combined shields of the heavier mechs. The sabotage teams had outdone themselves again, that much was obvious. Yet. this time, all their hard work wouldn’t be enough to prevent this from getting ugly. The Hive shields kept them from using their air superiority just yet, though the shields were already shrinking to maintain themselves against the fire from the Fleet overhead. Worse, those intact shields also meant intact heavy weapons emplacements that were already chipping away at the trio of heavy assault columns pushing toward the Hive itself.

Still, with the enemy artillery in disarray, she was confident they would manage to punch through the shield umbrella and position their own heavy artillery to start hammering those emplacements. Better, they could potentially start hitting the shield generators themselves with some of their longer-ranged particle and missile weapons. Those generators would be very well protected by anti-missile systems and such, but it only took a few lucky hits gained through saturation to take one offline, and doing so would let both their air superiority and orbital control start to tell.

For now, she hunkered down in her command Liger, watching as the Lancers stuck true to their name, punching ahead and wrecking the day of fixed defenses. The things were still ridiculous, being 8-meter tall humanoid mech frames. Yet their heavy shields let them close right up to what should be hard-points, where that bloody Kyber-based plasma-lance of theirs then proceeded to make a hard-point a soft-point. Generally, they got a bit chewed up in the process and needed to pull back, but the new Mark IIs built on the lessons learned from the Hutt Crusade had detachable armor segments. Pull them back and, in fifteen minutes or less, their support crews could completely swap out a full armor set and have them back in action.

She supposed it wasn’t truly ridiculous if it worked…

… … …

Izuku’s fingers danced as he input dozens of commands that highlighted weak points, rallying or cowering troops, broken droid control nets, and more. Deep in the flow of the Force, trying to manage the massive real time information flow it was providing him and forward the most relevant bits, he was only half-aware of General Ichov barking orders. He was even less aware of the two dozen men and women under the General passing fragments of those commands on, making the League Army units execute the plans the General was modifying on the fly, based on Izuku’s information.

It was all working, with two of the three heavy columns fully breached under the Hive shields by this point, hammering away with heavy fire from the Tiger, Liger and Phalanx Mechs. The fact that they’d deployed several new surprises, ones they hadn’t used even in the initial planetary assault, was causing additional chaos as well. One of those, EM scrambling and jamming packages deployed by missile, was causing a particular headache for the locals. They utterly trashed any attempt to keep the droid control net up, let alone organize the natives’ own units, and would normally have been a double-edged sword. Except, of course, that the League military had fully integrated QEC comms down to the squad level at this point. Which meant their own coordination wasn’t hampered at all, while the enemy was being rapidly reduced to hard-lines and runners.

Even as Izuku input a sudden weakness of the defenses around Shield Generator 3, another bit of information came through from the Force, causing him to stiffen. It was a bit of information he’d been waiting for, and he immediately lifted his voice above the back-and-forth of the rest of the command post, speaking for the first time since the engagement started.

“Hives Ghiria and Yiva are mobilizing. Five minutes to their first deployment on Western and Easten flanks. As expected, very few droids. Mostly warrior caste Genosians. Highlighting their attack vectors now!”

Izuku did exactly that, with two large arrows immediately popping up on the tactical map. More data flowed as fast as his fingers could move, adding detail to what was being deployed and how. The vectors alone had been enough for a victorious-sounding General Ichov to start barking his own orders.

“Contact the Fleet! Prep Starfall at the following coordinates!”

Izuku lost focus on the world as a whole again as the string of coordinates was rapped out, once more lost in the overwhelming amount of data he was getting from the local Force with his filters almost entirely down…

… … …

Asmotiv Te Ichov was a grimly happy Dubravan at the moment. His homeworld was one that had benefitted greatly from the rise of the League of Free Stars, despite not having been within Hutt Space itself, if only by technicality. Located in the narrow band between former Hutt Space and Wild Space that had been something of a no-man’s land the Hutts deliberately maintained as a buffer, they’d still been more or less under the thumb of the Cartels. They had also, however, been well-positioned along the Triellus Trade Route to interest the League as a major transhipping stopover point on their way into Hutt Space once the Crusade had begun.

The result for his people had been incredibly positive, since the League were a rare government that weren’t dickish about managing those that fell within their remit. The fact his home was a swamp world had only helped, as the Gungans still made up a significant portion of the Leage Army at the time, and had gotten along well with his people. Technically, they still got on well with his people, but the massive influx of different races into the military since the League properly formed meant the Gungans were no longer so prominent. Even if many of them were still in high command and liked to vacation on his homeworld…

Asmotiv, like many young Dubravans, had taken the chance to get off world by signing up with the League, and had done extremely well for himself. As evidenced by General T’sun personally recommending him for this undertaking. Thankfully, it was going well so far, though he had to admit that was as much because of his ultimate boss and the sheer bullshit his magical powers were. Still, he wasn’t going to judge and was going to take full advantage.

Just as he was doing now, as he watched with satisfaction. Starfall was a gambit he, the big boss, and the boss’s lady had come up with to make use of the B2 stocks and production capacity they now had. While a great many resources had come down from the Fleet to the surface, that had left lot of lift capacity that would have headed back up to the fleet empty. If not, that was, they hadn’t decided to stuff all the drop pods they’d used in the initial assault, plus enough B2s to fill them, into that lift capacity.

Now, those pods were being fired at the planet again, hammering straight into choke points the flanking Hives would have to cross through, and releasing thousands of B2-series Super Battle Droids. Unfortunately for the natives, those droids were heavily armored, and their armor was particularly good at shrugging off the sonic weaponry typically used by Geonosians. Without much in the way of droids of their own, having not been supplied many as they were merely subordinate minor Hives, those droids were going to slaughter the forces attempting to flank.

Then what was left of them would be bombed into bug-splatter, since they’d had to move out of their own shields to make their attack attempt. Given how bloody-minded the locals were, he wouldn’t be surprised if they committed their second and third waves despite an utter slaughter of the first, but if they did it would be just as bloody. There was a reason he hadn’t been overly concerned about those minor Hives jumping them, once they’d had more data available.

Turning his focus back to the main battle and the much more dangerous Hive Robi, Asmotiv noted the shield flickering, then constricting, with interest. Clearly, one of the…ah Generator 3. The Hive’s Generator 3 had gone down, forcing them to pull the overall shield back even farther. He stepped forward into the scum again and began snapping orders for a bombing run to take advantage of that fact before the Hive ground forces could pull back…

… … …

Aayla grimaced as she pretended she was Izuku. Specifically, she was duplicating his combat style with a series of rock slabs. She’d discovered early on, in the fight for Sartol Hive, that the sonic weaponry of the natives couldn’t be easily parried by a lightsaber. It wasn’t impossible…if you were willing to throw your lightsaber a good meter from your body to disrupt the containment sphere of the shot so the sonic pulse didn’t hit you.

Not exactly the best way to deflect repeated shots.

Thankfully, she did have a workable example of an alternative, having fought Izuku enough over the years to be capable of mimicking his style. The slabs of rock she was using weren’t as good as his phrik shields, but they worked perfectly fine to intercept the shots aimed at her and her team, working as mobile cover. The Champions were all trained with blasters as well as their light-weapons of choice, so that mobile cover was working out well to let them advance against individual hard points and take them out.

It was grueling, dangerous fighting, compared to the precision sabotage they’d been used for before now. Yet she hadn’t lost anyone so far, and she didn’t intend to if she could help it. They were also still making a difference, managing to hit and destroy spots that were giving the advancing heavy columns trouble. Given they’d almost made it to the Hive, and said Hive’s shields were faltering, they only had to push on for a little bit longer…

… … …

“Woooohooo!”

Zavra whooped in delight as she jumped off the Geonosian she’d been steering by forcefully controlling its wings, letting it splatter against the optical sensor of a ground-bound Vulture that had been trying to provide fire-support for a group of mixed natives and B1s. The splatter didn’t do much but momentarily blind the droid, but that was enough for Zavra to land on top of it and quickly cut through the ‘neck’ of the droid, resulting in it sputtering and dying.

Not content with just that much damage, she used the Force to pick it up from underneath her and throw it at a trio of tanks, falling to the ground where the Vulture had been. The natives, clearly stunned and awed by her immense beauty and talent, hesitated and gaped for a full three seconds before they started to fire at her! Laughing, she easily wove between that fire, lifting bits of debris with telekinesis to intercept the few shots she couldn’t dodge, gleefully soaking up all the attention~!

Which, of course, let her Champion squad, who had properly gotten used to her amazing tactics by now, jump them from behind!

Mind you, they took the boring approach of having hijacked the rare droid STAP or, in one slightly more fun case, a hovertank that was being aided along to move faster with the Force. Zavra marked out that pair of Champions as her new favorites, particularly when it proved they’d somehow gotten the gun working and fired a round right into the enemy commander.

Good initiative!

As her team fell on the bugs from behind, Zavra stopped playing decoy and darted forward, picking up one of the Vulture Droid’s legs with the Force to use as both cover and a bludgeon. It wouldn’t take long to wipe out this particular group of foolish natives, and then they could move on and pick another random place the Force told her someone was trying to rally troops at! Onward, to glorious chaos!

… … …

“That’s gotten it done sir! Sector J-17’s shield is down and not coming back up!”

General Ichov nodded sharply, then snapped out his own command.

“Contact the Fleet. I want the Weasels to run that section, followed by a bomber squadron! Commit the rapid action units to reinforce the flank of column three, and tell them to punch forward as fast as they can. The sooner they smash into the defenses after the bombing run, the better! We need to get into that base and start doing lasting damage.”

Pausing for a moment, he added another command almost absent mindedly.

“Recall the commando teams that are still out. I want them resupplied, fed, and with a short rest. Then redeploy them forward to help wedge the door open once we crack the Hive. They proved how good they were at breaking down the internal defenses already.”

The General got ‘yes, sirs’ from multiple officers, who immediately shifted to following up on his new orders. Ichov himself shifted to look over the tactical plot again, noting that at least one other shield sector was in danger of failing. It was tempting to just orbitally bombard the place, with those shields coming down. Unfortunately, the fact that the factories were so massive and entirely underground meant it would be impossible to confirm their destruction if they did that. No, they’d have to fight down to at least the factory levels, and if they were doing that far, taking out the Queens too only made sense.

“Rotate in the Lancer reserves to help cracked the Hive defenses. If they can get into the factory proper, let them have fun carving it up too. Best give the defenders something to focus on, rather than letting them have the chance to be clever.”

Another ‘yes sir’ answered him and he nodded, focusing on the latest data the Sovereign was supplying to the tac-net. Hmm, it seemed the natives were trying to tunnel under column two. Better do something about that…

… … …

Izuku slumped at the final report came in, confirming they’d killed the Queens of the Robi Hive. Unfortunate that they’d refused to surrender, just like the others so far, but it was mostly expected at this point. One way or another, the bulk of the fighting was done, the assault having taken two and a half days, during which he’d barely eaten and hadn’t slept. Still, that was damn fast, all things considered, and he knew it. Unfortunately, they’d played out most of their remaining tricks to achieve that speed, meaning the fight against the Stalgasin Hive would be worse.

At least they wouldn’t be facing artillery to their rear and flanks, though. That wasn’t nothing.

Nor was the upcoming destruction of the fourth Droid Factory. That wasn’t a done deal yet, the factory massive enough that their engineers would need a few hours of setting charges to be sure the whole thing came down. Once it did, though, they’d have cut 4/5ths of the droid manufacturing on the planet, and more of the subordinate Hives were already abandoning Stalgasin. They’d need to slug it out to get the last factory, and he had a feeling it would be far more of an even fight than the two they’d engaged in so far.

It needed doing though, so the League would get it done.

As for him, he needed some rack time before they went through a debrief and laid out the next phase of the plan. Even the General had cycled out once, to catch a few hours, letting his staff handle a slightly less critical part of the Hive capture, once they’d been in and secured the most critical areas. Rest, mental recovery, then planning for what they hoped would be the last push before they could shake the dust of this ugly planet off their boots and move on…after setting suitable skymines around it so the bugs weren’t tempted to leave, of course.

Then they’d have to track down those three Hives that had left for other planets. Ugh. Another thing Izuku wasn’t looking forward to, though still possibly better than whatever political fuckery would pop up once he was available to take calls again…

Chapter 144: Assault on Hive Stalgasin

It had taken an additional five days for them to feel comfortable even talking about attacking Hive Stalgasin. A frustrating amount of time, given that the wait gave their enemies time to make themselves a harder and harder target, to pump out more droids and arm more of their people. Yet, there just hadn’t been any realistic way to speed things up. The battles they’d fought so far, despite being unqualified successes that achieved kill ratios deeply in their favor, had still bit deeply into their logistics. They’d lost over fifteen million droids, and suffered close to 400,000 sentient casualties, though only a little over half of those were fatalities.

To be certain, those numbers still represented a staggering victory, given that they’d accounted for something like 375 million dead natives and at least 40 million more droids. A massively uneven number brought about by superior hardware and tactics. A number which, with the fall of so many major Hives, had also convinced many of the remaining subordinate Hives to abandon rule by the Stalgasin. Something which was fantastic news, as it reduced their remaining opposition from over another billion to just the core ruling Hive.

A Hive which, unfortunately, supported nearly 85 million native troops and another 20 million droids. Not to mention even heavier defenses than the other major Hives they’d taken on so far. Numbers that meant the League Army was still outnumbered, had a lot of repairs needed beyond just those droids outright destroyed, and just generally needed time to reset, repair, and recover. Their logistics was, thankfully, in much better shape than the enemy, particularly as they believed that the loss of the subordinate Hives had cut the ruling Hive off from raw materials needed to keep the factory they were sitting on producing. Which at least meant the numbers weren’t getting that much worse as they gave the enemy time, even if the static defenses were likely hastily improved.

Even with the recovery time, the League had taken certain losses that couldn’t be made good. Well, not losses exactly, so much as new restrictions. While only a few of the Ossus Champions and other Force users had died so far, all of them save Izuku, Aayla, and Zavra had been pulled off the planet by this point. The death of so many sentient beings, even if the Genosians semi-Hive mind reduced the impact, had created a distinct taint to a world that had already leant Dark due to the natives’ constant internal battles.

The effect was currently still a natural depression of the Living Force, rather than a taint on the Cosmic Force that could be properly labeled as ‘The Dark Side.’ Yet it was still dangerous to Living Force wielders to be exposed to that much, for lack of a better way to put it, Death taint, within the local Living Force. It was the sort of thing that could and would get to Force Users who weren’t truly prepared for it, and the vast majority of their people weren’t experienced with it. Zavra, of course, had experienced far worse for most of her waking life. Izuku and Aayla, likewise, had plenty of experiences with places tainted by genuine Dark Side energies, rather than just the heavy feel of death and echoing pain imprinted on the local Living Force.

Unfortunately, this meant that they’d lost a number of their hole cards, as it were. Even the Wild Weasels had been pulled back, as their members were Force Sensitive enough to begin feeling the weight of all that death, and they’d begun taking more casualties as the local Force had become increasingly murky besides. That didn’t mean that all their advantages were gone. They still held orbital control, more completely than ever. They still have the comm jamming abilities that would make the droids and individual mobile natives less coordinated. The tech edge remained theirs, the normal commandos were still available, and so on.

It’s just that they’d expended most of their major force multipliers already.

Which is why those filling the command post looked less than pleased as they worked through the possible approaches for the next phase of the invasion. They’d already ruled out any real chance of sabotage teams working again, or of finding a way to disable the power or shield generators. Which left, frankly, a frontal assault that no one was happy with. Of course, Izuku had one last trick to play that would help, but he knew full well that no one but him and Zavra were really going to like it. Leaning forward, choosing the moment where the command staff were at their most bleak about the possible costs of the assault, he struck.

“Gentlemen, ladies, I have one last card we can put in play. One that will at least let us carve through the outer positions and reach the Hive itself without suffering crippling losses. You see, I had a bit of specialized hardware brought along…”

He was, of course, right. None of them liked his plan. Yet, none of them could deny that it had a high probability of working and cutting their losses to the entrenched outer defenses significantly. Besides, in the end, he was still their Sovereign, and they knew full well he could just order them to allow it. He would get his way, even if he knew certain people back home were going to chew him out of pulling this particular stunt.

Still, after having been forced to sit on the back lines this entire time, he found he could live with that…

… … …

Despite the chaos of the battlefield around him, Izuku was grinning widely as the massive plasma lance of his custom Lancer sliced cleanly through a Octupatara Magna Tri-Droid. The fact that Geonosis even had some of the Techno Union designs had been a nasty surprise, but it wasn’t enough to wipe the glee from the rush of combat away. Even as another wave of smaller Scorpenek Annihilator Droids attempted to take the spear tip of assault forces he was protecting under fire, he shifted one of the four massive phrik-and-cortosis shields he was controlling to intercept.

Those shields, each of them five-meters across, were the real reason he had taken the field despite all protests of high command. No one had thought anything of the fact that he, Aayla, and Zavra had all put in the hours to fully qualify in a Lancer. The humanoid mechs were, after all, Big Stompy Robots that were immensely fun to mess around with. It was, in fact, half the reason Mei had insisted on making the design practical, despite all conventional logic. The fact that they’d turned out so useful had merely silenced all the naysayers.

No one had realized that they hadn’t been qualifying just for fun, but because Mei had created a custom set of Lancers just for them.

The custom Lancers were more powerful, better armored, and their use-case was largely based around Izuku’s personal combat style. Super-sized versions of his phrik hex-shields were mounted on the back, just as he would normally carry his when armored up, each of them equipped internally with anti-grav systems that would reduce the strain of moving them around with the Force. Only Izuku could manage four of them, which was still a downgrade from the six he used in personal combat, but Aayla could manage two, and Zavra three.

Between them, and with the Force guiding how they used them, they were a mobile bulwark for a fast-moving spear of mechs. They’d waited until the battle was fully in swing, then used a Gate to deploy on the extreme right flank of the battle. With Izuku, Aayla and Zavra’s Lancers acting as a neigh-immortal speartip, they’d thrust into that flank of the battle, with a line of heavy mechs and elite ground troops following in their wake. Curving once they were through the front, so that they threatened the rear of the forward troops, they’d accepted fire from the Hive itself by deploying heavy shield mechs to that side, then unloaded mercilessly into the backs of the Geonosian front line.

Even now, as Izuku happily let the familiar flow of combat adrenaline flood his system, washing out months of politics from his system, he kept up the brutal forward pace. A Hailfire tank, a group of DSD1 Dwarf Spider Droids, and a unit of some sort of heavy Geonosian non-droid weapons platform fell in rapid succession. He was only lightly dipped into Battle Meditation, just using it to bolster coordination of his own spear of heavy metal, but he could feel it as the entire right flank of the enemy folded inward and began to collapse.

Any moment now, that would turn into a catastrophe for them as Sidekicks with heavy missile loads would be pouring through a Gate brought in under the shield. Their fire from above combined with a massive artillery barrage that the General had been setting up would rip the heart out of the bunched up center as the right flank folded into them, crippling the entire outer defense of the Hive. All he had to do was keep up the pressure. A job he was delighted by after being relegated to the rear lines until now.

That probably wasn’t the healthiest mindset that had ever crossed through a Force User’s mind. But Izuku was ultimately a creature of action and he had a lot of frustrations to work out on a stubborn enemy that had refused every offer to negotiate a surrender. He could mediate later to recenter himself if necessary. Right now, he was going to take what he could get. Who knew when the next time he could convince his people that taking to the fight personally was a good idea would be, after all?

… … …

Izuku hummed, watching on in interest, occasionally blocking a desperate shot from a gun someone got working on the Hive walls again, keeping it from disrupting the rapid assembly of ‘The Cracker.’ He’d only been able to watch from a distance as the weaponized Gate assembly had been used to crack open Hive Robi, and it hadn’t been needed at all for the previous three Hives, which had each been cracked by orbital bombardment and bombing runs. The ruling Hive, unfortunately, had a much more robust set of shields, including secondary shields protecting the shield generators. Meaning they had to bring in The Cracker, under the primary shields, to breach into the Hive itself.

The design was brutally simple, though currently impractical to use aboard ship for technical reasons Izuku freely admitted he didn’t understand. Something about kinetic blowback from the Gate? He knew they only got single shots out of the thing before having to outright replace some parts for another shot, and that in spite of the fact that the parts in question were made out of beskar, of all things. Still, despite the fact he didn’t understand the technical details entirely, the actual mechanics of The Cracker were dirt simple.

A Gate, connect to another Gate, in front of a fuck-off huge railgun, mounted on a large space station that used Isotope-5 to power both the Gate and the railgun.

That railgun was far larger than even the ones mounted on their Siege-class frigates, and even if the Hive’s walls had been made of phrik or beskar, the sheer brutal kinetic force would still have punched a breach into the fortress-spire. As it was, it was merely reinforced, thick native stone. The Cracker would break a massive breach into the base of the spire, just as it had with Hive Robi, and the Army would use that breach to begin taking the Hive. Of course, considering that this Hive was much larger and more heavily defended than even Robi had been, they were actually setting up three Cracker Gates. Each one was currently being protected by himself, Aayla, and Zavra. One for each of the special Gates as they were set up.

Three shots, three breaches, plus aerial troops using openings farther up the Hive Spire to get inside and work their way down. It was still going to be an ugly slog, but they’d already learned from the other Hives that the League Army was actually much better suited for tunnel fighting than the Geonosians themselves were. The Geonosians might live in the tunnels, but they were a flying species that typically preferred to do all their fighting under the open sky where their maneuverability was in play.

There was no longer any doubt they would win. It was only a matter of how high the cost would be when the bill came due…

Chapter 145: Wrapping Up

Izuku sighed as he read over the final reports from the Invasion of Geonosis. It had ultimately taken another week and a half to break Hive Stalgasin, and another week to negotiate a new deal with the other Hives on the world. In exchange for not just dumping skymines over the planet to keep them confined, the new ruling Hive had made agreements to both refuse any support to the CIS, and limit their space-capable development. Not forever, but for long enough that the current war would hopefully be long over before Geonosis built into a potential threat to other worlds again.

Now, the League was in the process of withdrawing from the planet, bringing up all their own assets and a decent bit of recovered hardware from the Hives they’d taken or destroyed. Some of that hardware would help make up for their losses…which ended up totaling nearly 34 million destroyed droids and close to 700,000 sentient casualties. Though, at least in the case of the latter, the number of actual dead was under 400,000.

Under 400,000.

The idea that the number had to be considered an absolutely staggering victory was an uncomfortable one for Izuku, who was responsible for ordering those people into the fight in the first place. Nor was the fact that close to half a billion natives had died a palatable idea either. The numbers were genuinely hard to even conceptualize. Yet, despite how horrific they were, even the Force told him that not getting the job done would have somehow resulted in even more death.

Something that was all too believable, given the fanatical way the natives had fought. Double so given that they’d found plans for something called a Death Star which was intended to destroy planets. The Force, the Cosmic Force, not just the local Force, had practically outright shouted in triumph when they’d found those. Apparently, the Force believed the damn thing was bad news. Not a small feat, nor a comfortable one, given how rarely the Cosmic Force had strong opinions on something.

Frankly, the only reason he hadn’t immediately ordered the data regarding it destroyed was that they didn’t know if it had been transmitted elsewhere at any point. Thus, in the event that it had been, they’d kept a high-security copy to have analyzed for possible weaknesses. Though, given it was a crude blueprint that focused mostly on the weapon’s system, it probably wasn’t that helpful in that regard. The fact that the main weapon apparently used Kyber likely did help explain why the Force had reacted so strongly to the potential existence of the space station. That amount of Kyber, used to destroy planets, was just begging to end up with a Dark Side infused super weapon. Something which pretty much never ended well for anyone, even the crazy bastards who made and deployed such things.

Still, whatever happened with those plans, the truth was that the invasion had cost the League.

They’d lost at little under 5% of their entire ground army, plus over a thousand fighters, and an absolute fuck ton of expended ordinance. Admittedly, the League had been cranking up its production even higher while he’d been busy here, but they’d already been producing on a war time footing, and couldn’t just make up those sorts of losses quickly. Not even with a lot of recruiting going on for sentients. Enough that they were going to struggle to train them and might actually see their droid-to-sentient force equation drop below what it was at the start of the Hutt Crusade.

The bitter truth was that the League, despite how well equipped it was, just didn’t have the numbers to fight this sort of invasion more than a handful of times. Though, thankfully, it would be a very rare world that could match the sheer numbers problem they’d run into face-first with Geonosis. At least for now. With the massive production of battle droids that the CIS was trying to increase, that could very well change. For now, the CIS actually had less battle droids than the Geonosians had possessed organic troops, and those droids were spread out over hundreds of worlds.

Of course, the CIS also controlled thousands of worlds and their local defense forces weren’t entirely droid armies. Which meant that the real figures on their military were highly nebulous.

Nevertheless, the truth remained that the League really needed to avoid getting sucked into ground wars if it could help it. They were far better able to match the CIS in space, at least in theory. A theory that was holding up according to other reports he had on hand. Dac, for example, had finally repelled the repeated CIS attempts to invade it fully. One last attack, after the first set of Plus Stations had come online, had resulted in a ripped-apart CIS fleet that finally seemed to help the Separatists find a clue. All reports, both from scouting and LIS agents, claimed the CIS had withdrawn from around Dac entirely by this point. Likewise, a second attempt on Jabiim had been hammered hard…and the foolish CIS fleet commander that had dared poke his nose into Ossus had discovered the hard way that the system was protected.

Personally, Izuku suspected Darth Sidious had been behind that particular attempt. Given how deep the man’s moles went, it was almost certain he’d known about Ossus Academy and had likely wanted to smash a potential threat to the Sith. With Ossus supposedly isolated within space where the CIS controlled the hyperlanes, he’d likely thought he could get away with said smashing…only to discover that Ossus had both a defensive fleet and an active Jump Gate.

Since Admiral Lin was fully read in on the Academy, she’d fully expected someone to try hitting it, and pre-positioned several Veto-class ships in the system. To the result that not a single ship of the substantial CIS fleet that had tried attacking the planet had managed to escape. There was a very real chance that the Sith Lord had just lost a fleet sending it to Ossus, with no idea how it had been taken out. A good turn of events if Izuku had ever seen one.

Unfortunately, while things had been stabilizing for the League so far, things weren’t looking nearly as good for the Republic. The CIS to the galactic North were still busy digesting their gains, as well as loosing battles to the League, but there were strong signs that they were going to make a push against Kashyyyk soon. Meanwhile, the CIS to the south had managed to punch through a blockade at Chardaan, then continued to roll right up the Hydian Way to take Denon. That force had only been stopped at Exodeen because Kuat had freaked out and dispatched a chunk of its home fleet to help the Jedi out of Antar stop them before the CIS could get into striking range of Kuat itself.

Regrettably, the CIS fleet had withdrawn rather than fight, and moved on to capture Isoen, Loronar, and several other worlds instead. That force, which was swelling with a constant trickle of reinforcements, was now in a position to threaten both Kuat and Corellia if it really wanted to, though it lacked the numbers to take either of those worlds without a fight that would likely maul CIS South to the point of no longer being able to hold what they already had.

Frankly, everyone on the Republic side was frantically scrambling to hold what remained of the Republic worlds together. No one was even talking about striking back just yet. Though a few ambitious raids to help support defiant local forces in worlds within ‘CIS Space’ that had yet to surrender had been mounted. To mixed success, it had to be said, but at least some success. Thankfully, the Republic was at least managing to use the time where the CIS were temporarily busy to make headway on bashing the various groups together into a greater command structure. Though it was still rather rough and untested at this point.

Sighing, he leaned back and rubbed his eyes.

Assuming he could get away from the vicious pack of politicians that wanted a piece of him, the next thing he would have to do personally was try and prevent the droid attack on the Wookiees. They had been fantastic allies to the League since the start of the Hutt Crusade, and he wasn’t about to leave them high and dry now. Thankfully, Rana had followed through on the idea they’d come up with before he set out for Geonosis, reinforcing the fleet at Randon and making sure the Wookiees knew they could call on the League for help.

He was fighting off a migraine from the weight of everything he’d need to do in the coming days when he felt Aayla’s hands on his shoulders. He’d felt her move from where she’d been reading reports of her own, of course. Their bond was such that, this close, he was always subconsciously aware of where she was and what she was doing. Just as he was aware that a bored Zavra had perked up from where she was sprawled on a couch nearby when Aayla moved. Steady hands began working on the knots in his shoulders, just a bit of Force healing pushed into the fingertips. Tension left him, slowly but surely, and the oncoming migraine faded with it. It was pleasant enough that he almost missed what Zavra was up to.

Almost.

-Lemon Starts Here-

Zavra, having managed to slip out of everything but a skimpy g-string, had crawled over to him and was now gently spreading his legs. Feeling the anticipation from her and a spike of lust from Aayla as she watched, Izuku went along with it. He wasn’t quite in the mood yet, but knew he would be quickly, between the two of them. Zavra pushed between his now-spread legs and quickly popped the button on his pants, lifting him just slightly with the Force so she could remove both them and his boxers at the same time.

Amused, he opened his eyes to look down at her, and the view of her intently leaning over his groin, tits out, certainly started his cock stirring to life. Something which put a pleased smile on Zavra’s crimson lips as she reached for it. Stroking hands, soft despite the calluses of hard training, did the job of bringing him much closer to full mast, and the follow up pair of lips slowly and sensually engulfing his cockhead finished the job. He lost track of the rest of reality for a few moments as his Sith lover worked her way slowly down his cock, lacking any sort of gag-reflex, but taking her time with a dozen small advances to hilt him completely down her throat. All the while using her unnaturally long, modified tongue to wrap around his cock and squeeze.

Aayla must have taken advantage of his distraction, as a moment later, just as he realized her hands had vanished, they returned. Only this time, she used them to pull his head back…into bare breasts that squished delightfully around his head. Her hands began to work on more than just his shoulders, massaging more of his body as Zavra began to properly, if slowly, bob up and down on his cock. A groan slipped out as she added a hand fondling his balls, and the sound seemed to only encourage her to speed up.

By now, Izuku was fully into it, and he considered letting Zavra finish. The blowjob was incredibly nice, after all. Yet, he hadn’t had a chance to be with the pair since before the Senate disaster, and he wasn’t content to leave it at just a blowjob. Even if he did have the Force to provide extra stamina, he also had two gorgeous and randy women with the Force of their own to keep up with. With that in mind, he struck, reaching out to trigger two of Zavra’s implants, Force-attuned to him and him only.

The first caused her to nearly choke on his cock as it forced an instant orgasm out of nowhere, the second flared a stimulator to life implanted right behind her clit, which caused the piercings that held said clit between them to gently begin to vibrate. Humming, he gave a third mental flick which turned on her orgasm inhibitor. He would let her cum again eventually, of course, but for now he wanted to tease her. To her credit, there had only been a slight hitch to the blowjob she was giving him, but now he reached down and pulled her off his cock.

It only took a little Force enhancement to pull her up to straddle his hips, his cock pressed tight enough against her soaked panties to feel a bit of the vibration from her piercing. Instead of focusing on that, though, he instead captured a nipple and began teasing her, even as he sent an image of what he wanted to Aayla through their bond. He felt her grin as she pulled away to retrieve the items they would need from their shared bedroom. Thankfully, they’d been working in the living space of their suite aboard the Miruko, not in an office, which meant all of their supplies where fairly readily at hand. They kept copies of certain fun things in all of their residences, and Aayla was usually the one to insist on stocking them, so he let her retrieve what they needed while he focused on teasing Zavra some more.

By the time Aayla returned, he’d both switched breasts…and turned on another one of Zavra’s implants. Specifically, the ability of her nipple-piercings to rotate through heat and cold, the slowly shifting temperatures causing her to shiver and moan even more than the attention of his tongue did. Thoroughly distracted, Zavra didn’t fight it at all when Aayla grabbed her arms, pulled them behind her back, and put two pairs of padded binders on them, one at the wrists and one just above the elbows. The fact that this had the effect of pushing her chest out even more was delightful, though Izuku reluctantly gave up lavishing attention on her nipples.

He and Zavra had left poor Aayla unattended for too long, after all. It was time to change that.

Already knowing what he wanted, and having stripped down completely while she was in the bedroom, Aayla moved to the couch that Zavra had started from, conveniently just across a low table that hid a holoprojector. Of course, right now, Izuku only wanted that table as a flat surface, not for its technology. He surged to his feet, taking Zavra with him into a princess carry, but quickly shifted her around and planted her knees on that table, grabbing her by the binders to guide where the rest of her body went.

Aayla already had her legs lewdly spread, creating the target for that guiding as she toyed with her own pussy. She shifted her fingers to spread her lower lips wide as he steered Zavra’s half-helpless form in for a landing, face-first between Aayla’s legs, tits dangling free in the space between them. Leaning in, Izuku whispered in Zavra’s ear even as he used his free hand to rip her soaked g-string off her body, rendering her fully nude at last.

“Use that tongue of yours to make Aayla cum, Pet, and I’ll let you follow her…assuming she says you did good enough~.”

Zavra shivered…and pounced. That same unnaturally long tongue that had wrapped around his cock earlier had truly been meant for use on Empress Acina, not a man. Aayla benefited now as it plunged deeper in her pussy than should have been possible, then started to vibrate for good measure, curtesy of the numerous gold piercings embedded in it. It was Aayla’s turn to moan lewdly, her hands moving to her breasts to maul them as Zavra did things to her insides that no one else could ever manage, prehensile tongue hitting places that were almost impossible to reach normally.

Of course, Izuku still needed to reward Zavra for her enthusiasm. Lining up his cock with her drooling slit, her slowly sank in, enjoying as always the unique insides of his Sith lover. The internal rings of nerve-laden muscle inside Zavra’s pussy twitched and tightened as he thrust through them, burying himself to the hilt even as she moaned desperately into Aayla’s sex. Smirking just a bit evilly, given she couldn’t actually cum at the moment, Izuku used the Force again to turn Zavra’s clit and nipple piercings on at ‘medium vibration,’ then started to thrust. Slowly at first, but with increasing pace as he felt Zavra hit the wall where she should have cum and just get stuck there, constantly surging against the orgasm inhibitor implant that was firmly set to ‘no.’

Of course, her former Mistress had done this to poor Zavra far more often that Izuku ever did, ensuring that the Sith girl could still pleasure her Mistress despite the insane level of ongoing pleasure and denial. Given that Zavra knew how to earn her release, from what he’d whispered in her ear, she redoubled her effort to make Aayla cum and cum hard. Not exactly a difficult feat, given how sensitive Twi’leks were in general. It took less than two minutes, despite her trying to resist a bit, for Aayla to peak, crying out her climax…and Izuku decided to be nice this time.

He released Zavra to cum, but only once.

She screamed that orgasm into Aayla’s pussy, and he was abruptly flooded with sensations as the rings of flesh in her pussy went wild. Between her earlier blowjob and the new stimulation, he couldn’t hold on any longer and pumped cum into her depths, something he felt would have caused her to cum again…if she’d been allowed to. Of course, she’d get the chance to cum again before the night was over, as he had no intention of stopping here. Instead, as soon as her body unlocked so he could pull out properly, he did so…and lined up on her rear entrance instead of her pussy.

He had more holes to claim. One more of Zavra’s, then at least two of Aayla’s as well. Possibly all three, if his stamina held out. Tomorrow there would be more stress to shoulder, but tonight he fully intended to take advantage of his lovers’ willingness to help him bleed some of it off…

-Lemon Ends Here-

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