Summary: Ah, the easy days have come and gone...

  Chapter 79: Raids

  Za'Zyll twisted through a tight series of evasion maneuvers the instant she pulled up from her attack run. She barely felt them, of course, the inertial compensator of her Hero Starfighter dialed to removed 95 percent of the Gs she would have felt otherwise. She'd been initially skeptical about not dialing it all the way to max, but now swore by the extra help 'feeling' some of the movement gave to her kinesthetic sense while flying. It was one of the many, many tricks she'd learned at the League's Naval Flight School. A school she'd graduated with top honors from just a few months ago, after one kriff of a life swerve away from being a pleasure sve for the Hutts.

  Getting clear of the engagement zone for the corvette she'd just done a strafing run on, she leveled out her flight and gnced at her sensors to see the results. The patrol corvette, local to the Toydaria Defense Forces, was venting air and barely firing at this point. It was all but dead in space and with the occasional life pod shooting out from its hull. Her own run and the energy torpedoes she'd fired had stripped away one of its few remaining guns and punched another few holes in the armor, making her own instinctive evasions likely unneeded but still best practice. Particurly as there was still a swarm of fighters incoming from the pnet itself. In fact…she keyed her mic.

  "Bde Squadron, time to go! Looks like the locals are going to be joining us in force if we don't get a move on. Everyone check-in and make for point Delta."

  A series of check-ins from her squadron fired back with reassuring speed. They'd lost a couple of Sidekicks, but none of their manned Heroes. Which meant they didn't even need to worry about the gunships, hovering just out of range for potential SAR, having to scoop up any ejections before they scrammed. Smirking proudly at her boys' and girls' work, she pointed the nose of her own ship back toward their hyperspace exit.

  They wouldn't need to jump far, there was a carrier waiting for them just a few light seconds outside the system, but for a raid-and-run like this job it had been better to sweep in with nothing but the fighters running as cold and stealthy as possible. Even the gunships that had been assigned to potential search and rescue hadn't jumped in until the fighters had already engaged with the patrol vessels. Now, settling into the rear of the formation, her own Sidekick on her wing, Za spent the few minutes they had before reaching their designated jump point reviewing the battle.

  It had gone well. Just as several simir Raids had in the st two weeks. In addition to the corvette and its handful of fighters that Bde had gotten, the two other squadrons of fighters with them had gotten their own kills in a pair of heavily armed freighter conversions. Likewise, the H-7 bombers one of those squadrons had been escorting had shattered the moon base that was the only other logistics support in the system outside Toydaria itself. Which had honestly been the biggest point of this particur raid. Hitting Toydaria was out of the question, currently. But denying some logistics support for any ships trying to move through the system was useful. Particurly since things down on the pnet weren't really built for human-sized and nd-bound occupants.

  Like the other raids unched after their momentum had stalled, the Toydaria raid was designed to limit the ability for the Hutts to get fully back on bance. The Toydarian King, in particur, had made himself a target by completely refusing diplomatic contact with the League. Frankly, she was pretty sure her ultimate bosses would have preferred that the world joined peacefully. While the Toydarians weren't exactly fantastic people, tending toward ruthless business types as a culture, they were also one of the few Hutt vassals with a fully-functional government.

  Unlike many captured worlds, where the League were having to build governments from scratch, Toydaria could have joined the Liberty Council immediately. Something which would have added a functional and experienced bureaucracy that could have helped export those skills to all the new governments being formed. It would even have been a rather influential and prestigious position to be in, if the locals had gone for it.

  Unfortunately, the Toydarians didn't believe the League was going to st. Something that was true of a rge number of worlds that had been so approached. So far as Za'Zyll knew, the only worlds that had so far joined entirely without a fight were those along the Ilosian Spur. Unfortunately, the worlds of Ilos, Ilos Minor, Tal Nami, and Alee were all rgely agricultural worlds. Ones who's species had been ensved and barely possessed governments. The Ilosians had been useful enough, and not bucked the Hutts badly, that they'd been allowed some amount of government, purely to ease the Hutts' need to oversee them. Yet it was just barely enough to leave them functional without that oversight. Forget trying to get them to help build up other governments!

  Well, all of that was well above the paygrade of an ex-sve and current Squadron Commander of a single starfighter squadron. More practically, she'd once again noted an issue with the new Heroes. Well…not so much an issue as a not-entirely-ideal weapons mixture. It was performing very well in these raids, but that very fact was telling. They were ending up using it more like a very fast, very agile bomber than a starfighter. Sure, it could dogfight amazingly well. But the energy torpedoes were hopeless against starfighters and other agile ships, while being amazing against rger ships like that corvette, or even against frigates when they'd taken runs at a few in other raids!

  In some respects, it was a good mix…but it meant the Heroes weren't really fulfilling their proper role as a Space Superiority fighter. Resolving to add her observations, and those of the other Squadron Leaders if she could get them, to the data she'd already collected, she put the thought aside as she reached the jump point. Making sure she was the st ship of her unit out, just in case of malfunctions, she was gratified when the only such occurrence was another Sidekick. Sending it a self-destruct order, she made her own jump. Now that the excitement was over, paperwork awaited. Far less satisfying, but possibly even more important in its own way…

  ... ...

  Captain Anderson grimaced, suppressing an outright growl as another suicide-Vulture punched through a hole in the screen and smmed into one of the freighters he was protecting. The GR-90 heavy freighter design, created after the quiet purchase of the failing Gallofree Yards Inc, was the backbone of the League's logistics convoys. The ES-23's were amazing medium freighters, but cked the BIG cargo capacities to support a fully military logistics pipeline. The GR-90 was the answer to that, being 245 meters of cargo space and built with many of the ES-23's improvements. Those improvements meant that they were tough ships, with a strong hull, impressive shields and solid point defense. Unfortunately, that was the third suicide fighter to hit that particur GR-90, and Anderson watched with mounting frustration as the shields failed and heavily damaged freighter reeled out of formation.

  "Guard 3, shift to cover the Dancer's Grace! Comms, order her crew to abandon ship, there's no way we can protect her for long!"

  There was no protest from either the fighter squadron, his st protective squadron of N-3s, or from his comms officer. They knew the score and League policy. Even if the damage to his own Munificent II was likely going to climb with no remaining fighter screen against the suicide vultures, it was their duty to protect those convoy ships and the people aboard. He couldn't afford to move his frigate or his two remaining Defender IIs to do the job, so the st of their fighter screen would just have to protect the Dancer's Grace crew as they evacuated the ship. Snarling as another wave of those damn Vultures swarmed in, he called out more orders.

  "Tighten up formation with the Defenders and roll us broadside on to those bastards! Make ourselves a target and tell the other transports to fall back toward the entry jump point! Limited Barrage protocol!"

  It was the only order he could really give. Normally, you didn't want to let fighters swarm your broadsides like this, as it was typically where the heavier guns are lined up for duking it out with other capital ships. Since those heavy guns weren't overly suited for point defense, it was usually a lose-lose-lose proposition. Poorer point defense targeting, a greater profile for the enemy to get missile locks onto, and a serious risk of your main armament getting damaged by starfighter strafing runs.

  The Munifex II was a bit unusual in this regard, however, as the enemy began to discover as Captain Anderson's orders came into effect. While the design's turbosers had been upgraded from their original 'light turboser' configuration under the original Munifex design, they hadn't been beefed up into heavy battery designs. Instead, they'd been given a much better fire rate than was normal for turbosers. Something which Limited Barrage Protocol took advantage of by sweeping a specific area of space, which he'd designated as just in front of the new wave of Vultures with his command console, with sheets of fire from just twelve guns at a time. First, twelve of the turbosers, then 12 ion canons, then 12 turbosers again.

  The result of the pattern was an apparent cycle rate that was actually faster than the point-defense Quad Lasers could punch out. It couldn't track on targets, but it could put a virtual wall of fire into that one zone, and it paid off in spades now as the none-too-bright droid brains of the Vultures rammed right into that wall. More than half of them died instantly and several more were damaged, breaking the test wave and leaving them as easy pickings for his actual point defense guns, as well as the pair of Defender IIs that pounced on the broken wave.

  This time, nothing got through…and he sighed in relief as he saw no more waves of Vultures incoming. The enemy had blown their load, so to speak, and the transport ships that had been controlling the suicide-droid-ships were bailing out. He wished he could send his remaining two Defenders out after them, hoping to get lucky, but he couldn't be sure that these pirates didn't have another prong of the trap to spring on the retreating freighters. He doubted it, this had already been an expensive operation for them as they threw damn near two hundred vultures at his convoy in waves. But that very expense meant it had to be a Hutt attempt to disrupt their supply lines.

  One that had worked, unfortunately. The Gamorr system wasn't one that had anything but a listening post in, and the bastards had somehow managed to smash it without the post getting a warning out. He'd lost one of his charges, with tens of millions of credits in supplies aboard, along with his other two Defender corvettes.

  "Get SAR flights out there now! But keep us falling back. The Defenders are jumping with the freighters. We'll stay just long enough to pick up the rescue flights and then we're out of here too."

  There were nods and murmurs among the tense officers on the deck. He could sense their frustration and felt it himself. Convoy Escort wasn't exactly a gmorous job, but it had just proven a critical one. One that was going to need to be beefed up if they wanted to keep the logistics flowing between Tythe and Hutt Space. One disrupted shipment wasn't a huge deal, not even with the losses they'd taken, but if this kept up...

  Captain Anderson shook his head grimly. Time enough to worry about what to do about all of this after they were well and truly clear. It was going to be decided well above his paygrade anyway.

  ... ...

  Klin Nif had a bloodthirsty grin to match his bloody armor as he strode through the 'rebels' that had been holding the vilge his Death Watch team had just sughtered their way through. Jilrua was a retively unimportant backwater in Hutt Space, but one of many that provided significant numbers of soldiers to the Hutts. Like many such worlds, the supposed 'League of Free Stars' had fostered rebellion here, and put enough assets in to help it succeed. Assets that had been doing well at that job…until he and his Death Watch had arrived.

  The Hutts wanted as many of these little rebellions to fail as possible, in order to strain the League by forcing them to commit more of their own nd forces instead of relying on locals. To that end, they'd put a hell of an incentive on the job, too. A million credits for every failed rebellion, and they didn't even care which ones. The only stipution had been not to do too much damage to 'Hutt Holdings.' They wanted their precious businesses back intact.

  Which is why the boss had chosen this pce, of course. There weren't any major Hutt holdings here, since this backwater world mostly just provided fodder for their armies. With colteral damage not mattering, Klin and his team had been able to hurt the League and the rebellion here both, badly. If they caught up a few thousand innocents in that? Who cared. Not him and certainly not the Hutts. Hell, if he managed to take some of that sweet League hardware intact, Pre would probably prompt him.

  "Alright, you lot of bastards! Finish your sweep for anything alive, kill it, and get back to the ship! We have three more vilges just like this t—"

  Klin Nif never saw the Power Armor whose fusion gatling reduced him to paste. Nor his own people losing badly to a squad of more Power Armored League troops that had stealth dropped almost on top of them. Unfortunately, his was only one of a dozen teams, and the damage they'd done to the rebellion on Jilrua was enough that the League would have little choice but to focus on extracting the survivors…

  ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

  Chapter 79 A/N: This chapter essentially exists to show the back-and-forth that the Hutts and the League have currently settled into. Both sides are preparing bigger moves, but doing their best to harass and weaken each other in the process. The Hutts, in particur, have ways to do this that reach outside their territory by trying to cut the supply lines between Tythe and Hutt Space. There are plenty of pirates who don't want anything to do with attacking the League's fleet, but who would happily tackle a convoy instead...