Ten years, two months, and thirty-four days after the Battle of Yavin...
Or the forty-fifth year, second month, and thirty-fourth day after the Great Resynchronization.
(Nine months and nineteen days since the Arrival.)
Kavil's Corsairs do not delay.
Kavil's Corsairs attack.
The appearance of Anilex's small fleet in orbit of the planet Lorardia did not go unnoticed.
Ten Arquitens-class light cruisers engaged the rebel patrol fighters immediately upon arrival.
"Fire a barrage," Anilex ordered from the bridge of his flagship. "Maximum rate of fire. Prepare to launch our interceptors."
Cooperation with the Dominion and direct subordination to Grand Admiral Thrawn is paying off handsomely.
Kavil's Corsairs not only receive decent sums of hard currency for their services but also have the opportunity to spend it wisely.
The strength of the group — both space and ground forces — is continuously growing.
Yes, with Axxila's transfer to Dominion control, considerable prospects opened up for the organization's development.
Not only did Thrawn use them to forcibly purge all shadow spaceports within his Dominion or force all "shadow players" to relocate to Axxila, but the Grand Admiral also granted them access to his endless arsenals.
Some might say that Clone Wars-era equipment is old junk.
And that it's not worth the hundreds of millions of credits Kavil's Corsairs pay for it.
Anilex himself did not think so.
Axxila was flourishing in new colors.
It took a lot of work to bring the underworld and black markets on the planet under control, but it was worth it.
To cast out into the cold everyone who disagreed with Kavil's Corsairs' dominion over the planet, and to instill in the rest a simple set of rules for how business must be conducted on the planet for the common prosperity.
No shootouts or gang wars.
No attacks on the planet's guests, and especially not on merchants.
No attacks and, above all, no destruction — on Axxila itself or within its system.
No armed formations except personal bodyguards: if you need a mercenary squad, you're welcome to the Mercenary Guild.
A kind of version of the Bounty Hunters' Guild, which had long operated throughout the galaxy.
But now this organization is not a collection of loners.
Here you can hire a single tough fighter, an entire team of bodyguards, or even a battalion or two of mercenaries to escort convoys to any point in the galaxy.
This is a real exchange for mercenary squads, all of which are subject, one way or another, to Dominion law.
Anyone who does not follow this rule is eliminated root and branch.
Kavil's Corsairs have already made several "outfits" disappear that tried to play outside the established rules.
Quickly, bloodily, and as a lesson to the rest.
The chain of command is simple.
There is the Dominion, to which Axxila and Kavil's Corsairs submit unconditionally.
Axxila pays its taxes to the Dominion treasury regularly, and in return, the regular fleet does not interfere in the affairs of the planet itself and its inhabitants.
If Grand Admiral Thrawn needs mercenaries, he tells Captain Anilex.
And then Kavil's Corsairs, as the largest and most prepared mercenary group, will fulfill his wish.
In any part of the galaxy.
To be honest, Anilex didn't quite understand the positions of Captain Irv and Tyberos, who seemed to exist on the same terms, but then again, not quite.
Neither of the two owners of the "Providences" wanted to share the details of their contracts with Thrawn.
Nor did they want to join Kavil's Corsairs.
And they weren't listed in the mercenary database either...
Though they occasionally based themselves on Axxila, having Makem Te as their home port.
Which exists on roughly the same terms as Axxila itself within the Dominion.
Except that they don't have many mercenaries.
It's all strange, of course, but those who ask unnecessary questions of their employer don't live long.
Anilex preferred to live longer, so he followed all the rules Thrawn had established, which allowed Axxila to be the only shadow port in the core territory.
Which made it possible not only to coordinate and train mercenaries (which is legally prohibited on Dominion territory) but also to handle other "illegal" matters, like processing contraband goods imported into the state from abroad.
Just change the stickers on the transport containers, and suddenly a batch of hyperdrives was produced not at Kuat Drive Yards, but by some shell company right on Axxila.
The same goes for bacta, tibanna, kolto (especially kolto!), Corellian sweets and liquor, works of art, and everything — everything — on which money can be made without fear of a squadron of Dominion Star Destroyers appearing in orbit and pouring down turbolaser rain from the heavens.
Yes, the agreements do not allow for outright illegal dealings like spice trafficking, and even the activity of purchasing slaves throughout the galaxy is nothing more than a front for Dominion state agencies, using Axxila's economic zone as a buffer.
But at the same time, cunningly drawn up, they are fully consistent with Anilex's intentions, the very ones for which he agreed to cooperate with the Grand Admiral.
And for which he agreed to be the "shadow king of Axxila," shifting all responsibilities for the planet's development onto the Dominion's official authorities, who created a governing body and a tolerably functioning state apparatus on the planet to clean up the legacy of the previous millennia of decline.
Anilex himself handled more pressing matters.
To clean the filth off Axxila in such a way as not to turn its population into brutish paupers and drug addicts, but into more or less capable beings who wouldn't rob the first passerby in an alley for a new dose of diluted spice.
The mere fact that millions of beings have left Axxila seeking a better life throughout the Dominion, becoming part of the resettlement program to newly opened and colonized planets, already gives hope that in the near future it will be possible to clear out the slums and improve the situation of the population remaining on the planet.
In exchange for Thrawn's support in this endeavor, the organization does his bidding, and also has the opportunity to receive, as partial payment, upgraded Dominion military hardware from Clone Wars-era stockpiles.
Smaller mercenary teams, however, are forced to provide their own weapons and starships.
And they don't have the reputation to interest the Dominion.
Then again, small mercenary groups don't even try — the operations the Dominion assigns to Kavil's Corsairs are characterized by heavy losses, not just large rewards.
Anilex did not regret such arrangements.
Mercenaries are always needed, everywhere.
Especially when states are fighting "under false flags."
For the operation in the D'Astan sector, Anilex had to deploy almost half of his fighters from the available reserve.
And you can laugh at the rebels all you want, but they fight well — on the ground, certainly.
With the withdrawal of their forces closer to Serenno, after the relay in the sector was brought under Dominion control, after minefields — similar to those defending the Dominion's core — were laid on all routes leading into the sector, the reinforcements sent to the rebels turned from full-scale shipments into a thin trickle.
The final phase of cleansing this space of enemy forces and destroying the remainder had begun.
So now, timing it for when the enemy recalled their line ships to Serenno, Anilex moved his maneuver forces to the planet Lorardia, where the rebels intended — alongside Rentalles — to set up the last line of defense before Serenno.
But it seems they understood that on the planet devastated by Cavrilhu's pirates, the rebels had failed to establish a foothold.
Six Corellian corvettes guarding the system fled as soon as they realized they were outnumbered.
The moment their pilots' backsides were thoroughly thrashed, the rebels' survival instinct kicked in.
"Prepare the landing force; commence the drop," Anilex ordered, addressing his deputy.
There aren't that many troops on the planet, but there is plenty of armored vehicles and heavy weapons.
The ground battle will not be easy.
Anilex understood that.
But something else interested him far more.
If the D'Astan sector joins the Dominion, will Axxila remain the trade hub for routes from the state's peripheral systems, or will the massive goods flows be moved to another part of the core territory, given the territorial expansion?
He'd like to think not.
But logic stubbornly pointed to the opposite.
Having ended up not on the Dominion's border but deep in the core, Axxila would no longer be such an easily accessible trade world in terms of transport logistics.
The infamous Sela...no, Sela-... would then end up on the border, right on the Hydian Way, enjoying privileges quite similar to those Axxila has within the Dominion.
He would need to discuss all this with Thrawn.
But first — fulfill the contract.
* * *
Moff Gronn set aside the datapad whose data he had been studying for the past hour and a half.
His heavy gaze fixed on the "adjutant" sitting motionless opposite him.
"Your opinion?" he inquired of "Lieutenant Mic."
Torin Inek did not hesitate with an answer:
"He doesn't need new agreements. But he doesn't have the strength to handle our remaining patrols. He doesn't have enough ground forces to oppose the new garrisons. Consequently, before the substitution, ideal conditions had been achieved that suited Mi-Ha Hutt and his accomplices — whom he fears, at the very least, to let down."
"I've reached the same conclusion," the "Moff" agreed. "Gronn didn't keep detailed records. All the money flows — the illegal ones, I mean — went through him. Exactly as much as needed to pay off officials and military personnel. Not a decicred more. Even though the monthly amounts paid to maintain the bureaucracy and security forces can vary by several tens of millions in temporary Imperial currency."
"Which confirms the obvious," Inek nodded. "He was sponsored by Mi-Ha. Most likely, the amount of money the Moff received was much larger than what he paid out."
"The problem is something else," the "Moff" shook his head. "I think he was getting money from Mi-Ha long before he became Moff. There are a few shell corporations, intermediary charity foundations, through which Gronn received funds before his promotion. They all financed him for about a month or two after his appointment to the position in the Allied Tion sector, then ceased to exist. Despite this, the sector's financial stability didn't suffer one bit — now it exists off the economy of Imperial Space."
"Orinda financed the Allied Tion last year too," Torin hastened to remind him.
"Exactly," the "Moff" agreed. "But the volumes were smaller. Expenses didn't go down, but official funding went up. Very notable actions. For which I can't find any reasonable, logical cause."
Inek drummed his fingers thoughtfully on the tabletop.
"Why would the Zann Consortium reduce funding for its puppet just when he took over the sector?" he voiced his thoughts aloud. "And why didn't Orinda provide such massive financial assistance to the former Moff last year, like it does now?"
The "Moff" just shrugged.
"We could ask the Imperial Ruling Council directly," he suggested with a crooked grin. "The one who initiated the funding increase is Xandel Karivus. He also left plenty of messages instructing me to change policy regarding 'trading companies' affiliated with Mi-Ha the Hutt. I found his endorsement in recent financial agreements between Orinda and Jaminere."
"Can I take a look?" Torin asked.
"Of course," the clone snorted, handing Inek an information crystal. "I'm playing second fiddle here, Captain."
Torin froze for a moment, reaching for the storage device, but immediately pretended he hadn't noticed.
He plugged the chip into his datapad, trying not to look at the man sitting across from him.
The face of the real Moff Gronn, but the mind...
His consciousness and memories were copied from Torin's own head.
He understood perfectly that after some time, the "Moff" would start to unravel, when the consciousness foreign to this body began to conflict with the genetics of the cloned body.
How one could be connected to the other, Torin didn't understand.
Nobody had explained it to him, either.
Cloning and its specifics — that was data beyond the competence of a mere scout.
Even if he belonged to the "Bravo" group.
It took him several minutes to cross-reference the document dates with what he'd already heard from the clone.
"Karivus pushed through the bill to increase funding for the Allied Tion at exactly the same time the shell companies that financed Gronn before his appointment as Moff ceased to exist," the scout said.
"An unlikely coincidence," the clone declared.
"That's no coincidence." Torin noted in his own head that the data he'd found correlated quite easily. The fact that the clone hadn't noticed it meant the process of "personality collapse" had already begun. The real Inek simply didn't believe that a man with his knowledge and experience could have missed key elements.
"Do you have any idea what this is connected to?" the fake "Moff Gronn" asked.
"I do," Inek agreed. "We know Karivus is involved in the conspiracy. He brought Fina D'Asta into it. Then she was replaced with a clone. The same thing was done to an unknown number of Imperial and Republic officials across the galaxy."
"The Zann Consortium handled the replacement of real people with clones for us," the "Moff Gronn" continued the thought.
"Karivus also stands behind the financial activities of the newly appointed Moff Gronn," the scout stated the next fact.
"And at the same moment, the secret criminal funding, which through the front of Black Sun and Mi-Ha the Hutt was supposedly run by the Zann Consortium, stops," another piece of the big puzzle. "Which, in turn, transports a huge amount of weapons across the Allied Tion — weapons that were used by Zann Consortium operatives in the past."
"And it really doesn't like that the 'agreements' made in the past between Moff Gronn and the intermediary in the form of Black Sun and Mi-Ha the Hutt himself have been broken," Torin said.
"At the same time, we know that at the time of his death, Moff Gronn was already a clone, most likely replaced by none other than the Zann Consortium," the "Moff Gronn" declared.
"Which raises the question — when were these agreements made?" Torin asked.
"When Gronn was just an administrator? When he'd already become Moff? When he became a Moff-clone?" the "Moff Gronn" shook his head. "We still don't know when he became a clone."
Torin frowned.
"Obviously, no one will give us that information openly," he said. "But we know the maturation period. We'd need to look at Gronn's work schedule when he was an administrator and a Moff, identify suitable 'windows,' cross-reference them with possible changes in starship duty schedules in the sector..."
The "Moff Gronn's" cheek twitched.
"Of course, that's not a guaranteed answer, but at least — an analytical sample," Inek finished.
"You talk smoothly enough," the clone smiled humorlessly. "When did you come up with that move?"
"Just now," Inek didn't lie.
"And I didn't think of it," a bitter smile appeared on the clone's face. "Something's spinning in my head, like a thought you want to grab hold of, but... I just can't. Something's missing. Something I'm not getting..."
Torin silently watched the clone's frustrated face as he stared straight ahead.
Then the "Moff Gronn" looked up and their eyes met.
"This is dementia, isn't it?" the substitute official clarified. "Personality disintegration?"
"I'm afraid so," Torin didn't hide it.
He hated lying more than anything in life.
And lying to himself...
Even if the other "you" wore a different face...
That was, at the very least, low.
"Things are bad," the clone drummed his fingers on the table. "We've only just started figuring out everything that's happening, and there's already a chance I'll be 'written off.'"
Torin didn't even want to think about the fact that, most likely, before things got really bad, the Dominion would send another such "temporary" clone to replace the one who'd "run his course."
The lifespan of such "puppets" was short — about two months, after which they turned into drooling idiots afflicted with brain dementia.
In the Dominion, they never let it get to that stage — everyone in whom this problem was detected was frozen and, supposedly, cured.
The "foreign" personality matrices were extracted from their bodies, after which the "correct" ones were uploaded.
At least, that's what the scouts from the "Bravo" division whispered among themselves during short breaks between critical missions.
Whether that actually happened or not was unknown now.
But saving this clone was impossible anyway.
The real Moff Gronn had been killed by his own subordinates during an attempt to come to the aid of Lianna, which was besieged by the New Republic, last year.
His personality matrix was lost.
Only the genetics remained, which were used to create the clone sitting before Torin now.
Erasing Inek's memory (if that was even possible and not just a tall tale) from Moff Gronn's body wouldn't lead to stabilization.
Simply because there was nothing to load into it that would stop the dementia from continuing.
Loading any data, any personality matrices other than Gronn's own — that was just abuse, both of the body and the mind loaded into it.
The Dominion could have created as many such "defective clones" as it wanted, but it shut the program down as soon as it became known that this kind of "personality disintegration" occurred.
And surely, if there had been any other way to understand what was going on in this Imperial Remnant, Thrawn would not have created "Moff Gronn" and sent him here.
For some reason, Torin wanted to believe that Grand Admiral Thrawn didn't use "defective clones" for some compelling reason.
Not because Torin considered this being an exemplary commander who didn't sacrifice subordinates in the Imperial style: "We'll always have enough soldiers, even if we send them with blasters against tanks."
Torin didn't believe in the Grand Admiral's humanitarianism either.
But he did believe in rationality and understanding that spending half a month producing clones who would go mad in just a few months was, at the very least, wasteful — yes.
Thrawn was a pragmatist.
If he'd had a plan for victory at any cost, then among the hundreds of thousands of Republic prisoners returned home, "defective clones" would already have revealed themselves — perfect for use as sleeper agents and saboteurs.
But all these reflections were useless right now.
"We still have time," Torin reminded him.
"Yes," the Moff agreed. "But less and less with each passing day. We need to figure out what the hell the Zann Consortium even needed this sector for. Yes, there's industry here, there are armed forces... But not that many natural resources. Few agricultural planets. The sector barely supports itself — it's not for nothing that additional financial flows from Orinda were lobbied..."
Something clicked in his head.
"Wait," Torin said. "Funding. That's the key."
The "Moff Gronn" looked intently at the donor of his own personality matrix.
"Any ideas?"
"Only the beginnings," Torin admitted. "If you don't mind, I'd like to take the Moff's schedule of meetings and flights for the last... Hell with it — from the moment he appeared in the sector up to the events we both know concerning Lianna. And also — a selection of fleet orders. For the same period. If you don't mind, I'll work on this at home."
Torin gave a meaningful nod toward the heavy drawn curtains on the windows of the Moff's residence office.
It was already deep night outside.
"Of course." The "Moff Gronn" needed a few minutes to copy the requested data onto a new information chip. "Any suggestions on what I should do? I don't really trust my head anymore..."
Torin felt a twinge of regret.
But he suppressed the emotion.
"Try to rest as much as possible," he said. "The less your brain works, the slower the dementia will progress."
Both understood that the recommendation was pulled from thin air.
"The mission comes first," the "Moff Gronn" said with a sad smile, looking at his workstation. "I wouldn't want any more like me to be sent here. It's not an easy task, but the two of us need to solve it. My time is running out... I'll try to make sure you have as few problems as possible..."
"Hold out as long as you can," Torin asked openly. "I'll handle all the problems for both of us."
He didn't like the sound of such talk.
"Whatever you say," the clone smiled weakly. "I'll expect you at the next meeting in the morning. And yes, don't forget to extend the 'quarantine' status for me."
The story about Gronn supposedly being ill was concocted after Mi-Ha the Hutt's visit to Torin.
Pulled from thin air, but at least it provided a durasteel explanation for why the Moff was delegating his work to his adjutant.
But for "influential people," that wasn't a barrier in itself.
So, four hours after the meeting with the Moff, Torin filigreed his way through his current adjutant duties and headed home.
Clearly understanding that another delay had cost him another set of furniture.
When a nexu gets bored, it causes trouble.
It takes revenge for being tamed, but for some reason the stupid owner leaves the house instead of playing with the kitten-nexu.
Typical feline behavior.
As he flew his aircar toward his new residence — provided by the "Moff," but located directly within the security zone of the Moff's own residence (in simpler terms, a small guest cottage on the back lawn of the residence) — Torin kept one eye on his datapad, pondering why Mi-Ha the Hutt's promising threats had still not materialized.
Maybe something would happen to him — but outside the "Moff Gronn" residence.
Which he hadn't left yet.
Approaching the door, Torin noticed a text message on his communicator.
It was from "Moff Gronn."
"The problem of my condition and your full status has been resolved. I'll explain tomorrow."
"Looks like the dementia is getting worse," Torin thought bitterly, inserting the code cylinders into the door control panel's receiver slot.
Torin dove to the side, realizing he hadn't heard the familiar click of the magnetic lock.
And the next moment, his cottage blew up into the air.
* * *
Rentalles.
At first glance, a perfectly ordinary, unremarkable planet with a Type I atmosphere.
Astronavigation guides indicate it has a temperate climate, an atmosphere suitable for oxygen-breathing life, spacious continents, deep bodies of water.
One could cultivate fields and build cities here, but this world was discovered not so long ago — at the dawn of the Old Republic.
It so happened, whether through oversight or deliberately, that the planet was not included in the commonly known astronomical atlases, remaining only in library archives.
Grand Admiral Thrawn had acquired one such archive — data from Obroa-Skai — as early as last year.
Cross-referencing the Obroa-Skai data with information obtained during the attack on Coruscant led to numerous discoveries.
The Galactic Empire had built a base here and closed the world to sapient visitation.
They sealed the system using several Star Destroyers and continued to act as if Rentalles didn't exist at all.
Even representatives of the ruling D'Asta family knew nothing about this system until recently.
Until the rebels established themselves here, using the old Imperial base as their permanent headquarters.
What the Imperials were doing here in the recent past remains a mystery to this day.
Equally important a mystery is the reason and direction in which the Imperials vanished at some point.
But they had built a thorough base.
The Rebel Alliance used it to set up a communications monitoring post across the entire sector.
No matter how much the rebels disavowed the Galactic Empire, their military machine was built on Imperial principles.
And the Empire loved equipping secret bases and garrisons on half-forgotten asteroids or astronomical bodies.
Stuffed with weapons and equipment, creating bases for future invasions.
A simple tactic for preparing sector expansion.
Only the split between the New Republic and the Alliance meant that neither side had enough resources to attack and seize the D'Astan sector.
The Republicans confined themselves to monitoring.
And they would have continued doing so for quite a while, if the rebels hadn't needed an operational base.
The high-quality Imperial construction helped the rebels considerably with their setup.
After all, they didn't just get hastily built garrison bases, but a full-fledged ground base, designed to house a legion of stormtroopers with attached ground vehicles, shielded by deflectors and protected by air and space defense forces, with hangars for a dozen squadrons of small craft.
But most attractive were the base's enormous warehouses, which could have held supplies for an entire army.
The rebels had been working on expanding them, intending to turn the planet into a defensive node on the approach to Serenno.
The lone interdictor cruiser that had somehow ended up in rebel hands tirelessly pulled ships traveling toward the rebel capital planet out of hyperspace.
And on its "lucky" day, it pulled the Neutron Star and the assault frigates full of Mandalorians out of hyperspace.
In a short battle, the enemy retreated, abandoning all their ground forces on the planet to save the interdictor.
And now, keeping the Neutron Star — the temporary flagship of the Mandalorian forces — away from Rentalles' orbit and its planetary defense guns, Hedge was putting the Dominion's trophy starships in harm's way.
The Latti touched down on the planet's surface three kilometers from the base perimeter.
Hedge, now standing on the grassy plain, looked around.
Hundreds of transport ships and corvettes were landing here, building up forces for the strike, while the enemy thought they only had to worry about problems from orbit.
Hedge took off his helmet and inhaled with pleasure the fragrant scent of summer plants that the plain was drowning in.
A beautiful planet.
Mountains and a clear sky in the distance.
From a flying altitude, one could enjoy views of sandy beaches and clear bodies of water, seas, oceans full of fish and other creatures.
It was strange that the Imperials had stationed such a garrison in such a secret place, with no "Death Star" under construction nearby.
But that was for the Dominion to decide.
The Mandalorian forces' task was to flush the enemy out of here.
While the ships in orbit — several trophy assault frigates captured from the New Republic and belonging to "Kavil's Corsairs," controlled by droids — simulated an attack on the base's deflectors, taking shot after shot from planetary guns into their hulls, the Mandalorians landed their forces and armored vehicles on the surface and prepared to attack.
Did the Mandalorians feel sorry for the assault frigates being destroyed?
Not at all.
After the interdictor cruiser and its fighters were driven out of the system, everything of value had been stripped from these ships, including a significant portion of their weapons and propulsion systems.
Under droid control, the obsolete starships were acting as targets for the planetary defense guns.
And the TIE droids launched from their decks distracted the anti-aircraft guns, simulating airstrikes.
"All units are ready to attack," Hedge was informed.
"Then it's time to begin." He put his helmet back on and headed for the lead AT-TE walker. "Distribute the Mandalorians among the second-line vehicles and attack only on my order."
"Understood."
"We move out," he ordered the walker's driver, not even waiting for a reply.
He already knew what he'd hear — an annoying, standard response.
Scouts on speeders and light AT-RT reconnaissance walkers rushed forward — yet another legacy of the Clone Wars.
Behind them, at a speed of about sixty kilometers per hour, moved several columns of AT-TEs.
The machines, though not exactly fresh, were still better to have as cover than nothing.
Besides, Dominion engineers had modified them, armoring the cockpit and reinforcing protection by removing some useless weaponry.
Effectively, these old walkers had become maneuverable platforms for main-caliber mass driver cannons.
Not the giants discovered during the last offensive operation.
But the standard Clone Wars-era ones.
There were, of course, AT-TE modifications with turbolaser cannon armament, laser cannons, even missile launchers for which there were no missiles, but the variants with kinetic main guns were perfect for this operation.
Bombarding a ground base's deflectors from orbit could take a long time and wasn't always successful.
But kinetic projectiles would easily pierce the deflector field and damage the enemy's ground structures and defense nodes.
The General had ordered the base to be taken in the least destroyed state possible.
Hedge doubted the enemy would simply hand over such a well-fortified outpost, so he expected a lengthy clearing operation.
But all the better, right?
The fiercer the battle, the greater the glory.
The Mandalorian walkers approached the base's defensive perimeter and came under fire from the enemy's laser and turbolaser turrets.
The Mandalorian AT-TEs didn't stay silent.
With a roar and a rumble, kinetic projectiles, accelerated to enormous speeds, flew toward the enemy positions.
Computer-assisted targeting allowed them to identify the most important enemy defense nodes.
Including the base's deflector field generator.
Which was blown to pieces by the first volley from the Mandalorian mass driver cannons.
The next targets were the generators powering the space defense systems.
Deprived of energy, the planetary turbolasers drooped, lowering their mighty barrels to the ground, no longer able to strike the targets they were created to destroy.
This cost the attackers several dozen combat vehicles, some of which were destroyed along with their crews.
Left without reliable cover from orbital bombardment, the rebels panicked, but seeing that no drop pods were falling on their heads — only TIE droids prowling, attacking in dive runs and being shot down by the defenders' anti-aircraft guns — they took heart.
Why wouldn't they rejoice? The planetary defense systems had knocked out all combat-capable ships in orbit, and now, instead of assault frigates firing at ground troops, only smashed-to-pieces trophy frigates remained.
But the defenders' joy was short-lived.
Only until the mass driver artillery of the walkers began leveling the laser and turbolaser cannon turrets.
Time after time, dozens of kinetic projectiles streaked toward the defensive structures, slamming into the massive turbolaser towers at enormous speeds, turning the stone and duracrete masonry into mountains of rubble.
The enemy infantry, concentrated on repelling the ground assault, was fully deployed on the high walls.
The walls were sometimes dozens of meters thick, and everyone — both attacker and defender — knew that with mass driver installations alone, the Mandalorians couldn't break through or take these fortifications.
And it was at that very moment that Corellian Corvettes appeared above the enemy's heads, having previously been alongside the Neutron Star on a far orbit over the opposite hemisphere.
They were the ones who delivered hundreds upon hundreds of Mandalorian warriors onto the enemy, who reached the surface using jetpacks.
The same surface the corvettes, now entering the atmosphere, had pre-emptively worked over with laser and turbolaser cannons.
Left without Planetary Defense support, the rebels hammered at the ships with anti-air batteries as hard as they could, but they couldn't possibly inflict any real damage on them.
Laser charges splashed helplessly against the deflectors, doing nothing to slow the landing.
The seemingly impregnable walls came under fire from Mass Driver shells from the surface and energy weapons from the atmosphere, causing massive destruction to the base's perimeter.
Hedge watched with relish as a huge chunk of the wall, which the mass drivers and shipboard artillery had been bombarding, collapsed, opening access to the base's inner perimeter.
And there, in the smoke and flashes of explosions among the fleeing rebels hastily retreating to reserve positions, he could already see the numerous scouts and helldivers he had sent in.
"We begin," he ordered with a snort, activating his rocket pack systems and preparing for takeoff.
"Sir," he heard the AT-TE driver's voice in his helmet. "What do I do now?"
"Fight, you idiot!" Spar ordered, activating his jet engines and rising into the air along with hundreds of Mandalorians from the second-line vehicles. "Once you reach the first walls — deploy the troops. Let the droids take the additional blow."
"Got it, got it," came the annoying B-1 voice.
That was right.
Hedge led the droid army into a ground assault, supported by two hundred Mandalorian warriors.
The bulk of the Mandalorians, as per habit, dropped from the ships directly onto the enemy's heads.
Today, the rebel base on Rentalles would fall.
And even if the rebels categorically refused to surrender and fought desperately, who was asking them anyway?
Today, the Mandalorians had carte blanche for a total purge.
* * *
As it turned out, an armored door wasn't a luxury.
It was a real way to save your life.
Torin Inek groaned something barely audible as he opened his eyes.
The door panel, blasted off by the explosion, lay almost completely on top of him, adding considerably to his chest's problems.
Breathing was painful, nearly impossible.
But that wasn't the main thing.
He could feel his arms and legs.
So his spine was intact.
His chest hurt like he'd been rammed by his own speeder, but it would have been worse if he couldn't feel anything at all.
"Body armor doesn't help against that," Torin thought absently, making an attempt to shift the explosion-warped door off himself.
His throat was raw from the soot, the air crackled with burning structures, and the glow right in front of him indicated the residence was blazing from the foundation to the pitched roof.
Somewhere far away, sirens tore through the pre-dawn silence.
Torin tensed his muscles again to push the panel aside, but he barely managed anything.
Being in good physical shape didn't guarantee he could lift a dura-steel armor plate weighing a hundred and fifty standard kilograms.
Naturally, he couldn't do it.
Especially when he felt the plate suddenly become about twice as heavy.
With the upper edge of the door panel practically at eye level, his position barely allowed him to see the burning second floor of the cottage, but certainly not the reason for the increased weight...
"I warned you," the glow of the fire was filled by the bulk Torin had been thinking about literally minutes before the explosion. "But you didn't listen, stupid human."
He guessed that somewhere the door's edge was resting on something sturdier than a human body.
Because judging by his position, Mi-Ha the Hutt was perched directly on the door panel.
And if it were lying directly on Torin, it would have crushed him completely — a Hutt has considerable weight.
"I told you — don't get in my way, human, didn't I?" the Hutt asked rhetorically. "I did. You didn't listen. All you had to do was rein in your moff, and everyone would be alive."
It was useless to yell, "You'll get away with this!"
He would.
Mi-Ha the Hutt had pulled off a sabotage on the territory of an entire sector moff's residence.
In the security zone of the new stormtroopers, who were very, very hard to bribe.
Not to mention the moff's personal guard — guards disguised as mercenaries.
And the Noghri...
Hutt take it, where were the Noghri from the cover squad?!
Obviously something showed on Torin's face, because Mi-Ha laughed like he'd heard a funny joke.
"I don't know what short-circuited in Gronn's brain, but he's clearly not going to bother us anymore. Him and his picture-perfect soldiers. And those gray-skinned Noghri freaks, who knows where you dug them up..."
If he could identify the Noghri, it means the agent's cover squad was destroyed — it couldn't be otherwise. And second. Mi-Ha the Hutt or someone from his circle had dealt with Noghri before, since they were able to recognize them, Torin thought.
"I'd like to know where you got such vicious little creatures," Mi-Ha said thoughtfully, "but that's in the past now. The moff is in the past, you're in the past, the Noghri are in the past. I didn't want to take it this far, Adjutant. I came to negotiate with you in person! So all these deaths are your fault and your late moff Gronn's..."
"Late!"
"You killed the moff?!" Inek breathed out.
"Yes," Mi-Ha said simply, pointing a short, fat arm somewhere ahead of himself. "Right now I'm admiring how his residence is burning. It burns nicely..."
It was hard to say what sounded more ominous right now — the Hutt's triumph as he chatted unhurriedly in his native language, or the realization that the operation was a complete failure.
Not just the death of "Moff Gronn," but the failure of the entire operation.
The criminals had been smarter than he could have imagined.
The very fact that Mi-Ha's fighters had managed to find the Noghri cover squad's base location spoke volumes.
Torin hadn't even been able to spot them, but he knew they were always somewhere nearby and would come to help if needed.
But it turned out there was someone capable of tracking down and destroying a Noghri Death Commando squad without attracting attention.
And on top of that, making sure they couldn't raise an alarm!
Without "Gronn," the operation would have to be aborted.
The military under the "moff's" command would never listen to some adjutant.
And who would take the post of sector head was a separate question.
In any case — it was a very, very delicate matter.
"I need to get out of here," Torin thought, not believing his eyes as he saw a gray-skinned figure next to Mi-Ha the Hutt...
A NOGHRI?!
Was there a traitor among the fighters in his cover squad?!
"What, are the 'dolls' stirring?" Mi-Ha the Hutt rumbled reluctantly, sliding lazily off the door panel.
"They're attacking our fighters," the Noghri mewed. "Many Ewok handlers killed. The stormtroopers are taking losses, but they're killing my Noghri..."
"What's your name, traitor?!" Torin rasped, glaring with hatred at the gray-skinned one.
"That shouldn't concern you, human," the Noghri said pompously. "My knife-brothers and I slaughtered your little whelps you call Death Commandos without even breaking a sweat. Obviously, after fleeing Honoghr, my kin have grown so desperate they started taking contracts from Imperial scum..."
His squad hadn't betrayed!
Other Noghri had killed them!
Noghri serving Mi-Ha the Hutt!
Not to mention the Ewok handlers — the dregs of the animal training world, who in their time had made a living turning Ewoks from the forest moon of Endor into living bombs...
But there was something else here.
This Noghri had mentioned the Overclan's flight from Honoghr.
Hiring themselves out to Imperials.
So the instigators of this mayhem had no idea who they were dealing with!
They thought Gronn had somehow found and hired Noghri!
The enemy didn't know the Overclan worked for the Dominion and that everything happening was a Dominion Intelligence Directorate operation!
Now he could be sure who had carried out the terrorist acts on the territory of "Moff Gronn's" residence.
Torin tried to crane his neck to look at the residence building of the head of the Allied Tion sector.
The building was blazing with fire from every window and doorway.
No one survived a fire like that.
Especially considering the roof had already collapsed.
Some of the floors, too.
"That was the last warning, Adjutant," Mi-Ha the Hutt said unexpectedly. "Whoever takes Gronn's place — you have to make sure he comes to meet with me."
"Alone and unguarded?"
It seemed they weren't planning to kill him today.
So he could try to get more information by provoking the enemy into being candid.
"You got that right," Mi-Ha chuckled.
He turned aside, seeing a pair of fighters approach him with some kind of crate.
"You seem smart, but you're clearly not one of those who think with their own head before going against me," Mi-Ha said, pulling two charred pieces of something vaguely familiar out of the box...
"I warned you, human," Mi-Ha the Hutt reminded. "Don't get in my way. I'll crush you. And eat you. But since I need a living witness who can give the right advice to the new authority, I need to teach you differently. By taking away the most valuable and precious thing..."
With these words, Mi-Ha opened his enormous mouth wide and shoved the frankly burnt pieces in, one after another.
"Delicious," he seemed not even to chew, just swallowed. "I never thought a young nexu burned in a fire could taste this good... Here," the Hutt threw something down next to Torin. "Take it as a memento of your stupidity and stubbornness, Adjutant."
Inek rolled his eyes to examine the object.
A small, soot-covered, flattened skull with four eye sockets.
And everything clicked into place.
A young nexu.
Burned in a fire.
"You bastard!" Torin clenched his fists under the door panel. "You ate my nexu!"
He was filled with helpless rage.
A creature that had never done anyone any harm had fallen victim to bandits.
That kind of thing was unforgivable.
To anyone.
Ever.
"Well, first my Noghri killed it while they were mining your new home, skinned it, and only then roasted it over the fire of your burning house, after which —" he pointed his short, fat arm at the inferno where Torin's house had been, " and only then did I eat it. And the same thing will happen to you, you little runt, if you keep opposing me!"
Shots rang out.
"Stormtroopers!" the Noghri warned Mi-Ha the Hutt. "A thousand meters. We need to go, master."
"Indeed, we do," the Hutt snorted, looking at Torin lying before him. "Leave him the contact info to reach me."
The Hutt's enormous bulk vanished from his field of vision with considerable agility.
And the face of the Noghri working for the "Zann Consortium" loomed over Inek.
"Do what's required, Lieutenant," he said with a threatening mewl. "Or we won't leave even a memory of you. Understood?"
Without waiting for an answer, the traitor dropped an information chip on the ground next to the scout.
"And don't you try to weasel out," the Noghri warned. "Our eyes and ears are everywhere, Lieutenant. The new moff must meet with Mi-Ha the Hutt, or the entire sector will burn."
Without another word, without waiting for replies, the gray-skinned alien departed.
When the stormtroopers, who had arrived on alert, freed him, Torin left the residence, heading to the garrison base.
He took only two things with him.
The skull of his deceased pet and the chip left for him to give to the new sector moff.
* * *
The Guardian left hyperspace, settling comfortably right in the middle of one of the galaxy's most important hyperspace routes.
The tactical hologram showed that the three Interdictor-class Star Destroyers escorting us had taken their positions, along with an equal number of second-generation Dragon-class Venator refits covering them.
A dozen Action IV-class transports lurked behind the Guardian's stern, confident in their complete safety under the protection of a Super Star Destroyer.
The gravity well generators were active and ready to turn this part of interstellar space into a gravitational anomaly impassable for any type of navigation computer and hyperdrive generation known in this galaxy.
There wasn't much time left until we began.
For now, though, it was interesting to hear important messages from the other end of the galaxy.
Oddly enough, after spending so long in an ambush on the Dominion's borders, I'd somehow gotten used to holoprojections being subject to interference.
So I even hesitated when I saw the instantaneous appearance of a blue-and-white volumetric figure of the General.
"Grand Admiral," the man bowed respectfully. "Lorardia and Rentalles are taken."
"Excellent," I replied. "Any problems?"
"On Lorardia, the enemy withdrew their forces, and we only mopped up the ground units," the General explained. "On Rentalles, the Mandalorians had to fight for real."
"That's fine, it only motivates them," I commented. "The assault on Serenno is next, isn't it?"
"Correct, sir," he replied. "But I must note that the enemy has concentrated all their forces there. It will be a large and bloody battle. Spy droids report that a deeply echeloned defense has been set up, including minefields, defensive stations, and a large number of mercenaries — both on the ground and in space."
"The assault on Serenno is no longer your concern, General," I declared. "Other individuals will handle that."
The Colicoid Swarm and the Black Pearl have already completed their mining tasks and are returning to Axxila.
Them, along with Kavil's Corsairs, Hedge Spar's Mandalorians, and the Baroness's forces — those are the ones who will make their mark in the general battle for the D'Astan sector.
The regular fleet will make sure no one escapes from there.
At least, alive.
"As you command, sir," my interlocutor replied.
"Prepare for redeployment, General," I ordered. "The Guard will transport you to your destination."
"Yes, sir," he replied. "To whom should I hand over my affairs?"
"Vice Admiral Pellaeon will oversee the final destruction of the rebels in the D'Astan sector," I told him. "His forces have already moved to the sector's borders and are blockading it. The assault on Serenno will begin in twenty-four hours. Pellaeon will contact you shortly and provide you with an escort and transport. You will receive your assignment later."
"Yes, sir, I will prepare all the necessary documents," the General assured me before his hologram dissolved.
The second-to-last day of the current month was expiring.
Tomorrow promised to be eventful.
On all fronts.