Mi-Ha Hutt was in a hurry.
So much so that his firm muscles, hidden under a thick layer of fat, were beginning to ache.
Pride and a marker of social standing among the Hutts — as unfortunate as it was to think about — was hindering his swift escape.
No, not escape.
Hutts don't flee from some clowns in black outfits.
Hutts conduct a tactical regrouping.
He just needed to reach the sloop and get to the rear echelons of his army.
What could a dozen fighters do to him when his starship was equipped with shields that even a light cruiser would envy with black envy?
Absolutely nothing.
But...
"Protect me!" he shouted to a squad of Zanibar mercenaries he'd encountered along the way.
The blue-skinned flesh-eaters understood him at once, raised their weapons, and charged down the corridor in the opposite direction from the Hutt's movement.
Reaching the turn that led to the dancers' quarters, Mi-Ha listened to the loud sounds of a firefight behind him.
Having reached its peak, the intensity of the blaster exchange began to die down.
But the agonized screams of the Zanibar mercenaries, on the contrary, only increased.
Mentally spitting on the fate of the pawns in his holochess game, Mi-Ha Hutt tapped a secret numeric sequence into a code panel in the wall opposite with his tiny hands.
Under normal circumstances, it was used to summon cleaning droids, but only the crime lord of the Allied Tion knew that the same mechanism would allow him to escape...
A ten-meter section of the wall slid silently aside, revealing an entrance to a dark tunnel where, reacting to the crime lord's hasty movement, lighting fixtures built into the secret passage's ceiling began to flicker on, illuminating his path to salvation.
The Hutt silently thanked the long-dead B'omarr monks for building this secret tunnel on a downward slope, allowing him to use his body mass to move much faster.
He suspected the enemy might at least know about the existence of any other secret tunnels, so he needed to hurry.
Who knew if they might have hypersensitive scanners that could detect voids even behind half-meter false walls?
Mi-Ha Hutt was beginning to suspect that the Dominion had known about his location for a long time.
And that everything happening now was nothing less than an operation to shatter and destroy his organization so that they could, with smaller forces, pick off piece by piece all the armies and fleet formations he had gathered around himself over such a long time.
A slip-up.
A big, big mistake to have kept that milk-sop alive.
But who knew he was just a pawn in the Dominion's game?
The Hutt grumbled in his native tongue, reflecting that he had managed to outwit one opponent, but another enemy, whom he had considered weak, turned out to be stronger than he thought!
And where did the Dominion get such resources?
After all, spies in the sectors located between the northern reaches of the Hydian Way and the Perlemian Trade Route were reporting that the Dominion fleet had begun a full-scale invasion of many hundreds of systems in dozens of sectors simultaneously!
And before, they had always concentrated their forces into striking fists because they didn't have either the manpower or the ships.
And now they suddenly had all of that?
Was it because Shadowspawn and his pet Lord Bonteri had transferred some of their forces to them behind Mi-Ha's back?
And perhaps his own actions had merely been preemptive?
Or was it something else entirely, and the Dominion had finally mobilized its population to crew the ships captured during the Battle of Sluis Van from the former New Republic fleet?
It wasn't entirely clear.
But he would still have time to figure out all the details once he got out of here safely.
Oh, and there was the landing pad!
The Hutt literally tumbled out into a spacious cavern located half a kilometer below the level on which the monastery had been built by that sect of insane renegades.
The ship — his luxurious Sullustan yacht — gleamed with polished hull plating.
The lowered ramp beckoned invitingly...
But the man standing next to it, leaning on a lift pole, did not please him at all.
"You!?" Mi-Ha Hutt squealed in a bass voice.
"Me," Captain Torin Inek replied calmly, emptying a Verpine shotgun into the Hutt's bulk.
The crime king of the Allied Tion sector felt an unimaginable pain in the very center of his vast, authoritative body.
But this was only the beginning of his journey into the experience of pain that Agent Bravo-One had prepared for him.
* * *
In Lieutenant Tychus Roach's memory were examples of dozens of deployments of 501st Legion units onto enemy territory.
He and the other troopers had been landed in assault barges, dropped from orbit in giant drop pods, delivered separately from their vehicles on transport shuttles...
But this method of deploying two AT-ATs onto the frontline at once, with the full standard landing complement inside them...
This was something new.
Landing AT-ATs using armored Gozanti transports.
The armored transport — which is periodically classified as a light cruiser by people of limited intelligence but strict adherence to regulations — shuddered throughout its entire hull, absorbing anti-air battery fire into its deflector shields that hadn't yet been suppressed, as it descended rapidly.
Its approach to the surface was so fast that, besides nausea and G-force, there was also the feeling that, by the universal law of unfairness, the transport's repulsors would fail right before the braking process.
And they would all be smashed to a pulp at the bottom of some large crater near the landing zone.
"Three minutes to surface contact," the armored transport pilot's voice sounded in the cabin.
"Acknowledged," reported Major General Jurgen, who was commanding the Rancor battalion's operations in this sector. "Lieutenant, are we ready?"
"Yes, sir," Tycus reported, marking the reconnaissance data on his monitor regarding the detected enemy firing points. "Enemy fortified area ahead, sir."
"Inform our bombers," Jurgen responded. "Let the boys have some fun. Less work for us too."
"Acknowledged, General."
Tychus reacted immediately, plugging into the controlled communications chaos of the landing operation.
"Rancor-1 on comms," he identified himself. "Grid seven-twenty-seven by kali coid six. Points two-two-nine and two-two-nine-slash-six. Enemy fortifications. Heavy artillery. Requesting air support."
"Request received, Rancor-1," a dispatcher from the headquarters deployed one hundred and ten kilometers behind the frontline replied in a flat voice. "Scimitar squadron is being routed to you. Can you designate targets with a laser?"
Roach looked at the tactical map.
Then at his comlink.
"Is he kidding me?"
"Negative, Dispatcher," he said, gritting his teeth through the formal reply but unable to restrain himself. "Target is seven kilometers away. And I don't have a Death Star to use as a laser pointer."
"Understood, Rancor-1," the dispatcher's reply was astonishing in its impassivity. "Next time, don't forget to bring government-issued equipment from the barracks. End transmission."
With a snort, the speakers went dead.
"Hutt-spawn jokers," Roach muttered under his breath about everything he thought of the coordinator's Jedi-like calm.
"Your own fault," Major General Jurgen said unexpectedly. "Legion HQ doesn't understand jokes. You can be sure that after the operation, you'll have to explain to the 'security officer' why you didn't have a Death Star on hand."
"Sir, I hope that was also a joke?" the lieutenant looked at the battalion commander.
"Of course, Lieutenant," General Jurgen chuckled. "To begin with, the 'security officer' will ask you why you did have one, since a Death Star is not standard issue for a battalion."
No, Jurgen had to be joking so darkly.
Wasn't he?
Meanwhile, the AT-AT's walking feet touched the ground.
Stabilizers howled, orienting the war machine to compensate for uneven terrain.
"Contact," Tychus reported, signaling the release of the war machine from its clamps on the Gozanti's belly. "Stabilized."
"Rancor-2, status on stability?" the General asked the commander of the adjacent AT-AT.
"Nominal, sir," a confident voice of Tychus's clone came from the cabin speakers. "Ready to perform the assigned task."
After briefly checking on the status of the other machines in the unit, Jurgen commanded:
"Battalion, advance. Operational groups, move to the vanguard and occupy positions immediately after the missile and bomb strike."
The objective of the Rancor battalion's mission was an enemy fortified position protecting the perimeter approach to finished product warehouses.
Stretching for hundreds of square kilometers, enormous hangars filled to the brim with outdated but still combat-capable equipment and military hardware were either being prepared by the enemy for use against the 501st Legion's stormtroopers or would be very soon.
Protected by powerful missile-based AA and a deflector shield against air raids and orbital bombardment, the battalion was tasked with either destroying or capturing these warehouses.
At present, elements of the 501st Legion and the attached battle droid units for reinforcement had already overrun and cleansed the primary and secondary industrial zones of enemy forces, tightening the ring around the production facilities that were the main target of the entire offensive.
He supposed he should thank whoever had built the industrial capacity of Corlax IV by stringing the industrial sector chain into separate districts of the settlements.
Primary ore processing and enrichment happened in one part of the continental sprawl.
Turning raw materials into blanks — in another.
In the third district, metal ingots were fitted with specific electronic systems or underwent final processing.
The assembly of war machines took place in the largest part of the industrial agglomeration.
And that was the target of the 501st Legion's stormtroopers.
Meanwhile, Rancor's job was to ensure the enemy couldn't use what they had already built.
Skipitar fast bombers flashed past the AT-AT hulls at treetop height, waggling their wings, racing ahead at breakneck speeds toward the designated targets.
You can only watch and envy how, parallel to them (or almost "nose to nose"), the high-speed Juggernauts with troops tear toward the enemy ahead of the AT-ATs, along with the speeder bikes, grav-cycles, and heavy S-1 repulsor tanks accompanying them.
The heavy S-1 repulsor tank.
The latter, alongside many other types of Imperial armored vehicles, serve the cause of the Dominion wherever they can be useful.
Their armament, consisting of a single turret-mounted heavy laser cannon capable of firing at heavily armored or fortified targets at a range of five kilometers, plus a rapid-fire laser cannon designed to suppress enemy personnel and lightly armored vehicles, combined with the artillery of the Juggernauts, will prevent the enemy from even raising their heads after the Scimitars deliver a missile-and-bomb strike.
It falls on their shoulders to carry out the initial clearing and hold the beachhead on the front lines of defense.
The AT-ATs, moving in the company of numerous AT-PTs and AT-STs of Dominion modifications, will arrive only slightly later, supporting with fire and developing the offensive across the entire width of the operational space, putting the enemy to flight.
Tychus grinned when he saw the huge blaze from the wall of fire that rose in the path of the forward units, as the bombers worked over the first and second lines of defense.
Judging by the spread of the conflagrations and the shockwave, they had hit not only the long-term, well-protected fortifications, but also the operational stockpiles of ammunition, power cells, gas cartridges, explosives for artillery and armored vehicles.
The detonation was splendid to behold.
Tychus received confirmation from the scouts that they had broken through the first line of defense and had advanced deep into enemy-held territory, sowing chaos and disorder among the enemy infantry positions.
Yes, the scouts on speeder bikes are not just messengers and not just scouts, as they are sometimes perceived by the masses due to incompetent use of these combat units by Imperial commanders of ground units.
They are specially trained for combat operations in conditions too difficult for ordinary stormtroopers.
Scout troopers were clad in light armor, were highly mobile, and usually performed reconnaissance and scouting missions, including in harsh survival conditions.
They were excellent marksmen and were considered the best snipers in the army of the Galactic Empire.
Despite this, they were rarely used for their intended purpose except for reconnaissance.
A scout trooper astride a 74-Z speeder bike.
In the Dominion, these fighters were only being reborn, as indeed was the entire Stormtrooper Corps as a whole.
True, instead of the ubiquitous Imperial Z-74s, which had become a byword, thousands of BARC speeders from the time of the Clone Wars predominated in the troops, originally created to provide mobility for Republic commandos but which "went mainstream" due to their effectiveness.
A BARC speeder.
Despite the fact that the manufacturer of both the 74-Z and the BARC was the same — Arakyd Repulsor Company — the former machines were not so numerous in the Dominion until recently, but the latter...
Few knew the reasons for this, but as Tychus himself assumed, it happened for the same reason that a significant part of both the assault legions being formed and the army corps, not to mention the Defense Force units and parts of Kavil's Corsairs, were armed with DC-series blasters from the time of the Clone Wars.
Simply put, the Dominion has a huge stockpile of this equipment, so there's no point in ignoring the use of weapons that are, though not modern (by the standards of their manufacture date), still deadly.
The Dominion's military-industrial complex continued to accelerate to provide everything necessary for the growing army.
There seemed to be no end or limit to this.
However, none of the military complained about it.
It's better to have more weapons in the warehouses — both modern and obsolete — than not to have them at all.
With thoughts like these, hearing the notification that they had entered firing range on the targets marked by the scouts in the second line of defense, Tychus, aiming the onboard weapons of the Rancor-1, began churning the enemy's trenches and fortified points into earth and mud.
* * *
With a characteristic whistle, proton mines streaked overhead, landing a full salvo on the enemy positions that were hindering the advance of the fleet special forces' sabotage group.
In the opposite direction flew clods of earth, pieces of bodies, fragments of mercenary fortifications, and some local tree debris.
Following them, heavy blasters joined in, their characteristic sounds clicking against the armor of the walkers.
Offended by this unfriendly gesture of greeting, the crews of the Dominion AT-STs fired another salvo from their launchers, backing it all up with fire from various caliber cannons with which the converted Imperial AT-STs were hung like a Gungan with trinkets.
An AT-ST in Dominion modernization.
Orsan felt his forehead itch under his helmet and reached up to relieve the discomfort.
His fingers encountered the faceplate of the black helmet.
Cursing, the special forces team leader peered out from behind a massive boulder, which he and his men were using as cover.
A massive structure, resembling a truncated quadrangular pyramid, bristling on all sides with large barrels of heavy turbolasers, firing points in its sloped walls, and a huge rectangular maw — the single entrance inside.
The main bunker of the defense center on Corlax IV.
Across the wide parade ground in front of the entrance, repulsor trucks were moving, hauling valuable equipment and even more battle droids inside to make it possible to hold out until possible help arrived.
Once upon a time, this bunker had been an Imperial facility, and it had housed a large number of stormtroopers.
The main bunker, from which the Imperials, and now the troops of Mi-Ha Hutt, coordinated the entire defense of the planet Corlax IV.
An impregnable fortress, the capture of which had taken the criminals a long time.
And the decomposing corpses of those killed during the assault still lay among the trees.
Because cleaning them up required a whole army of service droids or people willing to bury their former comrades.
The enemy had neither.
Even the bunker's main power source — a hydroelectric plant located a hundred kilometers from here, built so that ten levels of hydrogenerators would receive impulse from water falling down a giant waterfall and provide the bunker with everything it needed.
The enemy had taken the hydroelectric plant first, cutting off the bunker's power.
After which the stormtroopers here could only try to sell their lives dearly.
Yes, in terms of attack, this technique was quite effective.
The problem was that by cutting the huge cables transmitting power from the hydro plant to the base, the enemy had never found a way to splice the giant wires, which reached a cross-section of ten meters.
Which was understandable — such technology was hardly available for open sale in the galaxy, and as for specialists who could fix it all, there were none on the facility, dead or alive.
Neither for the Imperials nor for the criminals.
Therefore, most of the defensive structures and systems were deprived of power.
The ones that remained, together with the numerous droids, would, of course, be enough for the enemy.
But the fleet special forces thought quite differently.
"Captain," meowed a voice in his helmet's earpiece. "We found a secret passage. Seven degrees east of your position."
"Moving out," ordered Orsan.
The armored vehicles continued to draw attention to themselves, forcing the enemy to stir in order to lock themselves inside the impregnable (as they thought) fortress.
They still hoped that outside the Corlax system, everything was fine with Mi-Ha Hutt.
And that he, his fleet, his army of mercenaries and bandits, would soon come to the besieged's aid.
The stormtroopers trapped here were in much the same situation, isolated from their units and fleet.
Orsan didn't know these guys personally, but judging by the number of corpses literally littering the approaches to the bunker, he could understand that nearly thirty thousand stormtroopers, armed only with small arms and a little heavy weaponry, with long-unrepaired equipment and very limited ammunition, had taken down no less than a couple of hundred thousand enemy fighters and mercenary soldiers in this forest.
The corpses of the Zenibar stood out especially.
Very many Zenibar corpses, as if their entire vile race had decided to serve Mi-Ha Hutt.
Well, good riddance to them.
Judging by how mangled the bodies were, the local predators had paid special attention to the blue-skinned ones, preferring them as the main course in the feast.
"We're two minutes from you," Orsan warned the commander of the death commando squad providing them support on this mission.
In fact, in the operation to divert the attention of Mi-Ha Hutt's militants, a significant role was assigned to the mobile death commando squads.
As on all other key enemy military facilities, commandos had been operating near the bunker on Corlax for a long time now.
And in large numbers.
While the stormtroopers of the 501st Legion and the army troopers were engaged in open confrontation with the bandit army, the commandos were looking for bypass routes to penetrate the enemy's main base.
Here, according to Noghri data, a truly indecent amount of ammunition and military equipment was concentrated.
Given the impregnability of the position, the bandits could hold out here for months.
Especially considering the fact that the enemy didn't have many organic soldiers — a couple of thousand.
And almost two hundred and fifty thousand various droids.
Not to mention several million in a dormant state in the base's underground warehouses.
It was somewhat reminiscent of the storming of Carannia.
But Makeno, by an effort of will, pushed away that unnecessary comparison.
No time for reflection now.
The civilian population of Corlax would, of course, suffer.
But they wouldn't be completely massacred by crazed droids and left to rot on the lower levels.
"Welcome," a dark gray, short figure with a menacing appearance, almost lost in the darkness of the dense undergrowth, greeted Makeno. "The enemy has almost finished evacuation and is ready to barricade themselves inside the base."
"That's where they'll die," Makeno promised. "Did you find the underground passage?"
The Noghri bared his teeth in a frightening smile.
"Here," he stepped aside, pointing to an unremarkable hillock a couple of meters away, overgrown with lush vegetation. "A typical Imperial emergency exit."
"And you're quite the specialist in secret paths, huh?" he teased the death commando.
"An expert," the Noghri shot back.
"And where's the passage?" the captain asked, considering the polemic unnecessary. "It wasn't planned to retreat through the hill, was it?"
The Imperial fortification manual required builders to consider the presence of one or more underground passages necessary for conducting sorties into the enemy's rear, or for evacuation in the event of the destruction of a military facility threatened with capture.
The Noghri thrust his black knife into the surface of the hillock and, with two quick but strong movements, cut away part of the grassy covering, exposing a metal hatch with a code panel next to it.
"Camouflage," the Noghri explained in a tone as if he were surprised that the fleet special forces didn't know such simple things. "Needed so no one would accidentally discover the passage."
"And here I was thinking why there wasn't a glowing sign with an arrow," the captain muttered under his breath, turning to his men, who were patiently waiting for orders. "Open this Hutt lock."
A few seconds of work with electronic lockpicks, which, along with other electronic hacking equipment, had been provided to them for this mission, and the hatch slid aside.
Revealing a dark rectangular pit, leading straight deep underground.
"And they obviously felt shy about installing a turbolift," Orsan sighed, looking at the metal rungs embedded in the duracrete shaft cylinder. "Let's descend."
Ten minutes later, they found themselves in a tiny artificial cave — only about twice as wide as the tunnel that began at the far wall and stretched toward the base.
The walls of the tunnel were quite cracked, indicating the age of the construction done here.
No electronics, no lighting.
The special forces operators, carefully making sure that there were no tracks on the thin layer of dust covering the tunnel floor — characteristic of communication use — moved forward, navigating thanks to the night vision systems in the dark.
"Why didn't the stormtroopers use this passage to leave the base?" the Noghri squad leader asked quietly. "As we found out, they defended until a certain point. Then after a prolonged bombardment, they launched a counterattack and died in it."
"Because they didn't have time," Orsan explained coldly. "The bandits dropped combat chemical agents on their heads."
"Don't the armor and helmets protect against such a threat?" the death commando was surprised.
"They do," Orsan confirmed. "But not when you're being bombarded with it for weeks. Including through the ventilation systems. The stormtroopers simply had no choice. They waited until the filter element supplies ran out. Then they went for a breakout."
"And they all died," the Noghri added quietly.
"Death would have reached them anyway," Orsan said. "Gas or on the battlefield, but the guys did their job. And today, we'll avenge them against the bastards who survived the counterattack."
* * *
After the third shot, the Verpine shotgun misfired.
Torin looked at the jammed weapon — something had happened to the electronics, and it couldn't be fixed on the move.
Throwing the weapon aside, he looked at Mi-Ha Hutt, covered in blood and speckled with scraps of his own meat and fat.
The head of the criminal syndicate, who, albeit for a short time, had subjugated Allied Tion, was breathing heavily, watching the life-giving fluid flow out of him from a dozen penetrating wounds.
"Is that all?" he laughed hoarsely, moving forward threateningly. "Come here, you little human. I'll squeeze you in my embrace so your bones crack. And then I'll eat the meat off them, just like I did with your nexu. But this time, I'm in the mood to try it rare."
"Sure," Inek snorted, not reacting to the provocation. "I'm already running. Just need to tie my shoelaces."
The Hutt looked in bewilderment at the standard-issue Imperial boots, with no hint of the specified attribute.
"You're pissing me off!" the Hutt roared in a bass voice, lunging at the agent.
Despite his wounds, despite his size, he moved swiftly, and ignoring that would be an unforgivable mistake.
If only because he might not be able to strangle him in his embrace, but crushing him with his bulk was entirely possible.
Inek calmly waited for the enemy to approach him, then jumped aside.
The Hutt, mad with rage, crashed into his luxurious yacht, slightly rocking it on its landing struts.
Realizing the lunge had failed, he struck with his tail, intending to knock the man off his feet.
That would allow him to pin Torin under him and finish what he started — to crush the one who had caused him the most trouble lately.
Inek was prepared for such an outcome.
Rolling a good meter out of the trajectory of the short but muscular tail of the overgrown tadpole, he tore two massive combat knives from his belt.
The obsidian blades glinted in the fires of the exhaust from the Hutt's luxury yacht engine.
Blades thirty centimeters long would be just enough to pierce the Hutt's bulk and reach his muscular frame.
Mi-Ha realized this too.
I wonder if he even figured out that Bravo-One had infiltrated his secret lair using the escape route that Mi-Ha had intended to use to save himself at the beginning of their meeting in the throne room?
Judging by everything — at least he guessed.
Well, he should have made different escape routes.
"I've already won, agent!" the Hutt declared, crawling toward the ramp of his yacht. "Thanks for warming up the engines for me."
Yes, the ship was ready for takeoff.
And the Hutt was half a meter away from diving into the boarding hatch, while Torin would have to run about five meters to reach the gangster and strike him with his blades.
They both understood the deadlock.
But only one knew that this was not yet the end.
With a triumphant laugh, the Hutt crawled up the ramp.
"How pathetic you are!" he mocked the Dominion agent. "Decided to personally avenge the one who kills dozens of such 'avengers'? Triple 'ha'! You're too stupid, human, to defeat me on my own field. There is no one as cunning as I am!"
"Are you sure?" Torin asked calmly, taking a small remote control off his belt and showing it to the enemy. "I had plenty of time to spare..."
The Hutt, gurgling in his throat, looked at him with his huge eyes, realizing what device was being shown to him.
"You didn't have any explosives on you to mine my ship!" but by the Hutt's subdued tone, the agent understood that the danger declared by the threat of blowing up the ship had sunk in.
"Go ahead and check," Torin advised. "If you get inside the yacht, I'll blow it up along with you. They say thermal detonators installed in the reactor compartment do an excellent job of initiating the fuel for an explosion. I love explosions. Everything flies apart so nicely."
To confirm his words, the agent began moving away from the fateful spaceship.
"You need me alive!" the Hutt blurted out.
"What makes you think that?" Inek was surprised.
"I know too much!"
"Not more than your servers," the agent shrugged.
"I can tell you about the conspiracy around the Tion Cluster sectors!" the Hutt continued to bargain.
"I'm pretty well informed myself."
"Your superiors need it!"
"And they know everything in even greater detail," Torin broke into a smile.
"Not that much," Mi-Ha was being cunning.
"Well, then interest me," the Dominion agent suggested.
"Only after I get off the planet!" the Hutt warned.
"Well, that's not serious," Torin shook his head. "The best I can offer you is a double portion of prison slop instead of the standard ration."
"I have tons of money! I can share!"
"We'll find your treasure without you," Torin assured him. "Not right away, but we'll find it. My command loves to dig into the little details... However," he pulled a small datapad in an armored, shock-resistant casing from his pocket, "I think I already have everything I need."
"What's that?"
"A slicer receiver that I connected to your onboard computer," Torin explained, activating a function on the datapad for a directional, hyper-sensitive microphone aimed at the Hutt. "I had plenty of time, as I told you at the very beginning of our conversation."
"The data is encrypted!"
"And Dominion slicers are the best in the galaxy," the intelligence officer revealed, hiding the device in a pocket on his belt. "I'll tell you even more. When we're done with you, our slicer on the flagship will use your virtual copy again. With its help, an order will be given to all your lackeys to cease resistance."
"They're not that stupid!"
"Your voice sounds a bit uncertain there, Mi-Ha Hutt," Torin smiled. "Most of them are idiots. And therefore, most of them will follow that order..."
"'Will follow'?" the Hutt repeated.
"Of course," Torin snorted. "Almost half of your armies besieging our garrisons have already laid down their arms. The others are thinking it over. But as soon as we finish on Kothlis, our Super Star Destroyer will give them more reasons to either run, becoming targets for our counterintelligence, or to surrender. I'm sure our command will find somewhere to put all those paid mercenaries of yours who don't want to die. You never paid them the second half of their fee. And according to the hologram, you don't intend to."
In other words, the Hutt was being told that now the criminals in the Allied Tion sector considered their employer a plain "con artist."
And for that, they might even knife him in a dark alley.
Quitting the job was the lesser of two evils.
"I still don't believe you," the Hutt declared. "It's too neat. If you could, you'd have done it already!"
As if I'm to blame for the idea of a "con" only coming to mind now, Torin mentally grumbled.
"The choice is yours," he offered calmly. "Prison or death by blowing up your own yacht."
"You're lying about everything," the Hutt stated confidently. "I scared idiots that way myself. You can't fool me. A thermal detonator can't be remotely detonated!"
In the next instant, Mi-Ha lunged.
Toward the open hatch of the yacht.
"Whatever you say," Torin indifferently pressed the detonator activator.
Yes, he didn't have enough explosives with him.
But as said, a thermal detonator placed next to the fuel tanks produces a truly interesting effect.
Yes, he had installed not a detonator, but merely a remote-detonated magnetic mine.
But he had said the opposite.
Precisely so that the Hutt would react the way the Dominion agent needed.
Falling to the floor and covering his head with his hands, Torin felt several stings in his body where small fragments, scattered by the explosion of the Hutt's luxury yacht, embedded themselves.
Gritting his teeth, he got to his feet, tossed aside one cleaver, which had broken, and then limped over to the shapeless mass of meat and fat, which smelled of cooked organic matter.
Mi-Ha Hutt was alive.
His face and the front of his body had suffered considerably from the explosion, riddled with debris and torn to shreds down to the muscular frame of his massive torso.
One arm was broken, the other was torn off at the shoulder.
His mouth was mangled as if he had swallowed part of the blast, and his blind eye had simply drained out.
The skull, on which only pieces of flesh remained, twitched slightly when, groaning in pain, Torin approached this bulk.
"It seems you said you were terribly hungry, Mi-Ha," Inek mumbled. "How do you like the snack I prepared for you?" the agent inquired, sizing up the Hutt's body with his cleaver.
The criminal gurgled something in response, trying to tense his shredded body.
"How about seconds?" Torin asked, striking the end of the Hutt's tail with his obsidian cleaver.
Mi-Ha jerked as Inek severed a chunk of his tail the size of a human head.
Something groaned when it saw the cylindrical charge the agent had removed from his belt.
"This is just the kind of filling that'll suit your taste," Torin assured him in a confident tone, shoving the remotely detonated mine into the severed piece of Hutt tail.
"I'd even say the taste is — explosive," he shared his observations as a gourmet demolitions expert, giving the wheezing Hutt a look of utmost kindness.
"Nothing to say?" Inek wondered. "Cat got your tongue? That's a mistake. I have other plans for your airways."
Overcoming the pain in his wounded body parts, he climbed onto the Hutt's carcass, then slowly, so the movements of Mi-Ha's body couldn't throw him off, crept up to the crime lord's head.
"You shouldn't have killed my nexu," Torin said in an icy tone. "Come on, say it: 'Aaaaah!'"
The Hutt didn't obey.
Inek silently knocked out his teeth and slashed his facial muscles with the cleaver, forcing his lower jaw to open wider.
"There, that's good," the agent assessed the piece of Hutt tail lying on the path to his palate. "But maybe it can be even better!"
With a kick, he drove the mined piece into the Hutt's throat, making him thrash so violently that the agent himself flew to the floor.
Wincing, the agent got to his feet and limped toward the exit, without looking at Mi-Ha the Hutt, who was writhing wildly.
When he was a good ten meters away from the criminal, he turned around.
The Hutt, his single eye bulging, was trying to do something with his broken arm or the stump of his other limb.
When he realized the idea was worthless, he looked at the Dominion agent with a plea in his single eye.
"Didn't your momma teach you to finish everything on your plate?" Bravo One clarified, activating the remote detonator.
The Hutt's body was blasted into tiny pieces, showering Torin with sprays of blood, chunks of entrails, and stinking Hutt grease.
Wiping his face and removing the miraculously intact Hutt eye with its dilated pupil by the optic nerve, Inek snapped his fingers and wagged his index finger at the last whole part of the crime kingpin of the Allied Tion.
"I warned you. The taste is just the bomb."
Crushing the eye under his boot heel, the agent slowly limped toward the exit.
* * *
In the operations room of the main base on Corlax, there were quite a few sentients.
About twenty.
The commander, his deputies, operators controlling the mechanical army, loading coordinators, minor errand runners...
They were all busy tracking the data on the large monitor about the repulsor tanks approaching the Dominion walkers' position.
"We'll show 'em..." the leader said in anticipation, rubbing his massive hands.
The two-meter tall Weequay could practically taste the victory over the insolent Imperials — until he felt something else.
A prick of something sharp at the base of his neck.
"What the...?" he managed to pull a short needle from his body, but didn't finish his question, collapsing to the floor.
And the next moment, blaster fire erupted from five ventilation grilles encircling the room.
Two seconds — and everyone in the operations room was dead, except for the sedated leader.
No longer concerned with maintaining their cover, the naval special forces and Death Commandos blew out the grilles and surged inside.
"Control the entrances!" Makeno ordered the Noghri.
The gray-skinned troops, taking possession of the dead bandits' weapons, instantly turned the small airlock extending at a right angle from the operations room into a defensive position.
"Break into the system!"
This order was already given to his squad's technical specialist.
A soldier in black assault armor bent over the command post from which the defense of Corlax IV was being directed.
After quickly studying something, he turned his helmet toward the commander.
"Access is open. Nothing needs hacking. We can act right now."
Beneath his helmet, a smile of a man thoroughly pleased with life spread across Makeno's face — the smile of someone who, at the end of his labors, had found a winning ticket that would make him rich for life.
"Now that's a different story," he declared. "Give the orders. Inform command."
* * *
Captain Pellaeon silently watched as the Marut — which had brought the Grand Admiral to the system — positioned itself next to the Guardian.
"Sir," he addressed the Chiss, who was settled in his favorite command chair. "We haven't crushed the enemy forces yet. Is it wise to leave Janimere undefended?"
"Nothing will happen to the capital while we mop up the remaining pockets of resistance," Thrawn said. "Especially since the Firebrand is still in the system in cloaked mode."
"You could have used it to smash the enemy fleet without any risk," Pellaeon noted.
"There was no need to take that risk," the Grand Admiral countered. "Besides, we wouldn't have earned the loyalty of Captain Oland and his crew that way."
"Just one destroyer," Pellaeon shook his head.
"At the beginning of last year's campaign, I had only slightly more than that," Thrawn reminded him.
"But now there are hundreds of them. And they're fully crewed."
"Agreed," Thrawn confirmed. "But over time, if we don't find a solution to this problem in the coming years, the clones will age. And we'll have to create new ones. The more clones we have in the regular forces, the more replacements we'll need to create as they grow old. That's not the most prudent path."
"But they are young and inexperienced."
"As were most of our officers and crewmembers just a year ago," the Grand Admiral confirmed. "Proper training will make them worthy specialists in their fields."
"If they're willing to learn..."
"Trust me, Captain," a faint smile appeared on Thrawn's face. "They will be. The demonstration in Janimere was enough for those who want to serve by calling to become interested in their career prospects. And they'll do everything to be better. Not immediately, but over time. What's important right now is something else."
"What is that, sir?"
"We've managed to take one of the promising, young, and creatively thinking officers away from Palpatine," the Grand Admiral explained. "In experienced hands, Captain Oland could become an admiral, famed either for victories or for carrying out 'Base Delta Zero' orders. I prefer the first option."
"As do I, sir."
"Any news from the surface?" Thrawn inquired, changing the subject. "Did Captain Makeno complete the task?"
"Yes, sir," Pellaeon confirmed. "We received a communication from him three minutes ago. The control system is secured. All droids have been re-subordinated to us and are engaging Mi-Ha the Hutt's mercenaries. The defensive stations have stopped resisting. The droid starfighters have been recalled to the landing pads for target designation against enemy assets. Reports are coming in of mass surrenders among the mercenaries."
"Excellent, Captain," a devilish smile appeared on Thrawn's face as he gazed through the viewport at Corlax's surface. "There's not much left now, and the Allied Tion sector will join the Dominion."