— David —
"Burning hard!" David called out, whipping SPECTRE around and immediately dropping back under her cloak.
"We're clear," Taati called back. "Disengaged. They've lost us again. Good, good, GOOD kill, My Hunter~!"
She kept her voice mostly calm, but it was still brimming with the victorious energy of a successful hunt, shining through that composure with her last line. They'd bagged a big one, the final line through Slug-1's zero. By Togruta standards, their tribe was set to eat good for months. Already, that was something worth celebrating. David knew his pelvis wouldn't last the night unscathed after their work in the void was done.
But the battle had yet to be won.
SPECTRE followed his mental commands and his guiding touch on her controls with an almost Gonk-like eagerness. Her thrust vectored with just a thought. G-force pushed him back into his seat, even through the inertial dampeners and despite the artificial gravity. It gave a very real weight to her flight, only right when burning to speeds in the high double-digit kilometers per second.
The main Gonk fleet had pulled up onto the scene in force. Like reinforcements rolling up on a gang war in Night City, ready to hop out and slammit on with their opps and rivals. The real difference here was in the scale of things, and the fact that getting into the thick of it was a bit more complicated than simply hopping out of your vic and shooting with regular iron in your hand.
The Gonk Fleet… They boasted void-iron, nothing 'regular' about it. They were Nomads and Corpos and Spacers, and Gonks above all — no mere ganger, not anymore. And they were there to flatline the Hutt fleet that stood between them and a Free Nar Shaddaa, not win a petty, pyrrhic victory over just a block of gang turf.
SPECTRE slid back beneath her cloak like diving beneath the surface of the void, disappearing from sight and sensors as she sliced through the vacuum to temporarily leave the space battle behind. After securing his zero — making his statement that the slugs should fear the SPECTRE in the Shard — David quickly switched focus onto his secondary objective: doing what damage he could to the Hutt homeworld before the planetary shield was raised to full power.
He could feel his time limit in the Force. The emotions rising from the surface below were hectic. A mess of fear and panic and a whole lot of disbelieving indignation. The former two seemed to come from the 'little people' on Nal Hutta, for lack of a better phrase. And the last came from the Hutts of the world, practically screaming from their minds: "You dare?!"
And by Gonk, he did. He fraggin' dared.
David dared to bring the Hutt homeworld under threat for the first time in its history ruled by the slugs. From their own moon, no less. Try as they might, they couldn't do a damn thing to stop him. Only fight. Only flatline.
He aimed to make himself inevitable. Like Atom, like all of their Gonks. The Gonk Cartel embodied the word, right up there with 'Spite' and 'Freedom' and 'Legend'. They were an unstoppable force, breaking into a galaxy utterly unprepared for them to make themselves known, to make themselves Legend.
Atom would fight to the last, until the final chapter of his Legend was written. It was inevitable. David's fleet would fly or flatline, zeroing every enemy that pressed them in the void, no matter the cost. It was inevitable. And wherever they were, the Gonk Cartel would rise to stand free. It was inevitable.
It was a quintessentially Night City way of doing things, one they would be introducing the rest of the galaxy to. Like it or not, the Gonks were standing the fuck up and showing that they were there to stay. The slugs certainly didn't like it.
'But that's the point, isn't it?' David thought. 'Fuck a Hutt.'
That objective statement of fact lingered on David's mind as he burned SPECTRE toward the world below. He intended to show the Hutts on the surface that they were far from untouchable, even on their homeworld.
The chief slugs on Nal Hutta, the Hutt Ruling Council, had buried their heads in the slime. So far, that is. They hadn't been able to truly react to the Gonk blitz and victory, even as it took over the moon they claimed in the heart of their turf. They likely couldn't fathom it getting this far.
No other resistance to their rule had ever been so successful before. The Gonks succeeded where millions failed before them, blasting the slugs straight onto shaky and alien ground. Even now, they were trying and failing to simply process losing Nar Shaddaa. If that wasn't enough, they were now being attacked around their 'jewel' of a homeworld, and on the ground, if David had his way of things.
The Hutt Ruling Council was in for the rudest of awakenings. They were being made vulnerable like never before. The chief running of their society was threatened, and the only thing standing between them and orbital bombardment was a planetary shield that still wasn't up and running.
David and SPECTRE sought to exploit that chaos to their advantage. A cloaked weapon of mass orbital destruction burned toward them. David raced against the clock, raced against the slugs and their people on the ground getting their shit together. And as he reached the upper limits of the atmosphere, he knew he'd won that race.
Below, he sensed the frantic energy pushed by the ruling slugs. They were scrambling their people, shouting desperate threats to force them into line and even more desperate commands to salvage what they could from the sitch brought on by the sudden space battle above them. But that franticness was costing them more than it was helping.
Contradictory orders were issued. 'Little people' belonging to a dozen different Hutts tried and failed to work together as each of their masters sought a different solution. The planetary shield infrastructure was the biggest mess — unorganized, uncentralized, and utterly unable to complete its lone function.
Each of the ruling slugs was trying everything at their disposal to get it up and running. Even now, they were playing their internal games. And the defense of their homeworld suffered for them.
It should've been simple. They all had the same goal in mind: "Get that shield up!" Yet the way they went about accomplishing the goal was anything but. They were exerting influence just as much as they were issuing orders. It was the only way they knew how to do things — anything, even in an emergency.
Strings of threat and blackmail were pulled. Unnecessary favors were called in, only to clash with similarly unnecessary favors. One Hutt's people found themselves working beside another Hutt's people, with orders that differed just enough to cause damning friction.
Any hope of efficient operation was quickly brought to a grinding, stalemating halt. Each Hutt kept their own power close at hand, and so, everyone who was trying to get something done belonged to another string of command in the overall twisting knot.
Outside the planetary shield installation, the chaos was similar. Some Hutts tried to scramble valuable lieutenants to man the surface-to-orbit defensive iron for what little good it would do them. Others pushed majordomos and right-hand fools to do something, anything! And others still raged at anyone in their immediate area, blaming whatever they could for the death now looking them in the beady eyes.
Meanwhile, all of the actual Hutts were already securing their emergency ways out. The cowardly slugs wouldn't hesitate to abandon even their homeworld — their supposed 'jewel' — if it meant they saved their thick and slimy hides. Personal ships were prepared and set to launch as soon as their VIPs were on board. Only the slugs mattered, and among them, the Hutt Ruling Council mattered most.
That was the sitch on the ground that David found himself, Taati, and SPECTRE perched over. Ground activity lit up SPECTRE's sensors, a logistical and organizational nightmare that got little actually done. Certainly not enough to stop David from targeting valuable installations on the ground. If anything, the activity showed him what to aim for first…
SPECTRE's rail-iron was the most devastating option David had at his disposal for orbital bombardment. Her turbolaser batteries would come a close second, though. Her experimental beam cannon would hit, but its coherent light would be partially scattered by Nal Hutta's atmosphere. Dense bolts of energized plasma didn't have the same issue, and even denser physical projectiles would only have to worry about atmospheric friction (and not much of it at the speeds they'd travel).
David, of course, aimed for the planetary shield infrastructure first and foremost. SPECTRE's systems easily zeroed in on the titanic shield emitters on the ground. There, however, he ran into an issue.
It wasn't just one shield emitter. It was half a dozen in a somewhat concentrated area, each of the disk-shaped emitters aimed to intersect and 'bounce' their projected energy fields out over the rest of the planet as the actual shield. And while the whole shield was still down, the emitters boasted a more focused shield over the area they inhabited.
Someone with half a brain had designed and installed Nal Hutta's shield. Even when not fully up, it was protected, and a single decapitating strike was impossible. Still, it'd be a shame not to try.
Pointing SPECTRE's nose down at the planet, David focused all of her void-iron on the shield's infrastructure. Her systems took care of the targeting, and intuition through the Force had David adjusting his aim for best effect. Then, with an anti-climactic pull of a mental trigger, he rained hellfire down upon a world.
The beam cannon fired off first, even if it wouldn't do all that it could. At about half-strength, it struck the shield over the emitters. Even like that, it left a visible line of scorched air and neon light through the atmosphere. The shield below flared solid and just barely began to waver.
Then came SPECTRE's turbolasers. An initial barrage of three by three volleys. Nine bolts of plasma raced toward the surface below. Brilliant, brilliant shooting stars that screamed death through the atmosphere on their descent. In the Force, David felt the panic in the frantic mess of emotions escalate. From the Hutts most of all, delicious as they realized they were actually under fire.
Nine bolts struck. Nine flares of splashing plasma bloomed. David could see the effective hit with his naked eyes. A burst of color so far below. Immediately, he followed up with a second barrage, nine more stars that fell upon the world.
SPECTRE's sensors identified the shield failing but holding. Now, it was a rush against time. Under fire, the 'little people' working the planetary shield took charge in a way that their Hutt masters would've hated (if they were actually paying attention instead of scrambling to save their tails). David estimated a minute before the actual planetary shield came up in full.
He fired off SPECTRE's rail-iron. The recoil shifted her back and up from the position she held in orbit. But the dense slug was already off and impacting before SPECTRE could settle into place again.
The impact was visible from orbit, a raging, rapidly expanding shockwave that ravaged all it touched. Unlike the glassing destruction of turbolaser plasma, the rail-gun slug threw up as much dust and debris as a volcanic eruption. And the whole world shook.
The focused shield around the emitters gave its last legs to keep its charges from getting utterly annihilated. It withstood the initial impact but failed with the shockwave, and the emitters were struck by aftershocks that crumbled the very landscape they stood on.
That focused last effort by the emitter shield was enough, though. In its wake, the planetary shield powered on, shaky and stuttering but still effective. Just a little too late, Nal Hutta made itself protected from orbital strikes. Any more orbital strikes, at least…
Still, David counted his efforts as a victory, if a minor one. A bombardment like that would've caused damage that couldn't be easily repaired, and Atom was already planning on taking out the planetary shield in less direct ways. And more than direct damage, the damage done to morale was invaluable.
In the Force, David sensed Hutts rushing for their lives. The whole Ruling Council had already boarded what ships they could as soon as the space battle slammed on, but now, they launched, fleeing toward the side of the planet away from David's bombardment and the Gonk Fleet behind him. There, the planetary shield was lowered for just a few moments (likely ordered by quite a lot of shouting from a dozen different masters), and the Hutt-carrying ships slipped through the temporary crack to flee to the safety of hyperspace.
It was a blatant retreat, an open admittance of defeat. The Hutt Ruling Council was fleeing its own homeworld. Damned slugs weren't even willing to stick it out and fight for their 'jewel'. The only thing of worth left on Nal Hutta would be lesser Hutts, the 'little people', and the principle of the thing. The Gonks would still have to take the world and the void around it, of course, but David was already counting that as a win.
"Pathetic," Taati spat. "Prey that doesn't even have the decency to die properly, instead fleeing like womp rats flushed out of their burrow."
David chuckled, "Just means more hunts to come, Taati. Not being able to chase them does sting, but I'll take their home if I can't take their fat sluggy heads."
"Giving up Nal Hutta won't reflect well on the Ruling Council, I suppose," Taati considered aloud. "It will sow more discord into an already discordant herd. Seperate them, make them all weak, and hunt at your leisure, yes?"
"Something like that," David confirmed. "Atom is definitely taking the usual Hutt power games into account. Them being united, even under a largely ineffective ruling body, isn't good for Gonk business. Outright giving up Nal Hutta like this will shake every Hutt's confidence in the Ruling Council, and all of that internal strife makes everything we do easier."
"So our prey escapes, but we may track them better now?" Taati asked. "And we throw the structure of their herd into disarray? A somewhat less successful hunt now, for many more successful hunts in the future?"
"Don't go calling this hunt 'less successful', mainline," David grinned. "We bagged ourselves a slug ship, forced the herd's leaders to flee with their tails between non-existent legs, and it still isn't over yet. C'mon, let's get flying. We've got void violence to rejoin."
Taati grinned right back at him, "Yes, we can't let the matriarch have all the fun now, can we~?"
IIIII
— Gloria —
"Whatever happens, whatever they throw at us, whatever you need to do… Keep. Us. Moving," Gloria had issued that one command as the core doctrine of her crew. "We don't stand and duel, we fly and fight, and yes, flatline, or we'll be flatlined in turn.
"Every one of those slug ships has us out-ironed. They've got us out-armored, too. But we've got them beat in speed and backup and something worth fighting for! The little Gonk can still punch up at the sluggin' Hutt! Let's show them just that!"
The men and women she'd been given to command were determined and competent. They'd come together and learned to work as part of a system as best they could in the short time they had. They were Gonks. They were children of Night City. And they were counting on Gloria to lead them to victory and make sure they came back home in one piece.
Gloria had always been a proponent of talking, not fighting. Diplomacy over violence, if she could help it. But she couldn't always help it. There was a time and place for the latter, she knew, especially in Night City. That time was now, with her mijo leading the violence in the void and looking to make his Legend. Gloria always had and always would give everything she could to her baby boy, her mijo, her dear David. If that required her to roll up her sleeves and get into the fight, so be it.
She was idealistic, for her mijo, trying to raise him as right as she could. She'd kept him away from his father and the Edge Maine ran. But that protection could only take them so far. Gloria dreamed of a better life for her boy, but she wasn't blind, deaf, or stupid. Eventually, Gloria knew, the real world — the ever-present violence in Night City — would come calling, and they'd have to answer.
Now, David was all grown up. He was his own little man, with a mainline and a place amongst Legends in the making. It was his time to make his place in the galaxy. Gloria would never leave him to do so alone. He could be 18 or 58, and she'd still be there to help, to catch him if he fell, and to do all she could for the boy she'd birthed and held and raised into a young man willing to stand up to a whole fleet of slugs.
She'd loved him since she first held him in her arms. Then and there, she'd vowed to give him the galaxy, however she could. They had their ups and downs, through lessons and disagreements and opportunities, but in the end, they would always be family.
Family helped family. It was as simple as. They did what they could, everything they could, for each other. Gloria wasn't blind. She knew David would flatline for her. 'More civilized' Core Worlders might've had a problem with that, trying to avoid violence or whatever. But for all her talents and preference for diplomacy, Gloria was still from Night City. She knew the true realities of the galaxy. And she would just as gladly flatline for her mijo in turn.
David was dead set on making his Legend here and now. How could Gloria do anything less than join him and make sure that the Legend he dreamed of wasn't set in rockcrete just yet? Her baby boy would be Legend, but he wouldn't get there in a blaze of glory. She joined his fleet to make sure of that.
"I want grandbabies, mijo," She'd told him before the battle. "So don't go dying before you can give them to me and raise them as I raised you, neh? I won't allow it. If you get yourself killed, I'll have Atom drag you back so I can tan your ass red, you hear me, David?"
David had sputtered at the mention of grandbabies. Adorably so. But his mainline had her head on straight. Taati had just nodded in complete understanding, vowing to bring Gloria's baby boy back to her.
She was exactly what David needed, a feisty young thing to keep his head where it should be. And she had her own culture of violence to count on when the sitch inevitably turned sour around her mijo. A mother-in-law couldn't ask for more from her new daughter.
"Hunters look out for their own," Taati had said. "Our new tribe won't fall to pieces or fade into the mists of history, Matriarch."
Gloria… tried not to worry about the two of them, out there in the void on their own. That old spacer Linth had assured her that they were ready, that no pilot he trained would fall to some slug ships. Maine had been similarly (somewhat helpfully) reassuring, saying that it was his boy's time to run the Edge on his own.
Gloria had almost snorted in his face. 'His boy?' As fond of Maine as she would always be, David was hers. She'd raised him, she'd been there through thick and thin, all while Maine hadn't even thought to ask or look for a son that carried his blood. She was mostly fine with him being in David's life now, but her mijo would always be her son before he was Maine's boy.
Thankfully, Maine wasn't the kind of man who pushed for and obsessed over legacy through his children. He was happy to be part of David's life now that he knew, but he was also able to accept that he was coming in 18 years too late. He was proud of their boy, but didn't push him into directly following in his Edgerunning footsteps. Thank Gonk (as David had taken to saying) for that. Gloria would've had choice words for him if that was the case.
Unfortunately, the Edge did seem to run in David's blood, from both sides. Gloria had turned away from it since David's birth, one of the few who got out of the game with their lives, but the Edge would always be a major part of her youth. Now, it was part of David's life, too, more than it ever had been for Gloria.
It was hardly David's fault that they found themselves embroiled in history and Legends in the making. The closest one Gloria could've actually blamed was Atom. But she didn't, not really. She was fond of the young man who was changing everything for them, then Night City, then all of Nar Shaddaa.
She couldn't blame him for his trailblazing nature, his role in the galaxy as an unstoppable force of unprecedented change, any more than she could blame a star for nuclear fusion in its core.
Atom was just like that. And through him, everyone associated with him, all of his Gonks, were like that, too. Nothing he touched would ever be the same afterward. Gloria, David, and Maine included.
Atom and his Gonks swept everything along for their ride. It was a wave unlike any other the galaxy had ever seen. She couldn't fault her mijo for wanting to ride its cresting peak right beside his choom, his brother in all but blood. Hell, Gloria found herself wanting to ride the wave just like her son more often than not. They were part of Atom's Legend, the Gonk Legend, and Gloria wouldn't have it any other way these days.
Here in the void, David found his way to contribute. He found his way to make a Legend that stood right beside his choom and all the rest. Gloria knew her son well enough to know he wouldn't back down now that he'd found it. She'd seen all of the effort he'd put into his fleet, seen him working around the clock to make something special. When her mijo was doing so much, how could Gloria do anything less?
She went to Linth to see where she could contribute. David would've fought her on that determination, and he already had enough on his plate. The old spacer had taken her in, happy to help.
Now, in the proving, make-or-break moment, Gloria found herself captaining a starship. A Marauder Corvette that she named 'Matriarch' at Taati's recommendation. Some of the heaviest void-iron the Gonk Fleet currently had. The crew working with her was capable and willing to listen to her commands. She'd put the hours in to learn the systems, both for the ship and those her mijo had put in place. She was as ready as she was ever going to be, old feelings of Chill on the Edge coming back to her as they raced to join her boy in battle.
The Gonk capital ships were tasked with holding the spine of the fleet together as they punched up at the sluggin' Hutts. All three of them — Gloria, Linth, and Panam — were coordinating a third of the fleet, 30 or so squadrons each. They didn't have nearly enough tonnage to match the Hutt fleet straight up, but they weren't planning to.
"Keep. Us. Moving…" Gloria reminded her crew as they began to engage the enemy at distance, never slowing to 'proper capital-class' dueling speeds.
Double turbolaser batteries barked from all across the ship's hull — 8 twinned barrels, spitting 16 bolt volleys. In the captain's chair on the bridge, Gloria felt the recoil of each shot.
Each vibration through the ship betrayed tremendous firepower, the kind that glassed planets. They beat with Gloria's heart, slow and steady in her familiar Chill.
She kept herself cool — Chilled — kept her mind sharp. Terrible lances of plasma shot ahead, tracked through the bridge's sensors and viewscreens. Too far away to see with the eye, the slug ships arrayed against them were still displayed by targeting systems and coordinated battle data.
Gloria was struck with pride as she saw what had become of the second-largest Hutt ship. It was a ship no longer, left as a steadily spreading field of debris instead.
Her baby boy had shattered it over his void-iron knee. That's her mijo! Putting the fear of Gonk into the sluggin' Hutts!
Still, five slug ships remained. They maintained a loose but effective formation, with small swarms of fighter craft flying around and between them. But the Gonk First Wave had taken a significant bite out of those swarms and was even swinging back around for a second pass now that their reinforcements had arrived.
Set against the approaching Gonk Fleet, the capital ships were comparatively massive; monoliths of the void. Fat and formidable sluggish ships that resembled their Hutt masters.
Even the smallest three were more than twice the size of her Marauder, at 500 meters long, and likely three or more times their tonnage. They packed on armor and shields to live up to sluggin' durability, and enough iron to steadily zero almost any bigger ship as it tried to break through their thick hides.
In a duel, the Maruader would fall to the slug ships, even with all its advantages in speed. But the Gonks weren't… well, actual gonks. They never intended to duel. Their lacking capital-class void-iron was barely meant to scratch the lumbering slug ships.
No, they were there to give the Hutt fleet something to focus on. Their portion of the battle plan was simple: get the slugs' attention, keep it, and stay just out of reach of their actual iron. Tanking with speed, not armor. The biggest ships in the Gonk Fleet were the distractions, the bait too potentially valuable for the slugs to pass up.
Meanwhile, the squadrons around them would do the real work on the slug ships. It was a strange thing to have both quality and quantity on their side. But that was indeed the composition the Gonk Fleet boasted. They had preem pilots and plenty of them. So the capital ships would pull fire, and the smaller, 'insignificant' fighters, bombers, and personal ships would do the damage.
David had declared that every slug ship in orbit would be made into scrap. He'd taken out one himself. That left five for the rest of the fleet, and Gloria wasn't about to disappoint her hardworking baby boy by not doing her part. He said they'd be scrap. She would make it so. Her mijo wasn't going to fail here, not on her watch.
The plan was holding up so far. Their steady turbolaser fire had gotten the slugs' attention, and return fire was coming their way. Thanks to the deepdive netrunners running their sensor warfare, though, that return fire was the very definition of 'spotty'.
Some sluggin' turbolaser bolts flew way off course under glitching targeting systems. And others had their flight paths plotted before they even fired, and that data was fed directly into Matriarch's systems, so Gloria's crew barely had to try to stay ahead of them.
The Hutts were blind, and the Gonks were working with all the detes they could ask for. Netrunners were an unfair advantage, especially when fighting relied so heavily on sensors and systems. Even after the first few volleys of return fire, Matriarch's shields remained untouched, as did the other capital-class shields that were keeping the slugs distracted.
To make sure the slugs were focused where they should be, the two Marauders and Corellian Gunship flew straight at them for a while. Long enough to exchange fire both ways and present the illusion of a 'proper duel'. Then, they suddenly split, still untouched.
Panam's Gunship went up and over. Linth's Marauder swooped down and around to one side, and Gloria's Matriarch swooped down and around on the other. Their assigned squadrons stuck with them until the capitals passed by the slug ship formation at speed. Sluggin' turbolasers tried and failed to follow their course, only focusing on the bigger ships, until suddenly, they found themselves with 200-odd small craft coming at them from three angles.
The Gonk First Wave was already back in the thick of things, dueling the Hutt fighter swarms. Now, they were joined by a second wave of preem Gonk pilots. The Hutt fighters couldn't afford to pull away from their duels. Those who tried went up in flame and plasma fire from the First Wave that already had their comm numbers.
And so, the second wave of Gonk small craft swept straight past the defensive swarms. They raced toward the slug ships with torpedoes and missiles at the ready. Like the Gonk First Wave, Nimbuses, Headhunters, and Oni Gunships carved the course. Tengus, CloakShapes, and up-ironed personal ships followed up with blinding barrages of proton-scattering energy warheads.
Slug shields were made visible, just to inevitably fail under the sheer weight of coordinated and guided explosive ordinance. Watching the devastation as she streaked around through the void, Matriarch's bridge went up in a victorious cheer. So much energy was released in so many blooming instants that her sensors flickered. When they came back, the results of a thousand-plus void warheads were clear to see.
Not a single shield in the Hutt fleet outlasted the storm. From the smaller slug ships to the flagship, all fell. And when they did, dozens of torpedoes and missiles found their targets, falling upon the ships like a flatlining flood.
The three smaller slug ships were completely ravaged. Each was listing in space with burning scars in their armor, destroyed engines, and breached hulls. Whole sections of each ship's superstructure were simply missing, vaporized in overwhelming nuclear violence. From armored skin to durasteel skeleton, the ships lookedlike they'd been put through an industrial shredder or chewed up in an eviscerating instant like an Edgerunner chunkin' a SCOP burrito before a gig.
The newly appointed second-largest ship in the Hutt fleet, at 600 meters, didn't last long in that position. It was a prize that a whole lotta Gonk pilots seemed to be after, what with David shattering the initial second-largest in the void.
In those blinding instants of warheaded fury, the prize had been snapped straight in half, cored through by what had to be hundreds of proton torpedoes, even after the shields fell. The break where both halves had intersected was still glowing a bloody pink as it drifted apart, zeroed for sure.
The flagship ended up the best off, just due to sheer size and sluggin' stubbornness. Its shields fell, but little more damage was done than the bite that'd already been taken out of it during its retreat from Nar Shaddaa. That was mostly to plan, though, 'cause Gloria knew Atom and the other Mektons had claimed boarding privileges for the flagship.
Already, a specific squadron was scrambling to take advantage of the flagship's downed shields. The ships there had all be refitted to carry the Mektons and launch them instead of any missiles or torpedoes. Gloria had a feeling that those unique 'warheads' would find a way to be even more effective than the traditional kind, though…
IIIII
— Atom —
I braced against sudden acceleration as my Mekton steel was launched from its makeshift void-carrier. A YT-series had been chosen for the role — a 1930 with character leaking out of its engines and a supposed history as a blockade runner.
We had YT-series all around, actually, for every Mekton that needed carrying. They were some of the most beloved ships in the galaxy for a reason, and that reason was the sheer versatility and modability that came practically baked into the whole line of ships by Corellian Engineering Corp. They were cheap, they were hardy, they were loved by smugglers and spacers and civies alike. They could even be retrofitted to any role short of a cruiser, and were designed that way by CEC. That glorious corp wanted you to play with their ships, this line of them, at least, and so, the many and varied models of the YT-series were a mainstay of the Gonk Fleet.
As Mekton carriers, they'd been fitted with external hardpoints on the belly that the steel could be attached to. Furthermore, our steel had been given temporary boosters that would allow us to fire ourselves from the carriers like boarding torpedoes. We'd be coming in hot and heavy at speed, and physically cutting our way through our target's hull.
Unfortunately, steel had its limits, especially within the confines of a starship. Our netrunners had sliced their ways into the ships' schematics and given us what were essentially mini-maps to work with. So while we knew the slug ships had more spacious corridors and the like — a given with the Hutt tendency for grandstanding in everything they did — that only went so far.
Our steel would see the most use on the initial breach, in the hangars and cargo holds and bigger main thoroughfares of the slug ships. But, other than Smasher and Shaitan, we were prepared to dismount and get up close and personal with the rest of the boarding work. Our 'poor' full borgs would be stuck on overwatch for our insert and exit after that, while V, Isla, Sasha, Lucy, Becca, Podry, and I would get to have the real fun.
Smasher had, of course, been grumbling about that fact, "… COULD CARVE MY WAY THROUGH ANYTHING IN THIS STEEL, BUT THE MEAT-CLONE'S MAKIN' ME SIT PRETTY ON GUARD DUTY. BANTHA-SHIT, BOY! JUST WATCH ME BREAK MY WAY STRAIGHT TO A SLUG THAT NEEDS MURDERING!"
He was still grumbling over our comms, in fact, even as we launched from our carriers. I smirked at his discontent from the safety of my steel.
"The sacrifices you make for your metal, old bastard. Sucks to suck, unless you're willing to give up your steel for a more pathetic frame…"
"… FAT FRAGGIN' CHANCE. I WON'T BE QUICK TO GO BACK TO CHROME AFTER TASTING STEEL."
"Then suffer in silence and settle for watching our exfil."
The boosters were already burning to take us the rest of the way into the AO, firing at full throttle. We blasted through the black void, with only steel between us and its cold clutches. The Meks were environmentally sealed and had enough life support to keep us alive for a full day in the void. But other than that and external boosters, they certainly weren't meant to operate in the black, not with repulsorlifts failing away from a significant gravity well. In near-zero G, we were dangerous hunks of steel, but not mobile in any way that mattered.
"Decisions, decisions~…" Becca hummed over the comms. "Stick with steel and heavy iron? Or get in on the fun for myself?"
"Unlike the full borgs, you can't always stick to your steel, little choom," V chuckled.
"I know," Becca's nod was audible. "It's a damn shame, isn't it?"
"I'm not looking to go full metal just yet," Lucy deadpanned. "So it really isn't."
"YOUR LOSS, MEAT," Smasher rumbled.
"Our gain, actually," Sasha quipped back. "We get the benefits of steel and the benefits of flesh, big guy. Overwhelming firepower and overwhelming fuckpower!"
"HEH," Smasher snorted. "IF YOU THINK THIS STEEL DOESN'T HAVE FUCKPOWER, YOU'VE GOT ANOTHER THING COMING. I DIDN'T HAVE ANY PROBLEM FITTING IT WITH A MR. STUDD TO DO MY LEGENDARY COCK JUSTICE."
"… I can't even argue with that claim," Sasha admitted. "Considering Atom is your clone. Yeah, that's a Legendary cock, can't be denied."
"AH!" V frantically cut in. "Clear comms! None of that now! I don't want to think about Atom's cock and Smasher's cock in the same sentence!"
I rolled my eyes, "Just 'cause we share the same template doesn't mean we're the same person. My cock is mine. Smasher gave his up a long time ago, like the murder-obsessed gonk he is."
"IT WAS A TOUGH CHOICE, BUT YEAH," Smasher confirmed. "THE MEAT BELONGS TO THE MEAT-CLONE, NOW."
"… This is some crazy pre-op banter," Isla muttered, her comment still coming over the comms.
"You said it…" Podry agreed. "I'm just trying to block them out and focus on killing slugs. They ain't making it easy, though."
"You get used to the strangest of colleagues in our line of work," Shaitan shared a piece of his Legendary wisdom. "Once the violence starts, you might find yourself thankful for knowing unintuitively useful facts about the ones fighting beside you. They always seem to become relevant when you least expect it, and then, you'll be thankful for all of this pre-op banter."
"… When am I going to use the dynamics of cloning and cock claiming on a mission?" Podry asked incredulously.
"That's the thing. You never know," Shaitan chuckled.
"Right," I took pity on the former slave and V's right-hand woman. "We're T-minus 30 seconds out, and it'll be a hot LZ. Get your heads on straight, get your iron primed, and start clearing the space as soon as we land. I know we didn't take any of the Gauss rifles, but still, be careful about overpenetration. Hull breaches won't affect the steel, but most of us are going farther in on foot.
"We're not trying to take the ship alive, but I would like to keep living through this gig. Smasher, Shaitan, don't go sucking us out into space, neh? Once we secure the LZ, they'll have overwatch of our Meks and exfil. Everyone else is with me, and we're making for the bridge. Flatline anything that moves."
"WOULDN'T HAVE THAT PROBLEM IF YOU WERE ALL METAL," Smasher grumbled at the necessary limitations on his choice of firepower for this mission.
We couldn't arm the Meks as heavily as we usually might, what with working in a sealed starship. But considering we likely wouldn't be running into actual armor, we didn't really need that heavy of iron.
So the Meks were outfitted to destroy meat, not metal. Blasters were the name of the game since the slug ship's internal bulkheads would be rated for them. But as our primary steel support, Shaitan also had a sonic cannon to shakemeat apart, and Smasher had a mounted maser and a disruptor rifle to cook and disintegrate meat, respectively.
On the other end, us bulkhead-pounders were outfitted with all our usual infantry-scale kit and chrome. Blaster pistols and carbines, scatter-guns, vibroblades and melee chrome, and plenty of explosives in the form of frag grenades, breaching charges, and a few thermal detonators meant to be used most carefully. Personally, I had my RSKF-44 dual-barreled, heavy blaster pistol and beskar spear to work with.
I was the least armed of our bulkhead-pounding breachers, but then, I didn't need anything more. If I couldn't blast it, I'd stab it, and if I couldn't stab it, I'd double-barreled blast it into oblivion. And all of my lethality was, of course, boosted to hell and back by the Force.
At our direction, the external boosters for our Mektons gave their final approaching adjustments, their fuel tanks still about half full for when we inevitably had to bug out with all haste. Then, the courses of the most terrifying breaching pods the galaxy had ever seen were set. We aimed for the flagship's hangar on its undamaged side, opposite to where my Mek's proton torpedoes had taken a bite out of it on Nar Shaddaa.
The hangar's atmospheric shielding glimmered in front of us like a curtain call to the battle of void violence. We were there for the encore. It would be bloody. It would be brutal. It would be the beatdown to punctuate David's success in the void. I couldn't let him have all of the fun, though. The flagship wouldn't just fall to void-iron, but actual Gonk hands, as well.
Artificial gravity caught us as we blasted into the hangar, but not enough to defeat the inertia we already had. We landed at full speed, full force, repulsorlifts flaring on at the last moment to catch us. Already, steel was moving, and iron was raised.
"A greeting party. How kind," I said, grinning to myself.
Hutt Marines had set up a defensive position where the hangar led into the rest of the ship. They had blaster cannons and heavy repeaters waiting for us, and about a 50-strong platoon manning them. It wasn't nearly enough. Not when our breaching pods stood on two feet like the hangar was now hosting starfighters of the walking variety and began to pour fire down range before the defenders could even panic.
Mek-scale blasters barked man-sized bolts. They fell upon the defenders like a lethal hailstorm, ravaging their ranks. Flesh vaporized. Blood boiled into steam. Our graciously arranged greeting party was completely zeroed in seconds.
An unlucky Nikto ceased to be as he took a Mek-scale blaster bolt to the chest.
A gang of Klatooinians cooked as Smasher swept forward and issued murderin' microwave-frequency energy from his mounted maser.
Another marine, a Sakiyan, found his meat shattering like glass as Shaitan's sonic cannon focused on him.
The line of defensive iron was blasted to bits as Becca rushed in with her Mek-scaled scattergun, her steel shrugging off every attempt at return fire.
These Hutt Marines were some of the more organized, competent, and uniform Hutt forces I'd seen, a product of being part of the most official branch of Hutt military might in their navy. None of that organization or competence or uniform armor saved them from overwhelming steel firepower.
"Clear!" Isla called when the last of the defenders were left as stains on the hangar floor, corpo professional as ever. "V, sir, I'll cover you as you dismount. We'll take it in turns, just to be sure."
The cockpit of V's Proto steel cracked open with a hiss, and she slid out with deadly grace. Her kit was grabbed up from an internal panel, and she had a Shingen blaster carbine in her hands before the smoke could finish settling. A Kenshin Tech blaster pistol and a belt of vibro throwing knives followed, while her thermal monowire chrome and quick-hack abilities were always with her. All Arasaka branded, but I expected nothing less from the lethal corpo brat.
Isla dismounted next, with a similar loadout, minus the knives and exchanging V's Shingen for a Masamune blaster rifle. Then, out came Podry, with an A280 blaster rifle across his chest, wrist-mounted personal shield, and arm-length vibroblade, as he was most wickedly comfortable with the sword and board set-up from his life in the fighting pits.
Sasha and Lucy came out with A-180 modular blasters in hand in their pistol configurations, but I knew their real weapons were in chrome: netrunning cyberdecks, cyberkitty claws for Sasha, and monowire for Lucy.
Becca hopped out of her steel with an eagerness that couldn't be mistaken for lethal grace, but was just as deadly. She had her oversized Carnage scattergun — 'Guts' — in her hands and a pair of Omaha compact blaster pistols on each hip, unfortunately having to leave her HMG iron behind. Still had more than enough firepower to tear a pack of Trandoshans apart, and I didn't envy the slugsuckers who would die to her pink-and-green.
I came out last but quickly took up the lead as we set ourselves up to storm the rest of the ship. Smasher and Shaitan would be stuck in the hangar, welded into their steel frames. Alarms began to blare across the ship as we took our first steps across the hangar's threshold. Along with a voice over the ship-wide intercom, groaty and gargling and gratuitous, so quintessentially 'Hutt' that it made me shudder in disgust.
"You've come into my den, little worms. The home of the Huttest Hutt! Do not expect to escape alive. I will find you. I will devour you alive! You are nothing more than fuel and sustenance for my glorious slimy bulk!"
With the voice came a revolting weight over the whole ship. Like every one of us was buried under a whole hive of terrible, squirming things…
Instinctively, I pushed back hard. The Force flared around our crew, giving us just enough room to breathe freely. But we were firmly within the Hutt's domain. The corrupt, infesting weight in the Force remained, only pushed back by constant effort on my part. I wasn't eager to test the age-old wisdom of never fucking with a mage in his workshop, but it certainly seemed like that was the only option we had on hand.
"Goren, I presume," Lucy muttered, shuddering viscerally and not alone in that reaction.
"Fucking slugs and their fucking drugs… Careful now," I swore and cautioned. "Dooku warned us about him. So stocked up on kyber-spice that he's practically bloated his way to some unnatural ascension. He's an outlier, but a dangerous one. Even that former Jedi Master guest of ours opted to retreat rather than face him outright and unprepared…"
We stormed through the ship carefully but quickly, zeroing any resistance that popped up as soon as it appeared. Our iron blasted heads clean off shoulders and cauterized holes into torso after torso. Unlike the greeting party in the hangar, none of the defenders were truly organized. Just running around with the alarms blaring above, often straight into our flatlining advance.
"You know, from what detes we have, he makes a rather effective mirror for the Hutts as a whole," V casually mused as we moved. "Bloated, inefficient, infested with corruption, too big to fail or die, practically a crime against nature. He could very well be the Huttest Hutt, just like he claims."
"If he's as big as the Jedi old timer reported, I'll need a whole lotta scattergun ammo to shred his ass," Becca grinned, eager for the challenge.
"Or we just crash the ship into the planet below and get the fuck out," Sasha suggested. "Even the fattest fragging slug can't survive that, right? … Right…?"
… Probably not, but I kept my thoughts to myself, not wanting to jinx it any further. The Force, even the infested, bloated, drug-driven Force, worked in mysterious ways. I didn't want to tempt it aloud.
Our trek through the ship was marred by panicked and preoccupied enemies more than any actual resistance. The Hutt crew was in disarray, largely running around like chickens without their heads. More than a few didn't even notice our party until they were blasted full of bolts. Others tried to fight back, but barely got their weapons out of their holsters.
The Force-damned weight over the whole ship didn't help things there. It activated a certain primal instinct in every life it touched. A fear of death, of rot, and of being savaged by decay until you were unrecognizable. The inevitability projected into the Force was a terrible thing. It wasn't 'predator and prey', not directly, nor 'fight or flight'. No, it was a creeping weight that tried to settle in your very bones, something that tried oh-so-hard to get you to accept/give in/break in its not-at-all gentle embrace.
Straining, I kept it off our crew. My Spite Side was useful when telling the 'inevitable' where to shove itself. But such was the weight that I was still constantly aware of it, constantly pushing it back. It was pervasive, everywhere in this sluggin' domain, like Force-gravitational masses of Goren's unnatural presence were spread through the very bulkheads, pulling deeper everywhere we went. And it didn't like taking 'No, fuck off' for an answer.
We found a Hutt crewman huddled in on himself in a corner, frozen by the death pressing down on him. In the Force, his mind wasn't even there anymore. It was broken, not by eager acceptance, but by a sentient will overwhelmed. Pulverised by oppressive rotting weight.
I put the poor soul out of his misery with a stab of my spear through his heart. He didn't — couldn't — resist at all. But with his death, a touch of untainted Force crept into the infested domain of the flagship through the crack my spiteful straining made.
That death helped clear the 'air', a fresh breeze of untainted Force in an otherwise closed-off domain. For precious moments, I felt like I could breathe again. Then, all of the lights on the ship cut out, and the blaring klaxons went silent. Power remained, shown in the eerie flashing of the alarm lights without sound, but all of us recognized a stage being set when we saw it.
"Oh…" Sasha exhaled tensely. "Fuck that. Fuck all of that. We should get moving double time, Atom. I'd say bug out completely, but…"
I shook my head, "We'll see this gig through. I'm not about to leave David's victory a bitter one. Fuck the bridge, though. Get us to the engine room. You and Lucy will slice in directly there and send this slug ship tumbling into atmo. Then, we'll exfil and leave the flagship's fate to gravity, reentry, and the planetary shield."
"And if the 'Huttest Hutt' survives?" V asked.
"We'll zero that bridge when we get to it," I said. "I'm holding out hope, but also prepared to accept the worst outcome for a later day."
"I'm on board with this plan," Podry spoke up in support, visibly shuddering. "Everything here feels… wrong. Just wrong. Mighty Leia's stars can't watch over me in this damned ship… They're… clouded. It's turning my stomach something fierce."
"Keep your heads on a swivel," Isla advised. "The lights were cut for a reason."
"Just watch a slug try and sneak up on me and Guts!" Becca exclaimed, holding the oversized scattergun in her hands.
The new darkness in the ship, broken up by haunting flashes that left a red tint over everything, was more creepy than disabling. We still found our way easily, the crew's chrome and my Upgrade letting us see, and the Force guiding my sense of direction. I would've rather operated in any otherAO, though.
A thousand sets of unseeing, unborn, insectoid eyes peered at us from every angle. A thousand spiny legs skittered around us, through the bulkheads, shadows, and the very air at the edges of our senses. A thousand chitonous shells rubbed this way and that, creating ghostly music like the galaxy's smallest and creepy-crawliest violins.
We kept ourselves not just vigilant, but on edge. Our boarding action had suddenly become a horror movie. A kyber-spice driven horror movie… Slimy slithering noises awaited us around every corner, but when we rounded them, only a coating of Hutt goo could be found.
The unnatural weight in the Force grew heavier and heavier on my senses now that we were being stalked. Keeping it at bay had me tense like nothing else, pure Spite shouting back against the rotting Inevitable. Still, I led the way, blaster drawn and spear in tail (which itself was lashing to and fro like a hissing cat).
The engine room called out to me, driven into my mind by the scant threads of untainted Force I'd invited into the sluggin' domain. But even as it called, it barely felt like we were getting any closer. All the while, unborn Force ghosts haunted our passing, and a hidden Hutt did his best to remind us why his species were once apex predators.
The Inevitable ambush came suddenly. My only warning was an instant of quieted skittering and screeching insect music. I threw myself backward, pushing the crew back with me. A seething, moiling mass lunged forth from the shadows, moving quicker than anything its size had any right to.
It was pitch-black — hide like the void — and marred with rotting green cracks that seemed to glow from within. The biggest slug I'd ever fucking seen lurched with unnatural, inevitable grace. It matched any one of our Meks in size, and likely didn't fall far short in sheer bloated mass, either.
Goren the Huttest Hutt lunged to crush. He smashed, crashed, and trashed his way through the space that the crew and I just occupied. Bulkheads gave under his weight, further enhanced by the tainted Force about him.
I snapped off a shot with my heavy blaster pistol. Two barrels of plasma fury barely scratched his hide, seeming to just fizzle out where they struck. V, Isla, and Becca were just as quick… and just as ineffective against Force-stained hide. Only Becca's oversized scattergun drew a hint of blood, flecks of sickening, rotting green that splattered the crushed floor.
Then, just as quickly as he'd lunged, he was gone. Shifting back into the shadows in a way that nothing like him should've been able to do.
A gurgling growl came from all around us, "Little worms… Little, little worms… This is not your space, not your domain. You are prey, and you will die and rot here just like all the rest… I have reached the pinnacle of my blessed species and am pushing farther beyond still. You cannot hope to hurt me in any way that matters."
"Don't acknowledge him," I said. "Just keep moving. We'll see if he keeps that same energy when gravity comes calling to collect."
We picked up our already quick pace through the shadowed halls. I kept near-solid tendrils of Force Telekinesis extended in every direction as an early warning. That terrible mass barged through one, and I redirected the rest in that direction, forming a wall of Force that pushed back his second rolling, lurching lunge.
"You-hrk! You will rot! You will fester! And I will ferment your corpses into more kyber-spice to fuel my ASCENSION!" Goren choked and coughed on his own roar.
A third time, he came at us from the shadows, attacking the back of the party while I was at the front. Podry was ready. He met the charge with sword and board, like a flashback to when I met him. Then, he'd held his own against an enraged rancor with a scrap shield and a rusted blade. Now, he repeated his feat with a wrist-mounted personal shield and a shiny new vibroblade.
His chrome arm shook as so much mass pressed down on it and its shield. Podry stood strong. His feet left dented imprints in the metal below. A spirit of stars seemed to stare over his shoulder, blessing and standing with him. His shiny new sword flashed bloody in the eerie red-tinted lighting and bit into one of the rotting green cracks in Goren's mass.
V and Isla reacted, too. V lashed out with a whipping strike of thermal monowire, burning instant scars into Force-tainted hide. Isla snapped her aim on target and held down the trigger of her blaster rifle until it temporarily overheated. 30-some blaster bolts poured into the same spot with a professionally tight grouping, boring a hole that penetrated the pitch-black skin by a few good inches. The hole glowed with leftover heat until the cauterization there broke and the wound began to ooze rot-sickgreen.
With a startled squick from the bottom of his throat, Goren retreated after being made to bleed. We continued our breakneck pace toward the engine room, and he only lingered on the edge of my senses the rest of the way. The 'Huttest Hutt' was, logically, the most cowardly Hutt, too. If he claimed to be the pinnacle of their species, he enhanced their flaws with their boons, and I tucked that information away in my mind in case I needed it later.
"We only need a moment," Sasha called as we entered the engine room.
"I'll set the course, you override the manual controls?" Lucy asked.
Sasha nodded, "And fire off all of the escape pods just to be sure."
The ship's crewmen who'd chosen to hide there were flatlined with brutal, professional efficiency — a dozen headshots issued by me, V, Isla, and Becca before they could even react. Then, we took up positions around the chokepoint into the engine room and let Sasha and Lucy get to work.
Goren was still lurking, lurking, lurking out there. I could feel him seething and licking his wounds. A few choice blaster bolts into the darkness beyond the doorway kept him honest. He didn't seem eager to test us again and bleed for it.
As heavy as his presence was in the tainted Force, I could still discern a few bits of proverbial paydata. He felt willing to… bide his time — another enhanced Hutt trait, the long-life-spanned freedom to wait as long as they needed for their victories — and even test his luck against gravity — yet another, classic Hutt arrogance against what everyone else would consider the natural order.
The latter might not have been undeserved or fatal, though. I could sense his confidence, his utter certainty in surviving the fall to Nal Hutta. And a sinking feeling in the Force told me he was right.
The issue was that I didn't think we could make him wrong here and now. I didn't want to test the odds against him without much more preparation and overwhelming odds on my part. If I was alone, that might've been different. But with the others present, and all of us dangerously squishy right now with our steel still in the hangar…
Begrudgingly, I decided it was best to retreat, regroup, and return with crushing force for the guaranteed flatline. For now, we'd have to settle for making his sluggin' ass a falling star. Maybe the Force would still shine upon me and use the chance to purge its infestation with reentry fire. But knowing my luck, this rotting mass of taint would be waiting for us when we came to take Nal Hutta itself.
Quick as Sasha said, the flagship's systems were sliced and its course was set to burn into atmo. Warily but rapidly, we began to pull back to the hangar and our exfil. The unguaranteed flatline, the thorn left in my ass for later, stung, but…
"Fine," I muttered darkly to myself. "Buy yourself a week. I'll come for your sluggin' ass with a dozen Meks, two Jedi Knights, and Master Fucking Fay. Next time, I'm calling your flatline from my chest, Hutt…"
A chittering, gurgling, goading chuckle seemed to answer me from the shadows all around. My mood was all but ruined when we made it back to the hangar, suspiciously unharrassed. But I wasn't about to ruin David's victory, too.
We suited back up in steel and boosted out of the now-tumbling ship. A scattering of empty escape pod signatures lit up our sensors, but the zero-set flagship — and all its doomed and perhaps not so doomed crew — was visible with the naked eye. We watched it fall.
It slid against Nal Hutta's planetary shield, and the shield became visible where they came into contact. But the flagship was still going slow enough to sneak through with damage rather than being deflected entirely. As it slowly slid through the shield line, its insides were almost certainly ravaged and torn apart by an energy field meant to turn away turbolaser fire. Then, gravity took its destruction further, and the burning reentry further still.
A falling star over Nal Hutta heralded Gonk victory in the void. Something to celebrate, still a victory, still a statement that couldn't be denied. The void was ours. But I knew — I just knew — that the rot-slug would find a way to survive, and that there'd be another fight waiting for us on the surface…
IIIII
[AN: SO! This chapter ended up a lot longer than I was expecting. And the ending might not be as satisfying as some would like. But even if I've seen some exasperation with the 'kyber-spice' issue being dragged out in this story, I still like it and think it's worth exploring. Especially, as V says in this chapter, when a kyber-spiced-up Hutt makes for such a good thematic mirror into Hutt society as a whole.
That said, I will probably move on to other plot points and antagonists after a final fight on Nal Hutta. By that point, I think the thematic mirror of Goren will have run out its usefulness, and I won't have it potentially overstay its welcome any more than that. After Nal Hutta, Atom can focus more on empire-building/conquest than smacking down individual Hutts. And, of course, there's also the Clone Wars to get into, which I'll be throwing off the canon rails before it even starts lol.
So yeah, after Nal Hutta, we really don't need a monolithic, if thematic, villain like Goren, and I'm hoping to get more into shades of gray ("In Star Wars?" I know, I know) than just railing against "unnatural Force taint!". Shades of gray in political and other 'Gonk-state' level plot points, I mean, 'cause slavery is always open to crusade against.
Up next will be a few chapters of the Gonk-Hutt war going somewhat cold to consolidate and give time for outside parties to visit. Dignitaries from the Republic, for certain (Padme, Bail Organa, Obi-Wan, and Ani), but maybe some Separatist dignitaries as well, led by Dooku or acting in his name. The Gonks are attracting a lot of outside attention now, after all, having taken Nar Shaddaa and secured themselves against Nal Hutta for the most part. And soon, they'll be expanding even more… "Setting up a Gonk-pire isn't easy, chooms, but nothing worth doing ever is" ;]