— Atom —
I went to meet the Freed and their special visitor all on my lonesome. It was honestly a rare occurrence for me these days. I'd started my life in this galaxy alone, scrounging through the dark of the undercity. Every moment had been one of solo survival. It'd been me and me alone against the fresh horrors and hardships I'd been cast into.
Then, I'd saved Sasha, met the rest of the crew, and the rest was history. I hadn't been truly by myself since. In Night City, chooms stuck close. Living was short, hectic, and dangerous; it was best to spend every moment like it mattered, 'cause it often did, and it was even better to have chooms watching your back, so you could keep having moments that mattered.
And once I'd committed to changing the game, alone time was even harder to come by. There was always something else to be done; another fight, another gig, another task to delegate. I couldn't possibly do it all myself. So I was thankful for the 'good help' I'd surrounded myself with — competent people all, and now, even more so with the shared Upgrades. The Cartel's running, our overall efficiency, would likely increase by leaps and bounds after today, especially if Sstala had anything to say about it.
For now, though, my Core Crew and Core Gonks were occupied with unwinding and adjusting. I left them in Nova's eager, playful hands, catching a speeder on my own to the meeting I'd been invited to.
The Freed were as happy to see me as ever when I arrived at their main HQ. It was a sprawling complex just past the Night City Limits. Dozens of interconnected, surface-side buildings. They didn't go all the way down. They didn't need to.
The Freed had taken their rightful place at the top of the moon, deserved and long-overdue after so long in chains.
The Freed were the second biggest organization on Free Nar Shaddaa, far surpassing any of the corps in raw numbers at least. They claimed every freed slave on the moon — tens of billions of unchained souls. Even if there weren't nearly that many working members day-to-day, the Freed still boasted manpower numbers in the hundreds of millions. Easily.
They turned that most valuable resource, along with all the funding I could throw at them, toward good, essential works for their siblings and the rest of Free Nar Shaddaa in Mighty Leia's name. Charity, healthcare, rehabilitation, infrastructure development, insurance, sponsored opportunity, and the simple certainty of community; the Freed had quickly become the outreach, support, and service arm of Gonk rule over Free Nar Shaddaa. Something never before seen in this anarcho-feudalist environment of Hutt Space.
The Hutts certainly hadn't been providing services for those they trod upon. Now, freed from their selfish tyranny, that wasn't the way things were being run anymore. A man could still look out for himself, forge his own way through Lawless Space. But now, nets were forming to catch the billions of unfortunate souls who slipped through the cracks. And the work of forming those nets had been taken up by the Freed.
If the Gonk Cartel carried the hard factors — military might, economic drivers, consolidated control —, the Freed carried the soft factors for the moon. They were the ones who made the actual governance of Free Nar Shaddaa possible, backed by Gonk guarantee. They served the people so the Cartel could look toward the overarching aspects. The Gonk Cartel might've secured the core of Free Nar Shaddaa, protecting, establishing, and controlling it, but the Freed gave that core the legs it needed to walk and run.
In all, the Freed were just as essential to the state of Free Nar Shaddaa as the Cartel was. If I had to assign Gonks to every service the Freed did for the moon, I'd see internal riots. Their work was essential, but far from glorious. The Freed didn't need it to be, though. Not when they were perfectly content helping people, especially their siblings, in Mighty Leia's name.
They found their purpose in service and support, the social side of governing. Without them, Free Nar Shaddaa would fall apart, or sink back into the anarcho-feudalism of the Hutts. That was a system that hadn't worked for millennia. But despite serving the Hutts and only the Hutts, it'd left its mark on the rest of the Smuggler's Moon, the rest of Hutt Space as a whole.
This was Lawless Space. And there was a strange sort of pride in that. The Hutts wouldn't accept any limitations on their 'noble' persons, and some of that culture had trickled down.
The people here didn't know whatthefuck a law was. The word was meaningless in Lawless Space. And for now, other than Mighty Leia's Laws, I wasn't about to interrupt that way of things, the only way Hutt Space had ever known.
Instead of handing down fundamentally alien laws, our new state here focused on softer, supporting governance with an absolute spine of promised stability; the Freed saw to the people and their support while the Cartel asserted our control to keep things certain, secure, and familiar.
The unity of Gonk consolidated control acted as a platform to begin affecting change. Nar Shaddaa (now Free) understood hierarchies and control. If they could clearly see the one above them, they were satisfied. Something like democracy, here, would've fallen flat on its fucking face. But if we, with our absolute control of the majority of the moon, began laying the groundwork for supporting systems, for governing service…? Well, that was just those in control doing what they liked. The people of Hutt Space understood that much well.
It was a confusing tightrope we had to walk, here in the earliest stages of our Gonk state. The people were used to freedom and agency — to an extent, at least — via Hutt apathy. But they were also used to having lords above them, guaranteeing stability with absolute control.
What they absolutely weren't used to were functional, beneficial, unified, and representative states of governance. They weren't used to laws or having a say in the bigger picture; they weren't used to mattering. Even with all the change my Gonk movement had inspired, some supposed 'truths' were hard to break.
'The lords do as lords do; the fodder just tries to survive.'
That wasn't the vision I had in mind for Free Nar Shaddaa. Fuck anarcho-feudal-capitalism. Not only did it just not work as a system of actual governance, it also left too many people behind for my tastes. And on a moon like Free Nar Shaddaa, that meant billions were failed. Billions were left unable to live.
So the Freed served those untold billions, and more beyond, while the Gonk Cartel and movement guaranteed them the authority and ability to do so with our majority control of the moon.
Start with service, start with support, start with solving problems people never thought would be solved. Start with helping people, and build the rest of our newfound state from there.
Walking into the Freed complex was walking into the base of potential. The potential that no one else would be left behind, left to rot, only able to die before the harsh living of the Smuggler's Moon. From here, it would only grow, more official, more coherent, more welcomed. Eventually, the Freed would serve all who needed it most.
Until then, the organization was one of growing, hopeful chaos. Constantly busy with one service or another. A rehabilitation center for now-Freed slaves. Charities that fed the deepest, most desperate dwellers of the undercity. Services that reunited loved ones thought lost. Opportunities and sponsors for those who dreamed of making their own way. Healthcare for Free Nar Shaddaa's endless population of sex workers. And more and more, the Freed made themselves inseparable from Free Nar Shaddaa.
I was met on arrival by a Freed Twi'lek man. I could sense fervor for Mighty Leia burning in his heart. One of the truest Freed believers. For some, Mighty Leia was culture. For others, she was religion.
That true believer led me through the good work being done until we came to an unorthodox shrine. It was no grand church with rising arches and stained glass windows, but it was a temple nonetheless.
The room was utterly undecorated aside from a single centerpiece. A fire burned low in a braiser designed to look like any other barrel you might find in the most desperate spaces. It was purposefully simple. A reminder of late-night fires that slaves would gather around, the only warmth the masters would allow them to hold dear.
There, I met the Freed leader who'd messaged me. He was a massive Wookiee man, and I was only familiar with him in passing. All fur and muscle, he cut an imposing figure. But I knew he wasn't a fighter; he was a spiritual man, instead, devoted entirely to Mighty Leia. The leader of those Freed who saw her as a religion.
A Human woman stood beside the fire with him, reverently stoking the flames. Immediately, I could see that there was a kinship and understanding between them. Brother and sister, despite their physical differences.
I could see the resemblance between the woman and Ani. She had Ani's intensely blue eyes, or rather, Ani had hers. But where Ani's eyes were intense with energy and potential, Shmi's eyes were intense with such warmth, care, and compassion that I almost missed a step when she turned them to me.
Shmi Skywalker was an older woman, but far from ancient or unfit. 40, at most. She wore the years well. Tanned, healthy skin that seemed to glow in the temple's low firelight. Brown hair that likely turned a sandy blonde with enough sun. She was draped in pure white wraps of hand-spun linen, not silk, looking for everything like the 'High Priestess' that the message had claimed her to be.
"Halkal," I greeted the Freed Wookiee with a nod. "Mrs. Skywalker. I'm afraid you just missed your daughter, if you were looking for her."
"I'm aware," Shmi smiled softly. "She wasn't the reason I came, though it would've been nice to see her again before she found herself consumed by this war. Thank you for looking after her and Obi-Wan, by the way. And call me Shmi. From Mighty Leia's Champion, I won't accept anything less familiar than that."
"As is only right, Champion."
Halkal's massive clawed fingers flew across a personal device. His 'voice' followed, synthesized straight from the device. As I understood it, his growling, roaring vocal cords had been ripped out by a master at some point during his time in chains. They'd taken offense to his species's noble language, and now, Halkal could only speak through the device.
It didn't make him any less articulate. Perhaps the opposite, even. He'd adapted and persisted. Now, even through the device, his voice and words could capture a room.
"Alright, what's this all about?" I asked.
"Sister Shmi has come to this womb of freedom we've created," Halkal said. "She has ventured wide and far, from destitute sands to a city-world choked by unacknowledged chains, and now, here she arrives. There is purpose to her pilgrimage, Champion. I would ask that you hear her out."
I grunted in acknowledgement, "I'm here, aren't I?"
Shmi smiled at me, "You are 'here' in more ways than you realize, Atom. Standing up for our siblings, leading them to a new tomorrow. Already, you have done so much for our Starry Sister. Yet, I must apologize on her behalf. Still, she asks for more."
"And why are you the one speaking for her?" I raised a brow at Shmi, not disrespectful, but certainly curious.
Shmi seemed equally baffled and awed, "I don't know, to be honest. I am her sister, of course, but only one of countless chained. There… should be nothing in particular that's special about me. Yet… here I stand."
"Humility suits you well, Sister Shmi," Halkal said, his voice synthesizer chuckling. "You are favored by Mighty Leia. Touched. She holds all of us siblings dear, yet there are factors, I believe, that call for you to be more than just 'held'.
"You walk with her stars shining over your shoulder, with your own star shining brighter still. Your breaking chains were the first note in a symphony of the stars, soon to be heard by all. Skywalker, for you walk free through Mighty Leia's Sky. And where you do, you spread Mighty Leia's cosmic reach. You show our siblings how to rise from breaking chains and how to stand beyond them. You may not seek power and purpose, but Mighty Leia has seen fit to bestow them upon you regardless."
… Spite save me from Force-blessed spiritual leaders. Even with his synthesized voice, Halkal spoke with complete certainty. He knew more than his mortal mind ever could alone. There may have been something to his religious take on Mighty Leia — little surprise when she'd proven herself to be very real and very divine. Seeing such success as Free Nar Shaddaa and her Laws, she'd seemingly been emboldened — empowered, even — to act in more and more tangible ways.
I'd been expecting something like this to come about eventually, to be honest.
Mighty Leia had been gaining momentum since I first heard of her. That momentum had snowballed with my actions, my revolution. Every chained sibling freed was a star that rejoined her Sky. Now, on Free Nar Shaddaa, the new heart of her power, it felt like she was close enough to touch.
Here, her presence was more real than could be easily described. She was ever-present in the shining stars of her siblings. And I had suspicions that she was doing more than any of us could see for ourselves.
The Force Goddess of Freedom was smoothing the transition, keeping her siblings alive, well, and free. She had to be. The institution of slavery was too big for even our revolutionary change to see such success alone. Mighty Leia was committed here. Watching, whispering, and participating.
Given I'd been the one to set all of this in motion, it was little surprise that I'd been dubbed her 'Champion'. But 'Champion' just meant I fought for her; essentially adopted to stand for chained siblings in her name. It didn't mean I spoke her words.
For that, she needed siblings favored in a different way. She needed priests and priestesses in addition to her 'Champions'. I doubted that she could make Force Sensitives. But if there was a scrap of sensitivity in them — which there was, in everyone — she could tint it in her shining colors. She could bless them and reach from the Force to the physical through them, those chosen conduits.
I'd seen that much firsthand, with Podry. By Jedi standards, he wasn't sensitive enough to get the Order's attention. By Mighty Leia's standards, he was kin. He was her brother, and she stood behind him every step of his journey, from chains to freedom.
These days, I looked at him and saw a paladin, as strong as any Knight.
Halkal… I was certain he'd been blessed by Mighty Leia. But blessed with divine words and wisdom, not with the strength to fight against the masters of the galaxy. Chains had taken his vocal cords. Mighty Leia gave him new words to speak.
Shmi, too, it seemed. Mighty Leia had always been a culture, a religion in chains. Now, with momentum on her side, she was making herself more, making herself known and seen and felt, not just held to in hope. She was willing and now able to get involved wherever her chained siblings' stars shone.
And Shmi, as the first star freed by her Laws beyond Free Nar Shaddaa, as Mother to the 'Chosen One', as a sister to Mighty Leia, all on her own, naturally found herself favored by that surging divinity.
"Purpose… Yes," Shmi nodded, resolved if not yet fully comfortable with that favor. "On Coruscant, I attempted to speak to many about Mighty Leia's good word. Any traction I found withered and waned by the time I next spoke. And when I left the world, I was struck… by a flash of what wouldn't be, not anymore."
She seemed hesitant to share her vision, which sounded like a natural Force ability — some kind of retro-precognition? — but she continued anyway, "I left. But if I had stayed, I would've accomplished nothing, no matter how hard I tried. I saw then that no change would come from the Core. I saw that Mighty Leia meant less than nothing to those so far removed from our shared chains. That path is averted now; it won't be, not anymore. And with its elimination, I realized the pilgrimage I needed to undertake."
"The womb of freedom here on Free Nar Shaddaa called to you," Halkal observed. "Understandable. We are favored heavily by our Starry Sister. She is with us all. I'm glad she guided you to join us, Sister Shmi."
"I'm not about to turn you and your… pilgrimage… away," I grunted. "But I'm still not getting why I'm here."
"Direction," Shmi replied. "I can… hardly describe it. But I feel direction, flowing through me and intended for you, Atom, as Mighty Leia's chief Champion. I… there is something I need to show you. But I don't know how."
"Sounds troublesome…" I muttered. "Fine. Let's see this 'direction'."
I reached out with the Force, capable of manipulating it in ways that Shmi and Halkal, for all their blessings from Mighty Leia, couldn't. A soft touch from something massive, something divine, caught my reach and guided it where it was needed. Twinkling starstuff flowed forth from the aether, carrying information — direction.
The direction fueled the low-burning braiser in the room, and a scene began to take shape in the flames with perfect, uncanny clarity.
Reality faded until only the fire and the scene of light and shadow it cast remained. The three of us focused on it and it alone. A vision in the flames. Lore in every flicker. Unspoken direction in every crackle and pop. We witnessed a flashback to another age.
Stars. Stars and Void and all the shapes of existence dancing throughout. It was a time before the lines between Force and physical had been drawn and defined. An age of demons and divinities, an age when heaven and hell blurred into a cosmic purgatory where good, ill, anything was possible.
While mortals had only just begun to walk the worlds of their birth, grand beings spread through the galaxy. Unbound by mortal limitations, they were Force-made-Flesh and Flesh-made-Force. They breathed power in all its awesome forms. Yet even these grand beings were young and flawed, far from perfect for all their great and terrible power.
Celestial might came easily to the beings. But wisdom still had to be won by living. Celestials sundered worlds and made them anew. They made mistakes. They got lucky. They played, squabbled, and changed the galaxy with their awesome might. They lived, shaping both Force and physical for everyone and everything that came after.
It was in this Celestial Age that Mighty Leia came to be. Born. Formed. Spawned straight into full being. Even she didn't know. Regardless, she was. And for a time, she joined those like her. Playing, exploring, learning, living. She had no purpose then; she didn't need one yet. But other Celestials were already beginning to… specialize…
Celestials discovered and took on concepts, backed by the Force. Some Light and holy, others Dark and damned. While the concepts came before the Celestials, inherent to reality and only needing to be discovered, the Celestials took them on and embodied them as domains. They began to distinguish themselves from each other, those beings of awesome Celestial might.
Mighty Leia was in no rush to join her fellows, content with staying playful, innocent, and exploring while she could. Another… was not. This Celestial was Mighty Leia's antithesis, even then. He found a taste for the cruel, the callous, the chaining of the galaxy, for he saw it all as rightfully beneath him. Such was the concept that Loathsome Malik took up.
Across the cosmos, he could be seen playing his cruel, callous games of chains. A whole species, barely risen from the primordial ooze, fell beneath his black iron might. And when he grew bored of them, they were abandoned, having never known anything but the chains Loathsome Malik cast upon them from the very beginning. That species, an avian race that could've been soaring the skies, went extinct in a decade.
And Loathsome Malik didn't limit his chaining games to just the rising mortals of the galaxy. He stole another Celestial's treasured pets, a nonsentient species of the most beautiful gemmed lizards, and made them into gilded collars for his other slaves. He turned another Celestial's creation — an artfully bio-engineered and terraformed planet where every piece of flora was one in purposeful beauty — into a hellscape of his own black iron chains. And to Mighty Leia, he did the worst.
Loathsome Malik was the reason Mighty Leia knew chains. He tricked her in her innocence — her simple, playful goodness — with a gift. A crowning circlet of gems and gold, its beauty hiding Loathsome Malik's chaining nature. When Mighty Leia put it on, the circlet fell from her brow to around her throat. The gold flaked away, revealing black iron. Only the gems remained, a trophy won from one of Loathsome Malik's earlier chaining conquests, and now, perfectly fit for an even greater victory for his chains.
For the first time, a Celestial knew the cold bite of Loathsome Malik's black iron. Mighty Leia learned the weight of chains. The other Celestials protested, having grown well tired of Loathsome Malik's nature. But none of their domains, concepts-made-mantles, directly contradicted his. None could break his chains upon Mighty Leia.
Loathsome Malik toyed with her. He put her Celestial might to work on his behalf. He made her service him with her Celestial beauty. He put all his terribly earned knowledge of chains toward making her the shining trophy of his greatest conquest: the chaining of a Celestial.
Eventually, as Loathsome Malik tended to do, he grew bored, even of the absolute power he held over one of his peers. He truly was a loathsome creature like that, never satisfied. Even his greatest trophy of chains, he cast aside.
Mighty Leia fell into the hands of mortals. She was a gift to loyal followers of Loathsome Malik, a species already firmly under his sway. The Rakata were some of the first mortal species to reach the stars, and when they went, raiding for flesh in Loathsome Malik's name, they dragged a Celestial in chains behind them.
There, at least, in mortal chains — even if they were unbreakably wrought by Loathsome Malik — Mighty Leia found a star-shining lining. She found siblings in the countless, countless mortals the Rakata enslaved like her.
And with those siblings, she began to share her stars until she could finally slip free from Loathsome Malik's chains.
Breaking her chains, Mighty Leia immediately rode for vengeance against the First Slaver. Strengthened by the stars she'd shared, by the worship and kinship of a trillion mortal souls, she sought her anathema enemy out in the void.
She found him near the edge of the galaxy. In a barren system, Loathsome Malik was chaining the very matter present to his cruel creative whims. He formed a world around himself. This act was nothing unusual for the Celestials, but Mighty Leia instinctively knew this world would be different. It would be Loathsome Malik's throne of chains, a torus encircling him from which his slavery would sweep across the galaxy.
By then, Mighty Leia had taken up her concept. She'd mounted the mantle of freedom, the concept coming to her as naturally as she breathed awesome power after her time in chains and her breaking of them. Yet, in a way, even that was forced upon her. Loathsome Malik's chains had stolen every choice Mighty Leia ever had.
In that barren system, being artificially chained to Loathsome Malik's will, Mighty Leia enacted her vengeance. She struck down the First Slaver. He was weak. Pathetic. Seeming strong only when he could stand over another with a chain in his hands.
He was cruel, he was callous, he lived for and by his chains; he was not — had never been — truly strong, not compared to Mighty Leia and all she'd suffered beneath him.
Loathsome Malik died completing his throne world. Mighty Leia made sure of it. There was no coming back from what Mighty Leia did to him, not even with all the most twisted power of the Dark Side or the most serene power of the Light. He would never rise again, forever a corpse at the center of a throne world never used.
But for a Celestial, even a corpse was a thing of awesome power, of Celestial might. He breathed no longer. But dead gods still dreamed. Dreaming in death, Loathsome Malik's corpse remained.
Time passed, the galaxy revolved, and the age changed. Mighty Leia's peers died similar deaths or faded until only a handful of them remained, removed from the galaxy that had once been their playground. More and more mortal species took to the stars, and their age began in earnest.
One particularly grotesque species, so nearly made in Loathsome Malik's image that Mighty Leia often wondered if he'd had a hand in them before she killed him, found the artificial throne world. They named it Circumtore and populated it as part of the growing empire. All the while, Loathsome Malik's corpse dreamed.
Decaying but persistent, the corpse's insidious conceptual influence settled into the bones of the populated Circumtore, and through it, into the bones of that grotesque mortal empire. Loathsome Malik's legacy of chains lived on after his death, the creeping dreams of a dead god.
Now, with power and life and the stars of so many siblings returning to her, Mighty Leia would tolerate the corpse of her ancient anathema enemy no longer. What she started would be finished. What she'd suffered would know, not just death, but utter oblivion.
"Cut the conceptual strings, and the corpse's influence will wither to nothingness. Bring my Freedom to its never-used throne world, and stars shall shine through dead black iron. Strike the spark, and your Starry Sister will do the rest."
The room came back into focus as the vision cast by the flames faded and their usual light and shadow returned. Halkal, Shmi, and I were left standing there to process ancient lore and the quest it brought.
"… Fuck," I muttered.
"I shall have to add this to Mighty Leia's canon," Halkal's synthesized voice mused.
"Is-…" Shmi began, horrified. "Is that… thing… why slavery is so terribly prevalent throughout the galaxy?"
"Maybe," I grunted in reply. "Or maybe people are just cunts regardless."
"I think what Mighty Leia asks of you is clear, Champion," Halkal said. "The only question now is whether you will take up her quest and finish what she started so long ago."
"… Circumtore was always going to be next up on the Gonk chopping block," I admitted. "It's holding the shortest route from Gonk Space to the rest of the galaxy. Now, it'll just have to be a crusade and an expansion."
"At least the abominable demon is already dead," Shmi tried for a silver lining. "Mighty Leia's quest is just to deal with its still-dreaming Celestial corpse… somehow… Oh, dear. Now that I say it aloud…"
"Yeah, this is gonna take some doing," I agreed.
"Mighty Leia clearly has faith in us fulfilling her quest," Halkal pointed out. "I have to believe there is a reason for that faith, and that it should be repaid in turn. Our Starry Sister will be with us every step of the way. This is a quest — a crusade — in her name. If we muster ourselves for her Freedom, there is nothing we cannot do."
"I'm not turning it down," I grumbled. "She gave us a rather pointed hint, after all, and I've never been one to turn away from a challenge."
"'Cut the conceptual strings, and the corpse's influence will wither to nothingness. Bring my Freedom to its never-used throne world, and stars shall shine through dead black iron. Strike the spark, and your Starry Sister will do the rest.'" Shmi repeated. "Indeed. It is, at the very least, direction."
"Sounds to me like we just gotta keep doing what we've been doing, and Mighty Leia will pick up the slack," I said. "Establish her Freedom on Circumtore, give her that foothold, and let the divine sister handle all the divine business. Our enemy isn't the dead god; it's their lingering influence on the Hutts of Circumtore, and the Hutts themselves. And when it comes to zeroing Hutts and all they've built, there's no one with more experience than us."
"The Freed will stand with you on this quest, Champion, this crusade," Halkal reassured. "But we aren't fighters. That direct support will have to fall on our more martially inclined siblings."
I nodded, "If the Gonks were going in alone, I'd have a hard time mustering the forces we'd need to take a whole fortified and populated world. Thankfully, we won't be. The Freest Legion was practically made for a crusade like this. It'll be their time to shine, over even the Cartel's usual forces.
"Most of our Gonks used in the Battles for Free Nar Shaddaa will likely want stay here. They won't get much from expanding to another system right now, having to start their power bases all over again. Some will sign up just for the adventure and the violence — the Nomads, especially — but the Street Kids and most Corpos won't see much point to that. We'll be charging into Circumtore with the Freest Legion carrying the bulk of that weight."
"Many of our siblings won't return from this fight, then, Atom," Shmi warned. "Are you prepared to shoulder the weight of leading them?"
I snorted, "Like I'd be able to stop them once news of a quest and crusade directly from Mighty Leia gets out."
"The Champion is correct, Sister Shmi," Halkal chuckled. "The Freed and Freest Legion will leap to heed this call to arms from our Starry Sister. Mighty Leia shall have her crusade."
Shmi sighed, "And I wouldn't deny them that choice. I only worry about what won't be, not anymore…"
"What'd you see?" I asked intently.
"A legion that fails to return at all…" Shmi said before chuckling slightly. "But I suppose worrying about that is a paradox, isn't it? I know it won't be, not anymore. I must separate what I see from what can be."
"I'll get you in touch with Master Fay," I offered. "She'll be able to help you cope and understand. She helped your daughter, after all."
"I think I'd like that," Shmi smiled softly. "At the very least, to meet someone who helped Ani, as you say."
"I'll make it happen," I nodded. "Now, Halkal. I need you to spread the news on your side of things. Don't bother sparing the details. Preach that shit. The Freed and Freest Legion deserve to know what they'll be fighting for. If this is gonna be a crusade, make it count as one.
"I'll handle the Gonk side of things. As I said, Circumtore was always going to be our next step. This just changes the execution, not the goal. I'll get my Gonks moving. We'll have everything arranged as needed by the end of the week."
Halkal smiled a silent, toothy, Wookiee smile, his synthesizer speaking for him, "This shall be a great and terrible day, siblings, for we add to Mighty Leia's canon, today, and we go to war against the remains of our Starry Sister's most ancient anathema enemy."
I chuffed in agreement, "Quest accepted. Crusade activated. The Corpse Worshippers won't know what hit 'em."
IIIII
A whole lot could be arranged and set in motion in a week, especially when you had a crusade of religious fervor behind you.
*SCHH-BOOM! SCHH-BOOM! SCHH-BOOM!*
Artillery-scale blaster bolts bombarded a fortress on Circumtore, screaming through the air and detonating on impact. Terrible plasma battered down shields to smash against the durasteel fortifications beneath.
The world shook with volley after volley. Shields were overwhelmed. Steel burned as fuel to lingering plasma. Great gaping wounds were opened up in the fortress's steel shell.
The newfound Gonk Military Industrial Complex supplied our crusade with everything it needed. Some of the artillery pieces were bought from the more militarily inclined megacorps on Free Nar Shaddaa, Arasaka selling the most. Others were straight from Gonk-controlled factories on Free Nar Shaddaa, and more artillery-scale weaponry was mounted directly on the ships of the Gonk Fleet.
This opening siege took no chances. There wouldn't be any kind of ground assault, just the bombing of this fortress into smithereens. This would be our beachhead on the artificially created world. Getting boots on the ground would come after clearing it of any and all opposition.
We began our crusade with hellfire.
Turbolaser fire, mounted quad-cannons, ion arcs, and proton torpedoes. Some fell from near-orbit. Some came from the ground around the fortress, where siege engines had been landed and immediately put to work. The Gonk Fleet and so many new toys cleared the way for the rest of the crusade to follow.
Circumtore had been given no warning of the crusade that arrived on its doorstep. The Shell Hutts of the world — a uniquely deplorable sub-culture of their always deplorable species — were likely panicking and rallying right now. They wouldn't get here in time to dislodge us from our foothold, helped by the area we'd decided could be made into free real estate for the crusade.
This fortress, from what we'd gathered, belonged to a Hutt that infamously abhorred the very idea of meat slaves. They ran everything via automation and droids. That meant it was all but free to demolish without having to worry about collateral damage. If we obliterated this Hutt's fortress, we'd have the space we needed to land in force, uncontested.
It was also in an isolated section of the world, the location chosen for just that isolation and natural beauty. Circumtore, despite its artificial creation, was no ecumenopolis. Only city-sized chunks of the world's nature had been claimed by Hutt development.
It was likely the most natural color and life that many Free Nar Shaddaa natives had ever seen. And it was utterly wasted on the Hutts.
The skies were blue, and the lands around us were green with flourishing life. There was a crystal clear lake extending to the horizon from one side of the fortress. The temperature was warm, with an agreeable breeze of truly fresh, truly free air.
And all of that idyllic beauty, even if everyone knew about Circumtore's artificial nature and its abominable creator, just made us fight harder. Halkal had done as I'd asked; Mighty Leia's lore and the reason we were here had spread quickly. Now that we were, the beauty around us seemed to drive home that this world might've been made with awful intentions, but it'd also been reclaimed by Mighty Leia once, only to fall into the ungrateful maws of the Corpse Worshipping Hutts.
It'd been the spoils of Mighty Leia's victory over her ancient anathema enemy. All of this beauty could've belonged to her siblings. But those spoils had been stolen.
Now, this wasn't just a fight to destroy the remains of Mighty Leia's most ancient enemy and his terrible, lingering influence. It was a fight to reclaim her rightful rewards of revenge, too. A fight for a world once Freed by Mighty Leia, now stolen by abominable creatures cleaving to abominable influence. It was a fight to reassert Mighty Leia's Freedom.
In all… It was a beautiful day to crusade in Mighty Leia's name.