57 Chapter 57

--- Tatooine ---

The Mandalorians flew over the palace with their Basilisk War Droids, dropping bombs on the entire population. Only those that were already in cover were able to survive the attack. The rest were killed by the massive amount of explosives that landed around them.

With their initial attack weakening their defenses, the Mandalorians flew down and shot anything that moved. This location was the 4th of the day that the Mandalorians had raided on Tatooine that week, each one being shown the same amount of mercy as the previous and the same that would be shown to the next. While they would normally spare slaves or those who had surrendered, for this battle, they did not. For the Mandalorians were making an offering to their fallen brethren. 

Mira arrived at the throne room where Jabba sat with his personal guards and slaves. All of the guards and slaves were killed with a bolt to their face while Mira closed in on Jabba. 

"I surrender! Mandalorian warrior, I surrender!" Jabba shouted in basic, showing how much he had truly feared for his life

"No mercy today. Only blood!" Mira told him before stabbing into his body with a vibroblade and slashing across it.

The Hutt kept screaming in pain from the wound. His large body wouldn't die from just a single slash. Jabba's blood spilled all over her armor but Mira did not care. She kept cutting and cutting until Jabba's body stopped moving. And then she continued to cut even after Jabba stopped twitching. 

"Mira," Boxe called from the entrance of the room, her voice unusually serious. "Let's go. Sektor was able to locate a transport that belongs to Gardulla, that bastard. That worm has finally come out of hiding."

"Alright," Mira nodded. She threw the knife into Jabba's lifeless body before following Boxe out of the palace and back onto their droids. 

--- Toydaria ---

Toydaria was a planet covered in for and marshes where dangerous creatures known as grabworms lived. The native species, the Toydarians, evolved with wings and created cities atop mountains to escape from these deadly predators. The planet was constantly assaulted by severe weather that would destroy the crops of the planet every few years, causing millions to starve.

Because of the harsh environment, the Toydarians became vassals of the Hutts in order to receive food that they desperately needed.

Nott and her Acolytes stood on a ship above the planet while they launched countless missiles from their ships. Each missile was aimed at the different cities that were located across the planet as well as any mountain that the Toydarians could try to build a new one on and any ship in sight so they could not escape the planet. 

Nott watched the missiles rain down on the planet and saw some of the explosions from their position but she was unable to see the true carnage that their attack was causing. It was only due to her connection to the Force that she could feel the loss of life.

After firing 3 rounds of missiles, the ships had stopped firing. But even with this, she did not feel it was enough. 

"I want to make sure that the grabworms are well-fed for the next few years," Nott told the Admiral. "Don't stop until we are out of ammo."

The man was sweating buckets as he could feel the anger and rage coming off of the woman. As much as he wanted to voice his disagreement with her methods, he did not want to be the one to feel her wrath so he passed the orders to the other ships. All of the ships unleashed all of the ammo that they had on them, only stopping when there was not a single torpedo or missile left. 

"Let's go get resupply. We need to go after the next target since they have been taken care of," Nott spoke gently to the crew while leaving the bridge with her Acolytes in tow

--- Yautja Prime ---

Jial was aware of what both of his apprentices and the Mandalorians were doing from the various reports that he had received but he made no effort to stop them. He did not feel either of them slipping into the Dark Side so he was not worried that they would fall.

"As long as they are only targeting the Hutts, Black Sun, and their allies, let them be," Jial told the messenger before getting back to work. 

He was studying his Holocron which had the data of the various new factions added to it. Jial was amazed by all the data that it had compiled. The history of species that were 10s of thousands of years old but all so different and so biased. 

The Imperium of Man feared AI and progression to such a degree that they had their own people, not slaves but their own people, lift up weapons weighing thousands of tonnes with nothing more than ropes and numbers. While the Tau had perfected AI to a degree that they could recreate entire souls into a single chip so their people could still learn from those fallen individuals or spread their knowledge far apart when it was needed in multiple locations.

Each group had their own gods that they had actually seen in person with some of them enslaving those gods to power their own technology. 

But no matter how different each of the groups was, they all had one thing in common. They far surpassed the abilities of Jial's Galaxy in some way. The way they manipulated genes, how they could terraform worlds, the materials they created themselves to make armor and ships, their FTL transport abilities, and their weapons. 

'If just a single one of these cultures were to invade the Galaxy, we would be killed without a chance to fight back.'

Jial wiped the sweat from his head, glad that these figures were not in his Galaxy and fighting in one in either a different universe or very far away.

'But you all have given me a new path to walk down. I'll take away all the prejudiced beliefs that you have and use the knowledge you have gathered to forge a new empire here.'

A deep fear had taken over Jial's soul. After reading through their history, he realized that not every threat was in the Galaxy or known. There could be threats that emerged from outside of the Galaxy or ones that were hidden away, deep in tombs. And the threat of the Yuuzhan Vong Invasion had crossed his mind. He feared that he may have brought upon a menace to the Galaxy that they were ill-prepared to take on. 

With an invasion coming and him having no idea when it would begin, Jial left the war with the Hutts and Black Sun to his subordinates. Instead, he wanted to prepare the Yautja for their next stage. To battle an enemy he had no idea if he would be able to defeat or not. 

So Jial was constantly studying and learning the ways of these 5 factions. Their strengths, their weakness, their powers, their technology, their gods. Anything that could help in the future, he wanted to learn.

And it was the Hutts and Black Sun who would experience his first step to achieving his goals. 

--- Cyrkon, 169 BBY---

The domed capital of Cyrkon, Motok, was in a state of panic. The other 5 cities on the planet's surface had each lost communication with the city over the previous few weeks with only a few messages going through before they went silent. 

'Droids'

'Large number'

'Yautja'

No matter how much they tried to get more information, Motok's leaders could not get anything else. They had sent several ships out to scout the areas but none had returned. 

"We're being attacked!" someone shouted near the glass

Many citizens and soldiers rushed to the glass to see what was going on but the sight left them all stunned. Some screamed in terror while others collapsed to the floor and wet their pants. None had seen such a sight before.

HK-47 and Sektor were walking through the wasteland of the planet, not afraid of the toxic atmosphere. Behind them was an army of droids numbering tens of thousands. Each droid resembled a skeleton with its ribs exposing its power cores, giving anyone a good target to aim at. They all had blasters in their hands and were the size of humans but those things didn't matter. An army that size had never been seen before. Not of droids. 

The wall of droids kept coming over the horizon with no end in sight. Everyone finally knew what had happened to the other cities. And what was going to happen to Motok. 

--- Later that day ---

"Statement: The Necron units proved effective, Master. The Warriors were able to follow the commands of the Immortals which in turn followed the orders of the Lords without overloading the systems," HK-47 reported the success of the Battle of Cyrkon

"Good," Jial was glad that the programming had worked as he had expected, even on such a large scale

Jial designed the Necron droids into three tiers, giving each one different computational abilities. The Warriors had the least amount of independence which made them cheap and easy to mass produce. They took orders from the Immortals who were given slightly more independence and the Immortals took orders from the Lords. The Lords acted as central computers for the droids to think from while the Immortals acted as extensions to spread the Lords' influence and relieve it of having to give out all the data itself. 

The best way to describe it was that the Lord was a Wi-Fi router while the Immortals were extenders or boosters. This also meant that if the Warriors lost connection to one Immortal, they could latch onto the network of another. 

He designed them this way due to the high cost of Zaku IIs, Kampfers, and Goufs. While they worked excellently as elite units, their cost was too high for him to use on various battlefields. Their numbers had run thin, slowing down the progress of the war. But with his Necron droids proven capable, Jial was ready to ramp up production for his newest line of droids