"Grunt, my dear friend, it is so good that you have accepted to meet with us." came the voice of Sheev Palpatine as we conducted a holo meeting with Jedi Masters Yoda, Wendu, and Kenobi as well as Jedi Knight Skywalker and his Padawan Tanno, "Our situation is quite dire and we believe your expertise may be vital."
"I've gone through the dossier." I told them, "If the CIS can afford something as powerful as you are describing then I obviously undercharge them for their annual tribute."
And boy did I mean that. The Malevolence was an enormous credit sink. Not only building such a massive ship but also powering its main ion cannon. The amount of fuel burned to generate each burst could buy one of the ships it regularly destroys, and from the show I remember that Grievous is willing to fire the main gun just to catch a single freighter.
My envy knows no bounds. I am always credits in and credits out expanding and upgrading my forces and these asswipes can just piss away their credits on spectacle pieces. I have shielding on all my electronics, meaning that I can just pass my forces through the main gun these people are freaking out about and attack the external bridge of their ship to mission kill the damn thing. It be hell to get through all the turbo lasers on the damn thing, but I could do it.
Hmmm… it might be time for me to change the terms of my agreement with the CIS and take that big ass ship for myself. A few retrofits and I'd have the ultimate can crusher.
Probably not. Trying to rework such a poorly designed ship of that size would put me in the red, and nothing was more important than the bottom line. Except pussy.
"I can't believe the Separatists are still paying you even after they have declared war on the Republic." Skywalker expressed his outrage.
"They know who they can afford to fight and who they can't." I grinned at the Jedi, "By the way, your mother is very disappointed in how reckless you've become."
Shmi was old and not particularly attractive, but I'd taken her as a concubine just to be Darth Vader's step dad.
"Please don't talk about my mother." The Chosen One looked down at the ground in defeat.
"You should stop by and see her sometime soon, son." I told him like a step dad that cares, "We can play catch, or hide and seek. Would you like that, son?"
"I contemplate suicide every time we talk." Anakin muttered.
Sounds like keikaku coming together.
"Anyways, there isn't much I can do for you people." I told them, "I can't afford to pull my fleets away from my defenses to search the galaxy for a single ship or fleet. If you people can find this boogeyman and pay my price, I'll deal with it for you."
"Surely we can negotiate the price you've asked for your full assistance against the Separatists." insisted the Supreme Chancellor, "What you have asked for will ruin the Republic."
"Would that be any worse than what the Separatists are trying to accomplish. At the end of the day, it's just credits I am after. They want your lives." I chuckled menacingly, "But tell you what. I'll cut a deal with you this time. For the sake of our good friendship."
A bit of haggling and I was on standby to battle the Malevolence.
Not long later I got the coordinates to the party and dropped my ships within effective range of the Malevolence. My timing was impeccable as my step son had just finished his bomber run and taken out the ion cannon that caused everyone so much trouble, happy to not reveal the EMP shielding on my ships. With the heavy cruiser reeling from the backlash of the cannon's self-destruction, their shields were down and I was free to hammer their bridge.
Watching it blow and knowing Grievous was on it made me laugh uproariously from my internal command deck. The feared cyborg general died like a chump because of ridiculously bad ship design.
Those laughs aged poorly when I would find out later that Grievous, like the great Star Wars Mary Poppins herself, somehow both survived and escaped. I should have seen this coming, the bad guys in the show were insanely capable when it came to running away.
At least I got paid a fuck load up front to fight this ship and got a steady stream of tribute from the Republic to fight this war.
From that point on hostilities between me and CIS ran hot, of course to do this they had to give the Republic an easier time on other theaters of war. Due to support from the younger generation of hutts, the other four members of the Grand Council joined me in my venture as privateers for the Republic.
My tactics against the droid armies remained the same, blow the bridge, tow the ship, reprogram the disabled droids. With the full power of the hutts behind us we inflicted daily pain on the Separatists, but our true opportunity for vast wealth came when the Republic failed to hold Ryloth.
With my old pal Wat Tambor murdering all the Twi'leks he could get his grubby green hands on, the typical slowness of the Republic's response, and the historical quickness of the Twi'leks to sell each other into slavery, The Grand Hutt Council brokered a deal to save the planet in return for a truly staggering amount of slaves and the rights to Tambor's war chest.
I refused to stop taking advantage of the insanely poor designs of the ships in this verse and their pathetic military doctrines until they learned how to stop me. Dropping a huge fleet of fighter and bombers right over the Separatist blockade and my larger ships below, We came out of hyperspace guns blazing and overcame the CIS Forces in space swiftly.
A few orbital bombardments of Watts AA defenses that he thought we wouldn't hit from space because he built them in locations full of civilians and our fighters and bombers were free to hunt and annihilate the CIS ground forces.
Watt gave up his war chest immediately after I offered to take him back to my rancor pit, and for some reason I couldn't fathom, the Techno Union paid his ransom again. The guy must have some filthy contingency plans for those corpirates to part with their money twice for him.
In all we managed to preserve way more Twi'lek lives than the Republic managed in the show, and we did it all because we're evil. We walked away from the Battle of Ryloth with more ships, more droids, more slaves, more loot, and more money.
Mama the Hutt called for the victory celebration to be held on Nal Hutta, and even though Jack and I hated the swamp world, spurning the Matriarch of the Desilijic Tiure was foolish. She whelped some of the most successful slugs to slink across the stars and technically was our grandmother.
Fortunately the party was held in one of the many palaces that dot Nal Huttu and not in the swamp gas infested shack Mama prefers to spend her time in. The tables in our feasting hall bowed under the wait of thousands of dishes, just enough to please every palate. Between the food and the liquor and the raw high of such a massive victory even the slaves serving everyone were affected with good cheer.
I sent my respect to all my nerf herders for the thick cut and juicy steaks on my plate and the milk in my cup. Alongside a few plates of fatty fish and buttered crustaceans, Jack and I tried our best to not view the rest of the hutts eating the variety of gut wrenching dishes they so enjoyed.
An impossible task considering we were sat at a curved table next to Mama, a hutt of truly gargantuan proportions. Only the young Grakkus approached her mass, though his body rippled with less fat and more titanic slabs of muscle. A hutt after my own heart.
During a lull in the feasting while everyone worked on gaining their second wind Mama addressed the assembly.
"It's been a long long time since it has been this good the be a hutt." Mama spoke in her deep rumbling voice, "In fact I can't remember a time when the galaxy did more than try their best to ignore us, but those days are gone."
The chamber filled with the cheers of happy hutts.
"And there is only one of you responsible for this." Mama gestured to me, "A young half breed that has done more in the last ten years than any of you have done in the last thousand. Grunt Desilijic Tiure, has made the hutt clans the most feared organization in the galaxy. The movers and the shakers now all check with us before they dare move and shake because they are afraid of getting snatched up in the night and fucked to death by a rancor. How many of you command that level of respect, of fear? None!"
Mama waited for the muttering and boos to die down.
"The hutts are the strongest we have been since the fall of the first empire, and we have done so through violence, not money. I say the time of the Kajidic is over and the time of the third Hutt Empire is at hand, and there is only one name worthy of the Archon. Grunt Desilijic Tiure!"
Marlo, the leader of the current Grand Hutt Council came forth to fight the proposition.
"You announce this to us, on this the day of our great victory, demanding us to bow down." Marlo rasped.
"I demand my great grandson's due." Mama countered.
"You demand us to bow down." Marlo insisted, "To abandon millennia of tradition and make ourselves subservient to Desilijic Tiure. What have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully?"
Morlo would have really taken the wind out of Mama's sails if not for Uncle Ziro stepping in.
"Oh Morlo," Ziro tittered, "It's not about respect any more. I happen to have in my possession a holodiary chalk full of evidence of all the Grand Hutt Council's misdeeds. It'd make it an awfully hard time for business if it were to find itself on the Senate's doorstep. That is unless you had a powerful backer like my sweet little nephew."
"That changes things." Morlo backed down and the other members of the Grand Council backed down with him.
The giant Grakka took up the chant, "Archon! Archon! Archon!" and soon all the other hutts in the room, enthusiastic or forced joined him.
On that day the Third Hutt Empire was born, and assholes around the galaxy clenched in fear of our coming.