Syd awoke in pain. Her arm barely starting to regrow and half her normally near impossibly beautiful face missing half it's skin from the crash landing, exposing slick, glowing green muscle and oozing glowing green blood sliding along an unusually obsidian looking skull as she began pulling herself up, the glowing blood dripping onto her damaged catsuit. She checked for her lightsaber and found it in the distance, slightly scratched.
She strutted over to it in spite of her absolutely mangled, bleeding state
like a total Diva and scooped it up before hovering off the ground a few inches and began looking for a source of energy to help speed up repairs to her body.
The City was a HOT trash fire of epic scope. Bodies of Alliance, Imperials, some Mandalorians here and there surrounded by bodies of imperials and Sith Lords (One Mandalorian had accidentally made an EPIC statue of himself when a Cryoban Grenade had accidentally gone off on his belt while he was strangling a Sith Lord with both arms while lifting him off the ground at the same time).
The Force Spawn found a sparking power terminal and began to approach it, holding out her hand to drain the energy into herself, which began to regrow her arm up to her elbow and start to heal her face and side before the power was drained before the process could complete, though the enchantments of the suit itself were still working all the same. She checked her comlink, miraculously undamaged, and flew up, grinning as she saw four of the five worms destroyed, and the fifth not faring much better against the forces of
Minerva Fhirdiad
.
"Troops!" She ordered. "We are being hit on all fronts! Initiate Code Epsilon."
The airborne forces of the Siege Troopers, began withdrawing from their bombardment of the worms and then focused on brutal strafing runs on enemy soldiers in the buildings.
One Squad of Defense Troopers on the lower levels, led by DT- 1043, ducked behind a wall as one of his squad was blasted apart by the powerful small arms of the 777th. They were aggressive, focused and ruthless, composed of Clones He and the others had soon realized, and they soon learned to try and keep their distance and deploy Droidekas to slow attempts at advance. But on many of the streets it was more difficult than normal for the Droidekas to exploit their rolling function, forcing the Defense Troopers to deploy two at a time as the Defense Troopers fell back, limiting them to stationary positions where their shields were rapidly overwhelmed.
1043 frowned under his Clone Trooper Armor, and loaded his single shot grenade launcher, an idiot proof weapon and waited. They were disciplined, and punished any mistake, and he had already lost two squad members. But a weakness he noted was their fanaticism and over commitment in critical moments. The desire to outright crush.
A Defense Trooper's combat doctrine is relatively simple. The goal is to resist, to bleed the enemy out, to slow their advance.
To know when to hold back from attacking as they retreated into a tunnel filled with weak fortifications they knew wouldn't hold up long under assault from the Heavy fire power.
"Sarge!" yelled another trooper in the back behind him. "Bugs and little evil looking skittering things behind our position!"
Sure enough, every Defense Trooper felt that little shudder of subconsciously trying to figure out whether they were gonna be Lex Luthor riding in triumphant on the Brain Bug at the end of Starship Troopers or that dude who gets his brains sucked out
by the Brain Bug at the end of Starship Troopers.
"C'mon you clones! You wanna live
forever?!" 1043 barked as he loaded another round into his launcher.
(WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE?)
Because the situation had not yet become severe enough that the Narrator felt the need to link Klandathu Drop from YouTube, The Squad sped up a firing retreat, activating the local Droideka they had left here as it rolled to life, being directed to buy time against the Bugs by firing as many volleys as it could of blaster cannon fire before it would inevitably be overwhelmed.
He lured the Squad relentlessly closing in on them before he fired the launcher at a weak barricade ahead, setting off a trap of shaped charges and grenades that killed three, forcing the remaining ten temporarily behind barricades. The 777th was learning about the Defense Troopers to.
They were
fearless. They
never retreated unless it opened their opponent to a potential counter offensive, or until they were left with literally no choice. They were deadly shots too. They could fire in bursts with their DC-15S and have a better than decent chance of hitting small targets. Despite how outdated the carbine was, it could still punch through soft parts like joints, and the Defense Troopers were adept at quickly singling out threats and conducting volley fire on singular, dangerous targets, often soaking them with Droideka fire to open them up to flanking attacks, and we're very good at blind firing from cover, to make up for all the disadvantages involving their outdated armor and personal weapons.
A Siege Trooper 1043 had ordered onto hiding sprang from his Camouflage of rubble up against a wall in the tunnel and sprayed the troops that had initially evaded death from the traps with Cip-Quad Cannon fire, blasting up a stubborn Mythos clone and Shredding the remainder who were Nyx Clones.
"About bloody time." ST-609 muttered like a bored clerk as he began using that crazy awesome chest blaster with four barrels of blastery goodness on the absolute swarm that had just finished decimating the remaining Droideka.
"Oh, I'm sorry, 609, did you have a hot date? Appointment with the Hair Salon perhaps?" 1043 barked snidely as he blasted apart a giant bug at close range.
"Sarcasm wastes efficiency. Fett Clone Within, Fett Clone Without." 609 replied in a soulless husk of a tone.
(Cutaway of Perturabo sitting in an elegant Chaos Chair by a Fireplace)
(Perturabo: I LIKE this Guy!)
The Defense Clones and the Siege Trooper pressed the assault against the unwanted visitors, blasting apart the deadly insects.
"A little piece of Geonosis..." one Defense Trooper muttered.
Just then,
just then that was when they received the order from Syd.
"Oh, crap, Epsilon!" 1043 muttered as he used his last grenade on a crowd of the lamprey like creatures that looked like the ones that haunted his darkest nightmares since waking up in this era of pure crazy where planets were getting invaded every ten to twenty years (Yet there was somehow no galaxy wide mass revolt at this fact.).
He was forced to switch to his Carbine, firing it on full auto in conjunction with his brothers to hit the soft looking parts on bigger insects...
But still more were coming. The forces of Mawites under the control of
Thomas Barran
were as savage as the 777th was ruthless and already the Defense Troops everywhere in the city were starting to get slaughtered as his strategies began to overwhelm some of the more important immediate defenses they had at key junctions in the city levels, especially on the lower ones.
Syd saw her forces everywhere generally coming under a very clever, very focused bombardment, from both artillery and air strikes from fighters. Protecting the Siege Trooper artillery was paramount if Epsilon was to work so she flew up to a Sky Scraper, hissing ancient forbidden chants that caused her blood to fly from her and surround the top of a glittering spire in a glowing green ring that pulsed and hovered around it.
Her damaged arm along with her good one raised to the sky as she hovered over the spire and she screamed as her flesh warped and bubbled sickeningly under the catsuit, and green lightning from the clouds above struck her and flowed through her rapidly deforming body as it traveled downward, hitting the skyscraper she had marked.
Green lightning arched everywhere from the building in thousands and thousands of long range bolts that traveled across the building down it all the way to the very sublevels and then back upward into the sky, the deadly arcs striking (and seemingly homing in on) enemy fighters. Dozens and dozens of these Fighters were felled from the sky in an instant, overloaded by the intense Sorcery. If there was any doubt the creature that had merged with Syd wasn't as much of a powerhouse as the beast she had been derived from, this would be the moment that doubt would vanish for any who knew her present circumstances.
The thunderous, resounding BOOM across the sky as a green ring of lightning formed and spread out could be heard
EVERYWHERE in the battle across the immediate city scape.
Thick Heavy, Powerful green bolts erupted from the clouds to strike rapidly at large masses of enemy units in a devastating spray of lightning, each strike that hit potentially arcing and killing up to ten people in their immediate vicinity. The Heavy tanks were also hit by the heavy bolts, as well as their Artillery.
But that wasn't even Epsilon Protocol.
The worst was yet to come as the Defense Troopers in Towers of their own began to coordinate fire during all this chaos to hit the enemy snipers, having lost quite a few of their own already. Both Barran's forces, the Insects and Mutants, as well as the militia at the same time were attacked with severe aggression by masses of Clone Offense Troopers in old school Saber Tanks on the lower levels of the city, hand assembled over the course of weeks, backed by larger squads of the Red Striped Clones advancing in a blitz attack on
all enemy Forces, raining vicious salvos of Carbine fire as well as Artillery, Mechanized Flyer Assault, Old School Clone Gunships firing their composite beam ball turrets at any enemy they could spot, even as they carpeted enemy defense points with Crude Missiles, and savagery.
But with all this going on, Epsilon was not yet ready to be inacted.
This was just the opening, savage, brutal stages of the Wrath of Kytrand's Clone Army...
