POST #2
//Objective:// Objective II // Rock Raiders [ Aeten II ]//
//Location Objective:// Abandoned Stygium Mining Spier [Target Wesk (W)]
//Position:// Disembarking TXT XV-60a APC | Entering Target W Location
//Accompanyment:// Imperial Force Corps Aeten II Knights Taskforce (KTF) Aurek (A) & Besh (B)
//Personal Accompanyment:// KTF-A (
Zaine Balfur ,
Asmus Omaand
)
//Friendlies-In-The-Area://
Lyra 'Sybila' Voikryt
,
Grrwunhoooll Agaburry
,
Hadrian Javik,
Jackson Vernault
Belisarius
Inside TXT XV-60a APC – Gampassa 1
Music:
A few moments passed when the last intelligence report beeped in from Mynock Leader. Zovesa raised her vambrance to her face once more and tapped the embedded monitor. Patching in several electronic commands the report was sent to a probe droid who was perched on top of a gonk droid at the far end of the APC, charging on stand by. Its large red eye blinked into activation and unfurled its spindly mechanical limbs, levitating from its slumber. It hovered towards the center of the space between the benches. From a tertiary socket it spat out the report’s details. A blooming holo-map emerged and rattled into focus. As it refined its detail, the full scale of the operational zone of Target Wesk was revealed.
Target Wesk was as sprawling mining facility and worker’s barracks complex. There were two central avenues that were lined with worker’s barracks housing. The avenues met at a open plaza that led to the main facilities that were housed beneath the main monolithic Stygium Mining Spire. All over the map however, were highlighted red rings with dark fillings. Those were the beetle nest entrances. Wide and deep holes carved into the red desert and hot rock below. Zovesa studied the map and allowed the others to see. Zovesa leaned back into bench and pressed her back against the APC’s wall.
“I count sixteen,” she said grimly.
“Imperator’s Balls,” Dreggs sighed, “Sixteen? The whole complex is a flood of those things.”
“Which is why we are going to have to be smart about this, or else we’ll get overrun,” Zovesa chimed in, trying to establish some cold order. She stood up, bending over to accommodate the low ceiling of the APC and hanging onto a grip bar mounted above. She pointed to the outskirts of the complex.
“We’ll have to park the APC’s here,” Zovesa said continuing, “The tremors from these things will spook the beetles, they’ll swarm.”
“Once deployed, we meet up with advanced teams who are carrying out nest demolitions. Our job is to be their shield and their ramparts if they swarm.”
“Advanced teams?” Dreggs replied.
“Fifty-first of the airbornes are providing overwatch, while Stormtrooper contingent are already there scoping out the nest caves, Hadrian Javik is our contact for that team,” said Zovesa.
“ETA 5 Marshal!” called out the pilots of the APC over the comms.
Zovesa smirked, “This is where the fun begins.”
She tapped her fist against Dregg’s pauldron piece and surveyed her Taskforce.
“Aurek and Besh, move out,” Zovesa coolly commanded.
At Target Wesk
The APC came to a screeching halt. The back door hissed open and the disembarking gangplank slid out, impaling the red desert earth of Aeten II. With their hoods drawn and weapons tucked under the long flaps of their acid rain protective cloaks, Taskforce Aurek and Besh marched out. Remaining behind a special communications team who had quickly set up their equipment in the new open space of the APC. Powered by gonk droids they checked their equipment and shot a thumbs up to Zovesa as she exited the APC.
The desert was saddened with puddles of sulfuric rainwater and the air was thick with the repugnant aromas of volcanic activity. Even though their helmets filtered most of the toxic and noxious particles the surrounding volcanoes spewed, the stench still seeped in. Zovesa marched out towards where Dreggs was organizing the various squads of the Taskforce. Passing by a new recruit, Specialist
Asmus Omaand
, Zovesa gave him a strong thwack on the back shoulder. She nodded to him and pointed her finger.
“Counting on you today, Specialist,” Zovesa said, before walking off to link up with Dreggs.
As she did a comm-line prickled loudly in her HUD display, “Genesis Rifle Team One reporting in, we’ve got your six High Knight Marshall.” (
Lyra 'Sybila' Voikryt
)
“Copy that Genesis One, glad to see it. We will be moving in shortly, watch our six and creep in with us. We’ll need the cover,” Zovesa said.
Zovesa walked among her squads, “Alright, it’s time, we go nest-by-nest. One-by-one. We send in scouts, assess, and the detonate. Then we move. The detonations will definitely trigger movement. If it gets too hot, you get out and fall back. Understood?”
Taskforce Aurek and Besh confirmed with a united, “Yes Marshal.”
“Let’s go,” she said.
The moved in disciplined groups. With front troopers providing watch and rear providing cover. They moved into the first parts of the central avenues. The worker’s barracks were entirely abandoned. The windows smashed letting the dunes roll in and flood them. The entire modern structure looked like have sunken ruins from a lost time. Hidden in the rising tide of sands however, were gruesome clues of a catastrophic slaughter. Torn skeletons and crushed bones. Long rusted blotches of blood. In the distance the towering black steel monolith of the Stygium Mining Spire could be barely scene as the blowing clouds and rain gave only glimpses of its structure. Its emergency energy was still on and its emergency lighting gave it a dim red halo glow.
As the crept closer to their first nest hole, the sound a loud explosion in the distance. Zovesa motioned for everyone to halt. That was to loud for a detonation, Zovesa thought. A cave in? She was not sure. Whatever it was, it would have triggered the nests below. The beetles were overly sensitive to surface tremors. Blasting nests would have to wait, the stampede was coming. She turned and faced her squads.
“Break into fire teams, hide in the barracks buildings and prepare kill-zones over the nests,” Zovesa harshly said. “I want full suppressive fire.”
“They’re all coming now.”
“Go!”
Zovesa broke off with her team and ran towards an adjacent building, the entrance door failed to slid open. So Zovesa took out a window with the butt of her rifle and motioned for her team to vault the window sill and jump in. She watched the each go in and waited to go last, covering their entrance. When the last jump in she leaped over and entered. Inside the members spread out, each taking a window and levelling their weapons. Zovesa slowly reached for her lightsaber, pulling it from its rest inside the shoulder mounted pouch of her combat vest. She held it in her hands, not activating it. Tightening her black gloved grip around its Ducastel frame.
Then they came. First the echoing shrieking of their massive numbers, then the rumble of their approach, then chaos. The nest cave belched a swarm of beetles. Bursting from the depths in undulating hordes, it was hard to see where one started and one ended. A moving mass of insectoid limbs, screeches, and hisses. “Light them up!” barked Zovesa. Flashes of blaster fire ripped across the buildings in converged barrages of bright red death. Some of the blaster fire was findings its mark, killing the beetles and triggering their defensive death throws, exploding upon death. Others ricocheted off of their hard carapaces. Sonic grenades helped loosen their hard exoskeletons and open them to blaster fire. But, the swarm was huge.
Zovesa moved to Dreggs and tapped him on the shoulders, “I’m going up top, the Knights will help break the hordes up.”
Dreggs nodded and returned to commanding the barrage. Zovesa crouched and moved to a set of stairs and took them to the top of the building. Reaching the roof she walked to the buildings edge and ignited the white silver beam of her lightsaber. Summoning the Force, she focused it into a razors edge in her mind. And just as she would execute an attack with a conventional weapon, as a rifleman would his, or a sniper, she unleashed the Force in a direct action.
Throwing out her hand she bombarded the rotten air of Aeten II before her with telekinetic power. It crushed the air into a thick compressed wall that exploded forward. Crashing into the horde it and shattering it into smaller groups. For the brief moment it revealed open space, which Zovesa exploited. She guided the Force to her feet and leap down into the open space. Landing hard, she combat rolled forward and rose up in a wide arc slash that severed duo of beetles at their limbs before she buried her saber in each of their skulls. Having attracted their attention, she Force leapt once more to another nearby rooftop and took a portion of the hordes with her.
Zovesa prepared for another onslaught when another voice echoed in her HUD’s comms, "Assault team, this is Gladius Actual. You've got something big coming your way from inside the caverns. Stay frosty." (
Belisarius
)
Before she could reply for confirmation, another sudden explosion.
Something much bigger had burst out from one of the nest caves. It was hulking, massive, multi-limbed and let out a guttural roar that was no screech of an insectoid. Then hordes ran from it and stumbled over each other. Zovesa’s red eyes widened behind the visor of her helmet. The beetles did not stampede because they heard their approach, they were fleeing from something. And now that something had come for them.
Careena Fett
| Harath Eldar |
Tarrik Kestis
|
Tyrell Paxxus
|
Lucien Dooku
|
Thaelius
|
Marlon Sularen
