The jungle around them ignited in a blaze of fire. The Confederates were hit on touchdown, but they were hardly going to whimper away from the fight at first contact. Kroeger knew better than to think otherwise. His career to this point had been spent gunning down Sith who would repeatedly send human wave after human wave with neglient- no, contempt for those beneath their command. They were like rats being sicked on rotten meat. Swarming, firing, dying...repeat. He heard two callsigns snuff out from the impact. Despite every doctrine and protocol screaming and urging otherwise, Kroeger pulled open his hatch again and climbed to chest defilade from his Cataphract. There was hardly any need for night optics, now. Illumination rounds in tandem with the blazing inferno did well enough to send the area around them alight.
Kroeger pulled the tanker trooper helmet from his head, the otherwise regimented appearance of the Imperial armor scrawled with various kill marks and of course the symbol of the 'Thundering Herd' painted unto the back crown of it. Seemingly the same helmet he'd equipped himself with since his time as an armored platoon leader. With all the chatter wracking his comms, he seemed to ignore it for a moment, adjusting the bandaging which held his already cybernetically marred features together, a hand reaching into a pouch sinched to his chestpiece, producing a cigara which he sparked alight, taking a long puff of the stimulant herbs before he crawled back into his seat, hitting the automatic release on the hatch to slam it shut.
His gunner was engaging targets with the free reign and trust lent his way by the man beside him. A young corporal, not any veteran but a once Mantellian ship breaker who had a natural knack for the gunner's hand station, nearly acing his scores in the rigorous gunnery runs that Kroeger had forced all of the tank crews that manned his mailed fist through.
He took another rip, pulling on his seperate headset before he spoke again.
"Hellfire, Demon...from my position, five hundred meters north. Establish 'FPF Brimstone', lay as priority target, over." He took another draw, exhaling the grey smoke over his commander's screen, undisturbed as the turret snapped to lock on to an advancing AAT, a few thuds from the mass driver and it was cored and internals pulped.
"All Hammer elements, shift fire to prioritize their armor. Troopers engage at close range but keep OPs established for 'Arbalest' fire. Keep the Barrans bounding with their dismounts. They're trying to enclose around us, seeing red on both sides moving in." He nodded, another puff before he ashed it out against the edge of his screen.
"All PLs acknowledge. Red platoon keep bounding forward to Phase Line 'Echo', that's the trigger to our FPF. Keep a standoff of two hundred meters between you and the enemy. As soon as they're set, we're calling the guns back online. Black and White platoon establish elastic defense and draw their fire. The flames are as chaotic for us as it is for them, utilize berm drills and talk your guns." He said, relaying that one third of the company would press forward, meeting the Confederates in the fray in close contact before they would press the artillery to engage in a final protective fires on the Confederate position, a fire mission reserved for desperate moments in which the guns would expend every round to fill the sheaf with high explosive as the other two platoons covered their back, ducking down and up from cover, using the dead time of one tank to light up the enemy with another before repositioning or alternating, making suppressive or retaliatory fire difficult to lay on Kroeger's armor.
The jungle was hardly ideal terrain for the mechanized brand of warfare Arminius preferred but war is never fought ideal conditions.
One of the stormtrooper squads barreled into a crater laid by an earlier airstrike, a repeater set up on its enfillade before it began to lay down scunion in the form of a raking burst of amber particle beams.
<"Get the Arbalest up! Eyes on 'AAT', five hundred meters!"> The squad leader barked out, smacking a hand on the back of the anti-tank gunner who threw the large missile launch from the sling around his back with a grunt of exertion, pulling it unto his shoulder as he aimed through the 'Electric Eye' sights which flickered on and immediately adjust the thermal exposure to the fires around them. The brackets of a target lock were painted over the AAT.
<"Backblast area clear!">
<"Clear! Fire!"> The squad leader said before the guided missile limped from the barrel only to pulse to life and ascend to striking distance where it then barreled down with the snap of a finger, coring the approaching tank through its weaker top armor with a horrific scream of fire and metal. The next round was loaded in by the assistant gunner.
They were being thinned off but in a fight like this? Expected. Kroeger held back on his guns after getting the confirmation they were back up, holding them for a more decisive, shaping moment when he could spend their arsenal on a final protective fire or unmask an enemy gun position with counter battery if they dared to strike. Hopefully the closely growing proximity would relent their observers from calling for fire, a risk Kroeger was more willing to take. At least, under his line of assumption. The Sith would sooner mulch a company of their own if it meant killing an Imperial officer, the Alliance was more reluctant, valuing sentient life, their own no less above much all else.
The Imperial may not start every battle. But he would end it. All the while, Kroeger thumbed the message address to his company held in reserve, a good while from the battle space, telling them to enter 'REDCON-1' within ten minutes in case he needed to break contact at the front. The air space was saturated with hostiles, air strikes, landing parties. The Mandalorians were of little help here and he wasn't going to use his Iron Legion to break the waves of purple bashing at the gates.
