Location: Sev Tok, City of Anvil, City Center, 550 Meters Southwest of
The Epitaph
Local Time: 22:18
Date: -DATA CORRUPTED-
Primary Objective: Defend the City of Anvil Alongside SJC Forces in the Area
Secondary Objective: N/A
Equipment: Loadout 2 (Carrying 1x
Portable Clip Recharger in utility Field Butt Pack. Flame Projector swapped out with a CryoBan Projector.)
Friendlies: SJC |
Thirdas Heavenshield
|
Beltran Rarr
|
Aien Mueller
Hostiles: The Bryn’adûl | Open for opposition!
Kranak and a small platoon of militiamen and rangers were over halfway to the outer perimeter wall, walking the broad and once lively streets of Anvil. The city from the outside would appear quiescent to the naked eye from afar. A city wide wartime blackout was enforced to deny the invading force the visibility of friendly troop concentrations and movements for the siege but regardless, they were still prone to other forms of detection.
He was lost in thought as he continued walking to the fortifications. Uneasiness set into his mind. He had a number of concerns in his mind. Whose turn was it to die among them this time? Could he trust the militiamen to watch his back? Would they drop their weapons and run in the first sign of danger, or would they stand and fight as they should?
The giant heaved a frustrated sigh
<Where’s a vod when you need one…> He wasn’t the only Mandalorian from the Covenant deployed for this theatre of the war, but they were spread about the city for its defense. He could’ve trusted a fellow Mandalorian to watch his back without a shadow of a doubt.
The Ori’ramikad did not have the answer to those questions in his mind. He would just have to find out himself when the time came. All he knew is that it was
imperative that Bryn’adûl’s advance was halted in Sev Tok, here and now. He didn’t really care for the Concord or the Jetii for that matter, but they were valuable allies in the seemingly endless fight against the Dar’jetii in these trying times for the Mando’ade. Whether they liked it or not, the Mando’ade needed allies more than ever. They had to adapt to the reality of the situation and wage war accordingly against the Dar’jetii.
The banter coming from his rear broke his chain of thought, which was for the better for the Ori’ramikad. It was no use to
anyone staying worried like that.
“So… Have you ever seen a Bryn in the flesh? W-what do they look like?” asked a young militiaman in curiosity.
“I don’t know, I only heard descriptions from some fortunate refugees here and there. Tall, strong, chitinous beasts.” answered an older man.
“How… How hard could it be to take them down?”
“How hard?” the older militiaman repeated, mockingly.
“They’ve decimated worlds prior to Sev Tok, you know!”
“Hey… Hey, Mando! Have you ever killed one before?” the lad asked Kranak, perhaps to relieve his troubled young mind just a little bit from the battle that was yet to come.
The giant shook his head from side to side as he walked.
[“No.”] He had no comforting answer for him. The closest thing he killed to a Bryn’adûl was the Vong. But even then, fighting the Bryn’adûl would be something he never experienced before in his life. It would truly be an experience he would not forget so easily.
If he somehow survived the ordeal.
The lad went quiet for a moment after the Mandalorian’s short answer.
“Brrr,” one of them shivered.
“Is it just me or is it getting cold?”
“Ah, no.” said the other.
“My hands,” the militiaman slung his blaster rifle over his right shoulder and crossed his arms, tucking his hands underneath his arm pits to warm them up.
“It’s freezing out here! What the kark!”
Kranak looked over his left shoulder as he moved. He could see their breaths in the cold. They were right. It
was getting cold. But why? Deserts
did get cold in the night, sure. But not as cold as
this. This was not natural. His Heads-Up Display confirmed that. The temperature readings were way lower than what they should have been. The unexpected change in temperature kicked in his armor’s
Temperature Regulator and started heating him up.
“Come on, lad. You’ll be fine,” said the older militiaman, speeding up his pace to walk side by side with the young, worried militiaman.
“It’s gonna be one hell of a story you can tell your children!”
“Wha-what’s that over there?” The lad inquired, pointing at the horizon. Heads turned towards the horizon. Kranak looked towards the direction he was pointing at to see what it was.
He saw a bright dot of light on the horizon.
[“Magnify.”] upon receiving the verbal command, his macrobinocular magnified fifty times to see what it was over in the distance.
Upon magnifying, his HUD identified the unknown contacts he was looking at. He detected
The Epitath marked with a hollow red square, the Bryn’adûl invasion force. It was being pursued by a Concord Deshet-class Heavy Carrier, identified as the
Midnight Darkest, marked with a hollow blue square.
He could see swarms of smaller crafts launching from the
Midnight Darkest, all marked in smaller, blue hollow squares each. Their flight paths interdicted that of
The Epitath, attempting to intercept the colossal ship.
His commlink crackled to life not long after identifying the contacts in his HUD. He recognized the voice. It was the Antarian Ranger Lieutenant from before.
"This is Heavenshield! We've got confirmed Bryn on a collision course! AA-guns, open fire -- Repeat, open fire! We need to knock it off-course, there's no telling what that much mass will do to our shield!"
The Anti-Air guns dotted inside the city opened up with a violent salvo, directing their fire to the Bryn’adûl invasion fleet enroute to the city. The lasers and the tracing missiles created an unprecedented light show for the Ori’ramikad. They were already bright for the naked eye. They were more brighter for him, as his nightvision had casted a green haze over everything he gazed at.
[“Collision course?”] He repeated to himself out loud in surprise. Kark damn it. The Bryn’adûl were attempting something unconventional. They had prepared for a conventional siege, not a flagship being used as a battering ram about to collide with the city!
The Mandalorian muttered a curse in Mando’a as he watched the
Midnight Darkest ram
The Epitath as the AA guns let loose on the latter. But a sudden and intense flash of light
almost blinded him. He quickly looked away from
The Epitath and lifted his helmet mounted macrobinoculars with his left hand.
Looking back at the sudden bright flash in the horizon, Kranak’s HUD no longer detected the
IFF Transponder of the
Midnight Darkest. She was
gone. The Epitaph on the other hand, was closing in rapidly to the Anvil City, shrugging off the Anti-Air fire directed at her.
“What the hell is happening…” muttered one of the other militiamen in concern. The ground shook as
The Epitaph came closer due to her strong engines. The shaking was gentle at first, but turned violent the more she got closer. The window panes of the buildings and shops around them trembled violently at first. Some gave way from the pressure and shattered from the sound of
The Epitaph’s engines.
It didn’t take long for
The Epitaph to fly overhead. The monstrous ship passed the city’s defensive shields with ease, and was headed straight towards the city center.
That was Beltran over the open channel, warning all friendly elements to seek shelter from the imminent collision.
[“Disperse and seek shelter! Now!”] The Mandalorian shouted as he broke into a sprint towards an alleyway, quickly stopping and crouching by the closest ferro-concrete wall at the mouth of the alleyway. The others were quick to follow suit. They scattered in all directions. A few followed him into the alleyway.
The ground beneath their feet shook savagely. It felt like an earthquake. The window panes remaining intact or cracked were completely shattered from the violent tremor.
The tremors stopped after a few moments. They were fortunate enough to be not as close to the crash site unlike other friendly units, so Kranak and the friendlies near him weren’t seriously affected by the violent tremors.
The giant stood up and exited the alleyway and walked to the street.
[“Is anyone hurt? Sound off!”]
“I’m-I’m fine!”
“Status green!”
“Aaah, kark. I’m good.”
“Combat effective.”
The militiamen and the Antarian Rangers in his close proximity reported fine. They were all ready and able.
For now.
“W-what do we do now? That thing just-” the blue eyes of the young militiaman were widened in fear. He wasn’t expecting Bryn'adûl to land right on top of them. None of them were. The tactic they employed was very unorthodox for a siege.
[“No plan survives first contact intact, Trooper.”] spoke the giant, cutting off the worried lad. The Ori’ramikad continued after a short pause.
[“We adapt to the situation now.”] His HUD indicated large concentrations of friendly elements forming a perimeter around the crashed Bryn’adûl ship.
Kranak continued to speak as he reached for his probe droid from his utility field butt pack.
[“We most certainly have friendly forces attempting to cordon off the Bryn’adûl’s landing zone.”] with the movement of his eyes, he turned on the probe droid and gave it a set of commands verbally.
[“Reconnaissance protocol engaged. Point of Interest, The Epitaph. Minimum altitude, five hundred meters. Loitering circumference, half a klick from the enemy landing zone.”]
The probe droid swiftly increased in altitude and was no longer within the sight of the naked eye. The probe’s relative location was marked with a small, green hollow triangle in his HUD.
He opened a secure channel to friendly forces on the ground using his helmet commlink.
[“Ruus’alor Kranak reporting in. Standby for real-time reconnaissance data.”]
As soon as reconnaissance data from the probe was relayed back to him, the giant would patch the live feed to the SJC Command Center and those who had HUD’s in their helmets, providing friendly ground elements with detailed reports regarding the current positions of the Bryn’adûl ground elements.
[“Come on, we got to move. We have to link up with a greater friendly element to hold them off.”] Said Kranak, as he lowered his macrobinoculars with his left hand once more. A green haze from his nightvision was cast over everything once again.
The group of militiamen and a handful of Antarian Rangers followed his lead as friendly gunships flew overhead to disembark the troopers within their cabins to stabilize the new frontline. They went back the way they came and used alternating pathways such as taking alleyways and the likes to reach the new frontline.
Local Time: 22:25
Combat boots stomped on the ferro-concrete pavements and streets as Kranak’s platoon made their way towards the edge of the crater created by the landing of
The Epitath in a combat-pace. The structures within a five hundred meter radius of the Bryn’adûl ship were reduced to ruins, also creating a hundred meter wide crater, fifty meters deep.
[“Take up defensive formations along the perimeter, overlooking the enemy landing zone.”] said the Ori’ramikad, as he sprinted up a large mound of rubble and went prone by at the edge of the top, thus minimizing his exposure to enemy line of sight as best he can.
"Understood!"
"Yeah, roger that."
"Will do!"
A few of the militiamen and rangers confirmed their orders verbally. The rest simply followed suit after their comrades. They took up various defensive positions along the perimeter. Inside intact buildings, within ruins, anything that looked strong enough to use as cover.
He glanced at the probe’s live feed on his HUD before he peaked over the mound of rubble he was using as defilade. The reconnaissance data was inconclusive due to the black cloud covering a two kilometer circumference around
The Epitaph, messing with the probe’s detection hardware. The probe
did detect a significant amount of hostile forces in the area, but it didn’t provide the full picture.
But regardless, he patched the reconnaissance data to the Concord Command Center, as well as to the HUD’s of friendly ground forces in the area of operations.
[“Uploading real-time reconnaissance data now.”]
He quickly took out his datapad from his utility butt pack and interacted with the probe to give it the permission to assume the optimal loitering distance and altitude to obtain better reconnaissance data, all the while making sure it wouldn’t over extend and get shot out of the sky. He put the datapad back into his butt pack once he was done.
Kranak then peaked from his piece of cover before he issued orders to his platoon. The stretch of land was generally filled with small to large mounds of rubble, with a few buildings still somehow managed to stay intact from the enemy ship’s collision. Beyond the stretch of land laid the crater, and the monstrous ship within. He could see enemy movement in the crater, but he wasn’t sure how far they were from the edge of the crater closer to their side of the frontline. The sea of eyes of the hulking monstrosities glowed white green in his nightvision. A portion of the Bryn’adûl forces were enroute to their position.
"Oh kark me... Oh kark me!" one of the militiamen muttered to himself in fear at the sight of the Bryn'adûl forces and
The Epitaph.
"Look at the size of them!"
The giant rested his Paranaor Blaster Rifle on the edge of the defilade to increase his accuracy. He took off his blaster rifle off safety with a soft click and changed the fire mode to “SEMI” as he issued orders to his small platoon using the proximity commlink, secure to friendly elements.
[“Alright, this is it! Pick your targets. Fire at will, but remember, use either semi or short controlled bursts! Target distance is slightly beyond five hundred meters. Adjust your sights and engage accordingly.”] The militia and the handful of Antarian Rangers opened fire as soon as he was finished.
With the saved eye movement in his interactive HUD, his helmet macrobinocular magnified times six. Using the firing solution of his
MFTAS coupled with his
MSTA, he very quickly zeroed in on the enemy forces he could see and gently pulled the trigger. He would be aiming for either the head or the armor joints of the hulking beasts in the distance.
Their blaster rifles howled with each pull of the trigger as they unleashed their salvo. They were surely in the thick of it now. They were the closest fighting force on this flank. More were enroute to further stabilize the newly formed frontline. All they had to do was hold their position and not let any of the Bryn'adûl through. But that was easier said than
done.