The Aegis dropped out of hyperspace outside of the noted combat zones, and within seconds, the sensors were flooded with information on the battlespace. The enemy fleet was rushing, mines had been laid at the normal entry zones, which made Captain Clark breathe a momentary sigh of relief as he'd chosen a different approach vector than the main forces of the CIS. But the situation was bad. The CIS fleet had the enemy on top of them, and while they'd already landed ground troops, things were looking to slow down as the enemy had hostages. Sergei grumbled as he was reading the information in the war room as fast as it was coming in, and knew something had to be done. He called up to Clark over the comms.
"Clark, get the gunners to get us a shooting solution to get ground side, I'm getting the commandos spun up,"
"You want us to shoot you through the mass of frak that's right in front of us?"
"Maneuver as close as you can, The Aegis is fast enough to skirt the edge and get us on the ground with the pods. I'll take 1st platoon down," He was already walking to the armory amidst the controlled buzz of the ship as alarms sounded and men and women ran to battle stations.
Clark sighed as he sat back in his chair and then called out his orders.
"Engineering I want full power to shields and engines, we've got to move fast now! Helm plot us a course that will allow us to skirt the edge of that cluster kark in front of us and get us a clear shot at an LZ, Echo teams I want you to identify the enemy flagship and prepare for us to engage, have one team identify a LZ for Sergei,"
The Aegis surged forth with it's over sized power plant, the engines kicking the light frigate into high gear of movement and essentially rocketing the vessel up and around the cluster of warships currently duking it out before them. The light frigate would roll to compensate for Gs pulled and trying to keep them in the downward direction of the hull, making it easier on the crew and to reduce load on all aboard. Meanwhile Sergei and his platoon of Commandos were already grabbing weapons and ammo as the Gs started hitting the crew, overwhelming the ships already massive inertial dampener. But they continued to work through it, as they were used to getting ready while the ship was performing combat maneuvers, each man checking over the other's gear, and strapping in magazines of ammo for their newly minted 416 assault rifles. Sergei loaded his with efficiency that bellied his use of a similar weapon system growing up, and wordlessly strapped his Big Iron to his hip as well, carrying the ammo for it on his thigh along with two bandoleers of grenades and ammo across his chest. He grabbed his prepacked assault pack and loaded into the pod, locking everything into place before sealing the pod. His new semi-powered armor was a dream to him, as the thing felt weightless to him, but to the average soldier would feel like light armor. He eagerly awaited getting ground side.
Meanwhile on the bridge Captain Clark was watching and monitoring all the crews as they shouted reports to one another across the bridge, and The Aegis was performing a slow combat roll as it made corrections and adjustments to its maneuvers. To the average passerby someone would think it another Corvette by the way it moved, but several fighters made the mistake of attempting to intercept the fast moving "corvette" before it could link in with the rest of the CIS forces. Pin point laser cannon fire met them, and before they realized what it was they were up against, three fighters had already been destroyed in a hail of fire. And when the other three tried to turn tail and run, the gunners of the ship took the advantage of the maneuvers to lead them perfectly, and cut them down with automatic precise laser cannon fire. The crew had grown from their previous engagements across the galaxy, and Clark was more than proud as he heard the reports, their gunnery drills having paid off in dividends. And then he got the call from the first Echo team that they had sighted an area about a klick outside of the intended target that was opposite of where Dauntless had landed, which would give them enough cover to get there unnoticed. From there Clark knew Sergei would handle the rest. He was quick to give the order.
"Gunners, load the commandos in, and get them dirtside and quickly, we don't have a second to waste!"
A quick acknowledgement from the crews was uttered as they selected their rounds, and quickly Sergei and his men were loaded into the Hades turrets. With an efficiency and precision that showed the experience of the crew, the cannons went to preset vectors along the side of the ship, preparing to shoot 8 of the pods at a a time as The Aegis began to force another high G turn. In five quick successive broadsides from the main guns on the frigate, Sergei and his platoon of forty troopers were sent hurtling to the planet, and The Aegis made a quick turn about and was now looking to reengage the fleet battle taking place. Captain Clark folded his hands in his lap as he contemplated targets, and quickly told his comms officer to contact the head of the CIS fleet currently tangling with the main force of the pirates with a tight beam comms so only the two would be privy to this conversation.
"Fleet Marshall Cypher Rage this is Captain Clark of The Dire Wolves, mind if we cut in and pick a fight with that Venator?"
As he said this he issued the orders to his gunnery crews to target the Venator class Star Destroyer and for Engineering to bring the Hades cannons to High power for Artillery based mode. All gunners loaded Ion rounds into their respective guns, and The Aegis went nose 'up' on the plane of axis the current battle was taking place on, going high and above the much larger Star Destroyer. As all the canons locked onto targets, Clark uttered only one word as he smiled.
"FIRE!"
With a silent roar all eight barrels from the four turrets hurled their Ion based canister rounds at the Venator. And with that, The Aegis began to circle and prepared to dive through the enemy fleet's formation from it's position, planning on using it's superior speed and firepower to outrun and outgun anything that dared try to follow them. But Clark was certain of one thing. He'd have the head of that Admiral, come hell or high water. It was the way of The Dire Wolves to go for the throat.
*************************** GROUNDSIDE ********************************
The pods had entered atmosphere and landed without a hitch, the stealthiness of the pods and the general mayhem that was happening elsewhere made the pods look like debris from the battle overhead from the ground. Which was the intent of the pods to begin with, that even if they were detected, no one would think of anything of the pieces of metal that were just hurtling to the ground, until it was too late. And so they fell, moving to the planet with only the whistling scream of the wind moving past the pods as they flew through the air. Sergei could feel the shudders of the pod as it went through its two stages of reentry, and then slammed into the dirt of the planet. He punched the open command for the pod and the door immediately popped loose and opened. Sergei immediately grabbed his rifle and pack and began moving forward. The rest of the Wolves followed suit as they fell in behind their Dire Wolf. Sergei had them move quickly through the surrounding foliage, making their best speed as they knew that time was not on their side. And while they were moving at a quick jog in what appeared to be heavy armor, not a single noise was heard from any of them, no clanking of metal, no heavy foot falls. The soldiers had prepped their gear well and trained in it rigorously. When they reached the outer walls of the vessel that the so called pirate king hid himself in, Sergei and several other men took up shooting positions to clear the top, and then once cleared moved up to begin scaling the ship with grapple guns mounted into the wrists of their armor. The armored platoon ascended quickly, moving at a break neck pace as they reached the top, and quickly cleared their surroundings. Sergei figured the pirates were too busy dealing with Dauntless down below to be bothered trying to stop them topside, which would be a mistake that they would soon regret if any of them lived to. When the entire platoon was top side, Sergei raised a single fist to signal a halt, and looked to the RTO.
"Where is he?" He demanded over comms.
"Bridge sir, 600 meters that way," The mercenary pointed with a knife hand to one of the taller protrusions out of the hull.
Sergei for the life of him couldn't understand what the fascination was with having the highest seat in the tallest tower was with pirates, but decided that it would make for an easier breach anyways. He signaled to the rest of the platoon to move in a spread squad wedge, himself in the point position as they crossed the topside of the hull. Any lookouts on the top would be met with silenced rifle fire as the mercenaries moved with a purpose that showed their clear intent to kill their targets. They reached the base of bridge tower and Sergei split the platoon into two teams. He sent three squads, Blue Team, to find another access route in, and attempt to catch the target should he attempt to run, meanwhile Sergei and his squad would breach into the bridge and go after the snake head himself.
Sergei's ten man squad immediately started to rappel up the side of the ship, using the grapple guns to pull them up, while they kept their rifles or sidearms ready in case anyone sought to interrupt their little party. The men would first go up past the main windows of the bridge before stopping mid ascent, and Sergei checking the windows. They were definitely gunked up from the time that this ship had sat here, and that meant poor visibility from inside.
Perfect.
Sergei immediately signaled for the squad to start pulling breaching charges from each other's packs, and then flipped themselves over to become inverted, using their legs to hold them in place with the cables as they lowered themselves back down to the window. They would place the mats on the windows folded up, and then unfold them onto the window making sure that they were gentle with the placements to not make any noise. And then, with a simple pull of a switch on the charge, it would go live, and the squad would repel themselves back up a few feet. Once clear, they would reorient themselves to upright, and feed their grapple guns into their belts as they prepped for breach. Sergei motioned to remove suppressors as once those charges went off, they wouldn't be necessary, and the added noise would work to their advantage. All of the soldiers removed their suppressors wordlessly and silently, placing them in pouches and locking them in place. Sergei did one last once over before pulling out a detonator, and counted down from three with his fingers.
Three, all the soldiers squat and prepared to jump.
Two, everyone switches their weapons from safe to semi-automatic or full auto.
One, each operator leaped into the air attached to their ropes, propelling them outward and giving their ropes just enough slack that when they came down, they'd fly right into the window.
And with a massive blast all eight charges detonated and shattered the transparisteel windows of the bridge in a shower of translucent metal. Which was closely followed by eight large and very imposing armored mercenaries flying in on ropes firing their weapons at all of the targets present, which were many. With a quick jerk on his quick release his grapple gun released the rope and Sergei rushed forward firing his 416 on full auto as he gunned down one, then two, and then three enemies as he was cutting a bloody swathe to the dazed and now probably utterly terrified pirate king. As while blasters were loud, nothing was as loud as eight rifles firing their ballistic ammo indoors with over pressures and noises that rivaled any fire breathing dragon. And as each operative advanced, they cut down the dazed and confused defenders, the pirate king running for the door to the turbolift as Sergei closed to melee range with one of the remaining combatants and his gun clicked empty. His transition was as smooth as it was deadly, letting his rifle simply fall into his sling, naturally falling to his left side, as he drew his Big Iron with his right hand, and grabbed the poor sod with his left by the shoulder. He planted the weapon's muzzle into man's chest and pulled the trigger once, twice, three times as he brought him close to make sure he wouldn't move and provided Sergei with some cover as a few of the defenders regained their senses moments too late. With the man in his arms quite dead, Sergei stuck the revolver through the man's arm pit and leveled it the nearest man, shooting him in the chest with the disrupter while the rest of his squad dealt with the remaining pirates. The pirate king however had already made his escape, and Sergei surveyed the room as he holstered his revolver, and reloaded his rifle. He called into his comms quickly as he radioed to the other team.
"Blue team, target's making a run for it!" Sergei knew his men would be good enough to catch their prey, they just had to make sure they caught him first.
