Lareen City
Defensive HQ
Dawn
Far too quickly, the sun rose on the horizon and Lareen City woke to uneasy light. Throughout the night, engineers toiled tirelessly to secure defensive emplacements along rooftops. Main avenues were block at the street level by makeshift barricades and dotted with heavy repeater nests. Above them, landing pads for speeders were converted into defensive aerial encampments and refueling pads. In short order, the busting city had become a veritable corpse, for all the activity seemed to have vanished. Most of the city's citizens were evacuated north while the ones that refused to leave, or couldn't leave, were gathered into heavily fortified civil centers. The hope was that they'd be safe there while the attackers were repelled.
Near the south-eastern edge of the town,
soldiers hurried to and fro, armed with blaster rifles and lugging last minute equipment to where it was needed the most. Ayden stood in the center of the city's makeshift combat information center. Many of the wide displays, once used to coordinate civil services, had been re-purposed to display key defense zones and tactical information. To his left was Councilor Lera, her face a mask of solidarity, even as it was clear that her heart was breaking from seeing what the city had been transformed into. He did his best to give the Valen woman a comforting smile as a console alarm went off.
"Contact! Enemy contact, sector 05. Field telemetry coming up now."
Murmurs of shock rolled through the assembled as the largest screen was suddenly awash with black. A technical glitch would have be a blessing. Instead, thousands of
Sith troopers marched for the city. Dotting their ranks were hundreds of
AT-TTs, fearsome six-legged walkers that moved with mechanical precision. They, however, were not what held Ayden's attention. Amongst the assembled army were a dozen titanic
AT-SATs. Seismological warnings began going off across Sector 05 as the Sith army continued to approach. A second warning klaxon blared suddenly.
"Sector 09 reports enemy aircraft on approach." Radar maps were brought up, displaying dozens of
Taral-class interceptors and
TIE/r fighters. The attack was two pronged then, as they were escorting
enemy tranports into the city.
"Goddess shelter us and Gods take them." Ayden swore under his breath.
"Scramble defensive fighters to Sector 09. Inform Sector 05 that their birds might be a bit late getting to the party." Confirmations rang out as elements of the approaching Sith army broke off and headed north, to Sector 4.
"Alert all our forces. The Sith army has come. Now is the time that we make our stand." Ayden clenched his fist and turned to the Councilor and nodded to her before his form shattered into millions of photons. Elsewhere, at the command post for Sector 05, Ayden tightened the gauntlet around his forearm and gave it a tug. He hadn't worn the new Mk II/s combat suit yet. As the helmet came over his vision, gold markings the only thing to signify his elevated status, he resolved to speak to technicians about getting his own personal variant.
Slinging the
BTI-HPBR off his shoulder and checking the power cells, Ayden sighed in the final moments before combat as
enemy speeders broke off to engage Protectorate
recon speeders. His nerves were on fire and a knotted pit formed in his stomach. It had been some time since he had engaged in frontlines combat, but as he aimed the blaster rifle and watched the Sith forces break into a charge, somethings never changed.
And then the Nine Hells broke loose.
