Charlie fell back as the Mawites swarmed them firing fast and hard. Another squadmate and a refugee had been killed, and even the Refugees were firing now, but one more got shot in the arm.
Blow it, blow it! Charlie ordered via encrypted transmission.
The Thermal Detonators his squadmates had frantically buried in the precious seconds before the enemy had arrived in Force were detonated underneath approaching troops.
The Mercenary B1 Sniper team began firing from the top of the skyscraper they were in, firing on a fast Semi-Auto fire to try and hit the troops and divide the enemy's attention between the squad they were trying to kill and the Sniper Team that had a perfect birds eye view.
"'Sup?" The B1 Sniper grunted as he blasted the head off a Mawite. His Spotter began transmitting requests to House Io units in the area for an artillery strike. Charlie in the meanwhile directed his squadmates to use their built in gravity generators to try and slow down victims so they could be shot by others. But it was bad. They were
heavily outnumbered...
Meanwhile...
The Mercenary B1 called "Max" a glistening black color save for the triple-arrow symbol of the Eternal Empire on the front of his chassis had been issued a
Energy Bow Pistol for scout duties as he headed to a site on the way to his main destination.
When the Mandalorians had come to Panatha, the House Io units present had managed to spring a nasty surprise. The Mandalorians had been given the dubious honor of being the very first opponent to face the
Fortress Nuetralizer. It had carved a blood, insta-gib laden swath through their ranks before it's GTA Five Star Wanted Level Rampage had been ended when the Mandalorians ended up doing to Panatha what The Colonial Marines should have done in at LV-426 rather than do the dumbass thing and
land. Way to go, Weyland-Yutani Executives
Slow Clap.
It had been totaled, of course. No way they were getting it up and running. Best they could hope for was salvage...
Max approached the site of the wreck. House Io hadn't had time to journey to the site, being too busy using what ships they could spare to evacuate the populace they could get to. A decent amount of Epicanthix were flocking to them at this point.
He at last reached the wreckage. The advanced mech lay partly melted to slag in the streets by Mandalorian bombs. He Immediately began looking for a way into it's innards when he heard the whirring of a Repulsor Tank and got behind cover.
Max observed what appeared to be a Mawite aligned
HAG-M. It was being escorted by a large number of Mawite soldiers, all of whom appeared to be former Galactic Alliance marines, all armed with what appeared to be Light Repeaters the squad leader having a grenade launcher undermount to his.
Max crept alongside overturned vehicles, stopping as the Droid Tank passed by. They were getting closer to the Fortress Nuetralizer.
They had some ideas too. Great. Just great.
Max began to calculate his odds. They
were not good.
He began searching the rubble as the tank crew got closer. At a second glance he noticed they were equipped with fusion torches. He scurried into a bombed out building when he noticed the remains of a machine gun nest on the roof, keeping his weapon trained ahead. He reached the roof, dismayed by the corpses of Mandalorians everywhere. He began searching the bodies, hoping to find something that might let him engage the tank. But all he found were emergency flares, and a ball Droid. These Mandalorians had blown their last blaster shot trying to kill House Io at the first attack on Panatha. He took it anyway, along with one of their helmets and empty blaster rifles.
Going back inside yielded other results. A small Flashlight and high pressure aerosol spray paint, and a crude, single shot sawn off shotgun pistol. One spare shell.
Max began scrounging Electronics from the home, such as a timer and stove fuse, along with the electronics from a chronometer and duct tape. Further searching yielded a small bag of illegal fireworks and fertilizer.
Max located a soldering gun and a took kit and began going to work, assembling the explosive...
Ten minutes later...
The Mawite team had orders to salvage the strange mech for it's weapons or, if not possible, use them in enemies in their range, while taking notes of everything they found , and they had been busily examining them. One rail gun could still be fired, and from this range and angle it would smash into EE forces trying to cut off Brotherhood forces in the west.
The firing sound was fainter than normal, making them think it had come from father away, but that was not the case as the bolt smashed into a frag grenade on the belt of a marine, setting it off and killing him and the one next to him.
The other marines, their once proud alliance armor defiled by maw markings and blood, scrambled, looking for the source of the shooter.
The Tank Droid sensirs spotted a major heat source moving quickly and it fired it's mortar cannon right at it, but the heat source evaded the blast, moving between buildings as the Marines fired on what the tank fired on.
One Mawite spotted the helmet of a Mandalorian moving between windows and began firing on it, hand signaling surviving squad members to close in on the target while he and the tank focused on the fast moving heat signature. Two went for the Mandalorian, while two went for the Heat signature. The squad Leader and four others stuck close to the tank, watching from all angles.
A deadly sonic shot rang out from a second story window of a close by building, smacking into the face of a Corrupted Marine as the others concentrated fire on the window the shot had come from, The Fireworks went off in three key locations, spreading smoke and sparks very quickly and obscuring their vision, forcing them to adjust to thermal vision in their helmets.
One heard the click clack of metal feet behind him and spun around too late to be shot in the face by Max, who quickly scrambled away from return fire back into the smoke, going behind debris and keeping low as he was too close for the tank Droid to hit accurately.
The two closing in on the "Mandalorian" found it was a Helmet stuffed atop a mannequin. But the Droid had other things to work with. Though the Corrupted Marines too precautions, using scanners and the like, throwing stun grenades ahead of them before entering, Max had mad some very simplistic sabotages to the power generator of an oven, stuff too simple for the scanners to detect, an unscrewed power regulator here, a reversed circuit there, the motherboard fitted with parts from his comlink.
At his signal it exploded, basically a giant frag grenade in such close quarters, with the ensuing messy results. The second team, cautiously looking out for booby traps, caught both the trip wire Max had set up, as well as what looked to be a concealed explosive in the debris next to the door.
Max had stripped the laser sight from an empty rifle, modifying it to act as a tripwire to turn the flashlight on, along with the microphone from his comlink to simulate the sound of a blaster bolt when the laser was tripped.
Upon seeing the bright flashlight turn on in the darkness of a passage beyond along with the sound of a shot being fired, they immediately poured fire on its position, but too late realized their fatal error. The makeshift device had been attached to a plasma flow conduit.
The plasma leaked out and the conduit exploded, bathing the passage and them in plasma flames, which quickly spread to other buildings, rendering their heat sensors overwhelmed.
In all this chaos , Max had approached the tank and it's crew during the blast and was suddenly scrambling up it, running down the length of it's mortar barrel and reaching the mouth just as it swiveled, stuffing it's bomb into the barrel mouth and running, taking heavy blaster fire on one side that damaged it's ability to move, but the blast went off, shredding the tank and all but one of the survivors, who staggered towards the damaged Max, intent on finishing him off.
Max remained inert until the very last moment, before rolling over and shooting him with his energy bow pistol.
Max dragged himself up, an ar and a leg barely working, yet he would need everything for the task at hand...
Meanwhile...
The Mercenary B1 Droids that had been dispatched to the space port found the situation drastically changed when they arrived, with
Tegan Starfall
having pulled a Simon Phoenix and blasted apart significant number of ships. All but 4 CR-90's gone, with the rest being various other designs cleared out for evacuation. That pretty much left the House Io evacuation efforts one of the only
intact games left in town for any Epicanthix looking to flee. The Mawites were still firing on what was left of the evac site. This was not looking good. They needed a way in past the Maw Forces.
"No way we disarm the bombs in time..." On B1 name Guthrie muttered.
"Then we barrow ships from our own side to swing around here. Any they can spare and disarm any we find on the remaining vessels if possible." Luka the B1 replied grimly. "Let's move, team."
And then, a rumble. Soft, but growing more powerful.
One of the B1's saw a dust cloud in the distance from where The Assembly had been dispatched...
("The Sorcerer's Apprentice" by Paul Abraham Dukas Plays)
It is easy to think that The Battalion, being the less obviously trollish when compared to The Amalgam, has no sense of humor. This is untrue. She simply preferred the moments where humor could be its most gallows-grade.
For example, the past ten minutes she had been doing nothing but killing Maw. EE Soldiers helped by bringing her bodies. The sheer amount of Dark Side coursing through the planet made it easy to raise both slain Soldier on both sides, and slain Civilians, old or young.
But The Battalion, instead of some Daryl Dixon-esque shambling horror walk had decided to make each corpse skip in an exaggerated manner with the goofiest grin possible on shattered, mutilated faces. Was this tactically sound? Only
kinda. They would certainly soak up blaster fire. But the real work was going to have to be done by the B1's, and they needed a plan fast.
As the Mawites were forced to engage the happily skipping zombies, the B1 squad moved quickly, slipping into an exposed gap at the perimeter.
Definitely bombs. Fresh ships were needed. The B1 team wasn't fired on by the Defenders due to EE colors they were sporting, but they were making a beeline for the CR-90's that remained, sending out an encrypted transmission for two of their unmarked corvettes to swing around and pick up as many as they could cram aboard. Thank heavens for EE transponders...
One B1 began sending a coded transmission to all evac site defenders begging them not to shoot down the two evacuation corvettes they were sending. Others began to spread out quietly, looking to inspect any ship they could, quickly getting directed to a few already...
Mig Gred
Kralmus Orr
Khamul Kryze
Dodhorn Harert
Kybo Ren
Vorm
Ingrid L'lerim
