Location: 3 klicks out from Fort Nowhere
Enemy: [member="Gulliver Foyle"] | [member="Veris Tagge"]
Allies: [member="Dagorn"] | [member="Haytham Kaze"]
Given that they hovered, repulsor craft cared little for the shape of terrain. Indeed many commanders preferred repulsorcraft over treads and walkers. The primary concern when fielding them came from their inability to move through theater shields, as seen long ago in the ancient Battle of Naboo. Fortunately, the enemy before them had none, or at least none that they wanted to move through.
A second sticking point of repulsor craft was their speed. Even assuming that not all of the Triumvirate formation managed to make their top speed of 300 kph, the mechanized forces would reach the enemy in a little less than a minute. The sappers no doubt saw the incoming forces. Maybe it inspired them to work harder, or maybe they would realize just how little time they had to do their jobs.
Third and finally, the repulsor craft had no need to stay very low to the ground. The enemy knew they were coming and could clearly see them with visuals, if not with radar. Thus, even if the sappers could plant their explosives in forty seconds, the conventional mines wouldn’t be set off by the repulsorcraft.
Incoming turbolaser from the megalithic walkers tore into the Triumvirate forces, knocking a dropship out of the sky and obliterating two of the armored personnel carriers. The flames of their wreckage burned wickedly on the surface of Ruusan, adding more ghosts of fallen soldiers to the planet’s host.
Orcus himself rode upon a Dreadhawk gunship at the back of the formation. He stared through the carbonite fog, glowering sullenly. The holographic processors available to any stormtrooper via their helmet’s systems would cut down on the haze, but this artificial mist still proved troublesome. Best to be rid of it.
“Pilot. Lower the ramp.”
The Herglic Sith made his way to the lip of the bay ramp as it lowered. He held onto a strut with one flipper and glared at the descending smog, then he opened his mouth and took in a lungful of air.
Some Force users sported a variety of abilities, others claimed to have mastered half-a-dozen, while still more became jacks of all trades. Orcus had one specialty only.
“HAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUM!”
From the depths of his open maw came a bellow that resounded deeper than a rumble of thunder and unleashed a shockwave through the air of immense proportions. The shockwave hurtled through the carbonite fog and swept it away from the Imperium forces, stripping them bare of their covering as surely as the eastern gale laid trees bare of limb.
Without their mist, they had no cover from air support except the towering walkers and the three longbows.
Orcus’ jaws snapped shut and he grinned broadly.
Into the comm he said, “Mobi, you may begin.”
The gunners of an aft battery on the Primeval-class destroyer received coordinates from the ground. Longitude, latitude. Proximity to allied forces.
They opened fire.
Orcus looked up to bear witness to the handful of turbolaser bolts that shot down through atmosphere. Vibrant spears of green energy rained down on the towering Bahamut-class walker of the Imperium as though hurled by angry gods.
With the range of destruction confined to a twenty meter radius, the likely outcome was the overloading of the Bahamut’s deflector shield and the destruction of nearby support walkers.
The Triumvirate fleet was interposed between the newly arrived Imperium fleet and the planet. As such, a counter strike seemed unlikely.
In the wake of the orbital strike, ten gunships started to target the three Longbow AAs with now fully functional thermal and IR optics. Dreadhawks unleashed swarms of nano-missiles amid burst fire from laser cannons, swooping low to drop seismic charges on the AA platforms. After action reports would later show that they had dropped a total of twenty seismic charges on the three Longbows.
Half of the Pyrrhus dropships let loose with their cluster missiles on infantry clustered at the base of the large AT-SEs, but targeted those walkers directly with energy torpedoes.
The four repulsor tanks also opened fire, aiming at the smaller walkers of Tagge’s force as they drew in range. Microrockets streamed from their turrets, while their heavy laser cannons focused on the structural weak points of the walkers: the legs. Their 12mm pivot guns spat death at enemy infantry, making sure heads kept low.
* * *
“Contact. Five tangoes ahead of the main force. Looks like they’re setting mines.”
A snort. “They’ve got about twenty seconds. Bruno, pop the lid.”
A dorsal 13mm slug thrower popup turret extended from the roof of the fast moving APC.
“Light ‘em up.”
The turret swiveled, barking a stream of hot lead toward first one target, then the next, taking each in succession.
A similar event happened all across the front.
Infantry were a powerful tool, able to go places vehicles couldn’t. Useful in mountainous regions. But they weren’t in the Valley of the Jedi and the sappers, mortars and other foot soldiers didn’t have any defense against aerial callouts that pinpointed their locations, or really any means of combating the four repulsor tanks save mortars and artillery - whose use was rapidly dwindling the closer the Triumvirate came.
The other half of the Pyrrhus dropships swung toward Gulliver’s artillery batteries. Cluster missiles shrieked out, contrails darkening the sky.
Weather forecast for Ruusan?
Rainy with a chance of rockets.
* * *
The Triumvirate did not go unscathed.
“Incoming!”
The whistle came after the bang. Mortars bombarded the mechanized infantry. Bursts of shrapnel made the APCs shake. Troops gripped their weapons tightly desperately hoping that the cramped metal boxes they rode in didn’t become cramped metal coffins.
Under optimal circumstances traditional mortar crews could fire around 8-16 rounds per minute. Taking fire from gunships was not optimal, so eight rounds per minute was more likely the outcome.
Fortunately for the Triumvirate, APCs stands for armored personnel carriers, made with the express intention of being able to safely transport troops through battle zones. The sloped plating Vornskr APCs lessened the force of the impacts, but one went down under two successive hits from a mortar. The craft peeled apart as though it was an overripe fruit thrown across permacrete, spilling troops out like seeds as the repulsor engines went offline and it tumbled into the ground. Crashing, spinning, a shredded can.
Another went down, crushed by a direct hit from an artillery shell. The others - tanks and APCs alike - pressed on, spreading out to either side of Gulliver and Tagge's front lines and speeding up their flanks in an encircling O, seeking to wrap around them and put the awfuldamn turning radiuses of those walkers to good use.
The 1200 men of the Imperium could not outmaneuver the Triumvirate mechanized forces. And any withdrawal would be cut off almost as soon as it began. The walkers would make Orcus pay dearly with their turbo lasers, but he'd see them bombarded into the ground with uncontested control of the air. The Imperium could hide in crags and foxholes, in gullies and hastily dug ditches. They could hide. And they could die when Orcus sent his forces in to tear them out by the roots.
Like weeds.
Forces:
x700 Herglic Marines in Koodan-class armor.
x20 Malacath Shocktroopers in MA-1 Herglic Power Armor
x44 Vornskr-class APCs
x4 Repuslortanks
x16 Dreadhawk Gunships
x23 Pyrrhus-class dropships
