Location: Second Battle of Fort Nowhere
Enemy Commanders: [member="Gulliver Foyle"] | [member="Veris Tagge"]
Allied Commanders: [member="Dagorn"] | [member="Haytham Kaze"] | [member="Darth Vornskr"] | [member="Draco Vereen"]
Fog distorted sound. Chucking thermal detonators and rockets in fog, at distorted sounds, with no indicated assistance from any sort of advanced optics or holographic processors, was a recipe for friendly fire, if not outright disaster.
The dubious proposition of blindly throwing thermal detonators at the sounds of an APC’s turret while it moves by at 300 kilometers per hour met with the results one might expect.
As for why the fog still existed, well, the enemy underestimated their cetacean foe. This was the force nexus of Ruusan and Darth Orcus was in no mood for half-measures.
The howitzers all opened fire on that single alleged three meter section of space. A tingle ran down the Herglic’s spine and eyes of a fathomless black narrowed at the incoming barrage.
“I think not,” he rumbled, then opened his maw wide a second time.
On his best day, Orcus could, unaided, produce shockwaves from his mouth equivalent to the blast from a MOAB. And now the nexus of Ruusan flowed through him, a stygian ocean of roiling power that Orcus sucked into himself. Drinking. Drinking. A sea of ancient pains and hurts and all the horrific, lingering results of the Sith Brotherhood’s thought bomb, detonated so many millennia ago.
And still my cup runneth over. I’ve never felt power like this before.
Not even on Manaan when the berserker powder had leant him incredible strength. Orcus’ body trembled with the energy, begging to be unleashed. And he saw no reason to rein it in.
“HAUUUUUUUUUUUM!”
The shockwave rippled forth, slammed into the incoming howitzer rounds and scattered them like chaff in the wind, or else simply set off the impact fuzes. Explosions rippled in the sky, but Orcus was not finished yet.
The shockwave continued, but he altered the frequency, giving it less destructive energy and more Force.
If a nuclear wind was asked for, then a nuclear wind would be given. The wind rushed from his mouth at hurricane speeds, seized the remaining fog, and rolled it back from the enemy forces. All of it? No, some shreds remained in low-pockets. But the bulk of it was gone, pushed back and peeled away from this can of sardines. And Orcus was feeling hungry.
“Take us down.”
The Dreadhawk swung low and Orcus said over his shoulder, “That will be all, pilot.”
Then he leaped from the ramp and fell the remaining distance into the soil of Ruusan. He bent his knees when he landed, absorbing the impact, then straightened his spine and rolled a shoulder.
Some things in life required a personal touch. With a snap-hiss, his great saber came to life and he began stalking toward the howitzer batteries just ahead.
By this point, the APCs were already rounding the flanks of Gulliver’s forces, while Pyrrhus dropships continued to rain death on the batteries from above.
Gulliver’s other mortars opened up on the distant Fort Nowhere. The barrage made life difficult for Orcus’ reserve forces and sent any troops in the open scrambling for cover. One of the walls of the fort took a pounding and sagged inward, giving up its defensive facade to crumble into a heap of stone.
* * *
Twelve plasma torpedoes capable of overloading a capital ships shields roared through atmosphere, contrails like the tails of meteors. Orcus’ aerial craft spit chaff and flares, struggling to confuse the incoming missiles. Many successfully evaded the enormous torpedoes. Many, but not all.
Three ships went down, obliterated into a shower that fell through the sky as though tracks of burning tears. Another two managed to make it outside of the torpedoes’ physical blast radius, but the ion and radiation effects drained their shields. And yet still another fell prey to the deadly quad lasers.
The massive siege walkers unloaded their incendiary cluster missiles on the armored personnel carriers, leaving huge swathes of Ruusan’s surface aflame. The APCs flashed their deflector shields on as they cut through the sheets of hungry flames, but more than a few caught fire, sticky globs of chemical fire sticking to their outer surface like adhesive from hell. They kept moving, burning, as the drivers of each received simple orders.
The APCs on fire drove straight into the middle of the nearest enemy formation at their maximum speeds of 580kph, attempting to run over as many infantry as they could before the vehicles were non-serviceable.
Chin lasers from the walkers blew apart more of the personnel carriers, leading to Major Mobius D’ik’s call for reserves from the Fort to be sent in.
The two thermite torpedoes utterly annihilated a pair of armored personnel carriers, but the blast radius was not wide enough to catch more, since the Triumvirate formations were spread.
As for the ABC scramblers fired at the repulsor tanks, their weaponized ultrasonic, biologic and chemical payloads had little to no effect on the tanks besides a temporary blinding for physical line of sight.
* * *
Mobius D'ik, watching the battle unfold from within the impromptu F.O.B., was satisfied with the devastation wrought to the tactical walkers in the second enemy force and ordered the Dreadhawks to break away and let the newly arrived One Sith bombers have their fill with the two remaining Siege Walkers and the enormous Bahamut.
"Establish landing zones and eliminate those mortars with combined assaults," he ordered, "And deploy the troops from those armored personnel carriers before we lose anymore of them."
The fifteen remaining Dreadhawk gunships cleared landing zones with their blaster cannons and unloaded three hundred some odd Herglic marines clad in heavy
Koodan-class main battle armor. They wielded a variety of Blast-tech Industries weaponry and set about getting into those craggy positions the APCs and repulsor tanks couldn't reach, with support from the gunships once they took to the air again.
The surviving APCs also dropped off their troops and began moving at a slower pace now that the air support was more or less overwhelming.
The four repulsor tanks and a few of the Pyrrhus dropships targeted the five war sloops and opened fire on them with concussion and nano-missiles.
The second wave of APCs, twenty-four from the Fort, began speeding toward the battle. They would arrive in thirty seconds.
Forces:
x660 Herglic Marines in Koodan-class armor.
x20 Malacath Shocktroopers in MA-1 Herglic Power Armor
x36 Vornskr-class APCs
x4 Repuslortanks
x15
Dreadhawk Gunships
x19
Pyrrhus-class dropships
