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« Reply #53 on: March 08, 2018, 07:39:19 AM » |
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MARZ
5 ABY
The last thing I could remember was an ancient skyscraper, covered in moss and vines, swelling up all too rapidly in the viewport. Then, blackness.
Now, I was lying on my back, staring up at a rusted ceiling. My left shoulder throbbed with pain, and the smell of smoke, burning oil and twisted metal filled my nose. I wasn't wearing my helmet. My head was pounding, and I groaned involuntarily.
"The commander's awake!" Marda shouted. In a split moment, our second combat medic, Izzy, was kneeling over me.
"How you feeling, boss?" He asked.
"Like hell."
"That could be a good sign, if you think about it. I need you to wiggle your toes, your fingers, tell me your name and count backwards from ten." She said briskly, and I readily complied.
"Elo 'Marz' Arronak, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. I've got some pain in my shoulder, but I think my head's alright and I'm not paralyzed."
"You dislocated the shoulder. I reset it while you were out. We need you on your feet here, Commander." She stood and offered me hand to get to my feet. I surveyed the situation for the first time as Izzy handed me my helmet.
The gunship had smashed into the side of a monolithic skyscraper that had been as empty as the rest of the city for centuries. It was a mangled, smoking heap against the back wall of the large room they were in, a swath of destruction behind it trailing through several other rooms to the gaping maw it had torn in the exterior of the building. The unharmed survivors of the crash had set up a defensive perimeter at every entrance, and the less fortunate lie on the floor in a row, where Izzy and Nima were administering aid hurriedly. There was another row off to the side, still forms covered by their thin thermal blankets. Out of our thirty-five man team, only twenty-one had made it this far. Both pilots were dead, and so was Ganding. Everyone else's armor was burned, sooty and dented. All alone sitting in a corner, his bindings and blindfold removed, was our target, the young man looking shaken but unharmed.
Marda was overseeing the regrouping and reorganization of the team. Undamaged weapons were being stacked up, along with what rations and medical supplies had been recovered from the fire. I started towards her when the telltale crack of an old Tusken cycler rifle range out. I turned my head towards the hole in the side of the building. Doke, a sniper from Team Besh, was lying prone with his trusty weapon.
"What do you see, Doke?" I spoke into my helmet's commlink.
"The insurgents, sir. They're moving in, but I seem to be able to scatter them every few minutes."
"Good work. All units, prepare to move. If you can walk and hold a weapon, do so. Krake, how is the rappelling equipment?"
"Intact, sir! Along with our anti-speeder mines and tripwire bombs, but we lost the heavy rocket launchers and one of the heavy guns." The combat engineer replied.
"Excellent. Anchor the ropes, everyone but Team Cresh will be rappelling down. Cresh, check your jetpacks. You'll be dropping down to cover the rest of the platoon's descent. Medical personnel, evaluate our wounded for combat capability and prepare those who can't move under their own power for transport. Team Dorn, recover all navigational and communications equipment you can. I want everyone assembled in ten minutes!" I barked the orders confidently, hiding my concern. The fact of the matter was that we were lost and cut off, miles and miles out of communication range with the rest of the team.
Doke's rifle cracked again.
...
The remnants of my Platoon stood in front of me, looking as proud as they ever had. They were beaten and bloody, but still strong. Two of them leaned on crutches, and even they had rifles hanging from slings around their necks. Team Cresh had taken no serious casualties, amazingly, but Aurek had been hit hard. Of Team Dorn, only Nima, Izzy and Krake remained, the latter loaded down with explosives and carrying the automatic grenade launcher that had been mounted in the door of the gunship. Many of the others were armed equally heavily, with a scattering of different weapons.
"Alright, boys and girls, it's time to take a walk. According to the maps from our flybys, in Sector B-43-G there's a building with old communications array on top of it. That array is our primary objective. If we can repair and jack into that array, we can get a message back to the ship and the boys there will sweep in and bring us out. Our secondary objective, if that fails, will be to track some of these insurgents back to their base, which must be somewhere in the area, and steal a vehicle from them to get us home. It's gonna get heavy out there, folks, so be ready. Team Cresh is going to hit the ground first using their jetpacks, and we'll follow down the ropes." I paused for a moment, looking over the gathered mercenaries, before giving the order. "Cresh, go!"
One by one, Team Cresh hopped out of the gash in the side of the building.
"Aurek, Dorn, go! Besh, secure the target!" The ropes went taut as the mercenaries hooked onto them and began lowering themselves, quickly working their way down the side on the building. We blindfolded the target again, and strapped him into a harness that was then hooked up with my own web gear. The process was for his own good; it wasn't easy for an untrained civilian to rope down the side of a two-hundred story building without panicking.
"Don't worry friend, we've got you. Just stay still." I said to him in a friendly tone, booking my arm through a loop on his harness and easily tossing him over my shoulder, then attaching my guideline to one of the hanging ropes. We were so high in the sky that I could see the tops of clouds. My stomach turned a bit as I dropped out of the hole in the wall, planting my feet on the side of the building. I felt the young man hanging on to me for dear life tense up, his breath growing ragged as he realized what was happening.
"Just stay calm, buddy!" I shouted over the wind, and began descending.
...
I wouldn't have been ashamed to admit how relieved I was when my boots finally hit the ground and set down the target. I quickly took stock of the situation.
It was eerily silent, as though we were standing in a long-abandoned cemetery. Ancient, mossy pavement made up the ground, plants growing through the many cracks lacing it. The walls all around us were choked in vines and more moss, and in many places trees had taken over. Everything the eye could see was covered in varying layers of green.
A strong defensive perimeter had been established by those who'd already arrived, apart from two mercenaries who stood by the ropes to assist those still descending. Directly behind me were the men with crutches, each of them piggybacking on one of the medics, and finally, Krake, the combat engineer.
"Cresh, you're on point. Besh, bring up the rear. Form a loose column." I ordered, speaking quietly. Every sound seemed to echo. "Keep your weapons ready and your heads on a swivel."
I joined Cresh at the head of the column, an RT-97C in my hands, replacement for the weapon I'd lost in the crash. We made our way South, deeper into the city. Every sound, our boots on the mossy pavement, weapons rubbing against armor, even our own breathing, seemed deafening in the crushing silence of the long abandoned streets. We walked for half an hour before we began to feel it. Eyes on the backs of our heads, coming from windows, corners and alleyways that were always empty when you looked back. The sound of footsteps that maybe, probably, almost certainly belonged to the man behind you, but what if they didn't? There were shadows that felt out of place, but I couldn't quite tell why.
It only got worse as time went on, but I was just beginning to talk myself into believing that it was just my imagination when blaster fire erupted behind me.
"Get down!" One of my men shouted, and we all hit our knees as walls of blaster fire poured from our column into the windows and doors of the buildings around us.
"Hold your fire!" I shouted, and it stopped immediately. The silence returned. "Where was he?"
"Second story sir, third window from the right!" The man who'd first fired, whose name was Gem, replied, pointing at the building to our left.
"Marda, take three men and check that room. Everyone else, hold steady." I ordered. Marda took her three favorite breachers and kicked in the perforated remains of the building's door. A few minutes later, her helmet poked through the window in question.
"Nothing in here but smoke, dust and shot up antiques, Commander." She called down, before disappearing back inside.
"I saw... I thought..." Gem said confusedly.
"Don't worry about it, but don't let it happen again. Keep it moving." I said as Marda returned.
We continued our journey, but the feeling of being watched never left us. The deeper into the city we travelled, the denser the vegetation grew. We were within a mile of the objective building with the point man raised a hand in the air, signaling a stop, and knelt.
"Tripwire." He said, but before he could investigate further, he grabbed at his chest and made muted sound, then fell forward onto the wire. Everyone in Cresh dove backwards as a column of fire shot across the street, and our helmet speakers went silent, protecting our ears from the potentially deafening sound.
"Sniper, sniper! Get to cover!" I shouted as sound returned. "Doke, 12 o'clock!"
"On it, sir!" The sniper was already lying prone behind a large root, peering through the long scope of his rifle as the rest of us hunkered down in an alleyway. An incoming round dug a chunk out of the root inches from Doke's head, but he didn't even flinch.
Crack!
Doke's rifle rang out.
"Got him, Commander."
Zip!
The round slammed into Doke's helmet, and he slumped over his rifle.
"Stay down, there's another one!" I yelled. I reached to a pouch hanging from my web gear for my macrobinoculars as Izzy darted across the street to Doke's unmoving form.
There was only one building with an unimpeded view all the way down our street, at the end of it around one thousand meters away. I dialed in the range and peeked around the corner. I scanned it quickly from a standing position and drew back. It was a relatively short structure, thankfully with very few windows. The sniper was most likely on the roof. I increased the zoom on my binoculars dropped to my knees so that if he'd zeroed in on me he'd be forced to readjust, and peeked again, focusing on the roof. It only took a second to located him, and I dropped back into cover.
"Izzy?" I spoke into my commlink.
"He's dead, commander." I bowed my head for a moment.
"Can you get his rifle?"
"Already got it."
"The second sniper's on the roof of the building at the end of the street, all the way at the end to the right." I instructed. There was a sharp Crack! a few seconds later.
"He's done for. You see any others?" I took a moment to check.
"No, but we need to change up our route. Get over here, we're going to cut through the alleyway and move a few streets over if we can, into the heavier vegetation."
A few minutes later, we were making progress again, and the terrain the terrain became as much jungle as it was urban. The heavy foliage meant it would be much harder for snipers to see us, but it was a lot easier to hide traps, and we had to slow to a crawl as our pointmen checked for signs of danger. Finally, after what seemed like a decade of walking through the silent city, we came within sight of our destination.
The building was only a few stories tall, and sat out in the middle of on open courtyard. It seemed quiet; the enemy had no way of knowing that this was where we were headed, but we were still careful, and made our way across the open area quickly, kicking the door of the building in and rapidly clearing it.
This had been some sort of broadcast facility at one time. There were dozens of offices and studios crammed inside, and fortunately, the stairs were intact. It too dangerous to rappel up the sides in full view of anyone who might be watching.
Defenses were set up on the top floor. There were only two staircases leading to it, and plenty of windows that we could shoot down from. We also prepared a fallback position on the roof, where Krake was going to work on the communications apparatus. The complex system of dishes and antennas was in a woeful state of disrepair, but after raiding almost all of the platoon's electronics for power cells, he was fairly confident that he could jury rig something strong enough to get a message back to the Capital, where the rest of our comrades waited with the ship. It wouldn't be a quick process, he warned, and the rest of us remained on high alert.
It was an hour before they began gathering in the trees and buildings around us. We waited, biding our time, until they began assembling tripod-mounted heavy blasters at key vantage points in the area, and I gave the order to fire on those positions.
It was as though we'd kicked an anthill. At once, the enemy swarmed towards us, lying down a blistering amount of suppressing fire. They were reprimanded at once by steady, aimed fire, and the first wave never got within a hundred feet of the building. The storm of action had given them enough time to erect two heavy blaster emplacements on the south side of the building, and that side was raked with fire, forcing us to dig in behind the makeshift cover we'd assembled, and it was much harder to stop the second wave. A dozen of them made it to the door, and they were inside just like that.
Their mistake.
"Besh, we have intruders on the ground floor." I said as I approached the team defending the staircase. "Looked like about ten of them."
"Shall we go hunting, sir?" One of the men asked. I nodded, and he gestured to three of his team, who broke from their defensive positions and drew blaster pistols and knives. I had equipped a retrofitted CA-87 shock blaster, modified to fire a brutal particle beam blast.
Most fighting forces in the galaxy prefer to avoid engagements at extremely close distances; combat becomes even more messy and unpredictable than usual, and it's frightfully easy to make a misstep that can cost you your life. That means that it can be a strong tactic to force your enemy into such a confrontation if you're prepared for it and they are not. Our attackers had made a fatal mistake, however; Mandalorian Supercommandos are not only always prepared for such combat, we prefer it.
By the time we collided with them, the enemy had managed to get several more teams through the door. It would not help them. The five of us were a typhoon in the cramped offices, using our knives, fists and feet as much as our blasters. I charged into a hallway filled with insurgents, pumping the trigger of my CA-87. The overcharged blasts of energy tore into them, ripping through limbs and slamming bodies into the walls. I only had a few seconds of firing time before the volatile weapon overheated, but it bought me enough time to get within arms reach of the panicking insurgents. I let it hang from it's sling at my side and drew a vibroblade. The hallways turned into a full blown melee, and every time I drove my fist into a nose or knee into a groin, the vibroblade followed, finishing off each enemy as my blows temporarily incapacitated them. The other three commandos were operating very similarly, and we made quick work of the intruders. I had to stop for a moment and catch my breath as I got to the end of the hallway, and as I did, I noticed the voice in my commlink.
"Commander? Come in, Commander." It was Krake.
"Go ahead." I said, somewhat raggedly.
"It wasn't easy, but I got this thing patched up and a message out. Help is on the way."
Relief flooded through me, and I took half a moment before responding.
"Thanks, Krake. All units, fall back to the roof and prepare for extraction."
...
I'd never been happier to see the forked hull of our custom built cruiser as it shot over the horizon, all guns blazing. The destruction was apocalyptic as the dual turbolasers on the belly of the ship began to fire. The plumes of fire and dirt that were kicked up by the heavy armaments were perforated by spears of energy as smaller guns strafed the fleeing insurgents. The ship settled over us, hovering a few dozen feet above our heads, and a large hatch slid open. Four ladders and two stretchers dropped down, and I heard the pilot's voice in my helmet.
"You boys still in one piece down there, boss?"
...
Ten minutes later, the whole ordeal was over. In an hour, we were handing the target back over to his very grateful father. In three hours, we were in orbit, and I was standing on the bridge of my ship.
"Where to now, Commander?" The pilot asked me.
"Nar Shadaa" I replied. "A cushy job for some two-bit gangsters would be nice right about now."
The stars outside the viewport stretched into lances of white light before the blue vortex of hyperspace replaced them, and we were off.
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