The Helios closed on the Victory Class as soon as its boarding torpedoes hit the hull and the internal cargo of combat droids reported themselves onboard. On the bridge, the progress of the boarding parties was monitored over secure channels as the Corvette accelerated closer to the star destroyer floating in front of it. Turbolasers and ion blasts splashed against the shields and hull, but were not enough to stop the ship’s attack. Most of the weapons on that part of the enemy ship had already been destroyed or neutralized.
At a certain distance, the nose of the Helios pushed down and swung out of the way along the ventral hull session, exposing a completely flat surface with a large oval shaped impression taking up most of the area. The same instant multiple deceleration thrusters fired off and slowed the ship down quickly as it almost smashed head first into the VSD’s hull. The collision between the two ships never happened, however, as the Helios slowed down enough to calmly press the forward flat section against one of the only undamaged sections of the Victory’s forward starboard hull.
As the two ships came together and stabilized, two forward tractor beams came on from the Helios and clamped down to hold the ship in place completely. The oval impression extended forward and started a slow clockwise spin just as a pulsing concentrated disintegration pulse turned on around it cutting through the thick armor plating quickly and cleanly as the oval kept spinning slowly and pushing harder against that same plating. As the hull was being cut, a sensor pulse into the ships interior picking up a number of humanoids moving around in small groups towards the hull cutting operation taking place. Some in the last group paused and moved towards the wall on the opposite side from where a team of combat droids was cutting through a locked blastdoor.
Within seconds the operation was complete a slight clang sound could be heard as the large oval airlock clamped into place. All readings were in the green, confirming a tight seal and that it was ready for activation. At the Captain’s order the Helios closed the forward blastdoors that were situated behind the massive airlock and pushed the vessel away from the VSD’s hull. Everyone on the bridge could see the brand new airlock that was now attached to the other ship’s hull. It almost used fused on, as if it had been there for ages. As they kept looking, the airlock was commanded to open. The doors retracted into themselves and instantly atmosphere poured through the opening as if a water hose had just been turned on. At first it was simply air flowing through, but in seconds that air was filled with bodies as reaver after reaver was ejected into the deadness of space. Their arms reached out at the Helios as they flew past. Some even had weapons in their hands and were firing as they turned to turn towards the ship that sealed their fates, if they ever had fates to begin with. Some of them even came out in a trajectory that took them directly to the Helios, but they were quickly incinerated as they came in contact with the corvette’s shields.
When no more Reavers emerged from the airlock, it was closed again and the Helios moved back towards it, maneuvering carefully as the two ships made contact ones again. The atmospheric seals locked in place as two platoon sized marine units stood by to invade the ship. The majority of the combat strength was made up of droids, but a small number of living operators were there as well to take command of the operations once they were inside the enemy ship.
One of these living soldiers was a large Bothan male named Liak’ay For’ya or Liak to the people he knew well. He used to be a mercenary before his employment with Stellar Enterprises, an employment that was supposed to be temporary, but was now going on two years. His combat experience had come in handy when training the new clones being created at the Sanctuary facility. Back on Bothawui, in the army, he had hated bootcamp, but being in charge made it much better. He took out his frustrations and hated memories of those days on the men and women under his command. It was probably because of this that they had become some of the best soldiers in the Stellar Enterprises Defense Force.
Now he was here, on the Helios, checking his weapons as he stood close to the front of the assault line. This was his assault to lead, against an enemy they knew very little about. He knew the troops under his command could handle any mission, but it was almost a good idea to know who you were fighting before you go into battle. There were too many unknowns and that fact made the mission actually quite exciting for the old time soldier who had supposedly seen it all.
When everything was ready he willed the blast doors and airlock to open and both did as they were commanded, sliding open quickly. As soon as they did the first line of combat droids and two marines surged forward through the expending opening. Their weapons were at the ready as they rushed into the Star Destroyer to secure a beachhead.
Liak was in the second wave of men and machines, reinforcing the first. As he stepped onto the cold metal deck of the other ship he could see that for the moment they were alone. The area has been cleared of Reavers only minutes ago. His helmet display pinged with a new announcement, telling him that the first group of boarding droids had made their way through the blastdoor on the other end of the deck and were moving towards them to reform.
“Bring up the Sparkler.” Liak commanded as his eyes studied the area around them.
The sparker was actually a nickname for the Static bomb they had brought with them. The bomb was designed based on the Static Charge generator built into the Caster Class Cruisers, but on a smaller scale. It would release a pulse that would disable electronics in a certain blast radius, much like an ion bomb would, but without an explosive core.
As the ordered was being carried out, the Bothan looked over at their Combat Engineer kneeling down just to the right of him, the woman’s rifle moving back and forth along the hallway. “Eng, get some Moles down those corridors we need some recon and EW.”
She acknowledged quickly and reached behind to pull out three small disks from the large pack on her back and quickly programmed them for the mission before tossing each one into the air. The drones spun up quickly and silently, hovering in midair for a second before shooting down the corridor and curving towards their destinations, which were the few hallways leading into their beachhead location.
Just before the last drone turned towards its programmed hallway a flash appeared from that darkened hallway milliseconds before a missile slammed into one of the combat droids making its way back to the group. The droid’s chassis exploded into pieces, separating the machine into two at the torso. Even damaged heavily the droid pushed itself back up with one arm and turned the other towards the attackers and fired back down the corridor. The other seven droids stopped in their tracks and took up an advanced defensive position, their wrist mounted blasters sending streams of bolts down range at the coming enemy horde.
Through his helmet display, Liak could see the whole skirmish unfold from the feed the Mole drone sent them. Hundreds of Reavers were descending upon them from the depth of the ship. Many of them were dying as the last blaster bolts slammed into their bodies, vaporizing whole sections of their bodies. They did not die quickly; however, it seemed that the only truly lethal hits were headshots. Even some of the heavily disabled Reavers were crawling towards the droids with their legs or arms missing. They did not seem to feel pain at all nor did they bleed when shot. Many seemed to have weapons of different kinds from the rocket launcher to blasters to simple pipes or knives. As they got closer to the main corridor their moans could be heard, horrible…wretched moans. Even Liak, a veteran of many military campaigns shivered silently inside.
Behind him, there was movement and turned to see a pair of droids bring out a large sphere. They set it down on the deck and moved forward into the defensive line. It was time to move to the next phase of the operation. The Bothan moved towards the large bomb/generator and typed in the arm code into the control panel before issuing the evacuation order for the rest of his marines. They formed into pairs and peeled back quickly into the ship as if they have done it hundreds of times before.
He took a look back down the hallway just in time to see the massive swarm of Reavers collide with the combat droids. One of the droids was actually lifted into the air by a group and tossed against the wall as the others were toppled over. Some of the Reavers were actually trying to bite the machines, but their teeth cracked instantly, shattering against the armor the droids were wrapped in. As the droids began to stand back up, axes and clubs descended upon them trying to beat them into submission, but the droids withstood the assault. Some of their armor cracked in places, but there not out of the fight. Liak watched a Reaver fly into the area as one of the droids defended itself and slam into the bulkhead on the other side, bones and dark thick fluid spraying in all directions from the impact.
The rest of the herd surged forward, however, towards the beachhead. They were met with a torrent of blasterfire from the defending droids, shattering the forward ranks just as the airlock closed and sealed shut.
Behind the airlock Liak stood with his warriors and sent the command to trigger the bomb on the other side. It took a few seconds to get a response as the generator inside the weapon powered up and started to build up the static charge. Particles throughout the corridor coalesced together, making the air around it shimmer and sparkle, before a static like wave exploded from the core. In space the wave could have been stopped by powerful enough shields, but inside the confined space of the ship and inside the shields themselves the wave propagated quickly. Every piece of electronics the wave passed over were shorted and disabled. In seconds the charge passed over the reactor and engine room as well as the backup generators and bridge.
The Helios shook slightly as the VSD engines shut down and as the large ship started to drift. All lights went out instantly inside the ship as power was lost entirely. The Corvette had to quickly adjust itself to stay fully connected.
When the airlock open again and Liak stepped through, there was a massacre on the other side. Reaver bodies floated all over the place and thick globs of black fluid floated all around them. With the power dead, there was nothing to run the artificial gravity inside the Victory and only beings or machines with magnetic footwear were able to stand on the metal deck. Just before stepping back onto the VSD, Liak activated the magnetic field on his armor suit soles took a step forward, feeling himself clamp down against the deck plating. In front of him stood a row of combat droids, rooted to the floor themselves as a few of them fired off at the last few surviving Reavers that thrashed around as they floated mindlessly.
Pandath, Taanab
The ground beneath them shook hard as a bluish-white explosion cloud bellowed up one block to the North where two missiles impacted simultaneously. They heard the familiar groans and cracks as a building collapsed from the attack, sending dust and debris into the air. At the same moment a single Hammerhead fighter punched through the thickening cloud before veering away for another target. The attack had successfully stopped an advancing Reaver mob from ambushing Bravo Squad as they advanced towards their final objective.
The Reavers had begun by simply attacking the squad mindlessly in pairs and small groups as soon as they detected the presence of the Special Operations unit. These initials attacks were fairly easy to suppress, however, the enemy seemed to learn slowly. Attacks were starting to be become more coordinated and with much longer numbers of Reavers coming from many different directions. Reaver “Scouts” could also be seen at times from various alleys or high vantage points, such as building windows or roofs. These were ignored at first, but after the first few ambushes and unexpected clashes, the scouts were shot on sight. It wasn’t known how they were relaying what they saw, but for the moment it didn’t matter. Ilmus had to get his team to the final objective before the mission could proceed further.
He scanned the street ahead as they moving cautiously along the center of the road. It was something they would never do in a conventional fight, but this was far from conventional. They all wanted to stay as far away from buildings as they could. That was where most of the living dead waited for them.
At the far end of their spear formation Brute fired his HSAR at the third story of a building up ahead and to the right. The windows melted quickly as the stream of heavy blaster bolts from the Heavy Squad Assault Repeater smashed into them and traced a line slowly down the entire level. The fire peppered and vaporized entire frameworks that held the windows and supported the edge of the floor above. Slowly the rain of death moved further inside the structure and hammered the ceiling creating large holes as it swept back and forth further into the building. In moments the weakened ceiling collapsed, causing the Reaver congregation on that level to fall through onto the floor below. What fell through, however, were not whole people, but a mass of burned bodies and parts of Reavers.
Some were still alive and as Brute eased off the trigger, hands could be seen reaching over the edge of the melted windows before a few legless Reavers hulled themselves out and fell to the ground, moaning and screaming as they struggled to crawl toward the squad. Ilmus raised his rifle and squeezed off a few rounds as did the rest of the squad and watched their heads explode.
When the movement stopped Ilmus lowered his MIR and took a step forward. Almost instantly his left shoulder vibrated and the HID in his faceplate lit up, indicating of an approaching threat. He turned quickly, his actions made faster by the exosuit, in time to see two Reavers running towards him with their hands stretched out. They were almost upon him, with death behind their black eyes. As he started to bring his rifle up to fire, the first one’s head exploded. A millisecond later the second Reaver staggered back as if hit with tremendous force in the chest, just before his body exploded out. Black fluid and pieces of skin and bone flew in all directions. As the mist cleared Ilmus could see the Reaver still moving, one arm still intact, but missing everything else from the heart down. It was lying face down, but in seconds started to rise back up on its arm. Without support from the other arm it flipped over on its other side and just moaned, its mouth opening wide.
Ilmus smiled to himself, relieved, and turned his head slowly to look over his shoulder. His eyes zoomed in on the roof of the tallest building in the area. Atop the twenty five story office building a hand waved to him before settling back down on the weapon protruding from the edge of the roof. Reavers weren’t the only one with soldiers on rooftops. A few sniper units had been inserted with the company as well, but it had taken them some time in clearing their respective buildings of Reavers before they could perform their intended duties.
Ilmus nodded thanks to the warrior before looking back at the moaning animal on the ground before him. He walked over and lowered his rifle at its head and pulled the trigger, causing skull fragments and brain matter to splatter the feet of his combat suit. He smiled to himself inside the helmet just as more movement was registered above him, causing him to look up as the windows in building above him shattered and a pile of heavy desks came tumbling down on top of him, crushing him to the ground. Behind the desks a horde of Reavers ran through the broken window, jumping two stories into the street below.
All throughout the assault zones Reavers attacked in mass. Thousands of the creatures came out of subways, buildings, and just ran down the streets as all Stellar Enterprises forces in the areas. There seemed to be an intelligence behind them now as their ambushes started within seconds of each other and at weakened points along the established control lines. The spaceports seemed to be the heaviest hit just as the freighters for Phase 2 of the planet assault came in to land.
It seemed as if the Reavers knew these freighters were coming and were trying to prevent that from happening. It was these freighters, however, that sealed the fate of the Reaver counter attack. As they landed and popped open their cargo doors, hundreds of fresh combat droids poured out and instantly joined in the defense of these ports. The droids could be not be frightened nor could they be turned. They simply fought back with mechanical ferocity, never stopping or tiring. Even when surrounded they would simply bat or throw Reavers out of the way with their massive arms. They worked in teams to push the enemy back and secure the areas once again before continuing their attack further, decimating the Reaver forces and finally hunting down those that remained active in the killzones. Reavers did not pull back, they simply attacked and died to the last. Thousands upon thousands of their bodies littered the streets as Combat droids advanced over them, crushing their remains under heavy armored feet.
As the Reaver attack faltered, engineers inside a few of the new freighters were hard at work pulling out two large generator units. These units had almost taken up the entire cargo hold each. Power cables from the other freights at each spaceport were run to these generators as one ship would not be nearly enough to power them. It took some a good fifteen minutes to set up these generators and run diagnostics before they were powered up. As soon as the switch was flipped, or in this case button was pressed, a shimming field expended out from these generators and went on to cover the entire Pandath Megalopolis.
