The Rebel Faction

The Enclave, Kile II


“Here they come again!”


Lance Corporal Hooper peeked out of his helmet to see a massive dust cloud billow up from a distant canyon that ran into the largest valley of the Enclave facility. Tearing off his gloves, he buckled down the straps of his old-fashioned Imperial Army helmet. He slapped the side of his helmet, ensuring that it hugged his head tightly. Frak this thing, I'm going to want to loosen it as soon as they're gone. He quickly slipped the blast-dampening gloves back and gripped his rifle, already pointing down field towards the oncoming assault force. Pressing the rifle's cold stock against his cheek, he could see through the scope a motley array of walkers plodding forward with hundreds of armored figures riding on top of swoops and speeder bikes. Flashes of blaster and laser fire began to stream towards the defenders of the Enclave. Idiots, they aren't even remotely close enough...Several of the base's weapon's emplacements began to thrum all around him; laser cannon turrets and missile launchers sent their own return fire into the self-styled Viscount de la Triellus mercenary forces.


Several emerald bolts surged into the fastest of the reckless swoop drivers. One bolt caught an armored figure squarely in the chest, half-incinerating the man, and casting the swoop to spin about into the rest of his fellow swoopers. Another bolt smashed into the front of another swoop, smashing the speeder bike into the dry earth, and sending its driver tumbling forward. Hooper began his controlled breathing cycle, focusing his reticule on the nearest swooper driver, waiting for his target to enter firing range. Suddenly, a pair of discolored Z-95 Headhunters soared just above the oncoming troopers and began to rain down fire on the Enclave's forces just before the shock assault neared their lines. Dust kicked up all around them, obscuring his scope's pictures. The screams of people pierced the air around him, and Hooper found his breathing thrown off by the massive dust cloud the Headhunters brought with them as they swooped over the Enclave's lines, spitting out triple blaster fire and the occasional missile. The Enclave weapon's emplacements turned their attention off of the approaching charge to lash out at the strike aircraft above them.


“Frak this,” swore Hooper, hacking a dust glop of sputum, “come here and die, you sons of Bantha crap.”


He pressed himself against solid earth and felt its reassuring mass press up against his breast. The young man briefly wiped off the lens of his rifle with a finger tip and got back into his shooting stance. He began to sweep his rifle from side to side, looking for any dark blur in the dust cloud that could be an opponent.


“This is going to hurt,” muttered a voice through his helmet's comlink.


“Tell me about it Peters, they'll all here today.”


“You see anything yet?”


“Nah, it's still all a sandstorm to me...wait.”


The sound of a repulsorlift engines filled the air around them. Hooper thought he saw a shape coalescing into a solid form in front of him. He squeezed the trigger, sending a red bolt right at the upper torso of a fast approaching swooper; the bolt glanced off the upper shoulder pauldron of the humanoid's armor. The swooper slid his bike to the side in reflex, bringing his own blaster pistol to bear down on the lines of the Enclave troopers. A burst of red bolts came sputtering back at the Enclave trooper, but flew all over his head. Hooper ignored them, focusing on properly aligning the sight reticule. The man squeezed the trigger again; the red bolt caught the mercenary just under the neck, tossing the soldier off his bike and onto the dried up lands of Kile II. He swept his reticule from side to side, squeezing of opportunistic shots at the reeling cavalrymen, beset from steady streams of blaster fire from his fellow Enclave troopers. The rat-tat-tat of an E-web from its nest to the left of Hooper sent a bunch of swoopers packing straight into Hooper's fire teams field of fire; his quartet of blaster rifles lashed out at the harried men, cutting down several of them, but one of the dying men tossed a ball-like object towards the lines. The silver globe slowly rolled towards them.


Hooper's eyes quickly widened.


“Take cover!” screamed the man.


He quickly dropped to the ground, sliding against the very dirt that had protected him so far the last few weeks. The ground around him trembled as the thermal detonator exploded mere meters away from them. He heard a brief shriek through his own comlink before it rapidly cutting out. Dazed, the man grabbed his rifle and pulled it back down to him, only to find the upper half of it a red-hot melted metal. Growling, the man threw the ruined blaster to the lay in the middle of the trench. Drawing his blaster pistol, the man toggled his comlink.


“Peters, my rifle's down, you've got the distant ones, okay?...Peters, Peters?”


Swearing, the Enclave soldier sprinted down the trench, tripping on some unknown object just next to Peter's position. He pressed his hands up and glanced to see what he had tripped on: a khaki leg splattered in crimson.


“Oh hell no.”


He looked up at Peters's position to see dismembered parts of his friend laying strewn about. He instinctively looked for the man's own weapon, but his blaster rifle had also fallen a similar fate as his own, a newly misshapen rod of glowing metal. Hooper grabbed his friend's other blaster pistol and grenades from his belt and scurried down the trench. A pair of struggling figures obscured by a cloud of dust loomed in front of him. He recognized the silhouette of the Enclave's helmet, and promptly squeezed a half dozen shots from his blaster into the other shade. The armored figured slid to the ground, leaving only another Enclave soldier to stumble towards the man.


“I never though I'd be happy to see you, frak-face.”


“Good to see you too sir,” stammered Hooper, “what the hell is going on?”


“I don't know...”


The screams of ion engines pierced through the air as dark shapes fell down towards them. Instinctively, the two men dove against the sides of their trenches. The dust whirled and billowed away from the approaching starships. Several of them promptly broke their dive, sputtering out emerald laser fire into the Viscount's forces. One of the drones soared just overhead of them, cutting down a squad of mercenaries attempting to seek protection in the Enclave's own trenches. But the young lieutenant's eyes rose up to a loud repulsorlift sounds almost bearing down on them. Hooper's eyes joined the other man's, slowly resolving into a boxy shape of a CG-10 Centaur. The transport hit the ground and disgorged dozens of C1 battle droids which promptly spread out throughout the trenches, ignoring the two men. Right after them, half a dozen humans clad in some sort of gray ceramic armor and toting unusually heft blaster rifles fell in among the Enclave soldiers.


“About time you Confederate bastards showed up,” swore the officer, “now that half of my platoon is gone...”


“Yeah, we get that a lot,” countered one of the helmeted man, “but there's only so many of us to go around. It's not like we came here expecting a fight.”


“Well that's just great, frak-head...”
 
This post was edited by Corise Lucerne (3:58am 18/01/14, 12 years ago)

The next day...


Standing in the earthy trenches, Breixo and Hooper watched the Confederate reinforcements pile off of the transport corvettes. The Confederation's six-legged Hephaestus-class Walkers spewed out of the boxy corvettes like fire ants swarming a new sand hill. They crawled across the Enclave lines, setting up shop for the rest of the 1st Valinor Volunteers, due to arrive on Kile II in half a day on the next set of transports in. One of the the speeder truck sized walkers slithered right up to their position, its leg-mounted blasters seeming to twitch as it moved. Sparing a glance at the alpha numerics painted on the walker's front, Breixo slapped Hooper on the back.


“Come on, let's go take a peek, shall we? I bet Captain Visus will want to talk to you...”


The two men threw their rifles over the side of the trenches before clambering out of the trench towards the walker. They wove their way through the mass of legs to the abdomen of the ant-shaped walker. Breixo loudly rapped on a sealed blast door. Seconds later, another armored Confederate soldier popped it open to reveal the company's mobile headquarters, whose interior almost seemed like a miniature bridge of a warship. In the middle of all of the data terminals stood Captain Visus, a short blonde woman with a scar running across her left cheek. Watching the half dozen data terminal display screens, she barked various orders to the various NCO's coordinating the company's movement to the world. One of them pointed out the newcomers to her.


“You must be Corporal Hooper,” stated the woman bluntly, “we're still setting up shop, but what I can do for you Corporal?”


“Excuse me ma'am,” started Sergeant Breixo, “I brought Corporal Hooper in here to give you a better picture of the land, to give you a more local source than the satellite scans I'm sure you're working off of.”


“I see,” noted the captain, sparing a quick glance at the holo-projector, “That is good. Because then we are going to hit them before they know what's coming. Corporal, come with me. We are going to start talking maps and directions...”
 

“How can anything have lived through that?” questioned Hooper, gazing over the ruined base.


“People have gone through hell before, it's nothing new.”


Below them, dozens of Visus' walkers converged on the remnants of the camp. Several dozen mercenaries, either unusually bold, or more likely drunk or high, sprang out of their hiding spots to attack the Confederate walkers. Blue blaster fire from the legs of the transport walkers cut most of them down, but several made it to a partially ruined blaster cannon nest. The weapon began to fire out orange blobs of fire into the newly arrived walkers. Hooper saw one of the blasts hit one of the walker's in the front cabin, but the vehicle's deflector shields aided by a thermal secondary shielding rapidly dispersed the energy attack. Dozens of battle droids and infantry piled out of the back of the same vehicle to run to cover. One of the walkers behind the transport walkers began to steadily fire a variety of plasma-sheathed shells at the holdouts; an armor piercing shell quickly tore down the blast shield, followed by a bunker buster which obliterated the sandbags piled around the enclosure. A pair of high energy shells arced over the Confederate walkers to plummet down into the nest itself, exploding with vibrant blue energy, tossing a ripple of clouds of dust and debris across the base. The walkers, now supported by the dismounted infantry, swiftly crawled across the base, rapidly putting down any survivors they found. From their perch on the ridge, the two soldiers continued to take holos, documenting the mop-up operations as they unfolded for later analysis by Captain Visus and her staff.


“What's next?”


Breixo shrugged, “We may have blunted the Viscount's attack on the Enclave, but he still holds a fortress here now, doesn't he?”


“A town,” replied the corporal, “one he bought up before the war. They say he's made the citizens there build up the place to withstand any assault. I've heard stories about people quarrying away rocks for the walls and laying down duracrete to cement it.”


“Well, once we get some sleep, I'd be willing to bet that is where we're headed next.”
 

The two soldiers jumped out of the cabin's doors and into the slosh of the sewage. Breixo quietly shut the door behind him and quietly locked it with the click of his comlink. The Confederate quietly waded forward to the grate, where he nearly ran into Hooper in the pitch black. Hooper quietly swore as he fumbled for he had dropped in the sewage. Breixo knelt besides him and handed him a roll of silver tape.


“Det-tape?”


“Yeah...thanks.”


“Sorry for bumping you. It's a bit hard to see here...”


The two men layered more of the tape along with a slim film of plasticine thermite gel around the circumference of the grate. Breixo slapped a small ignition charge to the explosives and stepped back. With Hooper's hand on his shoulder, the Confederate waded back to the side of the walker, hunched down, and hit a button on his comlink. A brief flash of light encircled the crate before it slid down into the moat. The two soldiers waded back to the grate and into the sewage tunnel. Hooper lit up the glowrod attached to the muzzle of his rifle, illuminating the dank passageway. It quickly climbed upward to run just parallel to the streets above them. As they walked, the two men kept glancing upwards, looking for a manhole cover, as their boots sloshed through the murky mixture. Nearly a hundred meters into the passageway, the men finally reached a ladder. They quickly climbed its rungs, with Breixo quietly popping the cover open to peek around the darkened streets.


“Look clear, sarge?”


Breixo quietly set the cover back down and shook his head.


“Not yet, in a minute or so. It looks like there's a robo-hack making its way towards us. Once it passes...well, we'll see where we're at then.”


Once they heard the low whine of a repulsorlift drone past them, Breixo popped open the manhole cover yet again. He briefly nodded down towards Hooper. Each clicked a button on their suits, rendering them translucent. They quickly popped out of the sewer system and onto the streets of Drachurst. After quietly placing the manhole lid back in place, Hooper gripped the sergeant's shoulder as they made their way in the shadows to the Southern Gate. Minutes passed before they encountered their first sentry, who wrinkled his nose at their approach. But after looking around, the sentry kept moving forward past the two men, crouched behind a parked landspeeder. It took awhile before the allied soldiers met their next sentry, but Breixo guessed it was because the Viscount was concentrating his forces on the Eastern Gate. Finally, they reached the squat duracrete tower which enclosed the massive magnetically sealed doors. Briexo slapped the Enclave soldier on the back and dragged him behind a dumpster in a nearby alley way.


“This is going to go better if we can see each other,” stated the Confederate, deactivating his armor's photoreactive fibers.


Hooper nodded and pulled out his partially dissembled blaster rifle from the pockets of his armor, while Breixo pulled out a silenced slugthrower pistol. The two double checked their equipment and crept back up towards the gatehouse. The closest entrance appeared to be guarded by a single mercenary wielding a long-barreled gun along with a seeker droid. Breixo lined up the humanoid's head in his sights, concentrated on his breathing, and snapped off a pair of quick shots. The mercenary dropped to the ground. But before his body had fully toppled to the ground, Breixo had already expended the rest of the ammunition on his magazine on the seeker droid, which plummeted to the ground in a noisy clatter.


The two men stood silently, half expecting a bunch of guards to appear, but none did. Quickly, they rushed the gatehouse, dragging the corpse of the dead guard in with them. Hooper immediately began setting the charges around the building, taking care to place many of them near the hinges of the massive doors. As he did so, Breixo pulled out his comlink.


“We're in, and the charges are just about set. Volunteers, are you in position?”


“Affirmative. Set the charges and get the hell out of there.”


“Roger that ma'am.”


The two soldiers quietly left the gatehouse and quickly retreated back towards their walker. Just as they were entering it less than ten minutes later, they heard a loud rumble and blast echo throughout the air as the building exploded. The massive doors guarding the city clattered down onto the sand, and the Confederates began to rush into the city.

A dozen Hephaestus outfitted originally as anti-aircraft platforms rushed through the remains of the gate. Their medium laser cannons immediately cut down the first mercenaries to react to the attack. A pair of airspeeders soared overhead to investigate the attack. But unable to locate their targets because of the activated decoy beams, quickly fell prey to the combined fire of concussion missiles and laser cannons. Speeder bikes and other land vehicles rumbled through the streets to face the maruading Confederates, but the rearmost Hephaestus began to spew out magnetic pulse warheads, wrecking havoc on their opponent's operations all while safely guarded from the effects by their proton scattering secondary shields. The initial Hephaestus assault group was soon augmented by the rest of the Valinor Volunteer's mechanized group, who further pushed into the city, supported by C1 battle droids and Enclave infantry to rapidly overtake the rest of Drachurst.
 
This post was edited by Corise Lucerne (1:18am 20/01/14, 12 years ago)