The Battle of Onyx - Years before
Regent Joren Logan stood high upon one of the grassy hills of the western continent of Onyx, holding a pair of macrobinoculars in his hand as he surveyed the distant landscape.
Spread out before him, perhaps one or two miles away, was a majestic sight, a huge army was marching toward the edge of an even more distant forest, a forest which spread for hundreds of kilometers to the west.
The forest was the home of one of the most fearsome species in the entire galaxy...
For months now, New Alliance scouts had been surveying portions of the Unkown Regions for a secret redoubt base to use, in case the ongoing conflicts with the Rogue Empire took a sour turn for the worse. Chadd Fearsons was becoming more and more aggressive with each passing day, and Logan was almost certain it would lead to all out war.
And that thought terrified him as much as it increased his resolve.
They had only recently found Onyx a few weeks before. The world was what you would describe as utopian. It had perfect, blue, calm seas, rolling plains, beautiful forests, and dense mountain ranges. The planet was perfect, and already the New Alliance was secretly shipping colonists here, people who wanted desperately to begin a new life. The destruction the Je'har had left on Almania was still fresh in every Almanian's mind, including Joren's own. They all wanted to distance themselves from that dark and bloody past, and Onyx was perfect for them.
But there was only one problem.
The survey crew who first touched down on the surface of the planet believed it to be uninhabited.
They were wrong, and that oversight cost them their lives.
Onyxians could match most Wookies for height, and had razor sharp clwas on each hand that could easily shread the durasteel of a Star Destroyer. They had triple-jointed limbs, as well as powerful muscles that allowed them to jump and reach great heights. Their blazing yellow eyes frightened any enemy into frozen fear, just before those monsterous claws ripped into them.
The survey crew had met their end under those claws.
The Onyxians were staunchly aggressive. It appeared that their society was clan-based, and those clans had been warring against each other for centuries. Until now... a common foe had united them.
Unfortunately, that common foe was the New Alliance.
After more brazen attacks by the Onyxians, Logan himself had arrived with the TNA First Army to stop them.
Monsterous AT-ATs and even old Juggernaughts and AT-TE's now lumbered over the grass plains and toward the forest. Logan could almost see the legions of yellow eyes that awaited them just inside the forest. He even expected the Onyxian armies to charge them over the grassplains.
But these creatures...these Onyxians... they were smart.
They waited for the heavy walkers to come to
them...
Tropalsk - Present Time
Bravo unit moved through the newly burnt out remains of yet another town, carefully training their weapons in front of them.
By now, the Commonwealth army had moved past the outer ring of the city, and were taking a direct path to it's heart, and hopefully the mysterious commander of the droid army.
Mattias marched in front, with Bent on his left, and behind, and Mac on the right and behind. They were now deep in the second ring of the city, where the middle class once lived. One thing about old Imperial society, Mattias observed, for all their propaganda saying everyone is equal, they never had evolved beyond the three-class system, for the inner ring of the city held the most beautiful buildings and the wealthiest citizens. It was actually quite sad.
Mattias glanced back at Bent, who kept his rifle up and pointed ahead, like he had been trained to do. Outwardly, he looked like a well-trained, determined soldier ready to do his part. But Mattias new that on the inside, Bent was hurting. He and Max had been close friends, and it was tough to loose a friend like Bent had.
Mattias wondered weather this Galaxy he was in, and the Commonwealth he was fighting for, would every truly have peace.
Suddenly, the
chit-chit-chit of projectile weapons, weapons that the ragtag droid army seemed to prefer, sounded ahead of them, and Bravo unit instinctively took cover positions. They were on a street that ran through the middle of one of the smaller "towns" (they called them towns, in actuality they were more like city blocks), only this town had been heavily bombarded by Commonwealth artillery, so there were plenty of places to find cover.
Mattias carefully peeked out from behind a burnt-out repulsor vehicle where he had found cover, and loked down the street. protocol droids brandishing projectile weapons and jagged peices of metal to use as knives gave no thought to cover whatsoever and were calmly advancing down the street, firing steadily. Behind them, however, made Mattias blink, he had thought he saw a small, brown droid... rolling?
Whatever it was, it soon dissapeared, and Mattias turned his attention to the projectile-wielding droids. He signalled covering fire to to Bent and Mac to lay down covering fire.
"Green" He yelled, and across the street, Private Green, their crack sniper, looked up.
"Get into position!"
***
Private Green did not move.
He did not blink.
He did not dare breathe.
Do not move, blink, or breathe. That was lesson one at the Praetorian Sniper School on the barren asteroid base Sanctuary. That lesson had bent taught to a group of one hundred young humans, Tynnans, Azguardians, Frozians, Mon Calamari, and a host of other Coalition Army recruits.
Six months later, that number would be only ten.
Ten.
Ten of the best snipers the Coalition, New Alliance, New Republic and old Republic had ever produced. Private First Class Green was honored to be among them. He had endured freezing cold of the barren snow-swept world of Ilum, the dark jungles of Generis, and the beautiful and tranquil grasslands of Onyx.
His body had been put through all sorts of rigors, testing his mettle time and time again. But he had endured. He had triumphed.
And now, one of the best snipers in the Galaxy... was on some backwater planet shooting protocol droids with projectile weapons?
Green felt a little more than simply resentful. He knew that he had been assigned to Bravo company to gain battlefield experiance. But instead of delivering headshots to Imperial commanders, he was reduced to this.
So now, Green couldn't mask his disdain for this assignment, and instead of killing each droid with a calm headshot, he instead began firing at non-lethal parts, a hand, a leg, a foot, he even grinned when he put a shot through the round, circular restraining bolt-type device attached to the back oof the droid's neck.
He almost wanted to laugh as he continued to take each droid apart, piece by piece.
**
"What the hell is he doing!?" Mac shouted at Mattias as the sniperfire from a burned-out building a hundred meters away continued it's slow, inane pace. For some reason, Green was not killing the droids, he was taking them apart, piece by piece. Mattias grumbled inwardly, Green had always been a little arrogant, after graduating from some top-notch and top-secret sniper school. He seemed to think he was better than Mattias and Bravo squad. Just before the Valc assignment, Mattias he spoken to a superior about having Green moved to another unit.
So much for that.
"Open fire!" Mattias shouted, and the entire unit moved out of cover and unleashed a hail of blasterfire on the thinning-ranks of the droid unit. The droids seemed to be on some sort of slave-circuit controlled from afar, and didn't have the programming of base military tactics. Their only strategy was to mass in huge numbers and fire overwhelmingly at anything that wasn't metal.
Green was still doing his non-lethal shots, but Bravo was now using their entire strength to wipe out the marauding enemy forces. Soon, nothing remained other than a pile of scrap metal. Mattias turned to Mac, his chosen second in command, "Get Green down here now."
Mac nodded and turned towards the building where Green was holed up and started over there. Mattias turned to his squad, "Is anybody hurt?"
No answer.
He frowned, looking over his men one by one, each of them did not speak, and were looking at something behind him...
Steeling himself, Mattias turned around. Mac was frozen where he had been walking. A dozen feet away, was a fully equipped and fully deployed droideka.
Mattias had seen them only in old historical holos. They had been a staple of the Trade Federation for years, and it was said that even Jedi feared the rolling weapons platform. Mattias had never seen one in real life, and it had been years since he had seen those history holos.
The shield that Mattias knew it had was not up for some reason. Perhaps it didn't work, or the droid was malfunctioning. Either way, it stared down Bravo without moving.
Mattias slowly reached behind his back, and unclipped a thermal detonator from his belt and armed it. Mac was not moving.
In what seemed like slow motion, he yelled for Mac to get down, and then pressed the detonator's timer and threw it. The sudden movement made the droideka to turn toward him, and suddenly, it's shield went up.
But not before the detonator landing underneath it, between it's legs and within the shield.
Just as the droid unleashed the first few shots from it's repeating cannon, the detonator exploded, in a brilliant flash of fireworks. Mac picked himself off the ground and turned to Mattias, giving him a relieved look, "That was close."
Mattias realized he was holding his breath and let it out slowly, "Yeah."
And then, without warning, three more droidekas rolled up to replace the one that had been destroyed. Mattias muttered a curse and grabbed another detonator.
Thats when something strange happened...
One minute, the droidekas were getting into position, the next they were no more than scrap metal, and something... monsterous was standing in their place. The beast was huge, had razor claws, and horrible....
horrible...
yellow eyes...
[22:14] RogueLightSider: Omnae should let you know when he knocks you up methinks.
[22:14] LeiaOrganaSolo39: haha he must be really teeny, I didnt feel a thing!
