Coruscant, Approximately a week prior to the end of the Clone Wars.
The LAAT flew noisily towards one of the most heavily populated areas of the Galactic Republic's capital planet, the repulsorlifts and engines emitting what the pilot of the craft could only describe as a "throbbing whine." That noise had many different interpretations to those who heard it: to the clone troopers who used the craft as a transport, it was a sound of hope when they were on the ground. Help was coming. To the enemies, it usually signaled their doom. Or at least the pilot liked to think so.
"Target E.T.A. in four minutes," the pilot said to the troops secured in the back of the transport. His brothers. "Prepare for a combat landing."
Clone trooper CT-8584—known to his brothers and the Republic Navy personnel that cared for clone troopers as Trem—quickly glanced over his platoon, inspecting each and every one of them as swiftly and efficiently as he could. He didn't have the luxury of the time to do as thorough of a search as he would have liked, but every member of his platoon appeared to be ready. They clutched their DC-15 rifles close to their recently upgraded armor, each one ready to fight despite the nervousness that Trem knew that they must be feeling. They had to be slightly nervous; he was.
Trem held on to the netting that laced the top of the transport, his right hand clutching a blaster carbine tightly. The LAAT rocked slightly as it soared through the sky, dodging flak bursts from Separatist ground positions and returning fire. Trem looked towards the horizon of Coruscant through the open doors, temporarily turning off his helmet's HUD so he could see the sights unamplified.
The scenes were something out of a horror holo, he thought, going on an adage that he had heard from a Jedi General one time. Coruscant was burning. It wasn't a single skyscraper being caught up in flames caused by some careless person or faulty energy wiring, though, it seemed to be the entire planet. Entire buildings had been demolished as a starfighter that had been shot down crashed into it. Another had been hit by laser cannons as droid and clone piloted fighters fought their way over and around the massive city. Entire walkways had been demolished, their ruins now smoldering kilometers below. The ones that still standing had become battle grounds for his brothers and the droid invaders.
"One minute, now," the droid pilot warned the platoon, causing Trem to switch his HUD back on. Blaster fire could be heard now, soft against the roar of the engines, but threatening nonetheless. The walkway that was their landing zone now grew in size as the LAAT dropped in altitude. The transport's guns fired, blanketing the droid filled plaza with laser fire. Small arms fire arced towards the LAAT, the majority of it hitting the LAAT for only cosmetic damage.
"Thirty seconds!"
The troopers rose out of their seats and grabbed a hold of the netting, each one instantly recalling their training when it came to landing under fire. The LAAT's guns fired again, clearing as much of the enemy out as they could. It wasn't long before the transport hovered a meter above the ground, the pilot loudly alerting his passengers that the time to disembark was now.
"Go! Go! Go!" Trem cried out as he leapt down from the transport via the open sides, his fellow troops following shortly. The battle droids bunkered down in the plaza opened fire on the clones. One clone trooper fell immediately, Trem watching as a blaster bolt struck the unlucky clone in the chest. One step, he thought as he raised his carbine up to return fire. One single step and it would have been him that would have fallen instead of Ohhm.
He charged towards the enemy position with his platoon, hoping that they would reach the cover of an upraised garden that the walking pedestrians had found beautiful in the past. The trees and plants there would never be looked at in the same way again. Blaster fire and laser cannon impacts had torn them beyond recognition; burning them so that the smoke drifted into the sky. Trem saw a skinny battle droid—one of the B1 models—fall under his blaster fire, the head popping off and clunking to the ground as a bolt obliterated the thin neck. Precise shots from himself and the soldiers under his command took out four more of them before the platoon reached their much needed cover.
The LAAT that brought them to the battle field lifted off almost as soon as it had landed, the engines of the craft melding into the sounds of combat before eventually dimming as it sped away. Trem fired an unaimed volley towards the general direction of the droids while motioning for a sergeant to come his way. "Sergeant Emren," he said as the non-commissioned officer slowly made his way towards Trem's position, "do you see that stairwell beside the uprising to the left?" he asked.
Emren reviewed the combat footage inside of his helmet for a few seconds before finally replying. "Yes, sir!"
Trem looked at the sergeant's helmet, a large carbon mark on the top right side was the scar of Emren's brush with death a month ago when a droideka nearly took his head off. A fortunate duck saved the clone sergeant's life then. "Take your squad and secure that upraised area. Use it to rain blaster fire and blaster cannon shots down upon them."
"Yes, sir," the sergeant replied before rounding up the other nine soldiers in his squad. Trem didn't really know if the task he had given Besh Squadron would be able to be fulfilled, but he had sent the them anyway. He couldn't waste an entire half of his command on this movement by sending in one additional squad.
"Cover 'em, men!" he ordered the rest of his platoon, the 25 other soldiers instantly moving out of their own cover and fired several volleys towards the Separatist position. There were about a 60 of them, he guessed, counting down to 58 as he saw two super battle droids fall under a barrage of blue fire. From his vantage point, he could see that about half of the droid force consisted of the super battle droid variety, a more superior—and expensive—version of the battle droids that became so infamous around the Battle of Naboo. Thankfully, he thought as he caused a battle droid to explode from a shot to the chest, there were no destroyer droids deployed in this section of the battle, yet. He commed in to his company's temporary command center, though, requesting deployment of Alpha-09, the resident ARC trooper, just in case things got too heavy.
"Quickly, now!" Emren called out to his troops as they raced through the open courtyard. A small bit of concentrated blaster fire sprayed the area, sending chips and chunks of duracrete flying into the air as they hit the ground. The once nice-looking staircase loomed up ahead, now within several meters of the troopers. One of the soldiers raised his rifle and squeezed off shot of return fire towards the droids. It slowed him down, just enough for a surprisingly well-aimed blaster shot to take him down.
"Keep moving!" Emren yelled despite the comlinks inside of his helmet. That clone trooper had been new to his squad, a recent edition after another member of their ranks had fallen recently. Emren hadn't even gotten around to knowing his name, or even his registration number.
He reached the stairway and began to run up it, skipping every other step on the way. His troops followed, their rifles raised for the possibility that the enemy would attack them on their way up. A single B1 battle droid appeared at the top base of the stairway as they reached a quarter of the way up it. The droid yelped in surprise and then fell back. Halfway up the stairs, three more of them appeared, their small blaster rifles aimed towards the squad.
Emren squeezed off a single shot towards the droid in the middle and watched as the bolt removed the top half of the droid's head. The other two fell thanks to well-placed shots from two other clone troopers. Emren reached the top of the stairs and instantly somersaulted to avoid the fire from battle droids stationed there. Emren raised his rifle and fired twice, hitting a single super battle droid in its thick, grey chest. The droid staggered backwards for a second before lowering its blaster-laden right wrist towards Emren. A blaster shot from another clone hit the center of the droid's chest, finally deactivating it.
Emren threw a frag grenade towards the center of the droids' formation, watching as another one of the B1 battle droids fell. A blaster shot glanced off of the side of his armor, burning a patch of the teal stripe that signified his status as a member of the 135th Legion off. He fired his rifle, hitting and "wounding" a super battle droid. He dived for cover as the grenade went off, the explosion sending several tiny pieces of shrapnel headed away from the center of the blast. The ten remaining droids on the start of the walkway were shredded by the shrapnel, their own parts joining it as it continued to spread.
The sergeant cried out in pain as he felt metal shards penetrate the armor on his right leg and dig into his shin. Corporal Tann rushed towards the sergeant, traveling as fast as he could. "Take those droids out, Private," he ordered the trooper carrying the blaster cannon. "How are you doing, Sgt. Emren?" he asked, looking at the punctured and bloody leg plate. He quickly removed the damaged piece of armor and tossed it aside, pulling the small medkit he carried on the back of his belt off. It wasn't as well stocked as the platoon's regular medic's was, but it would do until the skirmish was over, he thought.
Tann worked quickly to remove un-soaked gauze from the medkit, swiftly wrapping it around the wound. He needed to stop the blood flow. The heavy thumps of blaster cannon fire came from nearby as the soldiers under his temporary command opened fire on the droids from their elevated position. The droids surviving the initial attacks futily attempted to return fire, but were cut off by the rest of the platoon charging their position. Almost as soon as it had started, this small part of the larger battle had come to a close.
Trem walked through the liberated plaza, looking over the wounded and the very few dead. Only three of his soldiers had been killed in the small piece of action, but each one was a valuable comrade and friend to Trem. "How is he, Mead?" he asked the platoon's medic as he reached the highest ranking wounded.
"He's going to be fine," the medic replied as changed Sgt. Emren's blood-soaked bandage. About an hour of surgery back at a mobile, and a day or two in a bacta cast and he'll be fine." Mead dropped the used gauze onto the duracrete ground of the plaza before finally standing up. "The shrapnel didn't even go very deep."
"I've called for a LAAT to evac the wounded," Trem replied. "Hopefully they're here soon."
Mead paused for a second. "We're moving out soon?" the medic asked.
Trem nodded. "We're to rejoin with the rest of Cresh Company and accompany Commander Hal and General Fionst," he replied. "I've got word that the Seps have just abducted the Chancellor. Several units have been ordered to rush towards the likely extraction site, us included."
The chopping sound of a LAAT incoming broke the conversation. "Speak of the Sith," Mead said, smiling under his helmet.
Trem used his eyes to adjust his in-helmet comlink, setting it to broadcast to all of the soldiers in his platoon. "Prepare for immediate redeployment, boys," he said. The clone troopers speedily picked up their equipment—some returned their helmets to their heads after speaking with wounded comrades—and then stood ready.