"Even an army couldn't get you in there, but one man...one Spectre in the right place..."
Gabriel Tosh, rumored to be the first subject of Project Shadowblade, and thus the first Spectre.
Phantoms of the Present
Chapter 3
Infiltration above Shili
Even though Mobius 1was fully immersed into his identity as a Viking, he began to grow bored.
That in of itself was incredible. The "sky" teemed with fighter craft trading blows with one another. Hundreds of Republic fighters were blown to pieces, as were dozens of Terran craft; equal losses considering their respective numbers. But despite the wild combat, not a single Viking of either squad had received more than superficial damage; a few burns here, some dents and tears there, maybe a few fried circuits and periphery systems shut down. Even as the pilot thought this, the damage was in the process of being healed.
For graduates of the Valhalla program, this was little more than a shooting gallery.
A current lull seemed to happen in the battle, as many of the fighters left the area, perhaps rushing to guard a ship under siege. Still, point-defense fire from nearby ships kept Mobius 1 from getting too comfortable.
Maybe he could do something about that...
"Squadron 5, come in," he declared over the radio.
"Yeah, chief?"
"We're here."
"Something new, boss?"
"Yeah, I got something new," Mobius 1 stated. "What do you boys say to a little raid?"
"A raid, huh..." wisecracking Echo 5 said. The pilot could hear the smile in his voice and knew what he would say next.
"Sounds aggressive…I like it!"
General Anakin Skywalker's position
Central Area of the Terran "Ahriman's Eye" formation
"I need some bomber cover over here, right now!" Anakin roared into his headset, barrel rolling and narrowly avoiding a spray of spike rounds from a nearby Titan. The jedi, his squadron of similar Eta-2s, and Ashoka were coming in hot towards what seemed to be the fleet's flagship, buried deep within their ranks, though it still got potshots off at Republic ships every once in a while.
"No bomber support can be spared, General," Yularen replied in an even, but tense voice. "They are all either occupied or dead."
Anakin gave a curse and rolled wildly again, as the defensive turret began tracking him. Thankfully, the Eta-2s speed quickly brought him out of range.
Without being able to sense an iota of the Terrans' presence, he was forced to rely completely on his precognitive abilities, something that his padawan and many other jedi did easily, but not Anakin.
Meanwhile, the flagship loomed ahead. Anakin noticed two things about it. First, despite the fact that it was an ugly, blocky thing, it seemed to have a sort of almost...rough beauty to it.
The second thing he noticed was the twenty mechs crawling all over its surface.
He immediately thought back to the battle of Coruscant, where he and Obi-wan had stormed the CIS flagship and killed Count Douku, as well as General Greivous, as Palpatine was being hunted down on the planet below.
I've seen this before... Anakin thought wryly.
"Master," Ashoka said warningly over the comm.
"I see 'em, Snips. Everybody stay frosty. This could get ugly real quick, but bypass the fighters and get to the hangar bays, no matter what." Anakin tensed his grip on the controls as the mechs shifted. They flexed their legs with massive mechanical muscles, launching themselves into the air. As they did, the gargantuan slug throwers at their sides lifted and disappeared as wings flung forward in their stead. The legs themselves also soon vanished, folding into the underbelly.
In less than a few seconds, a score of the large fighters, each larger than an ARC-170, were making their way towards the squadron at a respectable speed.
United Systems Defense Fleet
Flagship Hyperion Dawn
"Sir, guard Vikings are away."
They had seen the fighters coming, and Admiral Horner immediately knew what they were trying to do.
"Adjutant, bring the Matrix online, right now," he commanded.
"Unable to comply," the monotone voice responded. "There is not yet a sufficient buildup of power to bring the Defensive Matrix online."
Wonderful, he thought. Once activated, a Matrix shield actually took very little power to keep online, but bringing it online took immense quantities of energy.
Just when he thought it couldn't get worse, the robotic voice piped up again.
"Warning, class-5 psionic waveforms detected."
Jedi, he thought, his face becoming even more solemn. And of course it got worse. The Hyperion Dawn had just disgorged a small flight of Gremlins that required emergency repairs, leaving the fighter bays wide open.
"Close the bay doors!" he ordered.
Outside, the squadron kept coming.
Anakin's squadron was approaching the ship from behind, allowing them easy access to the small bays just behind the ship's "neck." Though he didn't know it, the far older Leviathan-class battlecruiser possessed fighter bays on the backside of the ship's "head," which provided far more convenient access to the bridge for boarding parties.
How unfortunate for him that the design had been scrapped with the first Behemoth-class ship to be commissioned. Thick, metal doors began to slowly come together on from the top and bottom of the opening in the ship's side. Meanwhile, two more of the squadron was torn apart.
"Alpha, Omega, now!" Anakin roared.
Imediately, twin LAAT transports streaked from behind the fleet, completing their fake maneuver heading for the assault fleet on its way to the surface.
Two more Eta-2s were downed. The rest desperately gunned for the narrowing entrance.
Anakin's interceptor cleared the entrance...then Ashoka's...then another...and another...
Fighters continued to enter as the space closed by another few feet. An LAAT barely cleared the area, skidding against the sides. The second had its wings clipped by the heavy neo-steel doors. It crashed to the metal floor, killing the clones in the bubble-like pods on its sides, as well as injuring a few inside.
Then the doors closed, crunching an unfortunate interceptor and pulping the pilot inside. Several more crashed into the large bulkheads, not having enough time to swerve away. The rest desperately attempted to escape, but were cut down by AA fire.
Inside the small bay, the two jedi starfighters skidded across the smooth metal floor. The glassy tops of them popped off as Master and Padawan jumped out, their fighters fetching up against the walls of the bay. The rest of the fighters and a (now inoperable) LAAT transport skidded to a slow stop before the clone commandos disembarked. The other gunship lowered itself to the ground, allowing its cargo to leave. Within a minute, a squad and a half of Republic commandos stood at attention.
The jedi and clones looked around nervously. They had all been a part of boarding parties before, though they were on CIS ships. The utter lack of guards in the fighter bay seemed…disturbing at best.
After a moment, Anakin decided that the Terrans weren't sending anyone.
"Alright, boys, let's get moving."
Sabrina's vision swam in a mist of blue as she observed the intruders from her perch on the ceiling. She always hated that…aura that jedi produced. They could sense anything within it that had no protection, no matter how they hid.
Thankfully, the Terrans had long ago invested in armor and training capable of dissipating psionic senses.
The Spectre lowered her gauss rifle, pointing the business end at the Republic soldiers. Then she stopped, a plan coming to mind. Sabrina lightly touched the side of her skull-faced helmet, activating the comm system.
"Sergeant," she said in a near whisper. "Stay out of sight. This is what I will do…"
Anakin was beginning to get paranoid.
They had maneuvered through hallway after hallway, but hadn't come up against a single Terran soldier. Hallway after hallway, but they saw nothing.
The pattering of boots against metal stopped as the troops halted. Skywalker slowly scanned from left to right, holding his activated lightsaber in a tight grip.
They had entered a three-way hall, a triple fork.
Still the jedi sensed...nothing...
Anakin pursed his lips nervously, fiddling with his lightsaber and looking around. His troops were also ill at ease.
"All right men," he began. "We'll need to spli-"
He was interrupted by a mental scream, yelling for him to jump aside. Knowing to trust his force sense, Anakin leaped straight upward just in time. As he flipped head over heels, he saw a clone cleaved in half at the waist.
Immediately there was panic. Even as Anakin hit the ground, the clones and his padawan gave panicked shouts to one another as the ship lurched lightly, likely hit by Republic ordinance. The soldiers pointed their weapons about wildly even as another clone fell with a loud crackle-snap-hiss, sounding unnervingly like a twisted lightsaber.
Then the...whatever it was stopped pausing in-between attacks. One by one the clones fell, cloven open with cauterized wounds. Two were decapitated, one pierced through the forehead, another through the gut, yet another sliced in half vertically.
Then none were left...
Anakin gave a hard stare towards the empty air, temporarily ignoring his padawan's horrified look. His mental arrow pointed madly towards that spot.
In the midst of sliced, broken bodies, the air shimmered crimson, and a woman appeared.
She was unlike anything Anakin had ever seen, though he had heard of the deadly US Spectres. She wore a skull-faced helmet, though her long, braided hair flowed from the back. Her armor seemed thin, but Anakin knew better. The stuff was tougher than nearly anything that the Republic fielded. Though a large rifle was mounted on her back, she held a thin sword of crackling, blue metal.
Unknown to him, it was a Storm Katana, sometimes called the Lightning Blade. It was as tough as any lightsaber, but was made to mimic the armor-ignoring properties of Protoss warp blades. Over the gleaming Vanadium was a shimmering field of pure plasma, ready to cross blades with the two warriors standing before the Spectre.
She stood facing Anakin, with her back to Ashoka. Yet he still could not sense her!
The woman turned the hilt of her blade over in the palm of her hand.
"Heh, clones," she began in a thick accent that would have been reminiscent of Master Fisto if not for the disturbing quality that it held, further warbled by the helmet-borne comm. "So fragile."
She was...calm? After brutally killing every clone, she does nothing but make a comment about their "fragility"?
Before Anakin could act, Ashoka struck with a vicious yell, bringing a two-handed strike down towards the Spectre's back.
The blade struck naught but another blade.
Beneath her helmet, Sabrina's smile disappeared.
All of that anger in the blow, the Spectre could feel it. She had so much anger, yet it remained bottled up! What kind of lives did these jedi lead?
"You are angry," she whispered harshly to the Togruta, who was panting and straining against the Storm Katana. "Why do you hold it in? Let it out. Be strong, use the fuel that it gives you!"
The padawan's eyes widened and she leaped back, allowing the Spectre to turn again and block the second saber aiming for her neck.
"You rely on anger," Anakin said in a semi-calm voice, weaving his lightsaber in blow after blow. "You rely on hatred, on emotion. You're no better than the Sith!"
"Wrong," Sabrina stated, continuing the deadly dance even as the Togruta joined once again. "To feel emotion is to be alive."
She thrust forward with a slight psionic push on her blade, making her two foes stumble.
For a moment, they stood, facing each other; the jedi in a crouch, the Spectre in a lax stance.
"We Terrans actually deal with our inner demons," she stated emotionlessly. "I release my anger, so I have none to let out."
"Here I am," she continued. "I, the one who lets go of emotion, have none to distract me. Yet you jedi, who so proudly claim control of your emotions, seethe with your anger. I can feel it scorching you from the inside out. I can see it rotting your mountainous fortress of control piece by piece."
Sabrina casually entered her battle stance once more.
"Continue the way you are, and you will snap. One way or another, you will lose to your demon, and become that which you hate the most."
In a split second, she coiled like a spring and pounced forward, blade outstretched.
In the midst of the Republic fleet
Blast after blast of red flashed by Mobius 1's armored screen.
None of them gave any more than scorches.
Most Republic weapons were not "lasers" per se. Instead, many seemed to be powerful plasma and ion hybrid weaponry. This made it possible for the Vikings to easily dodge the incoming projectiles, which moved far slower than the speed of light.
It did not take a genius to figure out what the two Vikings were doing. The Venator that they were charging towards was beginning to close the long hangar doors along its spine.
The plan was simple: split up, bomb the shit out of everything on board the first ship you find, and look for another ship to board.
Just as the doors were close to sealed, the two heavy fighters entered the massive bays. Their wings folded behind them, becoming additional armor. The nose folded downward, becoming frontal Blast Plating, and metal encased the cockpits as hidden cameras along the hull activated. Gatling cannons extended downward as "arms," and the back-mounted missiles became shoulders.
The two mechs stomped through the blue field of the ship's port side hangar.
Amazing, the clones were so involved in their work that they hadn't noticed anything!
To the side, Mobius saw Echo revving up his cannons.
The whine of servos woke the crewmen their predicament. Startled, they looked up from their tasks, many with horror plastered on their faces.
Four gatling cannons unloaded into the crowd. Clones, both pilots and engineers, disappeared in splats of blood and viscera. Fighters became Swiss cheese as armor-piercing, explosive rounds burst through paper thin armor and circuitry.
Without a single blaster shot fired in return, the hangar bay was dead.
Even as the makeshift mechs stomped to the large door at the entrance of the bay, Echo 5 chuckled.
"I just love a good raid."
The Venator was about to die, but not without a fight.
It's shields were long gone, stripped away by the powerful turrets of a Titan battlecruiser. It was so aggravating! Despite how small it was, the damned thing just...would...not...die!
It endured broadside after broadside and bomb after bomb, yet it kept going. Every flak cannon on the port side of the ship was unleashed into the Terran ship's side, but to no avail. Y-wings desperately bombed the deceptively small beast, only to be shot down seconds later by its turrets.
Then, one by one, from the front of the ship, guns began to go silent.
Horror was the response. The crew began to learn at the lower levels of the ship that they had been boarded, and it was by something really, really nasty. And it was going for what few weapons the vessel had left.
The gatling cannons roared and belched bullets and yellow flashes. Gun after gun toppled to the floor as its supports and crew alike were holed. Handheld blasters pattered against the Vikings, occasionally earning a short burst in their direction. A few clones tried to maneuver the flak guns to fire through the hallway, only to either be shot or be blocked by wreckage.
Then Mobius' helmet beeped a warning.
Missile lock.
The rocket lanced through the long, wide, tall hallway, crashing smack dab on Mobius' cockpit. The Viking stumbled back from the force, tripping over a girder and toppling. The girder caused another to shift, striking the second Viking and knocking it forward.
In their moment of victory, the clones cheered. But the relief was short-lived.
The tripped Viking flipped over, using its guns as supports to stand up. The second pushed upwards, knocking off the girder with a shrugged missile launcher.
The missile, which had been spot on and struck the cockpit, left only a crack in its wake.
The two squat mechs stood silently in front of the horrified crowd. Then a hissing emanated from them. It didn't take long to figure out what it was.
Missiles streaked from their shoulders, responding in kind and wreaking havoc on what few guns were left. Metal flew, crushing clones and guns alike. Explosions rippled everywhere, hitting conduits connected to other parts of the ship. But the fusillade did not stop. More bullets and rockets flew even as the mechs moved on through the hallways that they could navigate.
A part of the floor caved in, sending scraps of metal down into the bowels of the ship, severing control cables and crushing a secondary reactor, which was powering parts the ship until the main one cooled.
Immediately, half of engines overloaded from a sudden surge. Many of them blew completely, while one simply shut down. What was left gave the ship little maneuvering power.
Everywhere aboard the ship, lights flickered, then failed. Systems and consoles blew, and what little the vessel had left was reduced even further.
Even as explosions peppered the Venator, two solitary Vikings flew off.
Surface of Shili
Forward Base ST-41
5th Company Goliaths
The world of plains and fields was eerily quiet.
Despite the battle that raged above, nothing showed in the afternoon sun. Of course, reports came in constantly, and the ground forces were alert for the coming Republic landing fleet.
The Terran forward outpost, positioned a little ways from the 'Umbrella Zone' (the area directly beneath the fighting ships), was garrisoned by multiple squads: Marauders, Marines, Hellions, a few Diamondbacks, and a Linebreaker tank. The air support was covered by two Companies of Goliaths.
In any other case, 5th Company was laughable in size, having only four Goliaths. However, they were not typical Goliaths.
They were this planet's Spartans, the specialty squad.
Skipper looked around boredly and stretched, causing his vehicle to mimic the action as best it could. His Goliath seemed normal, if not for the sensor arrays above it and that the chin-mounted gatling gun was replaced by a grenade launcher.
Scout stood beside him. His Goliath sported only one weapon per side. The left was covered by a massive Mech Autogun, while the other had a huge quadruple Longbolt missile launcher. He was the sniper of the group.
Then there was Earthquake. His Goliath seemed more like a mini Thor. Armor covered every inch of it. The four autocannons were replaced by gatling cannons, and the chin gun by a flamethrower, while twin-linked light autocannon turrets panned from side to side from the top of his Goliath's 'shoulders'.
Pyro seemed to be piloting less of a support walker and more of a walking arsenal. Guns of multiple calibers decorated his Goliath, as well as an assortment of missile types. Small auto-turrets stood out at every possible angle. He was ready for any fight, anywhere.
Which would be this fight, right now.
Skipper scanned the area slowly, noting the absence of Togruta that normally walked the village's streets. They had, of course, been ordered into Terran-built bomb shelters and a Command Center was flown in, now dominating the admittedly low skyline with its bulk and tall sensor dish.
"Enemy air units incoming!" Scout declared. Warnings blared in Skipper's cockpit as well.
"ETA?" Earthquake boomed through the comm.
Streaks began to descend from the sky.
"Right the hell now," Skipper admonished softly.
A/N: 'Sup E'rebody!
I realize how long it's been since I posted a chapter. I welcome reviews, but please do not demand the next chapter. Fanfiction is a fun thing for me, not a priority, so chapters will sometimes fly several times a week, sometimes I'll be lucky to finish one per month. I have other things to deal with in real life. So please, no more PMs or reviews demanding chapters.
In any case. Reviews are still welcome.