Carbon, Imperial Navy Refining Vessel, Geosynchronous Orbit over Luna Moon
There's a long line at the pump, the Captain of the Carbon thought as he stared at the twenty Star Destroyers stretched out in front of his vessel. "Well, it certainly looks like our dance card is full." He remarked to his executive officer standing alongside him on the bridge.
"It certainly appears so, Sir." Both officers were watching a team of engineers maneuver high pressure vacuum hoses between their ship and Moff Seco's Flagship the Wilderness. The Moff's flagship had run her tibanna bunkers dry plastering cities on the main continental mass to rubble. A twelve hour, continuous low-powered bombardment had taxed the supplies of most of the turbolasers of the fleet. Now only the star destroyers around Target East and West remained to give support to the first waves of stormtroopers on the enemy world, and they were scheduled to return and fill up once they had been relieved by the warships lined up in front of the Carbon.
It was with no small amount of pride that the Captain knew he commanded the most valuable vessel in Tarkin's Fist. After the events of the 'big jump', her refining equipment had fed the big engines of the fleet and kept Tarkin's Fist alive. Now most of her heavy equipment had been transferred to the surface of Mars in anticipation of Earth slaves that would kick-start a much larger fuel-refining program that would rival even the Peragus Mining Facilty back in the Home Galaxy. Both Moff Culter and the Fleet Admiral had offered him part ownership in the facility and most of his crew had snatched up stock options from the new MarsCopolis Stock Exchange.
For the bombardment of Earth, however, the Carbon was nothing but a huge gas-hauling platform with enough tibanna to refit the fleet twice. "Or start a supernova..." the Captain muttered under his breath.
"Excuse me, Sir" The XO asked.
"Um, nothing, just thinking aloud. Are the other Captains saying anything about the Wilderness cutting in line?" Moff Seco had demanded that his flagship take on tibanna first, and then had caused a two hour delay while getting into place.
"If they are, they're keeping it to themselves. What can they really do, when it's the Theater Commander, and a Moff to boot, doing the cutting in."
The Captain did some quick calculations in his head and said "True enough, but he also pushed the support vessels for Operation Piper to the rear of the line. I doubt we'll get to them before the deadline for them to be on station passes."
"Yes, Sir, but those troopers, just as we do, come from Moff Culter's Anoat Sector Fleet." The executive officer hinted.
The Captain grimaced at the implication, "You think Seco might be out to bleed them a little? Clones aren't exactly replaceable, unlike Seco's stormtroopers."
"It's not like the esteemed Moff has any great love of clonetroopers. I wonder how their older equipment will fare in battle with the Terrans?"
"It's pretty old stuff. Most of it was left over from the Clone War but it should do fine against slugthrowers for the Emperor's sake. Plus their infantry has the new armor systems just like everybody else. Fleet Admiral Yos, unlike our Theater Commander, knows what he's doing."
Both men stared at their monitors as precious tibanna, mined from Earth 5, transferred to Seco's flagship. The Captain stared at the star destroyer's bridge next to his vessel, and imagined that the Ploo Moff was staring right at him and his XO, as if he had heard their speculative conversation. He shuddered.
"Let's get back to work. The faster we do our duty, the faster this miserable little war is won." Both men returned to their duties as tibanna flowed into the heavy blasters of the fleet.
Mokulele Highway 350, Maui, NAU, Earth
Things were not going according to plan. But then again, Marshal Commander Cody thought, how many plans actually survived contact with the enemy. At least that's how things had usually played out in the Clone War. As a Clone Marshal Commander he had been trained to deal with life's little 'setbacks'.
Cody was currently dealing with one of those 'setbacks' as he leaned against the side of his PX-4 Mobile Command Base parked on the shoulder of the local roadway. His stormtrooper bucket, painted in a tropical camouflage pattern, was tucked under his arm as he spoke to the blue HoloImage of Clone Admiral Bacara rising from the imager in his palm. The darkened roadway was lit by the full moon and thousands of stars above. If you knew where to look you could see the hundreds of support vessels of Tarkin's Fist in low orbit above, and Cody knew where to look.
His command staff stood on guard around his command track, somewhere outside the city of Kahului, watching several large hotels burn to the ground in the distance while they grinned and sampled the delicious local pineapple. Cody had tried the fruit himself and had decided that it might be the one good thing that had come from the invasion. He, too, stared unimpressed at the distant conflagration; he had known bigger during the Clone Wars.
It had taken half a legion an hour to conquer the small Earth town.
Throughout the night it had taken two Clone Legions almost two hours to secure every island in the Hawaiian chain except Oahu, but nobody was bragging about it. Cody knew why, too; there hadn't been any fight in the Earthlings. His gaze fell upon the three bound earthlings on their knees nearby. They appeared to be two police officers and a man in some type of camouflaged uniform that identified him as a member of some local militia known as the Hawaii National Guard.
CC-2224 stretched his legs a bit, as they had gotten cramped during the endless waiting and circling the invasion force had undergone while in low-orbit above. They never would have cramped up during the last war. But he reminded himself that he had aged twenty years in the past decade since the conclusion of the Clone Wars. He wasn't the newly decanted clone he once was.
This war wasn't the same as the Clone War. Not by a long shot. So far nothing he had seen amounted to the terror of facing hundreds of ranks of clankers bearing down on you. Compared to that, the invasion of Hawaii almost seemed like a. . . vacation.
His thoughts flashed back to the low-light interiors of the hundreds of MAAT/i that had carried his troopers into combat once again. The new landers were upgraded from the old workhorse of the Clone War; the LAAT/i. Through the pilot's viewports he had watched as had watched for hours as the Empire had punished the enemy with the demoralizing orbital bombardment. He hadn't been moved by all the death and destruction because he had seen it too many times before on a dozen other planets. He had watched on his MAAT/i's sub-space radar as the first waves of stormtroopers were launched at Targets East and West while daylight still warmed those opposite sides of the large ocean below, but it wasn't until darkness had fallen that Clone Admiral Bacara had finally received the go ahead for Operation Piper to commence.
They had dropped on their Pacific Ocean target like hunting hawkbats. With ARC-170s providing an overhead fighter cap, V-19 Torrents had led the way. The unlit island chain stood out against the moonlit ocean. On one of the central islands the city of Honolulu burned as a result of a short bombardment leveled on it earlier in the day. And within the fire burned most of the defensive capabilities of the Hawaiian State.
The squadrons of Torrents had engaged the dozen airspeeders that rose to oppose them. Cody couldn't see the air battle but had watched it on his MAAT/i's battle Holoprojecter; the dogfight was over in a matter of seconds. His Clone brothers had leaned their buckets out of the open doors of the MAAT/i, trying to pick out each of the dozen funeral pyres of the last of Hawaii's airspeeders. He smiled when he realized that every clone pilot in those escorting Torrents had remained in flight. Without commo or radar the enemy airspeeders had been easy pickings for them in the night.
The hundreds of MAAT/i and various shuttles had slowed while dozens of Torrents dove for the surrounding seas. The gunners aboard his own shuttle had taken careful aim at targets passing below their craft. As they had advanced on their target, the night was lit again as thousands of blaster bolts ripped into the ocean below. But they hadn't been firing blindly into the water itself. Earthican fishing trawlers, houseboats, cruise ships, cargo vessels, and even a few small naval destroyers that had been missed by the orbital bombardment had erupted into flame or were quickly punctured and sent to the bottom as the clone invasion force swept overhead. Thousands of sailors and fisherman had suddenly found themselves adrift after fleeing land that morning for the perceived safety of life at sea. Some saw the burning city of Honolulu and attempted to swim in that direction. Others had made the acquaintance of hungrier residents of Hawaii's coastal waters.
"Air and Seas are clear, Commander." Reported the clone manning the sub-space radar unit.
"Alert all Commands." Bacara's voice had cut across his 212th Attack Legion's operations channel. "Operation Piper Alpha is Jedi Sword. I repeat Jedi Sword. All Commanders verify."
Cody had instantly recognized the go-code for the mission; there was no turning back then. He had keyed the transmitter in his helmet with a flick of his eyelid at one of the icons in his bucket's HUD. "Cody is LightSaber, repeat Cody is Lightsaber." He responded. The code word had been chosen because no earthling should have ever heard of a lightsaber, let alone a Jedi. For Cody it just served as a reminder of his failure years ago on Utapau.
"Roger roger, good hunting, CC-2224." Bacara had answered.
He had nodded to the pilot of the MAAT/i as the clone shoved the flight-control stick forward, tilting the craft's nose downwards as it dove towards the target below: an island named Maui. Cody had switched his electrobinoculars to night-viewer mode and watched over the helmets of the flight crew as the formations of troop carriers split up and headed towards their objectives. The 212th banked their craft and headed to the south, away from the pyre that had once been called Honolulu.
Within moments the MAAT/i had dropped to two hundred meters off of the deck and was hurling itself at almost breakneck speed towards the lush island ahead. The smell of jungle and salt water permeated the craft as it dropped in altitude. Each clonetrooper in his command platoon had gone through their own last minute check or ritual to prepare themselves for the imminent combat that surely awaited them. Cody had quickly made sure his own DC-15S Blaster Carbine was locked and loaded before he signaled the 212th into the attack.
None of the mysterious slugthrower flak had risen to meet the first flights of Torrents and Alpha-3 Nimbus-class starfighters loaded with heavy proton bombs. His own MAAT/i had been just crossing the last breakers and passed over the beaches of Maui to the north of the city of Kahului when simultaneous guided-proton bomb attacks destroyed the tropical city's marina, police headquarters, telephone exchange, National Guard armory, and county courthouse. His own MAAT/i gunners had decimated the island's power station and radar and communication towers as the first of his troop carriers had touched down in the suburbs and farmlands surrounding the small city. The lights of the city flickered on and off before finally sputtering out and leaving the city bathed in moonlight.
Cody had moved to the open cargo bay door of his MAAT/i as it rushed over the streets of Kahului. He had stood and held onto the hand grip at the lip of the door. The warm tropical air rushed by and he noticed the local inhabitants pausing in the yards and roads below to stare up at his transport, cruising by just fifty meters overhead. The enemy non-combatants below had screamed and pointed at the hundreds of landing craft racing above them. A few of them had been smart enough to start running for the nearby countryside. The not so smart ones, well. . . He had frowned when his ears picked up the strange rapport of a single slugthrower over the whine of the MAAT/i's engines.
He had ordered his gunners to hold fire as they passed over the population center. A block to his port side a strange landspeeder with swirling lights disgorged two uniformed Earthlings, both of which immediately engaged a passing MAAT/c with small-caliber slugthrowers. The MAAT/c gunners had been instructed to fire in defense only over the city and one of the transport's door gunners had acted on those orders. His heavy E-WEB chewed up the pavement to the front of the landspeeder before impacting with its fuel tank. The resulting explosion shredded the two earthlings. The MAAT/c charged ahead towards the designated landing zone.
Cody's MAAT/i had lightly touched down in a sugar cane field outside of the town. He had been the first clone out the door, followed quickly by the troopers making up his headquarters section. Aides and junior officers rushed up and asked for confirmation of their orders. A secure perimeter was established within seconds by the first wave of veteran infantry.
Within three minutes of his own landing, MAAT/c had already unloaded two platoons of heavy AT-TE's which had then started their slow lumber towards the still awakening Kahului. Several companies of armored clonetroopers had followed in their wake.
A Forward Air Controller had guided a MAAT/c carrying his PX-4 Mobile Command Base right next to his position. His HQ section quickly boarded the tracked carrier and followed the attack into the city. Inside the vehicle, Cody had removed his bucket and watched the unfolding attack on the HoloMaps and hyperspace radio systems of the command vehicle. His own men were so well trained they hardly had had to ask him for confirmations of orders as they sent the troopers of the 212th into action.
Cody's troopers had pretty much had their own way with the city. Here and there the local police force tried to set up a roadblock or a handful of locals with slugthrower rifles had tried to hold a home or two as if they were bunkers. Cody had ordered Clone Blazetroopers and Flametroopers to reduce those targets. While ordinary clonetroopers had provided suppression fire, the flamethrower-armed clones had approached from the homes' flanks and spit their flaming liquid onto their targets. The screams of the burning defenders quickly diminished any remaining fight in the locals.
His AT-TEs had reached the beach twenty minutes after the attack had begun. His own troopers had reported only minor amounts of wounded clones in the attack, while the final tally had been just under thirty earthlings killed in the short engagement. Soon hundreds of earthlings had come into the streets with their hands held high. His clones had had to risk exposure and operational security in rounding them all up but there simply wasn't any fight left in these Earthlings. Several of them sneered at Cody as they were marched past his PX-4.
"Wait till you get to Oahu, that's where all our soldiers are!"
"If we had more guns you wouldn't have beat us!"
"You're going to get your butts kicked out of Upper California too!" They shouted and threatened, but Cody had heard even more of them whispering that they were just thankful to be alive. Cody had a hunch that war had never reached this part of their planet.
Clones went from house to house pulling out the hidden inhabitants and slapping binders on them before forcing them into the marching procession back to the landing zone, where Sentinel shuttles belonging to Operation Piper awaited them. In a few places the inhabitants still resisted but a blaster butt to the head usually encouraged them to cease any further resistance.
During the round-up several wounded and hurt Earthlings were been treated with minor first aid in a yard near his track. His orders had been specific on this matter. The wounded Earthlings would be bound so they couldn't do any damage while his troopers were here but they were to be left behind. The Empire didn't have the resources to care for wounded and damaged slaves. He had turned a blind eye to his few medics who chose to turn a blind eye to the Imperial order.
A battery of AT-APs had started firing long-range artillery at Pu'u Kukui, one of the nearby shield volcanoes. A jungle-camouflaged scout trooper had pulled up to his PX-4 on a BARC speederbike. "Marshal Cody, several thousand refugees are making for the mountains. Shall I order my men to pursue?" The clone officer had asked.
Cody had checked his chromo. The attack on the Piper Omega target was scheduled to go in at dawn. "No, Captain. Form a perimeter to guard against any probes or counter-attacks coming from those hills but we've already bagged almost thirty thousand prisoners from here and the other towns on the island. We've done what we came for. Get your troopers ready for action in the morning." The scout trooper captain had saluted and raced away on his speederbike.
Cody had gone back to checking on the status of the rest of the attack. His own 212th had simultaneously secured the smaller towns on Maui of Wailuka, Lahaina, Kula, Ha'iku, Hana, Kihei, and Kapalua. Within an hour mop-up operations in those towns had bagged several thousand prisoners who were now being forcibly marched or transported to the landing sites. The Hyperspace radio and comset of the PX-4 reported the capture of other Hawaiian towns. Lihue and Kailua had both fallen without a fight to Clone Commander Salvo's 32nd Air Combat Wing, but at Hilo on the big island to the southeast there was a large National Guard force that had been providing aide for refugees fleeing the attack on Honolulu earlier in the day. The fight had been bitter, and because of time constraints Clone Admiral Bacara had ordered the abandonment of the Hawaiian city. Marshal Gett's Sarlaac Legion had razed the city to the ground as they pulled out. Given another few hours the fight would have been theirs but Cody had known they had bigger fish to fry.
Each of their assaults had been staging attacks, either to set up assembly areas for the attack on Piper Omega or draw out counter-attacks in order to bleed the defenders of the NAU's Pacific Base. An earlier orbital bombardment had demolished Honolulu but another attack by three Acclamators was scheduled to commence at dawn. And then the three legions of Operation Piper would attack. Overwhelming technology and firepower on the part of the 212th would settle the issue and hopefully they would have their biggest catch right at the start of Piper.
Cody looked back at that optimistic thought from a few hours ago in growing frustration as he stood along the highway eating his pineapple. His mind was now thoroughly focused on the present. The last of the aboriginal prisoners were finally being loaded onto the remaining Sentinels in the field in front of his position. The sky was slowly turning gray and purple in the east.
CC-2224 silently contemplated his new dilemma. He was about to send his boys into Piper Omega with no orbital support. One after another the three designated star destroyers for Operation Piper: the Battle of Qalydon, the Pressure, and the Kuat's Storm had all reported that they wouldn't be on station on time. Evidently something had gone wrong at the Carbon refinery vessel and the three warships wouldn't be resupplied with their tibanna stocks in time.
Now the chromo was ticking down. Clone Admiral Bacara had advocated that the mission be delayed or scrubbed all together but the Theater Commander Moff Seco had insisted that the attack go on as planned. With Fleet Admiral Yos on his way back to Mars with his newly rescued daughter there wasn't anyone to overrule his orders. And if there was one thing clonetroopers were good at it was following orders, Cody thought with a shudder as he remembered a hot day on Utapau over a decade ago when he had been ordered to shoot his general in the back.
At dawn the 212th Legion would attack.
"Commander!" one of his officers got his attention. "Another rocket attack from Oahu incoming. ETA is two minutes."
"Fierfek, another useless cruise missile?" He hoped. Already four so-called 'Tomahawk' Missiles had been launched from the vicinity of the as-yet-unoccupied, enemy-held island. Three of them had been jammed by his Electronic Signals Warfare and SIGINT troopers and had smashed violently into the seas around Maui. The fourth had been intercepted by a V-19 Torrent off the coast of Kahului, which had resulted in a huge fireball about an hour earlier.
"No Sir, MLRS again." The Sub-Space Radar man informed him. Cody placed his helmet back onto his head.
"E Chu Ta! Everyone in the ditch!" He pointed to the side of the roadway as the troopers of his headquarters flung themselves flat in the muddy ditch alongside the roadway. The driver and the crew of the PX-4 climbed out of their vehicle and quickly joined them. The only vehicles still moving were four AT-AA that lumbered into position to engage the incoming rocket attack.
The Earthlings had learned to strike back quickly. As far as Cody could tell they had about six of the rocket-laden vehicles moving rapidly around Oahu. Their first attacks started sometime after midnight using highly sophisticated guided munitions. His SIGINT and ESW troopers had no problem jamming them or even tracking them with their Anti-Airspeeder heavy turbolasers. So after several failed attacks the enemy tried a new trick. Using Shoot-n-Scoot tactics the Earthlings started launching dumb rockets blasted like a flachette launcher from island to island. With no electronic guidance for his Signal officers to jam it was up to the skills of his AA-troopers in their four legged AT-AAs to knock out the rockets.
Cody helped the last of his troopers move the three prisoners into the trench with them before the attack came in. Already two of his AT-AAs were throwing up a protective curtain of plasma. Not that it was anything more than bad luck for one of the rockets to hit the Marshall Commander. The enemy on Oahu had no idea where on Maui he and his troopers were located. With no guidance the incoming rockets were no more useful than area suppression weapons, though quite terrifying and effective if you were in the area they were suppressing. The burning hotel behind them testified to the effectiveness of an earlier attack.
From the landing zone, one of his last AV-7 artillery cannons returned counter-battery towards Oahu in the hope that it would catch the launcher lingering at its launch site. Cody knew that was a small hope after the regularity of the attacks throughout the dark hours of early morning. Several small explosions erupted in the night sky as lucky hits by his AA contacted with a few of the incoming rockets, followed by a popping sound as the surviving weapons broke apart to release their sub-munitions.
Cody breathed a sigh of relief when he realized their trajectory was aimed at an impact zone still within Kahului. Several blocks of empty homes and businesses erupted in massive explosions as a small shockwave rippled over the island. His troopers picked themselves up and brushed the mud off their armor before continuing with the loading process. Cody suddenly had an idea.
Calling his staff officers to him, they boarded the PX-4 and studied the HoloMap projector. Cody rapidly outlined his plan. "Get all the artie blasters we have and start hitting them right here." He pointed at the 3D image of Piper Omega. "And then at dawn we're going to hit them here." His finger moved slightly to the west.
Around him several clones nodded in agreement, while others were already issuing orders over their hyperspace radios to their commands. The landing zone became a flurry of activity as his orders were obeyed.
Cody stepped back outside the moblie command center just as several returning MAAT/c dropped off batteries of AV-7s, UT-ATs, and SPHA-Ms. Within ten minutes a designated area of Honolulu with the pretty name of Pearl Harbor was being plastered by Imperial munitions. SigInt troopers soon informed him that the defenders were moving their troopers into the area and digging in. The last of the 212th Attack Legion loaded up on their MAAT/i.
He watched as the three captives were led aboard the remaining Sentinel shuttle with the last prisoners his troopers had managed to capture. He hoped the base on the moon was ready to receive them all. Distant thuds and crashes rocked the island. Already delayed demolitions left by his men were erupting across Maui's infrastructure and power stations to further deny their use to any returning earthlings. Cody smiled at the destruction caused by his troopers.
The earthlings were never going to suspect a dawn attack on Honolulu.