47th Combat Surgery Hospital, FEMA Emergency Camp Las Vegas, Henderson, Nevada, NAU
The exhausting desert heat that filled the tent along with the smell of iodine, sweat, and blood was almost stifling.
The President slowly made his way through the long rows of cots stretched along both sides of the white field hospital. Each bed was filled with an injured soldier. He was followed by a trio of nervous doctors who had been surprised by his sudden arrival at their hospital. They followed in silence as he visited the wounded.
"Excuse me, Sir." an orderly said from behind him. President Harris turned and noticed that the corpsman had an armful of plasma bags and looked to be in a hurry. He realized he was blocking the center aisle of the tent.
"Oh, sorry, son." Harris responded humbly as he stepped between two cots. The pair of Secret Service Agents who escorted him grudgingly made way for the soldier. The corpsman didn't say another word as he jogged to the end of one of the aisles and proceeded to hook up one of the bags to an IV stand beside a cot holding a man in tanker's coveralls.
A pair of civilian nurses monitored the entire ward with the assistance of several orderlies. Harris had been told the nurses had worked in an Emergency Room at a hospital in nearby Las Vegas before the war. Before he had entered the tent he had been told it was only one of dozens in this particular CSH's complex set up on the edge the Mojave.
Harris was highly aware of all the eyes that were watching him. He felt nervous and out of step in such a place. He knew that his own orders had landed a lot of these men in this situation, which is why he had forced himself to visit the hospital when his convoy had come across it during their trek west.
He looked down at one of the soldiers next to him. "Are you hurt bad, son?"
"Burns, Sir. Sixty percent of my right leg. Broken femur." The soldier lifted up a blanket that covered his lower body. His right leg was heavily bandaged and splinted. "Lots of guys got it a lot worse than me. Lots of guys are dead too."
Harris winced a little. "How did it happen?"
"Got it in Vegas. You know how they say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Well these burns are gonna stay with me for the rest of my life. The aliens blew the shit, oops sorry about the language, Sir."
"It's ok, I've heard a lot worse."
"I'll bet, Sir. Anyways, the aliens didn't hit Vegas with one of those bombardments from space. Instead they pummeled nearby Nellis Air Force Base pretty hard. Set the whole area ablaze. The local fire department didn't know what to do with a fire that big and pretty soon all of Sin City was burning. I was part of a convoy coming out of Fort Collins in Colorado heading for LA. They put us to work trying to help all the people fleeing the city. I got caught up at the MGM Grand. Fires were all up and down the Strip. Me and my squad got trapped in the casino when it collapsed. I got out but five guys didn't. We weren't firemen, Sir."
Harris nodded. Soldiers were dying far from the battlefield. Too much was being asked of these brave men and women. But if they were going to beat the Empire even more would be required from them before the end.
"You did fine, son. I know you did and your Union is proud of you."
"Thanks, Mr. President, Sir. I'll be fine in a month or so. Just as soon as the Docs give me my rifle back I'm gonna go out west and kick a little ET ass." The soldier said.
"Good for you. I bet you will, too." Harris patted the soldier on the shoulder.
The President went up and down the long line of beds. He made it a point to hear each soldier's story. He asked about their families and their hometowns. A few of them couldn't look him in the eye. Some asked for another shot at the aliens. The conviction and fervor in their voices humbled him. "You'll get your shot." He told a soldier who had come from the battlezone in LA.
A scream of pain came from a nearby triage tent. More soldiers were arriving from the battle out west, brought in to the makeshift hospital by any means the Army could find.
Harris went from one tent to another, stopping periodically to shake hands and talk to as many soldiers as he could. Hundreds of them had journeyed here from LA. Their mood was the same when they talked about the aliens. They felt as if they had been sucker punched by the Imperial's technology and deadly opening bombardment. They told him that they had been pushed off balance in the streets of Los Angeles from the get go and forced to retreat time and time again. Some of them said the Imperials had made a mistake by stopping when they did and hiding behind their mysterious forcefield. It gave the army a chance to recover and get ready for the next attack. All of them seemed assured that given half a chance they would go right back into LA and push the alien vermin from their world.
Harris liked what he was hearing. The soldiers had passion and conviction in their voices when they spoke of getting another crack at the aliens. He took it on faith that they would someday be victorious over the Imperials. His enemy may have won a battle but they were still a long way from winning the war.
He stopped beside the cot of a wounded female dressed in a navy flight-suit. A flight helmet sat underneath her cot. It was painted with icicles and had the callsign of 'Ice Queen' stenciled across the front. She wore a cast on her left arm and had deep scratches on that side of her face. He noticed another large bandage on the left side of her neck.
"How are you doing. . . Lieutenant?" He spotted her collar tabs as he started to greet her.
"I can't lie, Sir. I've been better." She smiled. She would have been considered quite pretty despite her wounds. "First Lieutenant Kazanski, VFA 81 out of NAS Oceana." She sat up in her cot and saluted.
"How did you get that?" Harris pointed at her cast.
"Harassment run at that new shield the Imps put up. One of their AA flak phasers decided to use our flight for target practice. They clipped my Super Hornet's tail section pretty good. Lost my port engine right away. I managed to keep her in the air for a little while but had to punch out somewhere over Palm Springs. When I came down I landed on top of one of those huge Joshua Tree cacti, which snapped my humerus and scratched me up something fierce." she explained.
"I'm just glad you were able to come down in one piece, Sailor." Harris said.
"Thank you, Sir. A lot of my buddies haven't been so lucky." Her voice seemed to fade away and her eyes glazed over as if she were remembering dogfights far away.
"How bad is it up there, Lieutenant?"
"Bad, Sir." She paused for a long time. Harris could tell she had much more to say and waited. He needed to know what it was like for the people who had to carry out his orders. Orders that were likely to get them killed.
"It's not what we trained for. You go up to meet those 'H' fighters up there and you're deaf, blind, and dumb from the start. We've got no radar, no commo, our weapons have no computer guidance and their fighters give off so little heat that our sidewinders shoot off after the sun or circle back at us because the ETs jam our IFF signals. We practically have to use hand signals to communicate with each other up there like we're some kind of World War One flying circus. Their phaser guns have an incredible range, almost as far as our missiles from what I've seen."
"Surely we must have some advantage over them?" Harris had hoped that a hundred years of Earth's aviation experience would be enough. That hope sounded foolish against a technologically sophisticated society that had already mastered intergalactic travel.
"Speed, Sir. They can't chase us worth a spit and they don't have any type of an afterburner to speak of. Which makes no sense because we've detected them going at unheard of speeds when they're out in orbit. It's when they have to come down and hit our air that they slow down to a crawl. It's as if they don't have a designated atmospheric fighter aircraft. The 'Hs' seem more suited for space than the Earth. And if we don't mind the horrendous casualties we can close with them at will and dogfight them some. Unlike their ground walkers, those 'H' fighters don't seem to like our bullets very much."
The President had heard some of this from classified intelligence reports but it was always better to hear it from pilots in the field. "So we have to get in close? Grab them by the belt sort of?"
"Even that's dangerous, Mr. President. Those 'Hs' can turn on a dime. They can pull g that would turn you and me into jelly. I don't know how they do it either. From what I've seen and heard they've got human pilots just like us. I've seen them side step a sidewinder and duck under a stinger. It's incredible. Lightyears beyond our own ability."
"That's a gap we're hoping to close someday."
"If you ever get a plane that can strike them on Mars sign me up as the pilot."
"You've more than earned the right for a little payback, Lieutenant. So why do you claim the aerial battle over LA is like nothing you've ever trained for?" Harris asked.
"At flight school we trained to dominate the three major areas of any conflict; Air, Land, and Sea. That's the way any war has been fought since cavemen starting clubbing each other. Now these Imps arrive and introduce a whole new theater; orbit. They swept our satelites from space and have a whole fleet up there that's just pounding us to pieces. Underneath that they've had no problem keeping control of air cover over LA. God, help the grounpounders, Sir, because the Air Force sure hasn't." She sighed.
He understood how helpless it must have looked to the pilots who witnessed their squadrons decimated from above. He wished he could have told her he had a new space fighter or laser gun that was going to sweep the Imperial Star Destroyers from Earth's near orbit. One day he would have something to tell her, he promised himself. He put his hand on her good shoulder to comfort her. She gave back a weak smile.
"This huge sacrifice the Union has suffered hasn't been in vain. I haven't given up hope. This is our planet: Air, land, sea, and space and we're going to take them all back."
Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, Oceania, Earth
Clone Marshall Commander Cody watched the city burn from the ridges of the nearby Owen Stanley Mountains. He wished he could say that all of the damage had been caused by his own troops, but the local abo prisoners had informed him that the slums of Port Moresby had been burning for decades.
He could smell the smoky braze from kilometers away in the sticky, tropical air. On the slopes below him several batteries of AV-7 cannons continued to pour withering artillery blasts onto the sinking wrecks of an Australian relief convoy in the Gulf of Papua that had tried to sneak into the city during the previous night.
They never had a chance as his V-19 Torrents had pounced on the convoy while still at sea. His ARC-170s had swept the skies of Australian and New Zealand air cover, while the Torrents had sent one warship after another to the murky bottom of the Coral Sea.
After the convoy failed to reach the besieged defenders of the island, the city as well as the nation of Papua New Guinea had surrendered to the forces under Cody's command.
To the west of his command a long column of beaten soldiers, not troopers, he reminded himself of the odd Earth term, marched up the Kokada Trail towards captivity. The earth troopers were made up from the smashed remains of the 1st Royal Pacific Islands Regiment and the Australian 1st and 3rd Brigades.
Cody respected them for fighting as long as they had. Completely cut off, and with an orbital bombardment from the Star Destroyer Fool that had flattened their lines, they had continued to fight and keep his troopers out of the city for four days.
A far different defense than had been mounted during the drive across the Pacific of the past week. His 212th Attack Legion had conquered one island paradise after another, usually without having to blast a shot. Nauru, Kiribati, half of the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and the Solomons had all thrown their hands up in surrender to his legion. Their reward had been the decimation of their beings as they were shipped off by the thousands to Luna Base on the Earth's local moon, and then onto the slave labor camps of Mars.
He had heard the reports of the slave uprising that had been put down on Mars. He didn't blame his troopers for letting so many infiltrators sneak into the masses of abos they had swept up. He simply didn't have the manpower to screen the hordes of prisoners that his forces were dealing with. He looked over at the trail again.
Along the jungle trail thousands of abo troopers marched with their heads held high between clonetrooper guards that lined the trail. Behind them marched another hundred thousand scraggly looking refugees. How was he supposed to screen all of them for infiltrators, he wondered?
The civilian abos looked terrified, as well they should be. Ahead of them Sentinel shuttles packed full of prisoners lifted off towards Luna Base. He had read a top secret report that the prisoners who had passed health screenings on the local moon would be fed 'Smilie Spice'. The abos' worries would soon be over, he thought. If only the Jedi had fed their slave army of clones Smilie Spice during the war, maybe Order 66 may have never happened.
Behind him Lieutenant Birgann and several hyperspace radio operators commed with troopers in the city as they finished 'mopping up' operations. Evidently several of the tougher street gangs hadn't wanted to give up the ghost and surrender with their neighbors. They were paying the price for their refusal as Birgaan directed several companies to flatten the brutal thugs and the ruins they fought from.
Cody sighed. Across the sea lay more islands to conquer, more prisoners to round up, and unfortunately more of his brothers possibly lost in the fight. Already Operation Piper had claimed the lives of over a hundred Kamino clones. Vode that should have been enjoying retirement were instead blasting their way through another back-rocket war.
As if to tear himself from his dismal thoughts the nearby artillery battery let off another salvo just as an angry looking clone captain approached with two miserable appearing clonetroopers in tow.
The Clone Captain approached and saluted him. Cody turned to the trio and returned the salute. "What can I do for you, Captain?"
"Sir, I found these two, um. . .consorting with female enemy civilians, Sir." The captain looked embarrassed to have to report his men's infraction. "They were getting their power couplings hooked up when they were discovered by field police in a hotel of ill repute inside the city."
Cody raised a concerned eyebrow. Since the very beginning of the invasion, the forces of Tarkin's Fist had been briefed on how high the level of disease was dirtside. The strange new, sexually-transmitted maladies found on this planet were especially rampant and deadly. Fraternization with the enemy had not only been forbidden, but strongly dreaded by those in high command.
Cody, however, had been a young trooper once, "Troopers, you want to explain why you couldn't wait to go on leave and calibrate your Deeces once you got back to Culter City?" He filled his voice with as much anger and intimidation as he could muster. It must have worked as both di'kut troopers appeared to be shaking in their armor as they took a dressing down from the commander of their Legion.
"Commander, they looked clean." The first trooper tried to explain.
"Clean?"
"Well, they didn't look like they had the Blue Shadow Virus or the Festering Plague." The second trooper hastily added.
"Those are diseases of the Empire, these beings around here are chock-full with aruetii local plagues." Cody growled.
"Sorry Sir, it's just that these two piffers seemed like they were just looking for a good time. I don't think they knew the meaning of the word 'No'." The other trooper gave a slight laugh at his comrade's words. If they were looking for the right defense Cody's disapproving frown told them that they hadn't found it
"And what did they want in return? Credits? Food?"
"Um, No Sir. They wanted to be excluded from that." The second trooper pointed at the long line of prisoners marching towards the slave pens and the waiting Sentinel shuttles.
"So you thought you would ignore your orders for a quick roll in the nerf straw? Troopers, you had better pass 'short-arm' inspection. Captain, place both of these troopers under quarantined guard until they pass an extensive medical screening. Also dock them two months' pay for disobeying standing orders." Both of the troopers' identical faces were crestfallen.
"Yes, Sir." The Captain saluted.
The crack of the slug as it whipped over Cody's shoulder, as well as the sickening, wet smack of it impacting the second trooper's face, got an instant response from the Clone Marshall.
Cody instinctively dropped to the ground. He hit hard and replaced his bucket before the dead trooper's body hit the dirt in front of him. It was a testament to their training that the other trooper and clone captain had responded just as quickly as Cody had.
"Jango's Bones!"
An abo machine-slugthrower erupted with its chatter from the tree line of the jungle a few hundred meters away.
The ripping noise the large slugthrower put out reminded him of a tapping buzzsaw. The enemy gunners concentrated their fire on the artillery pits further down the mountain's slope. A few dozen muzzle flashes marked the location of rifled slugthrowers in the jungle canopy.
"I count thirty rebel hut'uun in the trees!" Birgaan yelled from his own position. His adjutant and the radio operators had taken cover behind the armored hull of his PX-4 Mobile Command Base.
Cody didn't need any urging to flatten out as more slugs tried to search him out. He switched to the thermal sites in his HUD and attempted to pick out targets. He pushed the blasting stub with his thumb. His DC-15A blaster rifle slammed against his shoulder. In between bolts he dug a scrape for himself with his entrenching tool.
Within half a minute proton mortars exploded amongst the earthling's positions. His Vode had been cloned for war and had fought in them in one form or another for the better part of a decade and a half. They reacted on gut instinct and they did it instantly. The jungle erupted as hundreds of bolts from the headquarters company and the artillerymen returned blasts on their antagonists.
The abos in the trees were either dumb or stubborn, because they held their position, even in the face of overwhelming odds. Cody wondered why they didn't fade back into the woods once the element of surprise was lost. Already clone reinforcements were rushing up from the Kokoda Trail.
Cody thought he must have been the first to hear the noise. It was a steady, rhythmic thumping emanating from deeper in the jungle. From his prone position he glanced further up the mountainside: hundreds of birds were taking to the skies as something up there made the trees shake with its passage. The ear splitting crunch of trees being uprooted and torn apart reached even the clones in the pinned-down positions.
Each second the noise crept closer, until the jungle behind the abo position suddenly rang out with the blasting of dozens of laser cannons. The earthling ambush exploded outward. Their jungle positions either caught fire or were ripped apart by their new assailant in their rear. A last few surviving abos made the mistake of fleeing towards the Cody and his clones, only to be blasted from several sides by Cody's troopers.
In less than a minute the blasting stopped. Cody tentatively perked his helmet up higher, hoping not to attract a slug, as the thumping grew to a crescendo. At the moment it didn't sound as if it could have gotten any louder the treeline crumpled and collapsed as three large AT-OTs came crashing out of the jungle.
Along the top of the Open Transports dozens of clone ARF troopers lined the gunwales. One of the figures on top of the lead walker's caught his attention. The figure waved to him and Cody regained his feet and waved back.
The figure was dressed in the new anti-ballistic scout armor with yellow markings and a huge dualnode hyperspace radio set on his back that gave him the appearance of a large bug-male. The clone sported a pair of krayt-dragon pearl-handled sidearms and the lightsaber tucked into his belt left no doubt in Cody's mind as to who the clone's identity was.
The walker came to a halt in front of him. The clone on the cockpit didn't wait for the cargo ramp to be lowered, and instead leapt down to the walker's knee joint before bouncing off and landing in front of Cody.
"Su'cay gar Bly." Cody grinned as the medics took away the dead trooper next to him. The other Captain led the surviving trooper away to a quarantine, probably somewhere a lot safer than here.
"It's good to be alive, that's for sure." Bly laughed. Cody had been friends with Bly since their days on Kamino in the Marshall training course under the ARC commando Alpha-17. Bly's training as an ARC commando had led to him being tapped by Moff Seco to lead the Forward Observers around Target East.
From what Cody understood, his vod Bly had been instrumental in directing the orbital bombardment that had cut off the NAU city, and had kept the forces on the lesser continental mass too busy to notice what Cody and Admiral Bacara were up to out in the Pacific. Cody grasped Bly's forearm and pulled his brother in for a warm wookiee hug. Their plastoid armor clanged as they came into contact. "What are you doing way out here?"
"Things are slowing down at the landing zones. Now that they've got those fancy planetary shields over both of our footholds the vacheads in the fleet are refitting and refueling their Star Destroyers," Bly explained. "Moff Seco gave all of us Forward Observers leave and I decided to try to find myself a friendly, sunny beach somewhere. I talked to some abo prisoners in Target East and they suggested some place called Hawaii. Little did I know, ner Cod'ika had already vaped the place."
"That sucks void, vod. We didn't leave anything there but a bunch of starving, diseased, and wounded abos. Fleet's been dumping all the rejects from Operation Piper on Hawaii's outlying islands. If you stepped onto one of their beaches these days they'd probably eat you right up."
"The aiwha-bait didn't clone me to be anyone's shabla appetizer, that's for sure." Bly laughed. Bly removed his bucket and rubbed his hand over his closely shaven scalp. Like all of the other clones Bly sported the same face as Cody.
"So what takes you out here? I hadn't heard Bacara was going to cut you any orders to join us." Cody asked. Birgaan and a few other aides jogged up to see if he was a 100 percent after the ambush. Cody waved them away when they saw he was talking to another Marshall.
"I got a new mission, one that might just be up your hyperlane." A sly grin spread across his face.
"Oh? And how'd you plot that vector?" Cody asked, motioning for Birgaan to send clones into the treeline to search out any more possible rebels.
"I just came down from the Fool. Bacara's got a mission straight from the Emperor himself, could make us all very rich males. He also says that your 212th is going to be mopping up on this island for the better part of a week, and that you could use a little use a little R&R." Bly informed him.
"I wouldn't feel right leaving my vode right now."
"Birgaan can run the 212th while you're away for a day or two. Besides, Gett and Salvo's legions are both in the neighborhood." Bly pointed to the jungle where the abo ambush had been sprung, which was now ablaze as several Incinerator troopers destroyed the near-human corpses lying amongst the collapsed tree trunks. "Military resistance has already surrendered, these rebel scum all shoot like a moisture-farmer militia."
"They got one of our vode." Cody pointed at the medics covering the clone who had been hit in the face at the beginning of the attack. He let the words hang in the air as Bly's shoulder's sagged.
"Nu kyr'adyc, shi taab'echaaj'la" Bly sighed. Cody agreed with his brother's sentiments. Their fallen vode weren't gone, they were simply marching far away. Those words had prevented him from being overwhelmed with grief during the Clone War when so many of their brothers had fallen.
"Maybe you're right, I do need a break." Cody admitted.
"Of course, I'm right. When have I ever been wrong?" The ARC commando Marshall smiled.
"Well, there was that one time on Honoghr..." Bly reached his arm around Cody's neck and put him in a friendly head lock. Both brothers laughed.
It was a matter of moments for Cody to grab his equipment and leave instructions with Birgaan for the dispersion and deployment of the 212th Attack Legion while he was gone.
The two Marshall Commanders made their way to the nearest landing field, which was a clearing blasted out of the jungle canopy by the clone troopers. Several ground control airmen guided in a steady stream of MAATs that were in a constant flow of take-offs and landings. Overhead a flight of V-19 Torrents kept a loose formation as they provided air cover, while dozens of Sentinels flew back and forth from the slave pens further inland. High above in orbit, Cody could make out two Acclamator-class Assault Ships, the Fool and the Empress, providing orbital blast support.
Bly had an old Kappa-class shuttle waiting for them. Several squads of his ARF troopers rested in the shade of its wings. Some were eating MPETs while others were cleaning their blasters. They all snapped to attention when the two Marshalls appeared.
Bly just signaled for the commandos to follow them aboard. They boarded through the craft's forward entrance ramp and passed between a pair of stowed AT-PTs before finding a seat in the rear of the vehicle bay. The squads of Advanced Recon Force troopers took up their seats around the forward troop compartment. Some being had modified the craft by removing most of the seating and replaced it with several advanced blaster and armor maintenance workbenches.
A large CS-Mark 12 holoprojector took up most of the space in the center of the craft. A green-hued image of a large and intimidating fortress was being studied by the commandos while their boss Bly privately chatted with Cody.
"So these vode are your Forward Observers? Very Mandokarla. Tough looking bunch." The commandos had slightly bigger builds to them than the normal clones. Cody knew the Kaminoans had mucked with the DNA of the ARCs and Nulls, but beside Bly and one or two others he didn't think this many had made it through the 'big jump'. These ARCs were all almost pure Jango.
"Bunch of softies, every one of them." Bly winked. "Don't let me fool you though; the two Target cities were no blue-milk runs."
"I bet."
"Let me ask you something. You ever hear of gold?"
"The color? Of course. Unless you're talking about Aurodium?" The rare metal was used as a backrocket currency in the Outer Rim of the Home Galaxy where credits had been short. It was also the standard in which Imperial and Old Republic credits set their value.
"One and the same, the abos call the metal gold after the color, I think?"
"Like calling that sweet fruit of theirs an orange, after orange?"
"Something like that. Aruetii abos are a few starships short of a fleet, if you ask me. Still, the stuff spends the same no matter what you call it." Bly said.
"So what does this 'gold' have to do with me?" Cody asked.
Bly pointed at the hologram of the large fortification. "Some shabla SigInt technician was slicing the Terran's internet and came across this place. They call it Fort Knox. According to several websites it houses upwards of four thousand metric tonnes of gold bullion."
"Stang." Cody whistled.
"You said it. Vod." Bly said. Cody felt the Kappa lift off and rocket into orbit. The whine of her SFS-203 sublight engines filled the rear of the cabin. "That can provide a lot of retirement funds for a lot of vode."
"Is that what this is about?" Like most of the Kamino clones that had served in the Clone War, Cody was only twenty-six years old, but the double-aging effect of the cloning process left his body nearer to fifty. When they had been at the Death Star construction site before the 'big jump' he had guessed that his body would be pushing seventy before that thing was complete.
"Of course that's what this is about. Bacara set this whole retirement thing up years ago as a means for us to retire from the Old Empire, but what would have happened under Palpatine? We would have all ended up on the streets of the Outer Rim begging for change from passerby or with a noodle in the back of the head from some clone assassin. You and I both know the only acceptable way out of the old Imperial Army for a clone was in a body bag. Emperor Yos has offered Bacara and us a cut of the loot because he knows we still have some of the best commandos in Tarkin's Fist."
"That's for sure." Cody remembered leading clone commando squads in the capture of both Mars and the Earth's local moon.
"We've also heard from Neyo."
"Oh?" Cody leaned forward. Their fellow Marshall Commander had been left behind on Mars after many of the clones had received clandestine instructions for reversing the Kaminoan aging process. No one was sure if it could be done or not, but Bacara had left Neyo in charge of finding out. "And what does Old Stiff-Lip have to say?"
"Not much, as usual. Just that the recipe is getting close to completion. He just needs some aiwha-bait to stir the pot." Bly let the ominous words hang in the ozone-filled air.
"I heard a rumor some of the long-neck fishies had come along. They must have been the mystery cloners I read about on the HoloNews, the ones who cloned all those colonists for Earth 2."
"Bacara thought so, too. Neyo is looking into it hard. You heard he had a run in with a Jedi?"
"Fierfek. Yeah, I heard." Cody still felt like leaping out of his seat and grabbing his sidearm. Order 66 was ingrained in his psyche and the failure to complete that order had torn at him over the past decade. He silently cursed his old friend General Kenobi, wherever the old hut'uun was. "Did he even think to complete Order 66?"
"Couldn't do it. I don't blame him because I couldn't do it twice." Bly got a distant look in his eyes, and Cody wondered if his brother's thoughts were suddenly back in the jungle on Felucia raising his blaster towards Jedi General Aayla Secura. Cody's gaze flicked on the lightsaber at Bly's side. "Besides, 66 has been revoked along with all of Palpatine's orders, and that comes from Emperor Yos himself."
"Feed me to the fishes of Naboo! It really is a whole New Empire up on Mars isn't it. So what does all this have to do with me?" Cody asked. Synthetic bright light started to pour into the compartment from the viewports. Cody glanced out of one of them, and noted they were entering a Star Destroyer's hanger bay for landing.
"You'll see." The loading ramp dropped down at the front of the Kappa just seconds after the shuttle set down on the deck. The ARF commandos filed out of the craft in a hurry, followed by the two Marshalls, who strolled out into the middle of the busy hanger bay of an Imperial I-class Star Destroyer. Cody felt like putting his bucket back on just so he could use the polarized lenses for some eye protection against the hanger's glaring, overhead floodlamps.
The hanger was a madhouse of sights and sounds as a dozen shuttles of every make and model since the Clone War were hurriedly loaded by special forces troopers. Dozens of Imperial Navy officers and flight deck crewmen helped the loading process. Whatever the plan called for, Emperor Yos was throwing everything including the galley conservator at it.
"Welcome to the Insertion, Marshall Commander." a voice said from behind. Cody and Bly spun around to the sight of a mongrel Imperial Captain accompanied by a striking, blonde female in a gunnery officer's overalls.
Cody had to fight to take his eyes away from the beautiful officer and study the evident commander of the vessel. Everything about the mongrel screamed 'Danger'. Cody couldn't quite place what made him uneasy about the middle aged officer, but something was telling him the male couldn't be trusted.
"Captain Volt." Bly saluted. The Imperial returned the gesture. The blonde officer seemed to lean towards the Captain as her eyes moved up and down Cody's armor. The way her nose turned up at the sight of him, he felt like something the felinx drug in. Cody still couldn't quite get a read on the ranking officer though. "Sir," said Bly, "May I present Marshall Commander CC-2224 of the 212th Attack Legion and formally of the 7th Sky Corps."
"A pleasure CC-2224, Clone Marshall Commander CC-5052 here has assured me you're the right clone for this little venture we're attempting tonight." Volt said. Something about the way the officer stressed the word 'clone' and insisted on using their identifier numbers screamed high human culture. If Captain Volt wasn't at least a fully indoctrinated COMPNOR zealot Cody would be completely broggled.
"Yes, Sir. Bly here has informed me that we're going after a large aurodium vault" Cody stressed his brother's chosen name. He studied the Captain's face but the male's features gave nothing away. Cody knew enough to never want to play Sabacc against the officer. "Something along the scale of one of the old Banking Clan's depositories."
"A fair estimation. Nobody except maybe Emperor Palpatine himself knows how much the Muun were hiding away on Muunilinst or Mygeeto. Fleet Admiral Yos has estimated that tonight's target may hold about a third of either of those Home Galaxy treasury planets." Cody was curious about the captain's choice of honorifics, but knew now wasn't the time to push his suspicions.
"So what is my role in all of this, Sir?" Cody asked, as he started to get eager to punch up the coordinates on this mission.
"I thought Marshall Commander CC-5052 would have told you." The female officer seemed to scowl.
"Commander Eiryn, if you'd be so kind." The Captain offered, "It seems clone CC-2224 needs to be brought up to hyperspeed." Cody felt his patience start to thin.
"Of course, Captain," Her tone was too sweet and caring towards her superior officer. Once again Cody pretended not to notice. "While the Insertion commences orbital bombardment operations against the NAU cities of Louisville and Bowling Green you, CC-2224, will lead the jet troopers and paratroopers of the Subterrel Squadron in a HALO insertion upon the roof of the Bullion Depository. Once there you will secure the roof and dispose of any defenses and guards your clones come across. Once all anti-airspeeder defenses have been neutralized CC-5054 will lead thirteen shuttles containing armor forces and commandos in securing the aurodium vault of the building. Once CC-5054 has done this the aurodium will be brought back aboard this vessel by MAAT/c transports."
"At which point your heavy turbolasers reduce Fort Knox to molten slag." Bly added.
"Yes," Commander Eiryn responded, "Though the nearby NAU army base has already been pounded from orbit once, during the initial bombardment of the planet. You should still expect the primitives to send some possible reinforcements from it during your assault."
"You two should see to your clones, Marshall Commander CC-2224 your jet troopers will deploy in," the Captain checked his chrono, "Seventeen minutes. Dismissed." Captain Volt and his stunning gunnery commander turned away from the two Marshalls and walked away towards another group of mongrel naval officers overseeing the loading of commandos aboard the shuttles parked around the hanger.
Cody still had a hundred questions he wanted to ask but realized there simply wasn't enough time.
"I'm sorry, Vod, we are kind of rushing this. We don't want the di'kut abos to get wind of our intentions." Bly said.
"So all I have to do is secure the roof?"
"That's it. Keep the aruetiise flak off of my shuttles long enough for my boys to land, and we'll take care of the heavy stuff. You might just walk away a rich Mando'ad." He grinned and laid a hand on Cody's shoulder, "I've got to go see to my troopers. Your boys are over at that MAAT/s over there." he pointed towards a shuttle near the hanger doors, several commandos were in the process of loading their final gear onboard and staring back in his direction. "They've already been briefed and know their mission. Just get them through and I'll see you on the ground. K'oyacyi!"
Bly turned and trotted off to his own troopers. Cody took a deep breath and walked over to his own at the MAAT/s. The jet and paratroopers snapped to attention at his arrival. The stealth transport's big Rothana engines started their warm-up as the pilots saw his approach.
A paratrooper Lieutenant saluted and held out an outstretched hand to help him onboard. Cody took it and stepped into the cargo compartment of the transport. A crew chief handed him a repulsor harness, made especially for HALO jumps during the Clone War. Cody was intimately familiar with the gear. Five four-man squads stared back at him as he entered. He could tell most of them were mongrels. Only a handful of them were Fett clones. He tried not to hold it against them, but he would have traded all of the mongrels for just one more ARC trooper.
"You boys ready!" he shouted, in order to gauge their spirit and to be heard over the craft's engines.
"Hurrah!" the commandos yelled. They'll do, Cody told himself. He took a seat between two Kamino clones.
The MAAT/s left the hanger somewhere in orbit above the NAU state of Ohio and quickly went south. Through the viewports in the crew doors Cody could make out a nearby TIE/WAC that was providing jamming support for the mission. The two Imperial craft crossed the border with the NAU state of Kentucky only ten minutes after Cody had talked with the Captain of the Insertion.
The MAAT/s was over the night-side of the planet, and the ground below was cast in darkness. Very few lights could be seen as the MAAT/s moved into position. The abos that hadn't lost their power in the ongoing attacks on their infrastructure were under mandatory blackout conditions across most of their world.
Lights flashed from the north as the Insertion began its bombardment of the nearby city named Louisville. Cody breathed easier knowing the abos wouldn't be able to send support from that direction, nor from the south once the Star Destroyer put paid to another target named Bowling Green. A raging fire started in Louisville and Cody wondered how long it would burn before the earthlings below could contain it.
The crew cabin was lit by a single red light that barely illuminated the commandos at their crew benches. With their helmets on Cody couldn't gauge their jeeblies over the mission. Each jet trooper seemed crouched at their bench, as if they were a waiting nexu ready to pounce on an unsuspecting meal. Cody realized that even if they were mostly mongrels, each of them was still a professionally trained killing machine. They would have his back when they hit dirtside.
The light inside the cabin went from red to blue as the pilots indicated they were on station. The crew chief of the MAAT/s unpressurized the cabin doors and slid them to the rear before stepping out of the way.
Cody could instantly feel the chill if the thin air outside. They were so high up that if they hadn't had their buckets on they would have passed out from high altitude pulmonary or cerebral edema. Cody took a step to the edge of the doorway and paused for a half second, studying the darkened ground kilometers below. Then he took another step.
Cody immediately went into his free fall position. His helmet struggled to feed him oxygen while his body glove fought against hypoxia from the lack of pressure. He hoped none of his troopers or himself came down with a case of decompression sickness. His HUD told him that all twenty of the paratroopers and jet troopers were following right behind him in a military free fall formation.
He checked his altimeter as the formation passed eleven thousand meters; he knew he had reached terminal velocity several seconds before. Several loose cloud formations masked the on rushing ground below. Water condensation threatened to blur the lenses of his bucket. Cody switched to his nightviewer thermal sights and instantly picked up the fortress shape of the Bullion Depository along Highway 31W.
His advanced macrobinoculars inside his HUD helped him detect a few guards patrolling the rooftop and the gates of the facility, but there wasn't much sign of movement from within the nearby shattered army base or surrounding communities. At five thousand meters Cody engaged the repulsor lifts in his para-harness. The commandos behind him copied his actions. Still no signs of discovery from the earthlings below.
His speed rapidly decreased as he guided his force directly over the fortress. Several crew-served anti-airspeeder slugthrowers were visible on the rooftop now as Cody and his troopers descended through the last of the cloud cover over Fort Knox. Cody marked each of the weapons for a different squad to take on his HUD. Each squad leader acknowledged his commands with a short affirmative.
At two hundred meters they engaged their JT-12 jetpacks. Their tiny flames sparking like fireflies in the night sky. Several guards on the roof took immediate notice of the rapidly approaching danger as the commandos opened up with their jetpack warheads. The explosive projectiles smashed into each of the anti-airspeeder slugthrowers while the commando's DC-15 and E-11s opened up and sliced down the remaining guards on the rooftop.
Seven seconds later Cody's boots lightly touched down on the roof of the Bullion Depository. He took three seconds to scan the surrounding countryside. The building was circled by a large, open yard of grass, which Cody suspected was heavily mined, that ran until it hit a formidable death fence and forest a kilometer away.
Suddenly sirens screamed and floodlights lit the roof while searchlights erupted to probe the sky. Cody could just make out Bly's force coming down from orbit above. "Take out those kriffing lights!" Cody barked at his troopers who were landing all over the rooftop. The commandos went to work with a surgical vengeance. Their bolts smashed into hundreds of floodlights casting their world into darkness once again. Cody was relieved that some of them had engaged the blaring sirens as well.
One of his commandos shouted a warning and pointed below. An armored landspeeder of some sort had emerged from the front of the building escorted by several heavily armored guards. The small slugthrower of the landspeeder barked as its turret traversed and fired at the rooftop. Whatever the Depository was made of was tough stuff, Cody figured, as the slugs just bounced off of its side.
His commandos quickly dispatched the guards on the ground. Their anti-slug armor was no match for plasma bolts. A jet trooper fired a warhead that skewed the landspeeder sideways across the roadway leading up to the depository, but the turret atop the vehicle kept up its steady firing.
A paratrooper across the roof suddenly shouted out. Cody noted the non-electrical feeling to the shout as the trooper collapsed. Two of the trooper's buddies were helping the fallen man. "Body capacitance wires." A trooper said, pointing at several thin micro-filaments that ran along the edge of the roof. "Gave him a good shock. Knocked out his armor's systems."
"He's lucky to be alive. His body glove is probably all that saved him." Cody suggested at which the other trooper nodded in agreement.
With the banging coming from the landspeeder's slugthrower Cody barely heard the scraping noise of several hatches opening up in the corners of the rooftop. Mechanical whirs sounded out as automated machine-slugthrowers rose up on large tripods. "Get down!" Cody screamed as he hit the deck.
The slugthrowers tore into the commandos on the roof. One paratrooper was hit near Cody. The large caliber slugs ripped the man's left arm off. The male stared dumbly at his appendage as blood sprayed over Cody.
The commandos reacted instinctively on training. Cody moved towards the nearest slugthrower as it rattled out death at the commandos. His mind registered two of the slugthrowers exploding under the return fire of two squads of jet troopers. He activated his thermal detonator and tossed the explosive underneath the tripod of the droid slugthrower. An instant later a small explosion ripped the automated weapon from its mount, silencing it.
Cody turned quickly to witness the surviving commandos pour fire into the last slugthrower, which melted and slagged under their blasts. Three commandos lay dead upon the rooftop, including the one who had lost his arm. Four more had wounds that were being treated by their squadmates.
An explosion back in the main yard made Cody risk another look over the side. The armored landspeeder had blown itself in half as heavy blaster fire from Bly's arriving force sliced into it, cooking off its fuel and ammo.
Lambdas, MAATs, LAATs, Nus and Bly's own Kappa shuttle approached for a rapid landing. Their door gunners tore into the ground surrounding the Depository with turbolaser blasts, detonating mines under their landing zones across the large, grassy yard. The whine of TIE/In starfighters pierced the night as Imperial snubnose fighters provided air cover above them. If any abos had been asleep in the neighborhood they certainly were awake now.
Bly's shuttles landed with a thud a heartbeat before their squads of commandos poured out of the craft. Cody watched as the squads took up positions and fortified the perimeter of the depository yard within half a minute of landing. The yard was pitch black except for the small lights coming from scattered crew cabins, but with his thermal sites he picked out where several bunkers had been knocked out near the main gate during the assault landing.
Slug fire emitted from several small turrets on the corners of the fortress as guards inside opened fire with more machine slugthrowers and their own primitive thermal detonator launchers. Several MAATs in the sky above let loose with mass-driver missiles that silenced the guns and collapsed the small turrets. The yard was completely under Bly's control three minutes after Cody's boots hit the roof.
A LAAT/c came in for a landing, guided by Bly himself, who directed the craft to come to a halt directly in front of the large metal doors of the fortress. The dropship disengaged its cargo right where the Marshall wanted it. The LAAT/c wasted no time seeking altitude after dropping off its heavy payload; a SPHA/t walker.
Cody watched from the roof as Bly pointed at the massive door. The huge, crew-served weapon made a few adjustments to its aim and then unleashed the fury of its powerful turbolaser. The heavy blaster was designed to engage targets much more formidable than anything the abos could dream of.
Cody felt the vibrations of the turbolaser's impact through his boots. Cody leaned over the side to get a better view of the weapon's impact. A steady stream of laser energy was slowly turning the big metal door to slag. Loud popping noises were heard as the weight of the sagging entrance cracked its hinges as it sunk into itself.
Down in the yard Bly waved at the SPHA/t crew to cease fire. Several MAAT's dropped durasteel repulsor cables to the ground. Within seconds several commandos had them attached to the doorway. Bly signaled again, and the MAATs yanked the slags of molten metal out of the entrance.
Bly's ARF troopers led the charge into the building. For several moments the sounds of blasters and slugthrowers banging away at each other from close range rang out from the smoke filled entranceway. Bly's electronic amplified voice cut across the commando channel of his helmet's commo. "Endex. Repeat Endex."
Cody breathed a sigh of relief without dropping his guard in his overwatch position for a second. A moment later several ARF troopers led nine surviving Mint Police out into the yard. The earthlings looked as if they just went through a teras kasi match with a Gamorrean. Each of them sported several wounds, and most of them were bleeding from their ears, a sign they had come too close to the thermal detonators the ARF troopers used. Each abo wore a rebreather over his face, which Cody was curious about until Bly stated over the commo that the earthlings had flooded the place with some type of coma-gas.
Bly himself was inside the depository. Cody signaled the paratrooper lieutenant to continue to maintain the position on the roof and then he engaged his jetpack, jumped over the side of the building, and hovered down to the ground. Several ARF troopers saluted as he entered the gas-filled vault. His HUDs chemical warning system pinged a dozen alerts as he moved further into the structure.
The halls of the building were lit green by trooper's dropped glow rods and several emergency lights the fortress must have engaged when its defenders had lost power in the attack. Cody passed several darkened security stations and secured offices as he made his way into the bowels of the Bullion Depository.
Bodies were everywhere; most of them were the corpses of the defenders of the fortress, but here and there medics cleared out a half dozen commandos who had fallen in the assault. Cody came across several more of those automatic slugthrowers he had encountered on the roof. Their mechanical remains evidence to the fierce blaster fight that had erupted when the commandos stormed the Depository.
Cody found Bly standing in front of a formidable vault door commanding several experienced slicers and a pair of R2-series astromech droids that were trying to bypass the vault's security systems. Cody recognized several of the slicers as old Republic commandos that had been trained during the Clone War by the Null clone N-10, Jaing; the best data deceiver in the Grand Army of the Republic. If they couldn't bypass the vault door, then no one could.
The R2 units let out a series of happy sounding chirps, beeps, and whistles. "We're almost through. Eight combinations down, two to go." One of the slicers reported. Bly nodded before noticing Cody had entered the vault door room.
"Su'cay gar Cody. We're almost into the main vault." Bly reported.
"Wizard! Anything that'll slow us down?"
"Some smaller internal cells, but our slicers will crack them. The TIEs overhead aren't reporting any signs of a reaction force from the nearby NAU army base yet, but that might change in an hour. They destroyed several primitive attack chopters at Godman Army Airfield nearby before they could get off the ground. The Insertion is reporting that the bombardment of Bowling Green is going stellar and that the skies are clear of abo airspeeders."
"I guess this was a blue-milk run after all." Cody grinned from ear to ear inside his bucket. He was never trained to imagine how much aurodium they were about to discover.
"We're through." One of the slicers announced, as they backed away from the large vault door along with the R2 units. As soon as they did water started to trickle from the cracks of the vault door as it came open. As it widened the water flowed out of the opening like a river. Several of the slicers were swept off of their feet, while one of the R2 units was washed down the wide hallway leading up to the vault.
"Pressurized flooding system. Designed to crush any intruder." Bly stated matter-of-factly "Was wondering if they'd have one of those. We're lucky they didn't pump an electrical current into it." The water came up to their knees before subsiding in unseen drainage grates. The slicers helped their comrades up to their feet again.
Bly stepped forward first, followed closely by Cody. "Great Galactic Core." Bly sighed.
"Holy mother of meteors." Cody exclaimed. They had entered a massive, sparsely lit chamber, and stood upon a series of overhead gantries. Below them the room was still filled with water only centimeters from the gantry. Cody and Bly shined their helmet lights down into the water and were greeted by the sight of a bantha-sized stack of yellow bricks.
Cody was pretty sure his heart had stopped beating. He was looking at a pile of enough aurodium to buy his own squadron of Star Destroyers. Relief washed over him as he recalled Admiral Bacara's dream of a clone refuge for the veterans of the Clone War and how the theft of this so-called gold would achieve their goals.
They panned their lights back and forth and were greeted by a seeming endless array of stacks of the expensive aurodium. ARF troopers pushed into the room and spread out along the gantry system. Their lights piercing the slowly receding water, a few of their electronic amplified whistles echoed through the vault.
"Trooper get down there and grab me a couple of bars." Bly ordered the nearest commando. The trooper obeyed instantly; jumping over the gantry rail and splashing onto a nearby stack. The trooper was thigh deep in water and bent at the waist to pick up several bars, which he handed up to the two Marshalls.
Bly hefted his bar back and forth, before banging it with a load metallic clang on the gantry railing. Cody studied his own bar. On its side in alternate basic it read, "0.0 troy ounces. Gotcha." Cody's gut started to knot, as the meaning of the words clicked in his brain.
The clone in the water held up another bar. "Sir, the bars under the first layer are much lighter and softer." The clone broke a bar he was holding in half, revealing a pinkish interior to the false aurodium. Bly looked down at the bar he was holding and then held it towards Cody. The bar had 'gold' paint chipped off of its side where Bly had smacked it on the railing, underneath the paint was lead.
Cody shined his light towards the bottom of the stacks. Several mechanical devices with small blinking numeric indicators counted down at the base of each pile. He gasped when he looked at the mushy bar in the clone's hands again.
"It's a trap!"
Bly and the ARF troopers were already turning as Cody began to run. The ARF trooper in the water dropped the brick and was scrambling to get back over the railing. The Marshalls sprinted past the R2 units at the vault door who beeped in confusion. "Everyone out! The place is going to blow!" Cody yelled over the commando commo channel. He had never felt his legs move so fast in his life, nor had he ever felt as if he were moving so slow.
They reached the entrance; where they were greeted by the sight of commandos fleeing in every direction. His jet troopers and paratroopers were already evacuating the rooftop when a deep rumble emerged from behind them.
Bly and Cody both flung themselves on the ground as a huge explosion erupted from deep inside the depository. The fortress was a testament to the earthling's construction skills as its walls held together under the force of the massive explosion. A tongue of flame and debris shot out of the entrance spreading out like flechette launcher shot across the yard.
A little over a dozen commandos has still been inside when the trap was sprung and Cody doubted their remains would ever be found. He helped Bly to his feet as the blast subsided. The rest of the commandos in the yard looked at each other in awe that the abos had fooled them.
Bly growled, "Fierfek, their aruetycate internet told us where their aurodium was, but. . ." he never finished his sentence before a noise like a freight hovertrain pierced the night sky. A high-explosive slug the size of a landspeeder smashed down in the yard a few hundred yards away. The large caliber slug sliced right through a parked Lambda shuttle.
The resulting explosion picked up Cody and slammed him to the ground. Commandos nearer to the blast were killed as the explosion engulfed them in flames or crushed their internal organs with the shockwave of its blast.
Cody started to get up when his ears picked up the screaming roar of another incoming slug. He flattened himself out just as a second round smashed into the opposite side of the depository. This time, the building's already damaged structure saved them some of the impact of the explosion. He waited a few seconds before turning to Bly.
"Those have got to be mounted on some kind of aquatic ship!" he shouted, the ringing in his ears caused by the explosion dampened all sound.
"Probably railway slugthrowers. Huge ones too!" Bly shouted back. Cody nodded that his brother was certainly right. "Got to call the Insertion and have them taken out."
Bly sat up from where he had been sprawled out across the lawn and made the call. "Insertion we need immediate counter-battery support. Repeat immediate counter-battery support on earthling railway artillery to the west of our position. Repeat west, estimate four zero kilometers, Over."
A communication technician for the orbiting Star Destroyer responded. "Negative CC-5052. Insertion is currently engaged in suppression of Target Bowling Green. Captain Volt recommends dealing with enemy abos with forces under your own command, before extraditing aurodium to the Insertion."
"What? Tell Captain Volt it was a trap. There is no aurodium here. Repeat no aurodium here!" Bly yelled. Cody hit the ground in frustration as he knew the earthlings were currently reloading their heavy slugthrowers for another salvo. He frustratingly looked around the yard at commandos helping their wounded comrades to the dustoff LAAT/a, which was starting to become overcrowded with casualties.
Bly continued. "We need immediate bomber support!"
"Negative, all TIE/sa bombers are currently occupied." The hyperspace radio technician safe aboard the Insertion responded.
Cody was momentarily stunned that the Navy was refusing to come to their aide. With a flutter of an eyelid inside his HUD he activated the commando channel again. "This is Marshall Commander CC-2224 ordering the immediate evacuation of all forces at Fort Knox. Time to kriffing bug-out, troopers!"
To emphasize his words another nerf-sized slug roared out of the sky to impact the ground in front of the SPHA-T still standing in front of the vault entrance. The blast picked up the enormous walker and tipped it on its side. Hatches popped open all along its side as surviving gunners helped their wounded and dead comrades out of the machine. Across the yard, Ion engines stared to whine as the remaining commandos sprinted for their transports.
That makes three heavy slugthrowers, Cody told himself, assured that the abos couldn't have reloaded the first two in such short time. He didn't want to stick around and find out if they had another one.
Bly was still arguing with the radioman aboard the Insertion when Cody tugged at his shoulder. "Time to go vod. Its suicide to stay here!"
"No, not until we pay back the aruetiise for this." Bly argued waving his arm at the carnage around him. The medics were loading up the last of the dead and wounded aboard the departing shuttles. Only a few escape craft remained. Cody peered at Bly's Kappa nearby; the pilots waved urgently from the cockpit, but he had no fear they would leave without their Marshall.
"We've got to go now. I've already ordered our vode to evacuate. In a minute it'll just be you and me, and I don't want to be around when more of those giant slugs come around."
Bly was in a rage. Cody knew his own blood was boiling at their abandonment by the orbiting Star Destroyer and the deviousness of the earthling's trap. Bly ignored Cody's warning and continued to shout into his commo for orbital support.
Cody paced the last of the shuttles alongside the Kappa take off. By the light of the burning wreckage across the yard he made up his mind. He grabbed his brother by the shoulders, whipped his head backwards and then put all of his strength into a forward lounge. The two helmets came together in a Keldabe kiss as their buckets clanged in concert.
Bly went limp as the impact of the Kov'nyn knocked him out cold. Cody bent down and hefted his brother over his own shoulders. His muscles barely noticed the burden as his adrenaline-filled legs raced for the loading ramp of the waiting Kappa. Several ARF troopers helped him with Bly once he was onboard.
Cody yelled at the pilots to get underway as the ramp closed up behind him. The shuttle lurched off the ground, its inertial dampeners preventing everyone from smashing into the hull due to the rapid take-off. A second later the craft broke the sound barrier as it raced for orbit.
Cody moved over to one of the armor tables. He stood in silence for a moment, contemplating what had just happened. All the frustration of the failed mission suddenly poured forth and Cody took it out on the table, ripping its front end from its floor mounts. With a guttural scream of rage he flipped the table over with a horrendous crash. The ARF troopers looked at him but none of them dared to speak.
Cody paced past the medic monitoring the still unconscious Bly and collapsed on one of the crew benches. He ripped off his helmet and flung it as hard as he could across the crew cabin. His mind was full of images of the commandos and clones they had left behind, and how much the promised aurodium would have helped the ones who still survived.
Cody put his face in his hands and wept.
At the landing zone behind them three giant slugs tore into the Bullion Depository, creating explosive geysers of fire and earth.