The Story of Talon Chapter 37 Echo assaulted
Bloody Ridge
Spartacus took cover with Captain Gecko in a trench as the plasma shells pummeled the ground around them. Gecko looked at the armored giant.
"Sounds like we pissed them off," he noted.
"Don't we always?" Spartacus countered.
Gecko snickered. "To true." He looked at him for a moment. "How we supposed to hold off half a Division?"
Spartacus was quiet for a moment.
"With everything we got," he said firmly.
With only four-hundred and twenty-two men left, Gecko was right to be worried. At least four or five-thousand droids approached their position. Aero forces fought a bloody battle in the sky and both friendly and hostile artillery rained overhead. A scream from a clone echoed loudly. Someone had obviously been hit. Spartacus looked up, he viewed the landscape ahead. He listened carefully. Listening for the clanking sound of droids on the march.
The mercenary that just arrived, Seph, laid down in the trench. The Chiss woman put her helmet on and peeked over the edge. Foremost on her mind was her short conversation with general lady-eh, General T'racen. She hadn't been taken by her glad and friendly attitude. She didn't like how she brought up the thing with Kenobi and Skywalker, after all, she had betrayed the Separatists and risked her life to get them some strategic data. She almost got cut apart by Grievous in the process. Of course she had sold the data back to Viceroy Gunray later, after having copied it before giving it to Kenobi and Skywalker. In her mind there were no problem with that. They won, and she won twice and the seps thought they had all the data.
She fiddled with her assault R12 blaster rifle. She cleared it to fire and breathed in and out calmly.
Spartacus leaned slightly over the edge and looked forward. The artillery bombardment had stopped. They didn't want to bomb their own forces. The first lines of battle droids came into view as they marched up towards them. He squeezed the trigger of his blaster and fired three bolts. Three battle droids went down in a millisecond. He dodged when the droids opened up a hail of fire. They fired randomly forward in mass. He fired two bolts, taking down two droids in the first line.
"Lob a grenade over!" He heard Edge shouting. "Gear, open up on them!"
"Medic!" Someone shouted.
Spartacus fired three shots. Two droids went down in the first line and one in the second. He ducked when a super droid marched up front and targeted him. Gecko hit the super droids chest. It staggered but remained standing. With three well-placed bolts, Spartacus took it down.
A man was hit in the head beside him in the trench.
Spartacus spotted a Vulture droid coming in way to low. It looked like a kamikaze run. He quickly reached for his comm.
"Rocket! Incoming Vulture, ten o'clock!"
"Copy, I got the bastard," Hotshot responded.
"It's going for a suicide run," Spartacus continued. "Blast it down!"
A fired a bolt that decapitated a battle droid. Spartacus saw a rocket at high velocity coming towards the Vulture droid. It veered off and smacked into the droid ranks far back. Spartacus's eyes widened.
"Rocket get your-" he started.
He was interrupted by the fighter crashing. It crashed into one of the few remaining functioning bunkers the explosion threw men away like ragdolls. Changes of Rocket or anyone else surviving inside was slim to none.
Slowly he shook his head and peaked his head up. he fired six blasts, taking down five droids. One droid was hit twice.
"They're at the mines!" Gecko told him.
Indeed they were. The first droid ranks reached the minefield. Every mine took out between a handful and more droids. It didn't stop them. the battle droids continued marching right through the minefield, as if it wasn't even there. The first ranks of droids was sacrificial. They were a bump on the way to victory. Given the small number of super battle droids, Spartacus predicted that they were waiting in a second or third wave. This was the first batch. To soften their defenses and clean out some clone numbers.
"They're ignoring the mines!" Gecko exclaimed.
"They're clearing them out with their own numbers," Spartacus said dimly. "I really dislike droids. Really."
"No kidding big guy." Gecko leaned up and squeezed the trigger.
One blast missed but the other two took down a droid each.
Spartacus noted a sniper round ripping a droids head off. In quick succession another bolt decapitated a battle droid. A third bolt at high velocity destroyed a third droid. Ghost was certainly giving them a run for their credits.
The trooper he remembered as Jumbo laid dead a few feet away after being hit in the chest twice in rapid succession.
The armored giant fired ten bolts, taking out nine droids. One with two bolts. Even as Gear's rotary blaster cannon plowed down a dozen droids every second, it barely seemed to dent their numbers.
"Come on you clanking bastards!" He heard Gear screaming. "Come and get some!"
Spartacus shot off two bolts at a super battle droid. It staggered and went down.
Outer Rim, Abe system, Neptune Research station
Doctor Loo Harran keyed in a few commands into his console. For a moment he looked up and across the chamber one of the glass cylinder containers. He then looked to the Rodian man next to him.
"Raise the pressure in tube 3," Harran told him.
"Very well," the Rodian responded. He sounded a little shaken. "Raising pressure." He looked over at the glass tubes lined up in a row with a concerned and disgusted look in his eyes.
Harran looked at him.
"You know, I could have someone else do this if you have a problem with it," he said cooly with annoyance.
The Rodian looked over at his human college.
"Ms. Olalla could do that just as well," Harran continued. He half turned and looked for the Twi'lek female.
"No, no," the Rodian assured him. "I-I can do this. I've been doing it for some time."
Harran turned back to his console.
"Good," he finished bluntly.
The Rodian was silent for a moment, hesitant to speak.
"This…I can't wrap my mind around who authorized this," he said with a sigh.
"Someone who knows that we need to do whatever it takes to protect the Republic and our way of life."
"Right. But this?" He gestured at the tubes and their content. "If this project isn't a crime against sentient life, I don't know what is. It creeps me out."
Harran sighed.
"I'm just saying, how many people are gonna be sacrificed?"
"As many as it takes. Look. The Republics future is at stake," Harran argued. "Besides, you have to remember these people were criminals. No one will miss them. their deaths are for the betterment of the galaxy." He started writing on a pad and handed it to the Rodian.
"Get this to Doctor Paulson. Alright?"
The Rodian nodded. He took the pad and started walking out of the chamber. Harran looked around him. There was only a young Twi'lek assistant in the chamber with him. Young and pretty Olalla.
He walked over to the line of glass tubes and looked at one of them specifically.
"Don't you worry number 5. You'll eat soon. Very soon." His eyes studied the blood soaked pile of meat in the tube.
Body parts from at least two arms was mixed in, plus at least three eyes. The pile was almost two meters in height. A few pieces of skin skin and purple skin from another source was mixed in with it. It was the largest of the ten specimens.
Harran put his hand on the glass.
It didn't take more than five minutes or so for the Rodian to return to the laboratory chamber. When he walked into the chamber, the lights were off. He rubbed his temple and headed over to the panel to turn the lights on. He was curious to why they were off though. He smirked when he imagined Harran and Olalla snuggling in the dark.
"Loo?" He called as he keyed the panel.
The lights didn't work for unknown reasons. He would have to contact the technicians for it to be fixed. They couldn't very well work in the dark. And, he didn't mind taking a break from this horrifying project.
He spotted what could only be the beautiful legs of Olalla lying down behind a console. With a frown he walked over.
"Olalla, what are you guys doing?"
When he was three meters away, he noticed her legs twitching and blood on the floor. He jogged up and his eyes widened at the sight. He stumbled back, right into desk in shock and fear. He turned to the tubes. They were all empty.
He heard a grumbling and slowly turned around.
The Rodian's scream echoed.
This chapter was shorter than planned, but I decided to get it out faster instead and finish up the next.
Also, sorry it took so bloody long to get it done.