The air around the battlefield cracked so loud that anyone without hearing protection on was deafened for the better part of an hour afterwords with serious side-effects to come later. A quartet of mist trails from solid durasteel slugs traveling at a fraction of the speed of light streaked over the horizon and slammed into the left side of the Coalition mole-ship, nearly causing her to crash into a nearby mountain range before she had regained her bearing.
At least until the Grey Ghost appeared less than a kilometer away from the freshly hit side of the capital ship and launched every missile in her starboard bays into the enemy shielding. Despite being retrofitted with Eclipse technology, there was one piece that Mendez had kept aboard and that even Eclipse scientists couldn't replicate given it was the only one left in existence and Mendez wasn't sacrificing it for the one in a million chance that they'd crack its secrets; the Zeta-class Jump Drive. The Zeta-class was one of the many gifts that the Omega Initiative had given to the Pirinions during the Abyssal War, and meant to effectively get rid of the use of hyperlanes that were used to this day.
It allowed semi-instant transportation without the fear of hitting anything between point A and B like a star or planet. In this case however, it was perfect for getting the drop on an enemy capital ship and blasting her into submission.
"Railguns are recharging; enemy shields are buckling, sir. Wait for another volley?" Tom announced.
"No, focus every other weapon we have on their shields, once they're down, hit her weapons with every missile we have left." Mendez ordered in reply, suppressing a smirk as he saw the enemy shields fail, creating a sight similar to glass cracking and shattering, unlike Eclipse ships where it was either hexagonal patterns failing or water receding from a beachhead.
Blooms of fire sprang up from points all along her hull shortly after, marking former weapons emplacements with plumes of jet-black smoke mixed with the occasional tinge of orange. Tom noted with a hint of amusement that it looked as though the ship were powered by combustion engines of all things with so much smoke billowing from her dorsal structure.
"Boarding parties await your command, sir."
"Give them the green light, time to ring the doorbell."
Half the marines on top of Command Post A-00 began cheering when the smoke cleared and the Coalition ship that had been hovering menacingly over the battlefield was belching out flame with the Grey Ghost still hammering her at close range. The other half were still busy turning the drop pods of the shock troopers who had landed into makeshift barricades and shelter before the Coalition army arrived at the bottom of the hill.
All around them, the rest of Spirit Brigade was busy digging in between the hills where Lieutenant Jones and Captain Uyon had set up shop, depending on the two platoons of marines and EPAS troops to hold the tops and ridges lest any of the Coalition get through. The thick forest on either side of them created a natural barrier that would funnel them towards the top much like it had to Jones' men without a Knight to help clear a path.
They stopped cheering when a ball of white plasma painted the shields of an EPAS trooper, making her curse in surprise before returning fire. A moment later, more and more plasma and laser rounds painted the top of the hill as a wave of Coalition troops began surging towards the top, only to be met by what many thought to be friendly fire when Coalition heavy machineguns opened up and began felling many a trooper.
The hesitation caused was something Jones had hoped for, but not counted on as a few even tried to give a cease fire hand signal. His snipers took them out with near-maniacal grins as the men he had on the captured Coalition guns continued to strafe down the hill in an attempt to stall the enemy advance. Between them, popping up only to fire down for a few seconds, EPAS troopers, marines, and Draco Squad all fired down in turn, not presenting too many targets at once as enemy sniper fire began impacting their barricades.
"Heads down, ladies and gents, let's play this smart. Draco Squad, you lot have anything in the way of barrier powers available?"
"We can protect a fireteam at a time for a few seconds at a time if we're going to last the entire engagement... just give us some warning." the female zabrak replied with a grunt as dirt and clay showered her from a fresh grenade blast outside the trench. Jones simply nodded in reply, bringing up his squad overview and double-checking everyone's status before popping up himself to lay down some fire before the return fire forced him down with the signature 'crack' of his shields failing and recharging.
As soon as he dropped down, the shock troopers that had taken the fast route to the surface to reinforce his platoon stood up and laid down more fire. Luck seemed to favor them for the longest time as bolt after bolt of plasma zipped past them but refused to actually impact them. That luck was quick to run out though and did so with a shock as one of the drop troopers fell to the ground with half his helmet melted away and a sizable chunk of his head along with it.
"Sniper fire!"
A Centurion and four marines ran forward towards the mech they had just toppled with three rockets and a grenade. With the launchers secured snuggly on their backs, the marines got to work systematically disabling the limbs of the large machine with saber bayonets. Ever since the Reclamation War, the Eclipse had known that their front line troops would need a viable means to defend themselves in close quarters whenever the enemy rushed their position. When the Crandolian War hit, this became an even more pressing issue to the point of standardization of the Republic Armory Type-21 Plasma Bayonet. Using a vevium blade with a plasma edge that could be turned on and off at the users discretion, they had the same cutting power of a lightsaber without the cost of danger to an untrained user.
The marines used them to great effect, severing servos and other key components that helped the mech move while Chris pried the cockpit open so he could hold the pilot at gunpoint.
"Helmet off, now." Chris ordered as he charged his cannon in tandem, hoping to scare the man in front of him enough into complying. Regrettably, his tactic didn't work and the pilot tried to draw a pistol on him before the hand drawing the pistol and most of his chest were nothing but burning holes in the seat back. The Centurion scrambled to grab the helmet, disconnecting it from the wires that kept it synced up to the mech's systems as fast as he could before the pilots suit recognized the termination of its host and fried all electronics in the helmet.
He managed to get it off with less than a second to spare with a heavy sigh before he tossed it to the least-armed marine he had borrowed from Lieutenant Alphen. This marine was a tech specialist, meant more for working on computer systems back at the forward operations center or at a secured LZ than combat, but every marine was a rifleman after all.
"Give me a few minutes, I should be able to crack their communications encryption." he said.
"You sure?" Chris asked. "Harv can help if you need."
"This is the first time we've gotten a mech pilots helmet and communications gear intact, with any luck, the Coalition will think that it's still impossible to do and the security won't be too much... I'll ask if I need him though."
"Noted... now everyone hunker down, I think I hear another one."
"Scanners are showing a heat sig close to it. It's barely coming up though."
"Yeah..." Chris muttered, his own scanners picking it up much clearer than the standard Republic HUD, "It's there. And I think it knows what just happened."
"What makes you think so?" one of the marines asked. His answer came as a mech broke cloak and began spraying their position with laser fire, missiles, and grenades.
"That!"
"Are the preparations finished?" the Phyron asked, looking over his new bridge crew. With a humble bow, the executive officer of the capital ship he had chosen as his flagship gave the affirmative to which Phyron gave an approving grunt.
"My new toys are ready for use as well." the Arch-Mage added in from her seat on the command chair. She had elected to sit in it with her legs draped over one armrest while she rested her back up against the other creating a deceptively innocent scene for the much larger armored being in front of her. Phyron simply smirked before turning back to look out the main viewport. In front of him, two hundred ships of every class and size in the Coalition fleet were in formation. Behind the field of vision of his flagship, another three hundred and two super capital ships.
"All hands, prepare to jump... time to put down the Eclipse fleet like the dog it is."
A Coalition marine dropped to the deck with a hole through his helmet right next to the rest of his platoon in front of an Eclipse boarding squad. Behind the 10 men and women in the signature black and crimson armor of the Republic Marines was a trail of carnage that used to be a hangar and even more marines and a few LAAT/ms that were still carving up the inner containment walls.
"Boarding Team Aurek to Admiral Mendez."
"Go ahead, Aurek."
"Hangar Bay is secure and ready for umbilical."
"Roger that, Team Besh already disabled her manuevering capabilities so standby for your backup." Mendez replied. Once the feed cut, the entire mole-ship rocked and steadied once more as tethering hooks dug into her hull and the tractor beam emitters activated. Once both ships were stabilized and their hangars were lined up, the Ghost launched her boarding umbilical straight into the hangar door that the Republic troops had closed.
Due to the incompatible docking systems between the two ships, Mendez only had one option with how to set up a stable connection between the two ships and that was the combat boarding system that burned through hull and armor like a lightsaber through paper. Once the outline had been cut, an acidic agent was let loose on the metal, melting it quickly and safely so that the boarding parties wouldn't have to deal with a multi-story tall octagon of armor plated door crashing down into the hangar on top of them.
Boarding Team Aurek grinned as the 'curtain' of metal continued to shrink, revealing another company of heavily armed and armored marines trained specifically for boarding and counter-boarding operations came into view.
"Welcome aboard, Captain. Nice to see Krayt Company back in action."
Colonel Torpa swore loudly as more and more Coalition fire lanced past his position. Much more than a brigade should have been able to send at his position even with proper mech and armor support. Carefully, he peered over the barricade and let his sensors gather as much data as possible before trying to duck back down as a rocket impacted near his head and sent him sprawling to the dirt.
With a few select curses, he double-checked himself to make sure his one remaining lekku was still attached to his head. He had lost his first head-tail to the Coalition back at the Third Defense of Forn, he wasn't going to lose another one.
"Someone get me a birds-eye view of the enemy position, I think we may have a problem with out intel."
"Aye aye, sir. Something giving you that bad feeling?"
"Yes... this is a lot of firepower for a brigade... I think we may have under-sized this unit."
Jones tackled a Coalition trooper to the ground, punching his throat with enough force to crush it as he broke the mans wrist to disarm him. Once he was incapacitated, he grabbed him by the back of his armor and pulled him up above the trench line, watching with a morbid grin as Coalition troops mistook the man for an Eclipse soldier and pumped enough plasma into the man to light his armor on fire.
"Perfect." Jones thought, priming the grenades on the mans belt before tossing the body at his brothers-in-arms. He ducked and let his imagination fill in the blanks as screams quickly became louder than the explosions that followed his brutal move. Brutal, but necessary given the situation. His shields were down and recharging once again, how many times this was he had already lost count. Everyone on top of the hill with him was either fighting while wounded, dead, or somewhere in between, only two of the Coalition machineguns were still working, and their supply of explosives was down to three grenades and a rocket.
The only bright side to this was Draco Squad. Each one was wounded but still fighting fiercer than any of his EPAS troopers. Even without lightsabers, they continued to deflect blaster fire with their hands using a Force deflection technique that Jones didn't even know existed until the female zabrak, Junior Knight Venti, had jumped in front of him the first time the Coalition broke their lines and sent his rounds right back at him.
The Lieutenant smirked slightly at the memory before another body landed in front of him. He reacted instantly, noting the Coalition insignia on his armor and bringing his boot down on the mans helmet and crushing it.
"This... is getting out of hand..." Jones panted, charging up his sidearm again.
"We need backup sir! The boys on the bottom can hold their own but we're going to get overrun!" his intel NCO shouted.
"And why is that?!" Jones spat, lobbing another grenade into the wave of Coalition troops still climbing up the hill.
"We're outgunned more than we thought! That's not a brigade, LT!
"What!?"
"Intel got it wrong... that's a regiment!"
She was one with the Force, moving with unparalleled speed through the battlefield as her saber. Twin blades of crimson connected to a single hilt sliced through the side of a Coalition tank before she wrenched it open with her hands in order to drop a det-charge inside. Before it even adhered to the inside of the armored unit, she had sprinted away at breakneck speeds straight into a mech, shattering its legs into its base components before she let loose a torrent of Force Lightning straight into the cockpit.
As the machine fell, she leaped up and severed the main gun from the right arm, picking up the weapon meant for a 17-foot tall walker and using it like a rifle, blasting away at any Coalition troops in sight with the help of her HUD and enhanced strength. Once the power cell ran out she threw it at another tank, bending the main cannon as it was firing, causing a backfire to blow every hatch off of the turret.
The woman in the middle of this carnage smiled at her handiwork both because she had done a good job, but because she knew the marines behind her along the skirmish line were all probably dumbfounded that such a pretty face could do so much damage.
"Carlia, this is General Erianus, are you there?" her comm unit chimed in.
"Here and perfectly fine, sir, how can I help?"
"Spirit Brigade needs backup, specifically a platoon holding a hilltop. Chris-Z9571 is too far away to help, but you're a short sprint away. Get up there and report in with Lieutenant Jones."
"Of course sir, I'm on my way." she replied with a deceptively sweet tone. Once her shields recharged properly, she holstered her saberstaff and kicked off the ground into a sprint so powerful that she left a small foot-sized crater where her feet used to be.
A black blur of heavy armor, weapons, and shielding sped through the broken forest with speed that not even a Knight or a Centurion could muster. Luckily for Carlia-B2971, she was both.
The First Force-sensitive Centurion in the Eclipse Republic was finally in play.
