Episode 2: Rookie Courage

Chapter 3: Battle Of The Blue Moon

"This is Clone Captain Rags, reporting on the status of Azurite Outpost. We are in a state of emergency, the station is under siege. We don't have much time left. Send us aid before it's too late!"

-An SOS message sent to the Republic's naval base in the Bellatrix solar system, right before communications at Azurite were severed by the Mind Flayer's psychic powers. Whether it reached its intended destination is currently unknown.

Out in the blue mountains of Koentus, where the incursion from the Upside Down had occurred, Captain Rags and his warrior spacemen were positioning themselves behind big piles of jagged rocks, trying to stay hidden from the hideous aberrations patrolling the area, so they could launch an effective ambush and blow up the enemy's portals.

But staying hidden was easier said than done when you had a 9-foot tall half-giant on your team, who really wanted to run in guns blazing, even if it got everyone killed. Not to mention that the team had to act and make decisions quickly, because the longer the portals stayed open, the more powerful the monsters became.

"Thianna!," Rags said through his comlink. "You gotta find a better spot for cover! We don't have enough ammunition to deal with all the monsters at once if they find out we're in their territory! If even one of them spots us, the whole horde will be on our backs. Hive mind, remember?"

"I know, but I'm aching for combat time! When are we gonna start our counterattack? You said we had to hurry with this mission. We can't hide for long."

Behind a blue boulder not very far away, Noelle and Ahsoka were observing the rift site connected to the Upside Down with their electrobinoculars, and reported the situation to Rags.

"There's only a few enemies guarding the rift," Ahsoka said. "I see a Displacer Beast, a Rust Monster, a Remorhaze, and an Otyugh. Shouldn't be a problem if we catch them off guard with a volley of heavy blaster fire, even if they can breathe in the vacuum of space."

Author's note: Here's some descriptions of the beasts I mentioned:

Otyugh: A grotesque, bulbous, bulky creature with three sturdy legs, a mouth filled with razor sharp teeth, two tentacles equipped with spikes, and a vine-like stalk with eyes and a nose on it.

Displacer Beast: A six-legged feline predator with pitch black fur and two extendable squid-like tentacles covered in barbs and hooks. It can also turn invisible and blur its prey's eyesight.

Rust Monster: An insectoid creature similar to an enormous beetle, with a hard, lumpy brown exoskeleton, a long tail with a bony protrusion, and two feathery antennae. It can corrode just about any metal with its venom, though harder metals will take longer to turn to rust.

Remorhaze: An arctic abomination resembling a titanic blue and white centipede with winglike fins along its sides, serrated mandibles, long antennae, and heated spikes on its body. It can generate heat inside its body, and release it in devastating explosions.

"Are we clear to press the assault?," Ahsoka asked Rags. His response was:

"Here's how we're doing things: In sixty seconds, we jump out from between these boulders and spam as many blaster bolts as we can. Weight of fire will bring down these beasts before the hive mind brings more trouble our way."

"In the event that we're outmatched, I sent a message to Bellatrix Naval Academy, to bring us reinforcements, hopefully before we're overrun. Now, whatever you do, don't engage them in close combat- HEY, THIANNA, GET BACK HERE!!!"

The half-giant heroine had taken the blunt approach to things and disobeyed Captain Rags' orders, charging into melee range so she could skewer the monsters with her polearm, compromising the location of the strike team and reducing the chances of its survival, because the Mind Flayer's minions were more effective in close combat.

"LEEEEEROY JENKINS!!!"

"Should we go in with her?," one of the Spartan-IV cadets asked Rags. "No turning back now, she broke the fourth wall with her battle cry!," another one said.

"Screw it," Rags replied. "There's no point in hiding any longer."

And so everyone charged into the fray, blasters blazing.

The battle took a heavy toll on Rags' available forces. The Displacer Beast and Otyugh were grabbing troopers with their spiked tentacles and bashing them against the ground, in an attempt to crack open their armor plating and expose their flesh to the lethal vacuum of space outside.

The Remorhaze was shooting bolts of fire in all directions, and the Rust Monster was squirting jets of metal-corroding acid as well, which meant that the soldiers had to take cover.

Azurite Outpost's common grunts died in droves, and even the four team leaders weren't safe- Ahsoka's lightsaber was grabbed by a tentacle, and she narrowly avoided being chomped by the Otyugh in the process of retrieving it.

If the crew had carried out a quick surprise attack as planned, the abominations wouldn't have gotten a chance to fight back and give everybody trouble. But Thianna had ruined that opportunity by charging into the fray and drawing the beasts into close quarters.

Fortunately, she was competent and skilled enough to kill two of the beasts with her polearm (which was also a machine gun.) She twirled her long, heavy weapon in a sweeping circle, and cut through the Otyugh's tentacles, and then shoved the business end down its maw, filling it with two hundred rounds of copper and lead.

To deal with the Displacer Beast, she tripped it with her weapon's haft, before cutting off its tentacles, thrusting the spear's head through the creature's side, and filling its head with lead just like she did with the Otyugh.

"Two down, two to go!," Thianna shouted.

However, after she said that, she heard a voice from Noelle, who was busy dealing with the Rust Monster.

"Look out behind you!"

Thianna turned around too late, resulting in the Remorhaze grabbing her with its frontal pincers and aiming to bite her in half with its extremely strong, armor-piercing mandibles.

Thankfully, Rags was fast enough to stop the giant arcane centipede from eating his half-giant ally. He fired bolt after bolt from his modified Wookiee bowcaster, in a relentless barrage, making the Remorhaze's head and thorax explode, killing it.

"Seriously?," he said to Thianna. "This is the second time someone had to rescue you from certain death. Next time this happens, you're gonna have to start paying me and Noelle."

"Who cares," she retorted. "Let's just finish the job already!"

The Rust Monster was still alive, but it wasn't for long, because Ahsoka chucked a grenade between its feet, and the blast was directed at its soft underside.

"Take that!"

And with that, the last of the four fiendish beasts had been defeated.

Rags, Thianna, Ahsoka, Noelle, and the six remaining cadets who survived the brutal skirmish then moved on to the next part of their plan.

"Alright, listen up. There are ten portals connected to the Upside Down within a two kilometer radius, and we have more than enough explosives to level them all. Since we spent so much time fighting the monsters guarding the area, the hive mind knows we're here. We just gotta keep moving."

"As I said before, I sent an SOS message to a Republic Navy base in case our mission fails. Even then, I'm not entirely sure if the signal reached them, so we are most likely on our own. I could be wrong, but bloody conflict has made me somewhat pessimistic. Now let's finish the job, which is what Thianna said."

And just as he said that, the ground started to shake violently, and three gargantuan spider monsters made of squirming rotten flesh (like the massive creature at the end of Stranger Things 3) burst out of a nearby hollow hillside, and after a brief pursuit, they had cornered Rags and friends against a wall.

"Huh, shit," Thianna cursed. "It was nice to meet you all, but now our time is finally up."

Rags slammed his eyes shut as his inevitable demise came forth in the form of a toothy, armor-piercing tentacle, and the rest of his team did the same... but then, they realized they weren't dying yet, and the morbid, grotesque creatures that were supposed to terminate them were now... screaming in agony?!

A fusillade of incendiary cluster missiles had plunged down from the skies and ignited the fleshy hides of the demonic spider monsters. They collapsed to the ground and began to melt.

"An airstrike?!," Ahsoka said incredulously.

"But that would mean only one thing," gasped Noelle.

"My SOS message reached its destination!," Rags shouted in triumph. "But how? It was only sent recently, using my super-slow backpack vector. How could it be transmitted at such a speed with Azurite Outpost's communications broken?..."

"Oh my God-Emperor. Finn and Jake. We left our astromech droids behind because this mission was too dangerous for them, and they found a way to fix the comms and remove the Upside Down's interference while all the enemies focused their attention on us!"

Then, several UNSC Vulture dropships descended from orbit, proving Rags right, and they delivered mixed groups of Spartan-IIs, Spartan IIIs, and Spartan IVs to clean up the mess that the Upside Down made.

The portals were eradicated with plasma charges, and whatever monsters remained were gunned down by the dropships' quad autocannons and Gatling blaster cannons, as well as the Spartans' own portable cutting lasers.

After that, Rags and the survivors of the Battle of Koentus returned to Azurite Outpost and had a talk with their rescuers, Spartan Master Sergeants Ruby Rose, Yang Xiao Long, Kelly-087, and Edward Buck (who had helped decimate the Confederacy's droid armies on Geonosis not too long ago.)

Previously, Buck had been a Colonial Marine, but he had passed the tests for genetic enhancements, and became a full-on Spartan IV.

Thianna: Wow, you're fast! You and your troops arrived here at precisely the right time.

Kelly-087: Well then, I should tell you this: When it comes to sprinting, I'm the fastest Spartan out of the whole bunch at Bellatrix Academy. How's Captain Rags doing?

Ahsoka: Ask him that question. He's just realized that most of the cadets that followed us into battle died horribly.

Kelly-087: You know what... maybe Ruby and Yang should talk to him instead. I don't want to offend him by saying the wrong thing.

Rags: So, Ruby. What am I supposed to do now, after all this? Almost all my cadets died in the skirmish, and the ones that did survive are in the hospital.

Ruby Rose: My advice? I guess you have no other choice than to talk to their families, offer them condolences, and tell them their sons and daughters died as heroes... tell them the truth.

Yang Xiao Long: Hey, sis! After you finish talking to the clone captain, you might want to come with me, plus Kelly and Buck. There's some important news on intergalactic television that needs to be heard.

Ruby Rose: Gotta go, Captain. Please take care of those families who all lost someone.

Rags: See you later. Thanks for the advice.

Edward Buck: So, you're Ahsoka Tano, huh? I heard your Master, Skywalker, has a big reputation in the Jedi Order, and that he's the best star pilot in the Republic.

Ahsoka: His reputation speaks for itself. Though he is a bit reckless, of course. I should tell him about my time at Azurite, apart from the battle with the Upside Down. I met a lot of new people, and I became familiar with what Spartans, Astartes, Giants, Mandalorians, and other super-soldiers are capable of, even as fresh cadets.

Thianna: Yeah, I was told that Anakin Skywalker won a Podrace at the age of nine years old.

Then, out of nowhere, Yang, the Spartan-II heavy weapons specialist in yellow armor, interrupted the conversation.

"Hey guys, come into the transmission room! You're not gonna believe this stuff on the news. People are calling it the biggest scientific and historic discovery since the founding of the Galactic Republic."

Following her, all the heroes of Azurite Outpost huddled around the advanced holographic television, and waited, expecting bad news, because they were still shaken up by the recent catastrophe involving the Upside Down.

Finn and Jake plugged themselves into a wall and turned the TV on.

"This is Milky Way Network, reporting on Anakin Skywalker and the Jedi Order's breakthrough on the ice planet of Hoth. And Mace Windu, you say this machinery predates the dinosaurs on prehistoric Coruscant?"

"It predates almost every society in the known universe, or at least that's how old the species that built this was. We've seen similar ruins on different planets, but never this intact and with this much activity. The Republic's government has unofficially named the extinct species responsible for these ancient buildings as the Time Lords."

"And Master Windu, you say Skywalker and his associates are trying to access the technology of these so-called Time Lords, and incorporate the data into the Republic's war effort?

"That is emphatically his mission."

The Azurite crew's reaction was mixed, to say the least.

Ahsoka: My Master found an ancient scientific relic? He better get a promotion.

Ruby Rose: I think it's a boon for us.

Yang Xiao Long: What kind of weapons do you think the Time Lords had?

Thianna: Who cares, I think it's a hoax!

Rags: Let's not get our hopes up until we find out more.

Noelle: As a maid would say, we would have to clean up any big mess this prehistoric technology could cause, metaphorically speaking.

Meanwhile... deep in the Upside Down, in the center of the Hive Mind

A vampiric Chaos Space Marine champion, Strahd Von Zarovich, walked up some stairs, and then proceeded to kneel before his master. Then he told his master, the culprit behind the attack on Azurite, about what had happened in that situation.

"Master Vecna. I bring you news of our landing on Koentus."

"Did we seize the base and cut off all communications?"

"We had severed the communications, but the base's defenders were able to make them functional again, and call reinforcements, leading to the destruction of our gates. With that, the mission failed. I am deeply sorry, my Master."

"Sorry, sorry, sorry. Is that the only word you know?! Give me results for once! But looking on the positive side... all my other plans are right on schedule."

"We now know that the Time Lords have left one of their hoards of primordial technology on Hoth, where a huge Republic Army stronghold is located. And we have the perfect pawns in place to not only decimate the Jedi scum and their wretched allies, but also to hand us the spoils of war."

"Count Strahd, your associates have been infiltrating galactic governments for several centuries now, am I right? Well, now is the time to have them use all their resources to locate the other Time Lord remnants."

"The time to destroy the Republic has come! And with the false tenets of liberty, equality and justice out of the way... he who waits behind the wall, shall come."

L̴͉̔̅ͅo̶̠͆̏r̸̨͎͐d̶͙͍̈́͝ ̷̠͑Z̷͚͎̉͝a̶̛̝ͅl̴͇̓ḡ̸̞͘o̵͔͆…̵̸̨̱̰̰̐̌I̴̦̖̚ ̶͈͉̋w̴͓͎̅͋ḯ̴̘̺́l̵͚̲̕l̵̰͐ ̷̤̑n̶̹͌̒o̴͍̞̔t̴͙́ ̴͙́t̶̉́ͅḛ̶̭͗̂s̵̜͙̑ṱ̶̌͌ ̸̯͝y̶̺̓̚ọ̶͖͛̐u̶̠̒̑r̶̩̟͐ ̵̜͈̋p̵̃̚͜a̴̩̽ț̵̜̽̊î̵̭̙ė̴̠̤n̸̲͋̚c̷̜̺̈́e̵̱͘ ̶̱͕̐a̷͎͍͗͐n̴͓̕͜y̷̼̍ ̷͚̺̑͘l̵̛̖o̵̒ͅñ̴̗g̸̩̓e̴̫̻͆͝r̶͉̪͐.̵̬͌̔ ̵̭̎.

Note from the Author:

This is a setup for things to come, and who the main overarching antagonist might possibly be. I promised Vecna would be in this episode, but I chose to put him at the very end. He had bigger plans, anyway.

Next episode will be set on Hoth, and like this episode, it'll have new characters and stuff. Anakin Skywalker will be there, too.

Also, I've been busy brainstorming my own original anthology story project, which I call the Final Furry Frontier, (the FFF,) inspired by Star Fox, Zootopia, Mickey Mouse and friends, and Looney Toons.

It's a galaxy full of anthropomorphic animals, featuring a crazy, motley and intrepid crew of mammals who are part of a Grand Resistance fighting the Archosaurs, who are basically reptilian Nazis in SPACE!!!

It's essentially a Star Wars knockoff, but everyone is some kind of woodland critter.

I really hope you enjoy Starhammer 50k! More stuff will come!