Entry 10: Captain CT-1984-800 [178 Days ABG]
It has been an eventful day, and I am eager to record this battle, this experience!
At 0:321 hours galactic standard time, we embarked on our mission. All of the remaining gunships were supplied to us, and we had enough space for one whole company.
While Rays and the burrowrats fought the droid army on the ground, our five gunships ascended from the caves and soared into the sky. Even with the bay doors closed, the feeling of flight still lifted my spirits, and that of several of the troops with me. The triumphant feeling continued the further and further up we flew until we left the atmosphere.
Standard Republic Gunships are not equipped with life-support systems nor artificial gravity. We're supposed to be deployed from the upper atmosphere, not space. To any desperate militias reading this in the future, do not attempt this maneuver unless your standard armor is equipped with life-support systems.
It's hard to describe the feeling of weightlessness when it comes all of a sudden. Even though we were magnetized to the floor of the gunships, I felt [pause] like I was buoyant, without anything holding me back. During a mission to Travlyar with the Muunilinst 10, I saw a creature called a myaopod floating on the surface of a lake. The currents would cause it to drift, except it was anchoring itself to the rocks at the lakebed with one of its limbs. That's how I felt in that gunship as the Separatist Destroyer opened fire on us, shaking the crew compartment. We would have collided with each other if the mag-boots didn't keep us fixed to the ship.
Then the bay doors opened, and...I've had zero-gee training, we all have, but seeing the lightshow around us...nothing compared to the awe of seeing the stars mixed with the way the rapidly-firing turbolasers caused my heart to race with anticipation.
Our gunship was hit by a turbolaser blast, impacting the wing on my side of the cockpit in a fiery blast that shook the compartment! Still, none of us cared, and we all knew the gunships themselves weren't going to survive this mission. What was important was that they get us to one-fifty hundred meters from the destroyer, and they did.
Deactivating the mag-boots, we jumped from the flaming wrecks into the black – all of us, even the pilots – towards the looming warship and its turbolaser screens. Engaging our rocketpacks, we launched towards the warship, weaving through the hailstorm of laserfire surrounding the warship. Not all of us were lucky: we lost ten. Two clones on my right were hit, vaporized by the blast. Still, most of us made it through, and we landed on the hull.
We divided into squads and met stiff resistance both in space and once we cut into the hull. The fighting was intense, the enemy deployed wave after wave of droids against us. Several of my brothers didn't survive, but we pushed forward and made it through.
Lieutenant Tripo led the squad that seized main engineering. I commanded the team that was assigned to capture the bridge. I wish I could describe the look on the Duros commander's face as we stormed the bridge and gunned down his droid guards.
Once we had the important sectors, we sealed off our compartments, deactivated the ship's droid complement, and threatened to vent the rest of the ship if the rest of the organic crew didn't stand down. Needless to say, though the enemy crew outnumbered our meager company eight to one, we were the victors.
With the destroyer in our possession, we had eliminated the Separatists' primary tool for maintaining order on Doan. The rest was up to Rays, Kali'sto, and the Burrowrats. - End Log
