The streets of Axxila were alive with war. The whine of blasterfire, the intense crack of slugthrowers and the dull thump of artillery mixed in with barked orders, cries for help and screams of pain as a rainbow of armored figures loped through the streets to try and gain some little ground in the urban melee. Inside the buildings fighting had long since devolved into more brutal hand to hand as the clones struggled from hall to hall and room to room, dispatching battle droids with ease before moving on to their far tougher foes among the Kooriva Fusiliers and the Gossam Commandos.
Out on the street there was more distance between attackers, though no less hard-fought for all that as blue and red blasterfire criss-crossed the streets. Some of the troopers dug in on street corners and strongpointing storefronts had long sGallee learned that the key to urban warfare was to minimize movement in the open as much as possible.
However someone had forgotten to tell that to their leaders.
Blue and yellow moved as one, bounding through the streets, loping from strongpoint to strongpoint to check in on their troops. If Commander Bly had any doubts about dashing through the hailstorm of weapons fire, he took care to hide them...and the protection of his General's lightsaber was more than enough to allay any lingering fears.
The duo went diving through the window of a TaggeCo storefront, somersaulting to a halt within a platoon command post. The platoon leader-ever-reliable Lieutenant Galle-was already scuttling over to his Commander, taking care to keep low.
"Sir! Ma'am! We're decisively engaged here, it's a slugging match out there, and bad!"
Bly almost found himself cupping his helmet's voice projector with his hand to shout over the blasterfire. Too much time without his helmet. "Have they tried advancing?"
"No Sir," said Galle, looking over as his platoon's E-Web blaster chattered to life. "Couple of battle droid pushes but nothing en masse-"
The Lieutenant was rudely interrupted by a whoosh, followed by an explosion and cries for a medic. The E-Web crew had done its job too well and attracted the wrong kind of attention from the Fusiliers' mortars. Galle permitted himself a curse before continuing.
"-they're trying to wear us down, I think, before they send in the clankers. Only explanation I can think of."
Bly turned to ask General Secura her thoughts, but she wasn't with him and Galle anymore. She was already by the wounded E-Web crew, helping heal the injured gunner while his comrades covered her. Behind his helmet, Bly smiled. That was the General for you.
"Alright, Lieutenant, keep holding this position. Don't let them draw you out, last thing we need is for the 327th to be overrun by B1s. Bacara and Neyo would never let me hear the end of it." Bly clapped Galle on the shoulder. "Anything you need at your pos?"
Galle shook his head. "No Sir. Ammo and medical stocks are holding. About the only thing we're running low on is thermal dets and rockets for our Plex launchers."
"Roger." Bly blinked twice at his HUD, making sure his helmet had recorded that request, just as he'd done at the other positions he and General Secura had inspected. "We're going to try and have some gunships fly out ammo drops later in the day. Conserve supplies best you can till then."
"Copy that, Sir," said Galle, and then the Lieutenant was low-crawling back over to the firing line.
Bly was right behind him, coming up behind where General Secura was busy with the wounded. "How's he looking, Ma'am?"
"He'll be OK, bacta patches will take care of the rest of the damage." Aayla reluctantly lifted her hands from the trooper's chest, looking to Bly. "I heard you and Galle. We're going to need to move up our gunship flights at the rate we're expending ordnance."
"No arguments here, we-"
"INCOMING!"
Bly and Aayla threw themselves prone, but this time the Fusiliers' mortars were less accurate, and the salvo slammed into the street outside the storefront. Bly shook his head ruefully. "Ma'am, we need to do something about that arty. If we can't get counter-battery fire going we should at least send some teams in to neutralize the gunners."
"Gunship strikes," corrected Aayla, once more up and deflecting blasterfire with her lightsaber. "Less risk to our people."
Bly got up to a crouch, triggering fire from his rifle at a nearby CIS repeating blaster nest. It was a squad of battle droids manning the position, and one by one they fell under clone trooper fire. Cover wasn't something they had been programmed with.
"Commander!" It was Lieutenant Galle again, crouching behind cover as he hurried slapped a new tibanna gas cartridge home into his DC. "Sir, we could use some CAS, what's the word on those gunships?"
"Stand by, Lieutenant." Bly looked to Aayla, who nodded, and the Commander keyed his comm. "Jag, are you receiving?"
A few second later and the quiet voice of the clone officer commanding their air support responded. Commander Jai'galaar was a soft-spoken veteran who'd had the privilege of leading the Grand Army's gunships in their first foray into combat, landing in the arena on Geonosis to rescue the Jedi strike team. "Standing by."
"Good man. Sep arty's pounding our front lines, bring your larties in and give 'em something to think about would you? Targets of opportunity, coordinate with individual ground assets as necessary, acknowledge."
"Confirmed, focus on Sep arty, targets of opportunity." Grim pleasure was evident in the gunship ace's tones. "Request ground assets get their armor IR strobes up so we can verify friendlies, I say again, gonna need IR strobes, how copy?"
"Solid copy, already have 'em online."
"Acknowledged. ETA five mikes."
Bly grinned behind his helmet. "Roger. Break. All units, our friends on high are coming in to lend some CAS, keep your strobes up and your heads down!"
There were cheers in the strongpoint at that. Everyone loved gunships.
At first, Colonel Adrian Reiter was too busy observing the battlefield to notice the sound.
TR-11 had admonished him for unnecessarily exposing himself, but if Republic Generals and senior officers could lead from the quite literal front, it would hardly be proper for their CIS equivalents to stay hunkered down in a command post. Now, crouched behind sandbagged fortifications on the balcony of what had been a luxury apartment, Reiter swept the battlefield with his macrobinoculars, white eyes taking in everything.
He wasn't alone. RSM Hem Zhe was with him, with an oversized datapad that served as a tactical plot and several comms to keep in touch with the unit commanders and TR-11 back at headquarters. A squad of Gossam Commandos, the RSM's best (or so she said), were hunkered down with them in case the clones made a push. No one was firing but other balconies had been strongpointed in the apartment complex, and the Republic was less discriminating with their heavy weapons than Reiter would have liked. They'd run across more than a few civilians as they'd moved to set up their command post.
"Relay from the Fusiliers," said RSM Zhe. "Clones are starting to push forward, they're prioritizing our mortar sites."
"Understood. Have them displace at their discretion. And have TR-11 prep the first company of Super Battle Droids to advance." Reiter lowered his macrobinoculars, briefly tilting his head. There was a sound, a low humming in the distance...
"Already on it," came the tactical droid's metallic rasp over the comms. "Forward-most clone strongpoints have been identified as priority targets."
"Very good." Reiter frowned, sweeping the battlefield again with his binos. "Sergeant Major, do you hear that? Like a hum in the back of your head."
The RSM cocked her head, then cursed. "Sir, ten o'clock."
Reiter swivelled, peering through his binos-and then lowered them. A swarm of fat-hulled craft were in flight towards the CIS positions, and one didn't need to be a senior officer to identify them. "Gunships. Dammit-all positions take cover! I want anti-air droids targeting those ships immediately-"
The gunship formation was splitting up now...and the lead craft was still vectoring in towards the apartment complex. Adrian reached up to cinch his scarf tighter. Any second now-
-brief plumes of white smoke bloomed from the gunship's mass drivers.
"Missiles!" roared Reiter. "Cover, now!"
The Gossams threw themselves flat, as did Reiter. But the command post hadn't been the target: the missiles sailed by overhead to slam home into the building next to them. They could hear the shouts of pain and electronic dismay, too far to do anything. Reiter clenched a fist. "TR, where the hell's our triple-A?"
"Anti-air artillery online," came the emotionless reply. "Engaging targets of opportunity."
The clatter of metallic feet sounded on the next balcony over, and two B1 battle droids emerged, carrying missile launchers. A moment's consideration, and then the droids let fly with a pair of missiles. The gunship pilot reacted with the nigh-supernatural reflexes endemic to the clones, pirouetting the craft about and launching flares to try and divert the projectiles.
They were only half-successful. One missile went spiralling off in pursuit of the chaff, the other struck home and severed the craft's starboard wing. Once more the gunship spun bout, far less controlled this time, and went crashing headlong into the apartment building its missiles had targetted, leaving shrieks of pain and the groans of overstressed metal in its wake...but the building didn't collapse. Not yet.
Reiter looked to Zhe. "We can't let that go unanswered."
Zhe cocked her head. "Tri-droids, Sir?"
"No. The Republic decides how far this escalates. They've sent in their craft, very well. So shall we. TR-11?"
"Yes."
Reiter took a deep breath. "Get Squadrons 1 and 2 in the air, I want our HMPs out there now."
"Very good." The tactical droid sounded almost happy.
"And Aurek Company will commence their advance. Push where the clone lines are weakest." Reiter once more picked up his binoculars, peering down to the massed ranks of Super Battle Droids waiting below on the main thoroughfare. The formation stiffened as if responding to a signal, and then began to march forward, advancing on the Republic lines. Immediately the blue lines of the clones' outgoing fire shifted to target this new threat, but the droids responded in kind even as their metallic bretheren began to fall around them.
"Sir, casualty reports coming in." RSM Zhe was surveying the map, expression grim. "It looks like they were specifically going after the Fusiliers."
"Trying to knock out the mortars." Reiter turned to face his senior enlisted woman. "What's the damage?"
"Extensive. Fifty percent of our mortars are at least temporarily inoperable. Multiple KIAs." Zhe hesitated. "Multiple units reporting combat-ineffective."
That tore it. "Alright, we go back to the classic playbook. Mobilize as many droids as we can. Once droids arrive to relieve them at their positions, the Commandos and Fusiliers will withdraw. I'm not wasting our best troops like this."
The Regimental Sergeant Major looked relieved as she passed on the orders. Reiter squeezed his eyes shut, trying not to envision the next-of-kin letters waiting for him to write, and returned to observing the battlefield.
In the Biscuit Baron where the war had been reduced all too briefly to a far more enjoyable competition, Sergeant CT-19/3901 was the first to hear the new sound. And he was made decidedly nervous by it. Droid gunships, the HMPs, sounded almost like the beloved LAAT/i's, the Larties. But there was something off to them, a certain tension-inducing undertone to their engines, a certain teeth-gritting vibration.
Oh-One keyed his comm. "All stations, we're about to have company up high."
There was a brief crackle of static, then the gunship commander's voice came over. "Confirmed, HMPs inbound. Bly, we'll do what we can, but be advised we don't have enough fuel to tangle with this lot for too long."
Oh-One sighed at that-he'd had a nasty feeling Jag was going to give that warning, but it made sense. Larties weren't made for dogfighting.
"Understood," came the voice of Commander Bly. "Do what you can, out. All units, get your Plexes ready!"
Lieutenant Inc, Oh-One's platoon leader, was already bellowing out the order, and the Sergeant unslung his launcher, hustling to the firing line and shoving the body of a dead Gossam Commando off the barricade before taking a knee next to the E-web. The dull thrum of the droid gunships was growing louder, the squad nervously craning their necks about. Oh-One shouldered his launcher, staring down the sight...but the optics had no targets flagged.
"Where the hell are they," muttered Lieutenant Inc, warily regarding the sky through his binos. "All squads, any contact?"
"Negative for First," said Oh-One after his other two rocket troopers shook their heads, and similarly negative replies were given by the other squad leaders.
The sound of engines was growing louder now. Sweet dripped down Oh-One's brow into his eyes, irritably blinked away. The bucket was great for many things, but it made scratching itches and dealing with crap in one's eyes more than a little difficult.
"Where the hell are they?" snarled the E-Web gunner on the Sergeant's flank, echoing his platoon leader. The thrumming was all around but there were still no droids to be seen, no circular hulls bristling with missile launchers, no malicious red-hued robotic gaze staring down the clones.
For a second, as the sound swelled to engulf the entire platoon's strongpoint, the war ceased to exist for Second Platoon. There was only the tension, the sweat, and the unseen gunships.
Oh-One's finger tightened on the trigger of his Plex.
And then suddenly, a nightmare visage dropped out of the sky to loom in front of. It was almost insectoid, with two red-lit photoreceptors glaring down at the clones even as the laser cannons bristling along its hull swivelled to aim at the strongpoint.
To Lieutenant Inc's credit, the surprise only held him for a second. Then the platoon leader was barking, "Fire fire fire!" and letting loose with his DC.
The E-Web cannons chattered away, blasterfire and small arms stuttering against the droid-ship's shields and hull. And the HMP gunship's vocabulator crackled to life with mechanical laughter right as its cannons stuttered to life to stitch the clone positions.
"Rockets!" cried Lieutenant Inc, "get some rockets-"
And then he was cut off as the red hose of blasterfire swept over his body. Oh-One gritted his teeth and triggered his Plex, followed in short order by the platoon's other rocket-gunners. The Sergeant had just enough time to cheer at the rockets hitting home before the gunship's cannons stitched his body with bolts.
The world spun round Oh-One; nor was it the only thing, for he could see the HMP spiralling down to crash into the street beyond, spewing mechanical dismay from its vocoder. The Sergeant stayed conscious long enough to let out a faint, hoarse laugh at the craft's impact before his world went black.