The collective group of Mandalorian made their way into the first large hanger bay they saw, the ancient room covered in dust and corrosion as the team split up, the Commandos looking for a way to vent the ship's ancient emergency power systems to the blue sealant shielding designed to keep the ancient atmosphere within the vessel. On the other hand, Kal and his Mandalorian brother stood watch at the large door they had entered from, their weapons all trained on the slowing shutting automatic door.
Fidgeting with the ancient grey console on the far-left side of the room, Atin cursed under his breath as he cross wires and pressed ancient illegible buttons and switches.
"Is there still emergency powering running?" Niner asked the Clone under his command, glancing at him as he kept his DC-17m trained on the door at least a hundred feet away from him.
"Barely, the backup generators of this place are putting out so little energy that they are probably running on fumes at this point." The Commando replied in his characteristic gruff, cold voice. "Just one more second and…" In an instant the lights of the hanger beamed on for the first time in millennia, the panel gaining full control over the rest of the room. "Done."
The Clone then nodded over to his Father across the room, the man responding back with a nod of his own. Taking this signal for what it was, the Commando pressed the large red button on the center of the console, alarms blaring as the blast door of the massive hanger bay slowly pulled open, revealing the needed and prayed for blue shielding protecting them all.
As the door opened slowly, the men inside the space came into view of two yellow and grey, boxy and virtually unarmed civilian carrier ships, both being repurposed to house troops and vehicles for this assignment. Virtually everyone within the hanger collectively sighed in relief as Kal began signaling the transports into the huge open space. Slowly entering and touching down with landing gear and hisses of pressurized air, ramps slowly opened to reveal several separate squads of Mandalorians, some armed simply with their blaster rifles and other gadgets, others hefting rotary cannons and Disruptor rifles of all shapes and kinds.
As the first one approached Kal at the end of the room, the Old Mando felt something off. A sudden, freezing chill went down the man's spine. It ached on him until he looked behind his back towards the entrance to the hanger, and in an instant, as he saw the dark wide-open hall they had come in from, it was gone. Shaking off this feeling of what was likely just paranoia, the Mando walked over to the commanding officer assigned to the first ship that had touched down.
"Commander Skirata, what happened here? We tried to contact you but the coms were dead." The Woman asked, her yellow beskar armor gleaming and her sheathed Beskad almost begging to be used as she talked to her commander.
"We were attacked by unknown assailants, unknown if they are Imperial or not. They killed most of the first squad told to meet up with us, little of us remains now." Kal said solemnly before reverting back to his commanding posture. "We need reinforcements now, which is why we signaled you in here. I need all of you to group with me and help us get to the command center of this station. We need all hands on deck. Tell me, what are the forces inside your carriers?"
"Outside of the men you've seen, we have a number of speeders and an AAT inside. Most of the speeders are unarmed, but we do have one of the BARCs you had asked us to take with." The Woman replied before signaling her men to begin off-loading the vehicles inside the carriers. "Is that all, Commander?"
As the woman finished talking to Kal once more, he felt that chill again. That freezing, cold sense of dread filled his body and tingle his bones. The world went into slow motion as Kal withdrew his blaster rifle as quickly as he could, fear gripping his body, he heard it. The scream, that ear-piercing scream that paralyzed his body mid-lift and did the same to the hapless warriors around him. It was another ambush. And it wasn't one they were even remotely prepared for.
Recovering from the screech, Kal lifted his blaster rifle just to see up to white phantoms of death incarnate tear through his newly arrived men, the warriors helpless as they attempted in vain to shoot the blurs of bone before they exploded in a flurry of gore as the figures got too close. Red and blue bolts of plasmic particle beams filled the air as he finally got a clear look at his new attackers after they had already killed 12 of the 60 newly arrived soldiers.
Armor as white as snow, now stained crimson with Mandalorian blood, the tall, agile, all-female warriors wearing manes of red and eyes of glowing evil scarlet stormed into the hanger. The creatures tore through his men like paper, ignoring the impassible plates of beskar they seemingly knew would deflect their glowing orange blades of carnage and instead targeting their under armor.
Ordering his men to group behind the newly arrived ships, the Warriors continued to cut down his one by one, heads, limbs, and entire torsos flying away from bodies as they continued their crusade of carnage. Upon noticing the newly regrouping Mandalorians, these figures held out the black and gold weapons they were becoming known for in their other hands towards the running Mandalorians, this time they were only pistol sized but just as deadly as their larger cousins.
Ripping into the fleeing Mandalorians to the same effect as before, limbs flew off in all directions as the molecule-thick rain of shurikens met the children of Mandalore, killing 5 more of his men in a hail of death. Cursing to himself, Kal ordered his Commando sons from across the room to reconfigure their DC-17m's once again, firing bolts of blue at the rampaging Eldar warriors.
However, they were seemingly prepared for this. The blaster bolts only managed to kill 1 of the rampaging ghosts of death before its sisters threw themselves onto the walls of the hanger, the figures of doom running up the sheer 90-degree angles of the walls before they hid behind the vast rafters and ventilation shafts of the ceiling. The Clone Commandos continued their barrage of sniper fire before Kal ordered them again to reconfigure to explosive ordnance.
Just before the Clones could accomplish this task, another squad of these wailing hurricanes of death entered the room, tearing through another squad of Mandalorian warriors with bloody and swift effectiveness as they screamed their characteristic wails of doom. Before making a b-line straight towards the hiding Commandos.
Kal's heart almost fell out of his chest as he saw this, thinking quickly, the old man ordered one of the barely surviving squads of heavy weapon-carrying Mandos to open fire on the sprinting enemies. As he did so, lightning-fast bolts of Disruptor fire and slower, but nearly as deadly bolts of red opened upon the almost beyond comprehension fast enemy. Most of the shots missed their targets completely, but the ones that made their target hit them hard.
Ozone filled the air as the Disruptor shots disintegrated both the armor and bodies of the attacking enemy, leaving nothing but faintly glowing ash. The other members of this attacking squad met an all too different fate, body parts flying off in a flurry of burnt armor and flesh as the high-powered blaster bolts met their targets. Overall 3 of the newly arrived attackers lay dead, leaving 2 in the squad, their numbers broken but still attempting their deadly charge.
And just to make things worse, the first squad finally jumped back down from their hiding spots perched far above them, issuing an ear-piercing sonic scream as they counter-charged the defending Mandalorians before they could take more of their sisters' lives. Before he knew it, Kal was on the floor, tackled by what looked to be the Squad leader of the group, purple crested helm shining like death as it raised its duel glowing orange swords. Time slowed again as Kal attempted to free himself from the tightening grip of the Amazonian-like warrior's thighs. This thing was far stronger and far faster than the one he had faced before, and he knew just by the reflexes of this creature that he was dead the moment she landed on him.
That was until, like a bolt of crimson salvation, a single blaster bolt hit the attacker square in the head, causing her to roll to the ground, one of her blades flying out of her grip as she fell to the cold hard ground. Picking up the alien weapon and standing up, he saw the form of Sana, holding the blaster pistol he had gifted her before this entire shit-fest had even begun. However, as the two Mandalorians soon learned, this enemy was anything but dead.
Gripping the sword it still had, it charged the Mandalorian commander again as carnage raged all around them. As the female warrior met her Mandalorian enemy, Kal parried the blow just in time before the weapon's twin could take his head, the attacker's combat prowess clearly inhibited in some way by the still smoking blaster-hole in the side of the warrior's head.
Kal stood amazed by this display of resilience. He knew the attacker inside the armor had to be dead, a shot at that distance and to that area of the skull could kill even a Wookie instantly, but against all logic the warrior still fought, like the armor itself had harbored a presence of its own. Using his jetpack, the old man used armor's weight and his jetpack's force to his advantage against this taller, more mobile enemy, bear-hugging and carrying her hard and fast into the air, then finally into the eastern dura-steel wall of the hanger bay.
Kal felt something crack from the body of his attacker before they both rolled away from the collision, the body of his attacker and his own beskar armor mostly absorbing the blunt-force impact. Standing up, the man saw his feminine attacker do the same, eldritch green sparks coming from its helmet's face-grill, limping in a way characteristic of a broken back.
Attempting to issue forth another super-sonic scream, the grill simply let out a mono-tone wail as the sparking became more noticeable. Realizing this, the female figure decided to instead attempt to charge her combatant without the assurance its sonic weapon gave it. A fatal mistake, one she would never recover from.
Activating his wrist-mounted flamethrower as his enemy neared at a still absurd rate of speed, the figure quickly became doused in bright yellow flames as sticky, deadly napalm stuck itself to Kal's foe and cooked the alien inside and out. The screams of uncounted souls echoing through the armor as the unknown systems keeping the figure in action failed and broke down, leaving nothing but a smoldering burnt corpse.
Sighing as he collapsed on the floor, still holding the strange alien weapon he had taken from his now-dead attacker, he observed his surrounding as he found what remained of his men finally gaining the upper hand on their attackers for the second time. The banshee-like enemy combatants finally being executed at range by sustained disruptor and blaster fire.
Kal's head pounded as he observed his surroundings. They won, yes, but it was at best a pyrrhic victory. All around him, the figures of the newly arrived support squads lay dead or dying, cut into ribbons by blades and alien flechette weaponry. They lost over 70% of the reinforcements they had just gained, going from 70 soldiers to a messily 12, little better than they had come here with. Included in the casualties was, like before, the commanding officer assigned to the support squads, her yellow armor bloodied on the floor, her prized Beskad still gripped in her left hand, the super-sonic vibrations of the still active blade jittering painfully against the dura-steel floor.
That's when Kal remembered, the weight of his realization hitting him like a tank as he got back up to his feet and jetpacked over to where his sons were. They had 2 of these warriors charge them, even though he trained most of them himself, he knew if he had only survived one by the skin of his teeth, he dreaded to find out what had happened to them.
Landing next to one of his Mandalorian comrades who had rushed over to them before him, he saw a sight he knew he would see one day, but one he dreaded nonetheless. Surrounding the corpse of one of his very own sons knelt the others, the men in vain attempting to revive the clearly dead clone. Around them, sprawled on the ground were two other corpses, both of the alien attackers, one blown apart completely by an ordnance round, the other completely pot-marked by blaster-holes and burns to the face.
"Move! Move I need to see him!" Kal almost screamed at his sons, the clones parting way to reveal who among them had paid the ultimate price. There, on the cold, metal ground was his son, the last adopted into his clan, and the first to die in this terrible war. Clone Commando Corr, the medic, the sniper, the youngest, dead from a blade clean through his heart.
"Kal, she, one of them, it killed him. We didn't see until it was too late." Fi choked under his helmet as he stood up, shaking intensely as he talked to his father.
Taking off his helmet, and throwing it at one of the boxes his sons had hidden behind, Kal ran over to his youngest son and tried to shake his lifeless corpse awake. "Corr, Corr damnit wake up!" Kal gritted his teeth harder as he saw the lack of life, dread filling him as he called out again. "Corr, wake up! Wake up damn you!"
Fi knelt down next to his grieving father as he continued to shake his brother's lifeless body, nothing happening except the cold, brutal sound of plastoid armor banging against metal over and over again. "Pa, he's gone."
"No, he's not! Get some bacta spray on him now, he can't be dead!" Kal screamed as a single tear rolled down his cheek, pain soaking the old man's face and drowning his features in sorrow. Pushing his father off of his brother's corpse, Fi pleaded with his father, an uncharacteristic deep pain within his voice.
"He's dead Pa! There's nothing we can do!" Fi held his father's shoulders, almost shaking the Old Man out of his stupor. Letting go of his father, Fi knelt down next to Kal, still holding him. "...We both knew some of us wouldn't return from this mission, Father. We are clones just as much as we are your sons, we all knew here that one day we would die in combat."
Still gritting his teeth, Kal broke down almost completely. Long streams of tears rolled down his face as the loss destroyed him and his very being. He had lost people before this, he had lost people he loved and cared about as family before this. But these clones, they were much more to him than that. They weren't just clan, they weren't just family, they were his sons. And in front of him laid the corpse of a man he knew was his son.
Wrapping his arms around his father, Fi held Kal in a heartfelt embrace. Picking up Corr's discarded DC-17m, Darman fired into the dura-steel floor, opening up a hole deep and wide enough to hold the weapon. Placing the weapon barrel down before placing his fallen brother's helmet over it, creating the distinctive form of the battlefield cross. As he did so, Niner carried his deceased brother to the form of the boxy starships at the far edge of the hanger. Grief deep in his demeanor.
"We must keep fighting Father, we cannot lose," Fi told his grieving father, holding him hard in a paternal hug. "We will win, not just for Mandalore, but for the dead as well. We must carry the will of those who passed, and carry it forever onward."
Kal simply nodded in response, before muttering in between tears. "May righteousness never wither, for those righteous few will live forever in the will of those who inherit it." An old Mandalorian proverb, and one of eternal truth.