With the sound of a hundred, hydraulic joints, the ancient Droids began to spring to life. First came the nearly 2 meters tall tripedal Gunner Droids. A group of 3 of these mechanical beasts awakened from their cold mechanical slumber, their metallic plating coming to life as their linear ocular sensors lit up with a bright yellow hue. The first time they had awoken for thousands of years, and the first time they would let their enemy taste the bite of their blasters.
After taking a few seconds to take in their surroundings, some suffering a few shuriken shots to their back armor in the process, they slowly but methodically began tracking their new targets. Computerized targeting sensors tracking and predicting future movements, thick blinding bolts of red death fell upon the Aeldari enemy, laser cannon shots ripping through the air and blowing bodies apart in a rain of cauterized flesh. As the enemy turned their focus to the newly awaken Droid foe, the ancient war machines opened up with their secondary weapons.
A barrage of slower-moving, less deadly, but brilliant bolts of red blaster fire opened up. The Droids' side-mounted gatling blasters tore into foe and awakening Droid alike as they slowly made their grinding advance. Over half of the newly arrived Dire Avengers lay dead, and only 6 of the elite warriors in total remained still.
Then came the Hunter Killer assassin units, 10 specially modified, dedicated Jedi killers. Their unpainted beskar plating gleamed in the red, strobe-like flurry of combat as their central fusion cores finally gained power. As soon as they awoke, they lunged for discarded weapons strewn all across the floor of the space station's warehouse, both Mandalorian and Eldar, joining in the orgy of warfare alongside their mechanical and organic allies.
Moving with the speed of Jedi, with the durability of beskar plate to boot, they hit the attacking Eldar hard and fast. Causing the few remaining Dire Avengers to scatter as the Droids mercilessly cut down their foes, blood, and ozone filling the air as alien life was snuffed out. Almost every single one of their reinforcements lay dead, all except for their leader, their Exarch.
The blue and white-clad warrior, despite running out of ammo, showed no fear in his heart as his war mask took over his personality and charged one of the counter-attacking HK Droids, withdrawing a long ceremonial blade from his back. This Droid he charged however, it wasn't like the normal unmarked ones, this particular HK was marked head to toe in blue markings. He was the commander of the group the Mandalorians had just awoken, the killer among killers. HK-231. And this meat bag had just tried to charge him.
Lifting the attacker up by his throat as he wrenched the blade clean from his hand, the Assassin Droid proceeded to bash the alien's helmeted head into the closest wall he could find. The plumed helm withstood the first few bashes, but after repeated, dura-steel breaking blunt force, the alien's skull and its helmet soon broke into tiny, bloody pieces. The sadistic killer Droid was immensely satisfied with its work as the battle raged around them.
Soon, more Eldar reinforcements flooded the warehouse as more and more Droids came online. The crew Droids simply running away or desperately looking for anything to defend themselves with, the others, such as the Enforcer Droids and the other HK and Gunners quickly joined their robotic brethren in combat, massacring the newly arriving Guardian Defenders and Dire Avengers as they attempted, in vain, to destroy their new foes.
Atin stood at the control console, mouth-a-gape under his helmet as he observed the carnage.
"Think we should call the veterans back?" Atin asked plainly, looking at Kal as he observed the same.
"No… I doubt they'd like to miss out on this."
The covering Mandalorians, upon seeing their newly awoken brothers in arms, joined the combat, resolve replenished as they rained death into their alien attackers just as their new allies did. The warehouse was soon clear of the enemy, the bodies of countless Eldar warriors littering the floor like discarded wrappers, only occasionally being met by the few dead Mandalorians they had killed, and even fewer Droid bodies. As the fighting continued in the hallways around the large room, the newly gore-soaked and wild-eyed HK-231 walked calmly over to the Clones and Mandalorian at the central command console, the bot still hefting one of the discarded Eldar weapons in one of its hands.
"Greetings, I am HK-231. I take it you are Mandalorians?" The cold, monotone, robotic voice of the Droid chimed as the sounds of blaster-fire and chaos still echoed around them.
"...Yes, we are." Kal responded plainly, trying his best not to anger the bloodthirsty Droid.
"Good, then I am by my programming under your command." The Droid held out its bloody, gore-soaked hand, inviting the commanding Mandalorian into a handshake. Kal, sighing deeply, begrudgingly accepted, his hand wet against the blood and grey matter of the Exarch the Droid had brutally killed. "May I ask, what is your name, master?"
"Kal. Kal Skirata." The droid slowly nodded in response as he gripped the man's hand.
Squeezing the hand tightly and stiffly shaking it, the Droid then let go of its grip and looked over to the blaster-marked and smoking entrance and exit doors to the chamber. "I see in our long slumber enemies have come to occupy our station. This is unacceptable. By order of Mandalore the Ultimate, none other than followers of the creed shall step foot in this station." Hefting the weapon in both hands, the Droid looked back over to Kal Skirata.
"I would like to know more about this enemy, they seem to fight like Jedi, however, their use of ranged firearm-like weapons confuses me greatly, despite their alien appearance. Who are these creatures, and why have they infested this mighty station?" HK-231 asked, his robotic voice strangely innocent despite the foul deeds he had just done.
Kal shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine… They were here when we showed up, killed most of our forces, and we don't have any idea why. Some of us believe they are Imperial forces, but most of us don't think so."
"Imperial forces? Has the Sith Empire declared war on Mandalore?" The Droid responded in its characteristic monotone voice.
Sighing deeply, the Mandalorian simply looked over to the Hunter Killer unit and said, "There's a lot you need to catch up on, once we get the ships out of here, I'll explain everything."
"...Acceptable." As the droid finished it's thought, the sound of a tremendous crash echoed throughout the warehouse, the Droid and Clones both turning to see the form of a massive, lanky, humanoid, Droid-like beast from the main entrance of the room. The same characteristic hot-pink and blue of the attacking aliens coloring its alien form, a massive Ying-Yang symbol painted on its blank featureless head, massive, upscaled versions of their flechette launchers on its back, and worse still, a massive, flaming sword held aloft in one of its hands.
The massive form of an Eldar Wraithlord began to charge the Mandalorians and Droid forces at the end of the room, all of them opening fire on the nearly 6-meter tall creature running at an impossible speed straight at them. But then, another crash sounded from the opposite end of the room. It was another Droid beast, one of ancient legend, and one that would end up being a match for the charging vaguely biomechanical beast.
Sprinting on all four of its massive, hydraulic legs, the form of an almost 3-meter-tall and 6-meter-long Basilisk War droid came into view, the massive mechanical dog-like beast stomped through fleeing Droids and pulping corpses as it howled a deep, cybernetic war-cry. Crashing into the Wraithlord, the best began to claw into the massive wraith-bone creature, tearing deep chunks of eldritch sparking material from the attacking Droid creature with its beskar-tipped claws. In response, the Wraithlord swung its massive sword at the thrashing Droid-beast, taking off one of its hind legs in the process as it attempted to fire its flechette cannons to little effect, most shots missing completely and the others only minorly damaging the beast.
This did nothing to hinder the Basilisk, however. The monstrous Droid continued to claw into the Wraithlord before finally letting forth a flurry of pulse and laser cannon fire, blinding concentrated pillars of green and yellow light leaving the creature's pseudo-face and eviscerating the target's featureless head. The Wraithlord's cranium burst into chunks of flaming Wraithbone and alien green light, the sound of a screaming soul leaving the massive alien receptacle as it fell still, its entire lower head gone in less than a few seconds.
As the tank-sized Droid continued to claw and fire at the dead Wraithlord, a number of its kind began to enter from what seemed to be a hangar bay, the door leading to it on the far west side of the warehouse completely decimated by the Basilisk's timely arrival, the massive door panels torn apart and forced open like a cardboard box. Slowly, the injured Basilisk limped away back towards the hangar, it's Droid brethren replacing it as they too joined the fray outside the hangar.
It appeared Atin's work in jumpstarting the Droids finally made its way to the hangar-bound Basilisks. Something they were both stunned and thankful for, the carnage shocking even Kal in its brutality.
"It looks as if the enemy tank unit will no longer be an issue for us." The assassin Droid said as it slowly moved over to the console where Atin still stood, his DC-17m still trained on the, seemingly dead, form of the Wraithlord that had only a moment ago entered the room.
"It appears very much dead, my friends. You can lower your weapons." The robotic voice chimed as it began to rapidly press buttons and dials scattered across the vast control. "Now, Master Kal, would you like me to activate the rest of this facility's Droid forces?