Yeah. I don't own Avatar, just the random OC's.
Chapter 31: Sigrun's Spear
Date: 1900, May 26th, 2170
Location: Tartarus, Pandora, Alpha Centauri A System
The low, slow, and familiar rumble had begun again.
Parker sighed and stared out the windows of the Ops-Center as their small air force spun up its turbines and prepared, once more, to go to war.
He had done the math in his head, just like every other human currently trapped on the world. One modified Valkyrie, along with sixteen Samsons, going up against an estimated two-thousand blue-skins, about half of which would be banshee riders and able to fight back. Each Samson carried a meager eight missiles, Brunhilde carried none. Machine guns worked well at killing things on the ground, but in the air… hitting a wildly maneuvering target at anything but point-blank range from a bucking, swerving helicopter was anything but easy, and at those ranges, the enemy would be shooting back. The gunners on Brunhilde would have an easier time there, both protected by their scrap metal armor as well as the inherent stability of the much more massive vehicle.
Given all that, Weigand had re-drawn up the plans with his Hauptmann. The Germans would be launching two attacks on the approaching eastern force. The first of them, tonight's, was to be a softening up sortie, which would be followed up by the main attack the following night.
"The idea," he'd heard Weigand stress to Adler, "Is to maximize enemy confusion. Fire your missiles at the longest possible range, conduct some bombardment fire from Brunhilde, and leave. Take your time doing it as well, make them worry and panic. Actual body count is less important than destroying their will to fight us."
The pilots and crews had pulled out every stop they could think of to try and stay alive. The normally olive-drab helicopters were now a chaotic mixture of dark blues and purples to attempt to camouflage them. This, naturally, caused the white, black, and rust colored Brunhilde to clash even more with her escorts.
Turning from the window, he headed over to the main holotable, nodding to Thomes, who, on what was possibly her last trip to the base, had already brought up the thermal scans transmitted from orbit.
"I don't envy them much." Thomes said after they both gravely regarded the image for a moment, "Long night flight, followed by heavy action tomorrow. It's going to wear on them."
He gave her a slight nod, "Think we have a chance?"
She was silent for a long while. "Maybe. Against the eastern force, sure. Hit them tonight, and again just before they reach us from beyond their range? They'll be in no shape to fight when they do show up, your miners and Kozlov should be able to repulse them easily. The bigger problem..." she scrolled the screen north, showing the two prongs heading steadily south, and the third that had only recently shown up.
"Is Sully and his merry band." he finished for her, "And their furry friends."
A shake of her head, "Hard to tell how many animals are moving, except that giant flock of banshees. Best guess is that we can up the numbers against us by at least fifty percent. The animals will probably be too stupid to do anything but try and swarm us, but they're still targets we can't afford to let through."
The roar outside built up to a deeper rumble as Brunhilde slowly passed over the Ops Center. A glance to the windows showed a Samson gliding past against the darkening sky, the camouflage actually doing a decent job of causing it to blend in with the dark tree line. He shifted slightly in place, uncomfortable memories playing bad clips in his mind's eye.
Weigand moved away from his place near the windows as the last Samson drifted out of sight, red and green lights flicking on as it cleared the base.
"And so we continue." the Oberst nodded to the pair of them before zooming out the holo-image, appraising the squadron as it began its journey east. "I do not believe I will get much sleep in these coming days."
"Don't think any of us are." he murmured, eyes also following the pitifully small force slowly moving away from Tartarus.
"We'll have to," Thomes bluntly interjected, "Sleepy soldiers won't do anyone much good, and tired commanders will get everyone killed."
He shook his head slightly, "Going to have to start issuing sleep meds. Especially to my mining crews, most of them are shaky enough as it is, having gone through this before." Me especially.
Weigand glanced at, and then nodded to him. "I will draft the orders.'
The three fell into a companionable, yet tense silence in the quiet Ops Center, their eyes following the small lights on the table before them.
Date: 2342, May 26th, 2170
Location: Due East of Tartarus, Pandora, Alpha Centauri A System
Brunhilde drifted lazily amongst the clouds, every human's gaze on board glued to their thermal scanners, observing the horde that was slowly moving forwards.
Adler carefully watched the blue-skins as they approached. Weigand had given him free reign to plan the attack however he chose, and he'd come up with, what he thought, was a solid plan. His Samsons were lurking several kilometers back, nearly over the horizon, hovering in a linear formation with their running lights off. Brunhilde's limited computers were working overtime to transmit targeting information to the far-off squadron.
The idea was to bombard the area with missiles, focusing on the banshees, follow it up with heavy gunfire on the ground forces from long range with his gunship, using the cloud cover to mask their location, and then get the hell out of there once they had expended the majority of their ammunition.
He let out an explosive sigh as the native group slowly entered the Samson's maximum firing range, and nodded, activating the channel to his squadron.
"Feuer frei."
Confirmations flooded the channel, the radar picking up the missiles from their launching point nearly forty kilometers away. The computer updated with new targeting locations after each missile launched, until moments later all one-hundred and twenty-eight were airborne.
It did not take long for the stream of human weaponry to cross the massive distance, the missiles exhaust glowing brightly as they raced through the air.
Say what you want about the blue-skins, he grumbled mentally as he watched, They have good eyesight.
The numerous red-orange lights had not escaped the notice of the savages, and their formation apparently included veterans from the great battle, for the mass began to spiral and dissolve as they tried to get out of the way of the incoming weapons. What they didn't realize, however, was that this time there was no Flux Vortex to disrupt the tracking systems on the missiles, and Brunhilde relentlessly guided the munitions towards the aerial concentrations.
The veteran fliers had largely escaped the human's fiery wrath by diving into the trees as fast as possible, but the majority of the fliers did not react nearly as quickly, or as intelligently.
As the explosions began, the gunners took that as their queue and Brunhilde began to speak, the deck rumbling as forty-millimeter shells were lobbed into the general mass of the blue-skin ground forces.
"Track the primary group." he transmitted to the gun battery, and watched as they slowly 'walked' the gunfire across the largest clump of visible natives.
Their enemy might not have been able to tell where the missile fire had come from, but they could quite easily see the flashes of the guns, and while the missiles had hurt their formation, there were still hundreds of banshees airborne. First one pack, then another, began to ascend as rapidly as they could, with the fliers who had fled to the cover of the trees bringing up the rear.
Adler winced. The clouds hadn't been as thick as he'd hoped then, if they could see the flashes of light.
The question is, do we retreat now?
He had to keep Brunhilde intact, but he also had to thin the native forces before they could reach Tartarus.
"Continue the attack," he informed the pilots, before transmitting to his Samsons, "Valkyrie Kampfgruppe, Rückzug."
The Samson squadron began to fall back to the base from their firing position, while Brunhilde continued her long, slow bank, guns blazing, gunners waiting for the natives to swarm up through the light cloud cover.
They weren't disappointed; a horde of blue-skins on their banshees boiled up through the clouds to be met by machine gun fire from her numerous defensive bunkers.
Deep thuds began to resonate through the gunship as arrows began to rebound off her hull, Adler ignored it. Arrows weren't a threat to his Chooser of the Slain, what worried him more was whether or not these natives had picked up the fire-bombs from Sully. After two minutes went by, with only arrows bouncing off of the armor and glass, he guessed that they didn't, or if they did, they were on the ground, and thus of no danger.
He settled into this seat and continued to direct the heavy weapons fire as the "battle" continued. The blue-skins didn't seem to know how to handle the armored ship. Several tried to land on her hull to fire their arrows straight into the gun-slits, only to be murdered for trying. Perhaps five minutes into the battle though, one came up with an idea. Diving in below Brunhilde's bulk, the native had its banshee latch onto the rear bunker and began tearing at it with its teeth.
Swearing burst across the comms as the soldiers manning the defensive guns tried to find a way to kill the beast before it managed to tear the ramshackle armor plating apart. They couldn't get their machine guns in the proper position, and it wasn't until one of the men physically stuck his arm out of the firing slit and opened fire with his pistol that they killed the inventive savage.
"Scheisse." he swore as he listened to the reports from the small fight. He tapped the pilot on the shoulder, "Rückzug. Fliegen nach Tartarus."
The heavy guns fell silent as the pilot accelerated and banked, the native savages falling slowly behind as he accelerated Brunhilde out of the area.
He brought up the channel to the Oberst and began to transmit.
Date: 02:00, May 27th, 2170
Location: Tartarus, Pandora, Alpha Centauri A System
Everyone looked exhausted, Weigand included. That didn't stop him from continuing the briefing, or from them giving him their full attention.
"Enemy casualties are estimated as moderate to heavy. Over a hundred slain at least, but an exact count is impossible given the nature of the strike, and the altitude at which Brunhilde was forced to withdraw." the Oberst was re-iterating what Adler had told him several hours before.
Parker leaned forwards, "How much ammunition did they use? And what drove them off?"
"Expenditures were one hundred percent of the missiles embarked about our Samsons, and Brunhilde expended roughly a third of her ammunition. Hauptmann Adler reports his decision to withdraw came after a native attempted to use his banshee to tear into one of the bunkers. They were able to kill it, but he feared the natives would seize upon the idea, given their weapons ineffectiveness."
He blinked, "Shouldn't he have stayed longer, at least? I mean, that seems like a flimsy reason to fall back if it didn't even manage to break into the ship."
"Normally, yes, it would have been" Weigand nodded in agreement, "However, part of his orders were to keep Brunhilde intact at all costs, she is our most effective mobile weapon system, and must be preserved. Were we to lose her, I fear we would also lose any chance of success in the battle ahead."
He exhaled heavily and nodded.
The Oberst looked at him for a long moment, "Get some sleep, everyone. We're going to need everyone rested for the combat tomorrow night."
Everyone slowly rose and shuffled out of the room. Thomes and her staff solemnly bid them goodbye before heading towards the airlock that would take them outside to their waiting Valkryie.
He bid them goodbye without really thinking about it, and it was only when he reached the tunnel connecting the Ops Center to the apartment complex that the significance of the occasion struck him.
That could be the last time we see each other. His sleepy shuffled slowly wound down to a stop. I could be dead tomorrow, all of us could be, and the only ones who will know it are Thomes and her crew up on the Dream.
Gulping slowly against the rising tide of cold dread, he slowly began to make his way to his quarters. The plan is sound, Patel will succeed, and we'll survive. The plan is sound, Patel will succeed, and we'll survive. The plan is...
He kept repeating the short sentence to himself as he forced his legs to resume working, to take him to his quarters.
He didn't realize he'd begun to repeat it, over and over, out loud to himself until he reached his quarters.
Thank god no one is awake to have heard that Parker, he tried to make light of it, They'll all think you've finally lost it.
Laughing weakly, he crawled into his too small bed and turned off the lights, unconsciously resuming his mantra-style chant as he did so.
Sleep, thankfully, overcame him almost immediately into his numbing embrace.
Date: 11:30, May 27, 2170
Location: Tartarus Ops Center, Alpha Centauri A System
It always struck him in the oddest ways how different Weigand was from Quaritch. How different the professional soldiers were from the Sec-Ops mercenaries.
He knew that he shouldn't really be surprised by it anymore, not after all these months and years. But it still found ways to creep up on him.
In this case, it was the Oberst's lack of a pre-battle meeting of any form. There was no mass gathering of the troops to rally them, no conference of the administration staff to go over any last minute details.
Weigand was simply...being seen, he supposed, would be the best way to say it. The old German was personally striding about the base, around the positions, making sure that every soldier had everything they needed, that every bunker was stocked, that every pilot was ready.
Occasionally Jones or Adler would move over to him and hold a quick conference over some detail, they would resolve it, and he would resume his walk about.
The soldiers and miners seemed to be reacting well to his presence, particularly when he saw their AMP suit platoon. Whereas the Samson pilots had gone for camouflage and survivability, the AMP operators were going for terror factor. Each of the massive exoskeletons had been turned into a gleeful, terrible work of art. Most had taken their inspiration from mythology, Christian demons, Chinese dragons, even one that had Cerberus decorating its front. The Oberst's, however, certainly stood out.
Weigand's mechanic had gone with a uniform shade of midnight black, and then carefully painted human bones across it, the skull grinning from its place near the top of the cockpit. The Oberst had loved it, laughing out loud when the AMP was carefully brought out for him to see. He had been even more delighted with the mechanic had showed off that there were matching bones painted on both the sides, top, and rear of the AMP, ensuring that it would retain its skeletal appearance from any angle.
It's almost.. frivolous. Like they're trying to forget we could all die in the next twenty-four hours. He mused. He couldn't really blame them. If there was something he could do to forget, he would be doing it. As it was… all he could really do was supervise the Ops-Center, which was running just fine on its own. His miners were all heading to their positions, the mining equipment had been secured, and the building's defenses were online and waiting.
He strode slowly over to the holotable, and then brought up the thermal scans. The numerous heat concentrations were much closer now, and they were creeping closer by the minute. The jungle in front of and between the blue-skin groups had slowly increased in temperature as well, no doubt due to the native creatures now joining their parade.
Sighing, his eyes continued to stare at the image. All our pieces are in place. Kozlov and Jones are manning the forts and bunkers, Alder and his men are preparing for their last flight... my mining teams are all in position... All we can do now... all we can do now is wait for the ax to fall.
Next up is Chapter 32: Lucifer's Fury
And here is Chapter 31. The humans are ready and waiting for the coming storm, should be a fun ride, no? Next up is 32, where the true war begins.
Would like everyone to know that I very much appreciate all the reviews I've gotten, and am always especially glad when someone new reviews.
Review Please!
Review Responses:
a sitting duk: True on both counts, you'll see how it ends up.
webfx: Glad you like it, and glad you can correct my german. It's... well it's... ok, saying i'm rusty at the language is a bit of an understatement.