"Men, I need some goddamn casualty reports now," Kal said as he withdrew a long syringe containing of some kind of combat drug and injected it into his arm, the remaining Mandalorians and Clones around him doing a short headcount.

"9 dead, 6 wounded," Darman replied back as he looked at the iron-clad warriors on the ground, some completely still, others with arms and legs detached or almost completely bisected from the waist down, trailing blood and viscera as they attempted to prop themselves up against thick metal boxes.

"Send coms to the rest of the squads, get them here, and have them take the wounded back to the ships," Kal ordered. Just as he did so, the tech specialist Atin attempted to radio to the number of separate squads stationed all over the station. As he did so, nothing but static and interference came through.

"Pa, they are fucking jamming us to hell in here." Atin said plainly, crouching with his sniper rifle trained on the vast hallway down the way.

Kal cursed to himself. There was no one coming to help. He knew he could probably save more than half of the wounded, but the ones who lost half of their bodies… They didn't have the time or the ability to make it back to the ships docked outside without the soldiers bleeding out or being ambushed again, risking even more deaths. And even if they did make it back just to save one or two men, most of the ships docked to the station only had rudimentary medical stations, these men would need to be strapped to a hospital bed for months on end and have their entire lower halves replaced with prosthetics. Maybe they could have saved them if this happened after they got everyone loaded off and rendezvoused with the rest of the squads, but that simply wasn't an option.

Kal hated himself for the order he had to give next, but he knew it was the only way forward. "Put bacta sprays on the ones with survivable wounds, ones with missing arms and legs, and have them hold down the fort here alongside the remains of Squad 2 until reinforcements arrive. It very well could take hours, so be as silent and careful as possible. Do not attract any more attention." Kal looked over at one of his men, panting hard as he attempted to force his guts back into his body. A deep sadness overtook him.

"What about the ones who will bleed out? We need to save them, and we can't just spray bacta on their guts and think it'll be good. They need urgent medical attention, and we don't have anything we can give them here, not even I have the supplies we need." The Commando medic Corr said, anger broiling in his voice at the sight of what these unknown attackers had just done to them. Swallowing hard, Kal responded painfully.

"We have to leave them, we don't have the supplies just as you said Corr, and we can't bring them back to the ships without risking another assault. Even if we could bring them back, they'd likely bleed out before we could get them the care they need, the most we could accomplish with what we have back there is strapping them to a bed and hoping the shock doesn't take them." Kal's voice pained as he explained this to the men around him.

"Papa Kal, what sort of reasoning is that? We can't just let our men die, we have to save them!" Corr almost screamed, rage building at his father figure's pained and cruel logic.

"You're right, we can't let them die, not like this. We knew what we were signing up for on this mission, boys. We knew some of us wouldn't make it out alive." The aging Mando grabbed his Blaster rifle off of the floor and walked over to the Mandalorian holding his own bloody entrails. Removing the warriors helmet, he looked into the eyes of one of his own men, a soldier he grew up with and fought alongside during the Civil Wars. A man he loved as his own family because he was to him. He was clan, he was Mandalorian.

Spitting up blood and saliva, the hazel brown eyes of the man looked at his friend. "Jen, you know what I have to do, right?" Kal asked the bleeding, pained man.

"Just like old times, isn't it Kal? It's ok, I knew I might go out like this one day. Would much rather be mercy killed than bleed out all over the place anyways." A melancholy crossed the Mandalorian's face as he groaned and sputtered his words.

Kal nodded in response. "I know I'll see you soon, Jen."

"Aye, I know I will too. See you on the other side." The man choked up, a smile on his blood-soaked face. Suddenly, a glowing crimson blaster bolt entered into his head, fired by the same man who stood in front of him. The Clones and the Twi'lek turned away as Kal did the same to the other mortally wounded Mandalorian, giving the men he loved the short, painless death they deserved as opposed to their fated agonizing slow deaths.

Corr looked at his father figure in shock and disgust as he walked back over to the remains of Squad 1 and the Commando unit. Kal's helmet hiding the guilt and shame he felt in having to put down his own, mortally wounded men. As he did so, addressed the measly remains of the first Mandalorian squad, a measly 3 soldiers remaining alive within the unit.

"Do any of you know what just hit us?" He asked one of the squad mates left. In response, the helmeted Mandalorian shook his head no.

"I've been across the Galaxy all my life ever since I left the Trues. Fought and killed aliens of all kinds, have never seen anything like this, sir." The man replied as he walked over to the dead form of the female attacker he had killed on the floor, removing the helmet she wore, revealing an almost uncannily human complexion. Almost like a fun-house mirror version of a standard Galactic human, this being differed in a great many ways. From the strangely elongated features of her face to the long, pointed ears, the entire situation puzzled him completely.

What puzzled him more than the appearance of these new dead attackers was their capabilities. They fought almost like Force Users, using their uncanny abilities to outpace and out move their opponents, but unlike Force Users they didn't seem to have any metaphysical powers or precognitive abilities of their own, relying instead on weapons and armor as opposed to some sort of preternatural ability. And then there were the weapons they wielded.

He recalled how the first few volleys of fire were fairly normal, all things considered. Beams of highly charged energy that ripped through his men, their first weapons behaved like high-powered sniper blasters, strong but still unable to pierce their beskar plates. Then there were the weapons they shot after their first volleys.

They behaved much more like flechette launchers, being instead of shooting hundreds of tiny needle like objects they fired a single, shuriken-like disk as some of his men were made to realize. As he contemplated this, he looked over the boxes he hid behind and saw one of the many dead forms of the attackers who wielded these weapons, hot pink and blue form-fitting armor covering their entire body, cone-shaped helmets covering their heads. Many of them having blaster-holes straight into said helmets from the counterattack Kal had ordered.

As his eyes darted to their weapons which now lay on the ground, he finally got a good look at them. Long, black rifles with golden thin barrels, the weapon as strange and organic shaping as their attacker's armor. On the top of the weapon was a scope, a single red glowing dot where the exit lens should be. Odder still was the fact these weapons were connected to the armor of their attackers like their seemingly weak armor had some sort of power source that helped the weapon function.

Standing up again, Kal addressed the remains of Squad 1 and his Clone sons. " We continue with the plan, men. Whatever this enemy is, we need backup soon if we are going to reach the Command Center. Assuming our transports carrying our tanks and speeders haven't been blown out of the void, we need reinforcements. Mandalore is counting on us, and we simply can't fail. Understood?"

"Yes Sir!" The Clones and Mandalorians all said in near unison, all except Corr who simply glared at his father, and Sana, who sat on the ground. Curled up into a fetal position, the young Twi'lek still holding the blaster pistol given to her by her protector shook like she had never shaken before. Her arms and legs were jelly, the sheer terror of what had just happened taking her over and swallowing her like a vast sea of trauma and suffering. Walking over to the Twi'lek, Kal knelt down next to the clearly suffering girl.

"Sana…" The Mandalorian began, placing his hand on her shoulder like he did before.

"I want to go back, I want to go home." She pleaded to him, begging him to take her back to Mandalore and away from this carnage. This carnage that they both knew had barely just begun.

"Sana, listen to me. We can't turn back, not now, and not ever until we accomplish what we set out to accomplish here. You need to stay strong, not only for us but for yourself." Kal said, his fatherly and nurturing voice seeming to soothe the Twi'lek, but only barely.

"You don't even need me here, I'm dead weight. Maybe, just maybe some of the soldiers you lost, some of the soldiers you had to-" Sana began before Kal cut her off.

"Don't listen to those thoughts. That's survivorship bias, and it will nag you until you are in the ground if you let it. You are not dead weight, you are here for a reason, that data-slate you carry might very well be our only key to saving Mandalore and her people. Do you understand?"

Sana stayed silent for a moment, before nodding affirmatively.

"Remember what I said, I will never let anything here hurt you. Not even those things that sprung from the dark and hurt us." Kal said as he let go of Sana's shoulder before patting her head, causing the woman to look up at him. "And another thing. They aren't just my men, they are yours too. We are family here, we are clan. We are all Mandalorian. We will become stronger through this, together. I promise." Kal smiled at the young woman behind his helmet, before helping her to her feet and patting her on the back. Slowly but surely, the men and women left of the Squad 1 joined the motley crew of Clone and Mandalorian stock before making their way down the west-facing hall, weapons drawn and ready for anything.

0

The Farseer stood on the floor of what seemed to be an ancient barracks room, lit by the organically shaped technologies he had ordered to be taken alongside him for this fight, surrounded by readying and ablebodied Eldar warriors of all stripes. Isetar contemplated the place he found himself in alongside his allies. This place, despite being old, was only old enough to date a few thousand years after the fall, nothing like many of the ruins he had found himself in before. Stranger still was the apparent culture of the ones who built this place. They were mostly human, that was for certain, the architecture and design could be nothing but of Mon'keigh design.

But there were hints of something deeper, hints of a pervading alien culture that had originated before the humans of whatever tribe this was had taken over. He imagined the possibilities of what people had built this place, but those contemplations were soon interrupted as the front entrance door to the chamber was thrust open, revealing the lone form of a clearly injured Eldar Ranger. Grabbing onto the man, the Farseer noticed a large, deep burn on the right shoulder of the Ranger's armor, the beautiful blue armor sullied by what looked to be a weapon's discharge.

"Ysumar, report, what happened to you? Where is your squad?" Isetar asked, nearly pleading to the Ranger for an explanation. Soon after he did so, he screamed for the warriors behind him to find a medic.

"I and the Guardian Defender squad assigned to us attacked the meeting enemy as you ordered. However, they were too strong." The Eldar coughed loudly. "I believe my squad is dead, as well as the Guardian Defenders sent alongside us. These, warriors. They may be simple Mon'Kiegh, but they are good at their brutality, Isetar." As he finished, a Guardian Defender without a helm kneeled down next to the injured sniper and began working on his wound.

"Avenge them, my Farseer. Please. Avenge us." Holding the man while he coughed loudly, blood falling down out of his mouth, Farseer Isetar looked to a group of warriors he had taken alongside him for this journey. The lanky, beautiful forms of the Howling Banshees stared back, eyes and manes of crimson glaring back at the man even in this newly lighted room. The blue-clad Farseer simply nodded at the bone-white armored female warriors, the alien hurricanes of death taking the signal for what they knew it was.

If these "Mandalorians" would not go quietly, then they personally will drag them to their deaths. Like their founding Pheonix Lord Jain Zar, they shall embody the aspect of fear and bring the wrath of Khaine himself to these lowly creatures. Their deaths will be justice, and they will be it's instrument.