Episode 3: Blizzard Force Deployed
Chapter 3: Winter's Merciless Wrath
Special guest character appearance: Dicktor Van Doomcock from the Overlord DVD YouTube channel! He's here to kick ass and take names,and I just really like his pop culture and movie reviews.
General Anakin Skywalker had hired two geniuses in military strategy to search for weaknesses in the defenses surrounding Hive Boreas on Hoth, themselves a measure to keep ancient and godly Time Lord technology out of the hands of the Republic's enemies. However, after an unexpected call from his apprentice, Ahsoka Tano, he is given reason to believe that even the greatest fortresses will fall... including his own. And it will happen VERY SOON.
"I have news for everybody," Anakin said to his companions, after hanging up on the comlink. "There's been a change of plans. We are all in mortal danger."
Everybody looked at him as if he wasn't serious, especially Beidou.
"What? Why?"
"Because I just talked to my apprentice, and she said the Covenant were on their way here. I'm guessing they'll bring their whole fleet to overwhelm us, because they'd do anything to swipe Time Lord artifacts for their own use. And I mean ANYTHING. Except for maybe glassing Hoth with plasma lances... because that might damage the loot and make it impossible to use."
Since Senin Vant was a defector from the Covenant, this baleful premonition got his green blood boiling with rage. He would no longer speak rolling his S's.
"They're coming here? And they're surrounding us on all sides? GOOD!!! We can kill as many of those bastards as we can, and fire in every direction. Even if we eventually get buried alive in Grunt corpses."
"Good thinking, Vant!," Wayne shouted. "We're not going down without a fight. And with our aerospace forces, we're gonna wing it this time around. Get it? Wing it? It's a Bat Pun."
There was one more thing that needed to be discussed before the preparations for battle could begin, though. Har Har Bunks brought it up.
"We never really discussed this in the past 2 chapters, but the whole reason we're here on this ball of ice is to find out how to properly use the Time Lord tech. If we can get it working, we can rip the Covenant a new asshole!"
"VERY good thinking, Professor Bunks!," Anakin replied. "Though we might need to assign a crew of scientists to do just that. I order you to get started."
The Gungan researcher ran off, and disappeared in a flash using his teleporter. Hopefully he could gather some assistance and think of something before the Covenant was on top of everybody.
Then Elsa finally got a response from her brother on the comlink:
"My lord, my sister... I'm so, so sorry. I shouldn't have hid back on the ship and deliberately made you forget about me. But it's what I did for entertainment that will put shame and embarrassment on the whole family. Punish me as you see fit once you come back up here."
Her response?
"You know what, Alexei? Whatever stupid shit you got involved in while playing hide and seek with me, I'll forgive you for. Now get your ass down here before I have to come up there myself!"
If this episode had a happy ending, you'd think Elsa and Alexei would come back together, be more careful with their choices, and stop messing with each other. But it was Alexei's decision to remain on the Lupus Rex in the first place that unfortunately cost him his life.
A volley of cleansing beams fired from the edge of the Hoth system struck the spelljamming battleship and punched massive holes in its hardened wooden armor. A second barrage burnt up the solar sails on its deck, and a third one tore the ship apart and killed everyone on board.
Most appalling of all, the Lupus Rex hadn't even gotten a chance to counterattack, as its turbolaser batteries had a much shorter range, and could not hit the slowly approaching Covenant fleet.
The resulting explosion was visible from the ground, all over Hive Boreas.
"No..."
Elsa was speechless with guilt. Her brother, the Tsar of Snezhnaya and monarch of the Sirius system, the one person she had dedicated her life to protecting and serving, was gone forever. She had failed and dishonored her family, and it was all because she let her brother out of sight, JUST ONE TIME.
She just stood there, too heartbroken to utter a word.
"There's no time to grieve," Wayne told the Throne Warden. "We have to fight an inevitable battle."
And so Anakin gave the order to issue a truly chilling message to the whole hive city (even more chilling than the cold on Hoth...)
"Attention, all personnel and workers: An enemy fleet has been spotted in the heliosphere. This is not a drill."
Within minutes, people were teleporting everywhere and getting to where they needed to be with all manner of sci-fi weaponry in their hands. The immense steel gates of Hive Boreas opened, and a legion of armored vehicles spilled out into the ice plains.
General Anakin Skywalker stood at the forefront of the defensive force, on the back of an All Terrain Tactical Enforcer, ready to grind down his foes in a brutal war of attrition. Standing close at hand were Beidou, Admiral Ackbar and Senin Vant, and many more legendary alien heroes- in the trench network, Neytiri and a group of Na'vi warriors stood steadfast with repeating blasters in hand, while the cyborg Dicktor Van Doomcock and his reprogrammed Separatist combat droids formed a redoubtable phalanx near the secondary gate.
At the same time, Brutus Wayne and Elsa Volkoff oversaw the army assembling aboard the Darkwing dropship, hovering above the hive city's lower layers, and Ahsoka's Jedi transport finally arrived, carrying a cargo of Spartan super-soldiers, including the Master Chief himself and the renowned Team RWBY (from the American anime that had so much potential but ultimately failed and flopped.)
Everyone was here... but unexpectedly, the enemy hadn't shown itself. A deathly silence filled the freezing air as Republic troops stood positioned all around the hive city, a conglomeration so large it could be seen from space.
Then... the icy ground shook violently, the air became alarmingly warm, and the light of Hoth's blue star was blotted out by a tremendous shadow:
The High Charity Battle Fleet.
In mere minutes, planetary turbolaser turrets and the Overlord Titan engaged the attackers, turning 2,000 Covenant ships into piles of charred scrap. But for every naval starship the heavy artillery destroyed, four more would arrive to take its place. And soon enough, the turbolaser batteries were gone, the Overlord Titan fell, and ground forces were deployed.
Swarms of Phantom and Spirit dropships descended from orbit like bioluminescent insects in flight, and drop pods smashed into the Republic battle line, causing grievous casualties. Tick boarding craft complemented the damage by scattering plasma charges and tesla landmines.
All of this is to say, the Covenant struck first and struck hard.
The Republic fought back in earnest, though, and the initial assault hadn't killed any named characters, either.
The endless waves of Grunts, Jackals and Drones were mowed down by Neytiri and her Na'vi soldiers, and Doomcock's destroyer droids, who wielded heavy weapons like repeating blasters, autocannons, heavy bolters, arcane siege staves, and plasma rifles.
"Eat THIS!," Neytiri said while hurling grenades at a nearby squadron of Grunts.
"Fire in all directions!," Elsa screamed, aboard the Darkwing, whose crew answered her request by unleashing a salvo of plasma blasts, laser beams, guided missiles and Gatling cannon shells from 16 different ends.
Lieutenant General Doomcock wielded a modified lightsaber in the swirl of conflict, slashing apart his enemies and crushing Covenant vehicles with psychic blasts. His droids provided a wraparound field of fire, too, making it very difficult for foes to even approach him without being blown to shreds.
Elites, Hunters and Brutes joined the battle, too, alongside a plethora of heavy tanks like Scarabs, Locusts, and Wraiths. But they were met with fierce resistance by General Skywalker, Beidou and Vant, who had dismounted from their assault walker and were leading elite clone troopers into the fray.
Anakin was strong enough with the Force to drag Covenant ships down from orbit and crash them into the distant frozen seas with the force of a small asteroid, while Beidou was using a two-handed lightsaber claymore to decapitate Brutes and Hunters, leaping over their heads in an acrobatic somersault and beheading them in one quick stroke. Ahsoka saw this strategy, and went with copying Beidou.
Vant was spinning his Astral Plane quarterstaff around, the traditional weapon of a Githyanki commando, creating a lethal vortex of searing energy which fried Grunts inside their exoskeletons.
Admiral Ackbar hitched a ride on a heavy battle tank, and plowed through hordes of enemies while telling the crew to lash out with TWENTY BARRELS OF HELL!
And last but not least to arrive at the bloodbath, Master Chief, Ruby Rose, and a cadre of anime UNSC Spartans sprung into action and rained down hell upon the alien zealots with a number of different armaments- Yang's shotgun gauntlets and rocket launcher, John-117's flamethrower, Ruby's sniper cannon, Blake's submachine guns, Coco's rotary cannon, Nora's automatic grenade launcher, and Pyrrha's laser lance.
Everything was mayhem. The Covenant tried to gain an upper edge by utilizing super-heavy siegeworks vehicles like the Kraken, Harvester and Draugr, but even these massive bulwarks could be brought down by a combination of sustained artillery fire, aerial bombardment and mass volley attacks.
As the bloodshed went on, though, things gradually got worse for the Republic forces, which were both outnumbered and outgunned by a 30-1 ratio. Vant and his Astral Plane troops were brutally crushed under the foot of a Scarab, Beidou and Neytiri were forced to retreat aboard a speeder bike, fleeing from Hunters carrying ultra-fast firing assault cannons, Doomcock self-destructed himself and his droids to take out a large portion of the Brutes, Elites and their Engineer escorts, Admiral Ackbar did the same kamikaze move when his tank had nowhere to go, and even Anakin Skywalker himself had to fall back with his men, Ahsoka close behind.
The RWBY Spartans and the Chief teleported out of there and repositioned themselves around the Time Lord laboratory, where they would make a final stand once everyone else was pushed all the way back.
Brutus Wayne dropped down from the Darkwing with his squads of Night Lords in a desperate attempt to stem the tide of adversaries, slashing away with power swords, lances and axes, and firing their volkite death rays point-blank into the mob, but to no avail. Wayne and his Space Marines were cut down one by one, knee-deep in scorched corpses and fighting to the last man.
Elsa gave the signal for the Darkwing to withdraw, too, but she knew she would have to get involved on the ground in the end.
The battle went from a relatively fair match to an all-out massacre as more and more Covenant soldiers arrived, and the Republic units were driven back into the hive city's inner layers, forced to fight in cramped urban areas full of cover, where an enemy could attack from anywhere.
Clones, guardsmen, and other infantrymen were burnt alive standing in their positions by packs of Brutes wielding flamers, volkites and phosphorus blasters, the raging inferno only adding to the carnage.
As the hive city fell, flooded with Covenant armies, there was one last bastion, one last chance for the heroes to make it out alive: The laboratory, where the Time Lord archaeotech was stored. If anything could save Anakin's friends and comrades, it would be the hidden, unknown powers from the past.
"No, not that one! Try the other circuit opening!"
Professor Har Har Bunks and his crew of scientists, alchemists and programmers were in a last-ditch, eleventh-hour attempt to get the primordial artifacts operational. He had no idea what would happen if the tech started running, and had very little idea of how to fix it, so he had to rely on the next closest thing to Time Lord hardware: Current-day Dalek robot parts, for rudimentary repairs.
"This one isn't working either, sir!," a Hutt scientist by the name of Larg said, clearly just as terrified as the rest of his colleagues. The Covenant baddies were getting closer and closer, explosions could be heard in the distance, even though the laboratory was a mile underground, and the only thing that stood between the heroic nerds and a painful death was whatever remained of the Republic's army on the surface.
And worst of all, the whole tinkering process had to be done from scratch, because as we mentioned beforehand, nobody knew how Time Lord technology worked.
Fortunately, the people defending the entrance to the subterranean Time Lord lab were some of the best soldiers fighting for democracy.
"Larg, your hands are too slippery," Bunks told the Hutt. "Anyone else wanna have a go with this thing? Apparently it's called a sonic screwdriver, and it goes into one of these circuit outlets, connected to the Dalek capacitors. I'm not sure which circuit it belongs in, though, or if any of them will work at all."
Then, when the scientists least expected it, the elevator door to the lab opened, and out came the remnants of the Republic's high command: Anakin, Ahsoka, Beidou, Neytiri, the RWBY Spartans, (Ruby and Yang were the only Spartan-2s still standing,) the Master Chief, and Elsa.
"To put it simply, we're out of ammo, almost everyone is dead or wounded, and we're pretty much all that's left of the chain of command," Anakin told Har Har Bunks. "SO WHY HAVEN'T YOU GOTTEN THE LAB PROJECT TO DO ANYTHING YET?! WE'RE GONNA GET BURIED ALIVE IF WE DON'T HAVE A WAY OUT!!!"
"WHY DON'T YOU TRY FIGURING THIS PUZZLE OUT?!," the Gungan shouted back at his Jedi superior, resulting in the two exchanging dirty looks, then resume yelling at each other again, including curses and phrases too profane and outrageous for the Maker to write down.
It seemed as if the survivors of Blizzard Force were doomed, with their last potential hope of escape compromised.
But in spite of that notion, Beidou, the colorful Tau Jedi Knight, had a plan.
"You know, I have a method that can make any machine do what you want it to do, if you're lucky enough," she informed everyone.
"And what would THAT be?," Elsa said back, sarcastically. "Just so you know, we've lost too many good people today for any unnecessary idiotic shenanigans to take place! My brother is gone forever, and so are a lot of our friends, so whatever you do better be worth it!"
Beidou reached into her backpack and pulled out a construction hammer, and began smashing the Dalek capacitor that was connected to the barely understood Time Lord tech, causing quite a racket.
Somehow, through insane troll logic, energy began flowing through the capacitor, and the archaic devices began to hum with energy for the first time in FOREVER (get it? Like the song in Frozen? Never mind.)
Everyone gasped.
"How in the name of the God-Emperor did that even work?," said Ahsoka.
"You can't just smash something with a hammer and expect it to fix anything!," Ruby Rose remarked.
Beidou's answer?
"You see, the Force isn't the only multiverse-level magic system we can harness for good or evil. There is another technique to use the arcane... it's called cartoon physics!"
Neytiri, the stoic Na'vi warrior, just facepalmed at this.
"This is probably the dumbest writing the Maker has ever come up with, but I don't want to keep breaking the 4th wall."
A minute after Beidou's cartoon hammer trick, the air began to fill with sparks and whirring noises, and a small Stargate opened in front of the Time Lord tech cache. This revelation was confusing, because in the current Galactic Republic, Stargate technology was in its infancy. Maybe the Time Lords had much better Stargates?
Turns out this was a travel device after all... but that might have been a mere secondary function, nothing compared to the mechanism's capabilities at its prime, billions of years ago. Would it even be possible to restore the Time Lord relics to their former glory? Was Hive Boreas a huge waste of resources, considering nobody was able to do the latter?
Those questions could wait. Now, it was time to escape to... whatever place was on the other side of this gate.
"There's no going back now," Anakin said. We gotta go through, or die like everyone else who defended this stronghold.
"But we don't even know where the gate will take us!," Yang replied, with Ruby shaking her head. "And if we leave, the Covenant will get their filthy hands, claws and tentacles on these priceless primordial relics!"
"Does it look like we've got any other options?," Ahsoka told Yang and Ruby. "We lost this battle. But we can't lose the war. We must flee to fight another day."
The group universally agreed on this notion.
And so, without hesitating, the heroes of Blizzard Force stepped into the ancient Stargate... and their destination was indeed beyond anything they expected.
When Anakin opened his eyes, he saw him and his companions at the top of a cliff, with an alien jungle behind him and a blue gas giant in the sky. Presumably, they had come to a tropical habitable moon of some sort.
But what really caught the party's attention was what was at the bottom of the cliff: An army consisting of both clone troopers and battle droids, plus vehicles, marching in perfect sync.
They weren't fighting each other, they were working together instead! When did this alliance happen?
Anakin was the most shocked of all, being a Jedi.
"What the hell...?"
Why were Republic soldiers marching alongside Confederate droids? What was the galaxy coming to?
Anakin Skywalker and his intrepid crew will have to find out!
END OF EPISODE 3
...Just kidding. There's one more issue I forgot to address, that the party will soon take notice of:
When Har Har Bunks and the Blizzard Force scientists tried following Anakin and friends through the Stargate, the damn thing shut off!
"Skywalker! Can you hear me? We can't get through!"
No response came.
So the poor Gungan researcher and his fellow nerds were stranded underground, waiting for their imminent death... and that's when the Covenant beamed them up with a teleportation ray that penetrated a mile of solid ice, capturing the Republic scientists as prisoners of war.
Soon enough, a Covenant ship extracted the entirety of the laboratory's contents from the smoldering ruins of Hive Boreas, and it was off to deliver it to the tyrant god of necromancy, the arch-lich who had manipulated the Prophets into invading Hoth.
This catastrophe was all Vecna's doing- not to mention it one of the Galactic Republic's most disastrous defeats. And what's worse, the Covenant is just one of many pawns in his game, his task to revive his Master.
The crossroads of fate meet in the next episode:
Anakin has to find out where he is stranded and why the Confederacy has stopped fighting with the Republic, Har Har Bunks will have to endure loads of torture at the hands of the zealots who took him captive, and the first signs of a diabolical intergalactic conspiracy will be revealed.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Upcoming content:
Episode 4: Welcome To The Jungle
World: Pandora (from James Cameron's Avatar)
Lore Chapters:
Kasmari Assembly Forges: Building the ULTIMATE space navy
Adventurer's Guild: Exploring the multiverse with Dungeons and Dragons characters
Stormbird Dropships: The Millennium Falcon on steroids
