Episode 6: The Green Tide
Chapter 4: Up Your Arsenal
Right where we left off, Anakin and his new friends met a talking sea otter, named Monty Oum, (after the famous animator who created RWBY, who passed away in 2015,) claiming to be one of the last descendants of a primordial nation that existed alongside the Time Lords. He wanted to gain an audience with the Galactic Republic to give its heroes and champions some vital information on what they were really up against, and gather a team of said heroes for the purpose of ending the multiverse war, once and for all, by gathering all the lost relics the Time Lords had built.
Monty also explained that there was a mastermind behind everything, Lord Vecna, and the colossal conflict engulfing the Republic was just a microcosm of a bigger scheme hatched by the dark god of necromancy, whose ultimate goal was to unleash a Lovecraftian eldritch abomination upon the realms.
Astutely predicting that the wise otter might know something about what happened to all the people living in Tertius, Anakin hands him a jar of spore gas sampled from the mysteriously emptied ruins of that densely packed interplanetary settlement.
With shock and horror, Monty confirms that the spore gas is a fungal bioweapon made by Vecna, and that the Dark Lord was using it alongside the countless billions of harvested bodies from Tertius to build an army, specifically by infecting and mutating the living cells of the captives (who were still alive while this was happening to them.)
The otter wizard then panics, and even claims that Vecna's new army might be heading right this way, towards the Forge World of Gordasha.
Then, just when things couldn't get any worse, a moon-sized version of the Obelisk of Odium from Pandora suddenly appears in orbit, and immediately begins summoning onrushing waves of attack ships and landing craft, confirming Monty's claims, and making it seem like creation itself is trying to curse the Galactic Republic.
With the rhythmic thumping sound of boarding pods slamming into Randland Station's steel hull came the subsequent, unmistakable noise of guttural roars and stereotypical British football hooligan accents!
Author's footnote: By this point, you can probably guess why this whole episode is called "The Green Tide." Let's all shout "WAAAGH!"
Some key information for the readers:
All Republic space stations have stasis fields around their exterior that keeps the vacuum of space from getting in, even during a breach. However, the stasis fields can be compromised, should an attacking force damage a station's main power generator...
And with all that out of the way...
The Siege of Gordasha begins!
Everyone looked at Monty when the chaos started to unfold.
"Don't expect good answers from me! You're supposed to be the real badasses and fighters here, not me. I'm just a diplomat, informant and a researcher in the fields of magic."
Then the leadership job fell to Anakin.
"You're the Jedi here, what would you have us do?," Sidon asked.
"Let's head to the armory first, and gear up. Then we go to the hangar, because it's the most heavily defended part of the station, and most likely, all the other people on board here will be trying to launch squads of piloted fighters and gunships into space to begin a counterattack. I'm also assuming the station's weapons will probably be automated, so we don't have to worry about personnel risking their lives further by directly manning the gun batteries."
"The last thing I'll point out is that if shit hits the fan, being in the hangar will hopefully let us take off and escape in some sort of vessel before the orbital complex is overrun or goes kaboom."
Anakin admitted he wasn't the best tactician, even with lessons from Obi-Wan, but right now, everyone was counting on him. So they agreed to follow this initial plan, especially since there wasn't a better option at the moment.
But right before the party could head to the armory and join the rest of Randland Station's crew in the hangar bay, a huge hole appeared in the walls of the command center room they were in, smashed open by a seismic hammer, and four big, burly green berserkers with heavy melee weapons jumped inside.
Keyleth sighed in exasperation.
"It's a mob of Orks, what a surprise. Of course Vecna would turn people beyond count into Orks. They have no respect for nature, even when compared to everyone else."
The four Greenskins howled at the top of their lungs and charged, but Keyleth used her Druid staff to fire off a shotgun blast of poisonous plant projectiles, killing the Orks by destroying the nutrient-distributing spores and blood cells in their circulatory systems. In other words, she completely deprived them of oxygen in their bodily fluids, making them keel over and die instantly.
"Let's head to the armory and lock n' load before things get ugly," Ziggs suggested. The others agreed to do this task wholeheartedly.
After entering the secret password to the weapons storage room (Ziggs set it to be 12-INCH P3NIS, because WHO WOULD honestly guess a password like that?,) Thianna threw the heavy door open with a loud crash, and the gang went inside to take whatever they needed for the inevitable full-blown Orkish assault on Randland Station.
It was readily apparent that the station's staff and crew had already taken weapons from the vault, because numerous stowage sections, racks and containers were completely empty. There was still plenty of firepower to go around, though, and everyone correctly assumed that the Orks would try to gain access to the arsenal, so destroying it later was a key necessity.
Time was ticking, and the green menace was beginning to gain momentum, slowly chipping away at the defenses while their numbers grew steadily.
One wall in the vault had three rows of heavy blaster rifles- BlasTech Industries A280s, around forty to fifty in all. Sidon put on a robotic harness he found, with eight strong, clawed tentacle arms made of vibranium, and grabbed eight of the blasters, holding one in each limb, while his signature magic trident remained in the grip of his actual hands.
"Look, I'm Doctor Octorok! See my new set of arms?"
"Quit goofing around, Sidon," Anakin said. "We got some serious business to take care of." The Jedi prodigy had gone full commando, taking an E-11 blaster submachine gun, two DL-44 heavy blaster pistols (the same kind of pistol Han Solo used,) a bandolier with 6 grenades, one of each type, ranging from incendiary, cryo, fragmentation, heavy gravity, plasma, and EMP, two belts of blaster power cells, and a thermite flamethrower, both of which he slung over his back. Last but not least, he still had his trademark blue lightsaber attached to his belt.
The opposite wall was a grocery store of carnage and annihilation, anything a soldier of fortune could possibly dream of. Blasters, slug-thrower rifles, machine guns, missile and grenade launchers, Dust-powered magic guns, weaponized wands, dozens of different kinds of grenades, land mines, four varieties of flamethrowers each with a specific chemical effect, various calibers of Gatling guns, assorted melee weapons, including primitive, fantastical and futuristic patterns, even a portal gun.
Unsurprisingly, Thianna was ecstatic just looking at it all, like a kid in a candy store. She browsed the aisles and found herself a rotary laser cannon, then came across something better:
"Check this out. It's a Variable Weapons System. The kind of technology they put in Mega Man Power Armor, that lets you carry more than 25 weapons at once without being weighed down."
She slung the VWS backpack over her broad shoulders, stuffed it with 30 different big guns, then helped the rest of her fellows arm themselves.
Thianna gave Keyleth a disposable belt that had seven wands attached to it, an asset which would be able to channel a great deal of destructive sorcery. The half-elf druid also took a few flame chomper grenades and a zapper shock pistol as backup weapons for her staff and spellcasting abilities.
Ziggs crammed a huge backpack full of all sorts of specialty explosives, and brandished two oversized pistols that could chuck grenades using a belt feed linked to said backpack. He also had three powerful anti-tank land mines attached to his fuzzy chest armor, which he could lob and detonate with a voice command.
Monty and Noelle both held portable devices that could build many kinds of battlefield tools, ammunition and armaments out of nanobots, primarily for the use of construction and utility but also for intense combat situations as well. If you could imagine an object, the nanobots would attempt to build it, provided there were enough of them.
And of course, the otter diplomat and the shieldmaiden carried backup equipment as well, including blaster pistols, smoke grenades and explosive gel sprayers. Noelle had her signature two-handed chainsword sheathed for action too, and she desperately hoped that her Battlemech was still intact inside the vehicle barracks, since it could be a useful asset.
Following this, Monty set up a simple, timed explosive charge to destroy whatever else remained inside the armory, preventing any possibility of the invaders getting handheld super-weapons.
After loading everything up, the only thing left to do was to RIP AND TEAR, and perform a hero's duty.
At what cost, though?
After sprinting through a dozen corridors and hurrying to the nearest teleportation facility, Anakin and company joined tens of thousands of Republic troops huddling behind a large armored barricade, guns sticking out of every crevice, who were waiting for the Orks to begin pouring into the station in their teeming hordes. The purpose of this barricade was to hold back the approaching Greenskins long enough for a force of 200 starfighters (including X-Wings, Y-Wings, A-Wings, B-Wings, V-Wings AND K-Wings) to take off and engage in an orbital dogfight.
The roaring and growling noises from the breach in Randland Station's fortified hull grew louder and louder, indicating that the Orks were beginning to make their way on board in unprecedented numbers. The defenders tensed themselves up for a fight.
Then, with terrifying finality, the closed entrance gates to the hangar crumbled to rubble, and a tide of Greenskin warriors came forth, eager for slaughter!
The battle continues for the next few chapters, in this epic crossover climax...
