Flak buffeted the Reverent's lower deflectors, explosions reverberating through the ship's hull. Some men stumbled, but others kept in stride as klaxons signaling incoming fire blared through passageways.
The hangar bay, a mess of scrambling pilots, mechanics, and blaster-clutching troopers, prepared to land on Geonosis. Windu's 187th Battalion loaded assets into LAAT gunships and other drop transportations designed to land their support vehicles and light reconnaissance craft. 53, fully kitted in his ARC armor, shuffled into the bay of LAAT-14759 side by side with Lightning Squad. Sergeant Zulu repeatedly buddy-checked each ARF trooper as their assault neared initiation.
Shortly, they'd disembark and soar through low atmo to Point Hail and make landing on a ridgeline overlooking their objectives. Inside 53's visor, a holographic display indicated his vitals, munition count, communications status, squad status, platoon status, and proximity radar. Unlike the standard CT-unit kit, ARC troopers utilized extensively modified software to display and toggle all their systems through a hardware-reinforced bucket.
His being no different.
With a tongue-click-toggle, most of the display winked away, and 53 brought up the mission layout on the right side of his HUD. As arranged, the combined element was to land at Point Hail, establish a FOB, and advance under allied artillery cover to the three objectives simultaneously. Recent scans pinged below the report - a twenty percent uptick in hostile forces. Grand.
"Sixty seconds to zero time."
A calm, collected clone's voice streamed through the ship's intercom. 53 scanned his left-forearm mounted datapad. Slews of numerical and topographical data from The Reverent's most recent surface scan met his eyes. Despite the advantages he boasted in-helmet, a manual option of cycling through his functions became necessary. During ARC training, he recounted only five times his gear functioned fully to begin.
And only once the whole way through.
Like any clone, a toggle pad existed over his right forearm, and the ARC's helmet still utilized external controls. 53 surveyed Lightning Squad as Sergeant Zulu continued browsing his men. Stak and Razor hovered by the port door, while Zulu stood just by the pilot access. Their port access sealed shut, and with the LAAT's preflights already done, its engines elevated to a steady groan amongst the buzzing hangar.
Light and dust fragments billowed at the bay's center through the begrudgingly opening hatch doors.
Each ARF, like himself, toted customized gear. He noted the popularity of paratrooper rigs popularized by the Mudjumpers from Mimiban and those in the worsening engagements of Fallucia. Detonators, imploders, plasma packs, tibanna cartridges, bot-poppers, breaching charges, and a few RPS rocket systems spotted the troopers' gear. The DC-15A carbine's popularity didn't elude 53's notice, nor did the occasional DP-23 shotgun.
Built for close-quarters combat and robust function, it mimicked the DC-15A only in silhouette. Additional reinforcement ribbing lined the barrel, an adjustable stock with three positions, and a fixed wedge-like grip sat beneath the barrel housing. Like most BlasTech arms, the DP-23 utilized rudimentary iron sights and HUD-linked reticles for aiming. Specialized for room clearing. Great in use against terrorists or other unsavory things. These bugs'll get their fill.
It focused plasma and tibanna similarly to most blasters, the prime difference being it separated the charged bolt into multiple smaller pellets like a scattergun. Through an internal dial, an operator could scale the pellet count from 4 to 18. The power output would decrease accordingly, or the user could scale the power to max, depleting the plasma cartridge much faster.
The DP-23's edge above other particle and projectile shotguns lay in its adjustable choke. One could manipulate the cone of fire by adjusting a nut at the muzzle. 53's favorite setting - dubbed the duckbill - tightened the pellets into a narrow array of particle blasts capable of cleaving rooms of opponents and debris in half at maxed output. The user could adjust the option to spread vertically, but the GAR scarcely used this function.
At max output, one had to manually cycle open the action to momentarily vent accumulated heat, much like a traditional pump gun. Like those firearms, the capacity limited itself to a shockingly low amount. With max pellet count and power, the DP-23 fired eight shots per plasma pack and thirty-two per tibanna cartridge.
So, as 53 scanned those three troopers who carried them, he spotted numerous munitions. Charge packs, tibanna cartridges, detonators, imploders. They're prepared for this. As expected.
LAAT-14759's port door hissed open, and General Windu slinked inside, the access shutting moments after. Before Sergeant Zulu could put the men at attention, Windu waved a hand to them.
"At ease, troopers. I've come to inform you that Lightning will lead the way once we're planetside. In the front, with you to help clear the way."
Stak and Razor shuffled before the rest, their visages slinking between the flurry of orange-yellow flecked armor, identifying stripes of purple down their shoulders and helmets. Windu offered both a nod, and they reciprocated.
"It'll be one hell of a fight, sir," Stak said, gesticulating his blaster without flagging anyone. Windu nodded, his vision glancing between each trooper, ending on the Alpha. "That it will."
Each clone steadily returned to their pre-fight hubbub - chiding about kill counts, checking gear, hyping each other up, or standing solemnly as they mentally prepared themselves for the coming fight. Some even performed little rituals, signs, or other things they'd picked up in conflict. Windu ambled beside 53, who gave the General two feet of extra space to wiggle.
53 bumped into an ARF trooper with X patterns painted over his torso and helmet in Windu purple. Jag, 53 noted, eying the DP-23 in his arms, glanced sidelong from behind his helmet, and returned to his brooding ritual.
"Zero time."
53 straightened and instinctively snatched a dangling support handle. The LAAT cleared the deck and hovered towards the access and flight crew, sorting the mess of troop and vehicle transports sloughing to the breach.
"Troopers of the one-eighty-seventh," a voice identifiable as Rear Admiral Manis, clipped and posh, reverberated through the intercom. He broadcasted directly from Unyielding, "May your skill and tenacity prevail through coming hardships. We depend on your courage to secure this system. For the Republic!"
Anxious flight hands synchronously waved their batons towards the open breach. The grav-chained line of vehicles preparing to launch, a long line of LAAT variants, gunships, and the occasional bomber linked by pseudo-tractor beam signals that instantly and rhythmically lurched each craft forward to the maw.
A pit of anxiety welled in 53's gut as he opened an external feed within his visor's upper left corner.
Their speed picked up, piercing the sky, slingshotting through bay doors in a flash, and screaming into the low-Geonosis atmosphere. Sand and gusts buffeted the gunship as their pilot gained stick control, swerving around a burning fuselage pockmarked by flaming holes.
A nearby explosion rocked the vehicle's port side, peppering its exterior with shrapnel and concussion waves. One soldier flew into the bulkhead, and others jerked him up - Catch. We'll need his demo work. Don't get whacked so early.
53 watched their pilots steer around another cluster of flak and AA missiles streaming to the 187th vehicles. He turned to Windu, who stood silently, eyes closed and focused on the beyond. What are you on, Jedi? We'll find out soon enough. 53's train of thought shattered, the LAAT jerking as salvos of streaking red lasers severed one of their ball turrets, the polycarbonate battery erupting in blue-red fire and spattering shrapnel across the LAAT's hull.
The opposite turret, manned by a gunnery trooper, swiveled to the surface and opened fire with its concentrated beam cannon. Air defense, aren't you? He guessed correctly, the gunner knifing a beam through a trio of blue homing missiles swiveling towards their gunship.
53 toggled the other external cameras down his left HUD.
The Unyielding and Prosecutor spewed landing ships with much heavier ordnance across the skies. While a flurry of troop and light vehicle transports faced forward flak, weightier carriers with Juggernauts and SPHA-Ts lingered far behind.
A ground-mounted AA turbo laser knifed through a HAVw-A6's center fuselage and exploded through the transport vehicle's spine. Both tumbled apart as secondary explosions erupted across their surfaces. Soldiers spilled from the maw into the rustic barrens below. One homing missile skipped across an SPHA-T's side armor and exploded against a retaining yoke. The gargantuan command and artillery center sagged aft, skewing the carrier's flight path and tailspinning to the surface. Tiny white and black flecks ricocheted within the transparisteel viewport.
Wouldn't want to be them.
Other craft slithered through the formation - light attack fighters and bombers on strafing missions to hit the ground hard as an initial pounding and escort whatever possible. In the distance, sleek Geonosian craft and Droid fighters zipped towards them in loose formations with cannons and missiles blazing. Their orb battery swiveled to aim, ripping a neon-green beam through a Geonosian's fuselage and halving the fighter. One half spun into the rocky abyss, the other clipped a droid fighter and exploded blue-white among intense flak and particle fire streams.
53 tightened his grip as the LAAT dove at a near seventy-five-degree angle, the hasty jolt nearly pulling troopers off their feet. A missile side-winded inches off their hull and exploded several feet behind. Shrapnel gouged their aft compartment in a salvo of high-pitched pings and bangs.
"Stand by for evasive maneuvers!" The pilot, CT-287 'Noser' came through comms, "We're coming in hot!"
A salvo of red bolts shimmied, some grazing their hull with showers of sparks and fragments. Noser triggered an array of flares and worked the stick right, dodging an incoming sleek, black seppie craft as the ball gunner sliced it in two. The shpew-woosh sound of proton missiles slipping from rotary housings ripped through the audio receivers paired with the LAAT's autocannons raining fire into incoming craft.
Other gunship pilots did the same while light attack vessels slithered into enemy formations and started tallying kills. As gargantuan waves of Repub and Seppie forces clashed, collisions, particle fire, and missiles zipped between fighters and decimated durasteel compartments in seconds. A combined flak shell and Geonosian strafe brought down a squad from Maelstrom Platoon - a fellow 9th Company unit - their LAAT opening up as sun-hot bolts flash-cooked the occupants, blasting fragments of man and machine into the chaos.
Noser jerked the sticks again, slipping by an array of flak, which struck another LAAT on the nose. The flurry of landing ships bucked violently, gunning straight for the ground through the refuse.
Did we overshoot the landing?
Cycling to the only lower camera, he combined its view with the nose cam and shook his head. They dove straight for the landing zone. Noser dipped their angle hard, and many other craft did the same. Several carrying vehicles were already at descent, having hung back far enough to see their oversight.
Blast, we're coming right on top of it!
The SPHA-T carrier, which initially incurred damages, now cordially began its final hundred feet flanked by two of its escort LAATs on the landing zone - identifiable by their silvers over an orange landscape. 53's guts flew in his chest as Noser twisted their craft around another flurry of bolts.
He angled to Windu, who stood passively among the chaos. Several of Zulu's troopers were stunned into silence, clenching their gear and emergency support handles with vice grips.
Just as the initial landing armor group, flanked left by the 13th's party and right by the 187th's, made their headway onto the ground, a Geonosian fighter strafed the LAAT's side. The shields held for two rapid-fire shots, the third, fourth, and fifth knifing into the hull with crimson brilliance. One pummeled the cockpit, a second the starboard bay door, and the third nailed their wing missile compartment.
A red laser sheared into the upper compartment, opening a two-foot hole through the door and carving through overhead plating and electronics. The remaining energy bled into durasteel supports holding half of the shock handles. Five troopers suddenly spiraled to the cockpit access as smoke rapidly pooled into and funneled out the compartment.
Noser shrieked unintelligibly as the LAAT began a tailspin toward the surface. Lighting's collective men rolled around the chamber - 53 smashing directly into Stak as he tumbled about - a glancing blow from Separatist homing missiles mantling them in a concussive blast.
Windu snatched onto a roof support - suddenly visually aware and animated - glancing to the pilot's seat.
"Noser! Noser, do you copy?"
His voice, calm above the maelstrom, didn't break noticeably higher than the panicked shouts of Lightning Squad. Many of the troops now clung to spare wires or outcroppings. One clone bore black blast markings from the laser, and another had burns crossing his left hand. He screamed for several seconds as their doc worked however possible in the freefall. Catch floated unconscious by the pilot's access.
"Noser, sir! Copilot's dead! Ball guns one and two destroyed! Starboard wing is gone! I - I just barely got her under control! Can't stop the momentum!"
Windu placidly nodded.
"Tell me when we reach two hundred feet!"
"Yes, sir!"
Bile threatened to work itself from 53's throat into his mouth. Clutching the rumbling supports and knocking against other clones still didn't bode well with him, especially after their tirade of events. Windu, calm-faceted, released his holds and steadied dark fingertips together.
53 felt that bile work itself back into his stomach. A relief worked his nerves, and Lightning Squad's jittery, near-panicked mannerisms slowly began to subside. Catch began to stir, his helmet swiveling side to side. Sergeant Zulu snagged the trooper and helped him up.
Noser broke into comms, screaming,
"Two hundred feet!"
The Jedi General's eyes flashed open, and a jolt of concentration weaved creases across his chocolate skin. A noise akin to grunting escaped Windu as his palms then closed. The LAAT's descent began to slow - jittery and janky at first - then steadily decreasing to a controlled descent. Within moments, they landed on the surface, with a brief rapport of cheers from Lightning Squad.
Windu exhaled sharply, kneeling as nausea swept through him. Windu raised his head as the port side access hissed open. Noser clambered from his seat as Lightning filed out, DC-15A in hand.
"Sir! Weapons are about to overload!"
Windu nodded, grabbing hold of Catch and bolting from the wrecked transport. 53 and Noser caught his stride, following Zulu as he zig-zagged between a series of rocks, diving behind a tall grouping of rocky protrusions. Lightning followed suit.
Arriving at their cover, Windu laid Catch beside 53 and Noser. Mace stood to face the burning LAAT hulk and extended his hands. The craft began to levitate, weapons whining as internal fires gradually cooked off its plasma batteries and missiles. A shimmering bubble cordoned the expanding plasma and neon-hued energy around the LAAT's hull.
Windu swung his arms to the rocky sea, the LAAT hurtling into its endless brown plains and erupting in hemispheric cataclysmia over the canyon.
"Damn! Close call there, Sir!" Stak called over the carnage. Windu nodded, crouching behind the cover and absorbing their surroundings.
53 currently worked over the trooper, his CT number matching the name Bith, with a missing hand as Noser removed his helmet, the pilot's snouted bucket giving way to the clone's wide-eyed expression and crooked nose, sweat shimmering beneath a not-so-recent buzz cut. Zulu squared his men away by fire team, with Catch slowly coming to and under examination by Ward, the squad medic, with red crosses streaking his kneepads and a red circle on his torso. Stak and Jag took positions just right of their rock formation, facing east as Razor and West sprinted into the accumulating Republic landing force.
Zulu crouch-walked to Windu.
"Sir! Most of our leadership made the landing. Ponds, Bulkhead, and Kali are in our center knot of vehicles. Comms went down just before we could get a sitrep, and Seppies're jammin' our airspace! I sent Razor and West to get the word out you're on-ground to Ponds! Catch is severely concussed, and Bith's lost his left hand!"
"Damn," Windu bitterly grunted, then sat straight, "Looks like we'll find out ourselves." Without hesitation, he indicated The Alpha and Stak, "Five-Three, Stak, you two come with me. We will figure out what the droids are doing in that canyon. Sergeant, stand by for that word-of-mouth."
Without waiting, Windu took off between Jag and a large, destroyed boulder. 53 glanced to Zulu - who shrugged - and quickly loped behind the Jedi. Stak followed ARC-53 into the hazy dust storm.
Kneading between landed vehicles and pods of troopers, Windu led them around a two-legged, toppled, and burning AT-AP towards a line of partially dug-in AT-STs and sniper tanks, a gaggle of combat engineers digging embankments, placing quick-deploy cover, and shucking munitions towards the vehicles. Disembarked troopers wove hand signals and shouted as discharges of high-velocity plasma, dumb-fire missiles, and autocannons roared in the maelstrom of warfare.
As Windu approached an AT-ST with "Bogman" scrawled on its rust-colored hull, a red particle bolt glanced off the side glacis plate, ricocheting with a loud thwong. A soldier flinched, another didn't, then an observer with his helmet off and binoculars in hand waved down Windu. His blueish markings indicated he was a member of the 504th.
Armor troops. They'll know something.
The trio dipped into the embankment, face to face with a grinning trooper whose soul patch and mischievous eyes locked on.
"Sir! Glad you made it!"
"Likewise, trooper, that's the situation?"
"Come here and see, sir! It's a helluva change from the op brief!"
The unnamed soldier handed his binoculars to Windu as the limber Jedi moved beside him. Scanning the battlefield, he didn't react to 53 and Stak doing the same thing.
"That wasn't in the brief," Stak mused.
53 scoffed, "No skragg."
A fourth and fifth line of trenches, an additional forward gunnery position, and lines of makeshift gun holes and embedded tanks lined the valley in digital patterns. Dozens of the emplacements fired sporadic barrages of crimson bolts and smoke-trailing missiles up into Windu's landing force. The gargantuan comms tower held a patrolling party of armor sweeping its basin and a line of light assault craft - including STAPS and IG-177 Hailfires - protecting its premises.
Windu shook his head, handing the binoculars back to the trooper.
"What's your rank and name, trooper?"
"Corporal Deneb, sir," he said, looping the device around his neck.
"Corporal, give me some definite details about what's happening."
Deneb ran a hand through his combed hair, then fingered the direction Windu's team came from.
"Back there's where the General and Commander are setting up the command center. Only one of the mobile turbolasers made the landing, with four turbo tanks - one which's un-operable. Right before comms cut, we got a UHF transmission stating we're about ten mikes out from bein' hit by Seppie armor, and lots more than we first thought."
"How much?"
Deneb shrugged, "No clue, sir. I didn't receive the finer details." Windu jerked his thumb to Bogman, "Anyone in there know?" The soldier shook his head.
"Sir," 53 inquired, Stak flinching as an assault tank down the line got eviscerated by a Hellfire missile, erupting in blue-yellow flames, "We should get to that command center and sort this mess out."
"Let's do that."
Without another word, Windu waved a hand and bolted toward the central gaggle, his figure disappearing in the whirlwind. Stak followed instantly, while 53 suppressed a sigh and nodded to Deneb, following them into the blizzard of sand and flashing lasers.
This one is short, huh? Made solely to introduce the chaos of landing, I set up the next stakes of this offensive - the comeuppance and suspense of combat on Geonosis. If this doesn't paint the chaos I hoped to imbue in my iteration of "Landing at Point Rain", and believed to have done so successfully. Gonna stick the landing in the next scenes of high-stakes consequences of this botched landing and the combat afterward.
Enjoy! More to come.
-MontyTheMemeMan