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tiend · 5 years

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rats in a trap

“Osik,” said Banjax viciously, cutting in on the command channel. “Hagfish, bogey check.”

The new icon flashed amber on her helmet’s map overlay. Banjax was down with the rest of the clone commanders on the valley floor, running ops for their combined forces from a makeshift HQ. Morwen, more of a heavy hitter than a strategic thinker, had taken a squad up the eastern side to hunt out droid sniper nests.

She dropped behind cover, signalling to the troopers behind her: get down, stay, wait in position, and crawled out until she could match the map icon with the terrain. The air was clear enough for her to easily make out Banjax’s contact; a gun line of AAT-1s, hulls tucked just behind the opposite ridgeline.

“Banjax, visual tally eight Seppie Alpha Alpha Tango One.” Seppie artillery was not what they needed. General Umbattzo had pulled their gunships to help Njime’s 459th and 263rd evac, and they didn’t have anything else left that would put a dent in the AAT-1s unless someone could get close enough to drop a grenade down the hatch.

“Hagfish, copy eight Seppie Alpha Alpha Tango One Charlie Foxtrot.” Morwen snorted. Clones used Charlie Foxtrot for clusterfuck on comms, and she’d heard it plenty since they’d gotten boots on the ground. On the strategy table, they had been one half of a classic pincer movement, sweeping the Sep forces in front of them until they met up with Njime’s task force and pushed the enemy right to the coastline and the capital city. But the green welcome of the plains concealed a disastrous maze of ditches and minefields. Their advance had lost momentum, stalling until the sheer weight of B1s had pushed them back, up the valley until it had narrowed to a front the clones could hold. Njime’s battalions hadn’t been as lucky, and had taken the brunt of the Sep counterattack - but their successful evac meant there’d be a lot of enemy forces headed this way. This was only the first.

LAAT/i turnaround had better be soon, or the GAR were going to get plastered right into the bedrock. As it was, they were amber or orange on everything except water; and the casualty list was growing by the hour. One of the Seppie gun commanders stood out from the rest, and she dialed in her visuals a little tighter.

“Banjax, visual on a super tac, say again, I have a visual on a Sierra Tango Alpha Charlie.”

“Hagfish, acknowledged.” That explained why they’d bounced off the Sep defences so hard. A super tactical droid with time, processing power, and plenty of B1s to order around - no wonder the plains had been such a nightmare. It must have been gloating, if a droid could gloat. With Njime’s task force in full retreat, it dared to take a ringside seat. Justifiably; the gun line was protected by the steep slope of western side of the valley, loose scree topped by sheer cliffs to the summit of the ridgeline. Only a Jedi could hope to get up there, and even a Jedi might have difficulty with the remaining droid snipers and rocket teams nested on the eastern wall.

It was likely the super-tac didn’t know she was a Jedi. Yet. She’d spent the last sleepless week shoring up their defences or reinforcing weak points in the line. In her limited downtime she’d been in the wards, forcing her meditation bubble outwards to give the wounded a respite from the pain and worry. Nothing that needed her to wave a lightsaber and look heroic.

Morwen checked the HEIAP rounds left in her flechette pistol - they burned right through droid armour and kept burning, very useful and possibly a war crime - and flicked handsign behind her; a request for Gibs to come up.

The clone sergeant settled in beside her with a soft crunch of loose stone; her goodbye was brief, and silent. Super tac across the valley. Give me your grenades. Get down behind our lines as soon as I blow cover. It’s been an honour.

He would be fine; Gibs had been at Geonosis, and was unshakeable as the bedrock they were sheltering behind. She opened the command channel.

“Banjax, I’m going for the super tac and the battery.”

“The fuck?” said Banjax, as nonplussed as she’d ever heard him.

“Super-tac will be bringing up everything it can. Valley is going to go from kinetic to killbox.” She could see it happening in her mind’s eye, the droid commander’s presence was the first in a cascade of events that meant death for the thousands of men below. Without its presence to drive the B1s forward, they might have a chance. ”ETA from our homers?”

“No joy. Hagfish. Fuck.”

“If you have a better idea, now’s the time,” she said. “If it’s confident enough to show up and watch...” Casualties weren’t as bad as they could be. The wounded were, so far, under cover, otherwise hypothermia would start picking off what the Seps didn’t.

“I don’t,” Banjax said. “Sith fuck it all, I don’t. We’ll try and keep them off you. Force be - see you on the other side.”

“Copy that. Much appreciated, Banjax,” said Morwen. “If I, if. Banjax. Roach. Heron. Everyone. Tell them. It’s been an honour.” Her throat ached.

If her exoskeletal rig had to take most of her weight for the first few steps downslope, she got her legs under her just as the Force chose to swamp her. Distant clarity told her to turn there, and pause now, two steps left, sprinting erratically across the valley floor, jumping her own troops to run into no-man’s-land. There was a way up; she knew it as surely as she knew the steps of this invisible labyrinth.

Stop here, wait, wait, go, and the sniper’s bolt missed, searing past her a bare handwidth away. She dropped to the loose stones of the valley floor, crawled behind a low berm left by the spring floods, and bolted from it just as the first mortar round came in, rolling under the explosion, the chips of stone pinging as they ricocheted off her armour. Morwen hit the scree fast and sideways, leaping in zig-zags, and using the Force to hold it in place as she climbed. No point in burying her troops in a rockslide. Rounds from droids pocked the slope around her as she worked her way up. The rock shards stung, but it didn’t matter as long as she could keep moving.

The super tac had been watching, because a mass of B1s opened up as soon as she cleared the cliff-top. Morwen Force-pushed herself all the way across the flat top of the ridgeline and off the other side, jamming her gauntlet’s vibroblade into the rock to brake her fall. Her shoulder cracked, and she scrabbled for whatever toeholds she could to take the weight off that arm. Half-dangling, she dropped her awareness into the rock, but it was seamless granite. Not much she could do with that; no fracture lines for her to break open. Concussions tolled through the stone and her Force sense as the AAT-1s fired. She lost her grip, sliding, and had to brace urgent. Half-dizzy, she felt B1s coming, their metal footsteps pattering on the stone like rain on a roof. They needed to be winnowed down, quickly, before she was overrun.

“I would suck Dooku off for some grenades right now,” she muttered to the inside of her helmet. The B1s sounded nicely bunched up, but Gibs had only had a couple of droid poppers, and she needed to save those for droidekas. Morwen switched on her lightsaber. They knew where she was, and it’d be a pleasure to let the super-tac learn what she was.

She went over the top, back onto the small platform of stone, yanking the pistol from its holster so quickly she narrowly avoided stabbing herself in the thigh as the vibroblade retracted. The droids in front were cut down with a sweeping backswing, and she scrambled sideways, using a Force-push to knock their flank into the middle. She fired into the clump, and closed the distance as the HEIAP rounds burned through their armour, gutting them with efficient strokes until they were all down. She pivoted, and threw herself into the shadow of the AAT-1 at the end of the line, using the side as cover. Couple of decent tags, not that much blood really, rig mostly nominal. Good to go. No droidekas yet. She carved a deep notch in the barrel with her lightsaber; hopefully it’d blow itself up with the next round. She vaulted the AAT-1, launching herself at the super tac. It was still standing in the open hatch, E-5 out and pointing the wrong way, seemingly stupefied. Morwen landed and shot its centre of mass to give it something to think about while she climbed the tank. It was slow, so slow; she barely nudged it with her lightsaber before it fell into smoking pieces. She rolled off its tank, and half ducked, half fell off the ridgeline into the fold of a crevasse again, out of sight for the moment.

“Banjax, hard kill on that super tac. Two guns down. Looks like they built a ramp up. Could get some walkers to keep me company. I’ll tag the path.” Would’ve been nice to hear the gunships about now.

“Copy that, Hagfish. Acknowledge pics. Are you - sitrep.”

“Couple of dents, it’ll buff out. Going for the rest of the guns now. Hagfish out.”

She drifted over to the next AAT-1 and eviscerated it neatly; the other gun crews unbuttoned to fire on her. As long as they weren’t hitting the valley she didn’t give a fuck; her armour would have to handle what she couldn’t deflect. Five left, and something like a cloud of insect stings burnt down her side. Morwen dropped the popper into the main hatch, shoved the hatch shut, and yanked the other one out with the Force, smashed it into the rock, and cut its head off.

The world carried her sideways, and crushed her down. Blinking and dazed, she forced herself to focus. Lightsaber. She hadn’t accidentally amputated something. Good. She was still holding the hilt, fingers locked around it so tight they were cramping. Morwen tried to push herself to her knees, and failed. Red lights blinked in her helmet display; her exoskeletal rig was twisted and useless on the right, hip to ankle. She cut it free, armour plates falling away, and staggered to her feet, lurching with the unbalanced weight. The barrel. Of the first gun. The round had cooked off in the chamber. She’d forgotten. Concussion. Careless.

Something - a falling stone, a noise, the Force - attracted her attention. Super battle droids, leaning hard against the incline to speed up the path. Pale and sweating with the effort, Morwen half-carved, half wrenched a chunk off the nearest dead gun. She rolled it over with the Force and sent it spinning at them, and nearly got shot as she watched it fall for too long, bowling them like skittles. She sent more chunks skidding down the path. Something fundamental in her torso had torn with the effort, but the SBs were so much scrap now. Nearly there.

Four down, and her left arm was barely working. She fired the pistol dry down the open hatches, spraying the B1s with burning metal, bone shocking on bone in her shoulder with the recoil. Three. The remaining gun crews were still taking potshots, but she was too close to done to bring herself to care, raising them out of the hatches before dismembering them with her saber.

She slid gratefully into the turret of the last gun. Oddly, the Force was still with her; her left hand wasn’t working, but she managed to get the barrel aimed down the valley all the same.

“Banjax. Three, maybe four.” Her ears roared. “You should see the view.”

“Hagfish, sitrep.”

“I’m going to shoot the shit out of these fuckers,” she told him, and started laying rounds on the upper slopes of the eastern wall, hoping to trigger an avalanche. Morwen couldn’t quite get her breathing under control; she was short on oxygen. She tried a wider spread, walking the rounds down behind the Seppie lines. Everything was desperate, attenuated. It still counted as harassing fire if you couldn’t aim for shit, right?

“Status, Hagfish. Hagfish, status,” said Banjax. He sounded worried, which was briefly gratifying.

“This would be a lovely place for a picnic,” she slurred, punching in a new firing solution, and heard the grind of bone in her shoulder echo up to the ache in her skull. Other injuries shrieked to awareness: the catch and burn in her sides, the splinters embedded in her legs. She slumped sideways, trying to prop herself up, and the stray bit of her rig gouged deep into her hip, scraping across the bone. Her traitorous body was still determined to feel pain, the meat too stupid to know it was dying. She would’ve screamed, but could only choke on a fast, shallow pant. Things got smaller, folding in on themselves as everything reduced itself. Her hearing was the last to fade; the comforting irregular thump of AT-RT feet and the crack-tink of outgoing mortar fire lulled her into the darkness.

#@celebrate-the-clone-wars #writing wednesday #tiend writes #morwen - oc #heron - oc #banjax - oc #njime - oc #587th BN #the end is in sight #ask me about my military research #go on #i dare you

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