Farlorn's Forlorn
Chapter Eight: Storm of Steel
Part One
Location: Lahag Erli, Cresh Sector, CIS Trenches
Tags:
Luna Terrik
BX-72967-RAZOR
OOM-018-GEM
@Tiria Reinhart
Objective: Hold the line at all costs
They’d been hit thirty-seven times in the past three hours.
Their attacks had been heralded each time by a world-ending bombardment. Such was the scale that it seemed like the toxin-ridden rain sweeping the front had been replaced by screaming steel.
Then the assault troops shrieking at the top of their lungs came through the mist of evaporated mud, wielding antique bolt-action slugthrowers and rusty halberds. Their disease-ridden bodies seemed not to understand the concept of death even after they were struck by dozens of bolts. They had no cohesion, just a rabble of men whose tactics boiled down to drowning their foes in bodies.
Each time their onslaught had been halted and thrown back, sending them yelping and cursing back to their own lines. But always at a cost.
The price of the last storm had been Sergeant Moray’s squad at Post 271. Two hundred against just ten. They never stood a chance. When they found what was left of them, there wasn’t even enough of their butchered remains to fill a grave-pit.
The enemy had swarmed in such numbers that their slain bodies had formed a waist-high wall along a kilometer-long front where they had faltered at meter-deep coils of razor-wire and hastily-dug ditches. It was feared that their foe would exploit this bloody advantage by using it as a screen for subsequent attacks. The insurgents could crawl up to a dozen paces in some places without harassment.
Colonel Anarkwor Farlorn lowered his micro-binocs and stepped down from the armored loophole, his face contorted with frustration and fury. That was close enough to the trenches to lob detonators for Vicelord's sake!
“How much longer until Fenris' guns are in place, Bellary?” He asked, his voice almost a whisper. Comms-Chief Bellary knew that was bad. His commander was the type of man who was boisterous and proud of himself to the point of outright arrogance. Yet he had led the Rangers to victory time and time again, liberating worlds from despoilers alongside the greatest fighting force the Galaxy had ever seen while being a harsh but fair man to his troops. He was not the type of man that would entertain the idea of having others miss a single word he said.
Here he was barely keeping his infamous temper in check in the face of the worst grinding attritional warfare he had ever experienced since Fort Malus during the Battle of Tatooine, long before his command of the Carians.
He had lost so many men already for next to no gains and with the nature of the Carians, everyone that fell was another stepping stone to their complete extinction as a people.
Bellary knew he had to choose his words carefully or Farlorn would destroy his Macro-Binocs in a fit of, admittedly justified, rage.
“Sir, Colonel Fenris assures you that he is moving his field pieces into position as fast as he can, on the verge of exhausting his men to collapse. The mud and atmospheric conditions have been wreaking havoc on both his tracked and repulsor platforms, as well as being constantly bracketed by Insurgent Artillery. I’m extremely sorry to say that he reports it will be maybe another hour before they’re in range and ready to fire.”
“Don’t apologize on his behalf. Just tell him to bring his guns to bear with all haste he is able to summon.” He bit back many remarks regarding the circumstances of his birth involving a Hutt and his Gungan mother as well as a suggestion that his infamously lax men be encouraged with whip and blaster-point.
“Yessir.”
“Pass Fenris’ report to my Battalion commanders. Notify what reserves we still possess at the back to be prepared to move up and reinforce in half an hour. Once those guns are at last in place it’s very likely that the opportunity for a general advance will provide itself.” Farlorn said as he put on a grey-black storm coat and put on a peaked officer’s hat, brim-first. He preferred wearing his officer’s cap to clearly denote his rank to all but the danger of insurgent snipers and shrapnel from detonations was far too high. He was wearing armor plating as well beneath his ruined uniform despite the fact it had been reinforced with Armourweave.
“And where will you be, sir? Just in case I need to find you?”
“I’m taking a look at the fire-trenches. They’ve been hit pretty hard and the men need to know that I stand alongside them. The Central Triage station will be my first port of call. I need a first-hand report of our casualities from the last wave.”
He pulled back the heavy drapes of anti-gas curtaining at the entrance of the dugout and stepped out. To say that the trenches around him were miserable was an understatement. Everything was damp all the time, mud swelled out of the poorly constructed duckboards and at times the walls would collapse in at the slightest provocation, sometimes burying men alive.
He walked down the line and around him, in hand-scooped dugouts, his soldiers gathered what rest they could after the hell of the last attack, so exhausted that they ignored the filth they slept in.
Rats prowled every nook and cranny of the trenches. They were particularly repulsive on this world, with evil naked faces, and elongated, and flailing nude tails. Some were of the size that it required multiple full-powered shots from a blaster rifle to scare them off. And every time one was killed, it seemed like a hundred would take its place.
The moment he had stepped foot on this planet, he realized that no cleaning service in the entire Galaxy would ever rescue the ravaging his rather expensive uniform would endure.
Farlorn ducked into one of the few bunkers that had been dug on this cursed world. This one was currently serving as the triage station where wounded would be assessed, treated where they could be, and if necessary be sent further back where there were actual proper medical facilities. The first thing that assailed his senses was the pungent odor of strong antiseptic, blood, and of waste, all trapped within the chamber by the failure of the clogged air-circulation systems. All around him wounded writhed on cots as medics desperately fought to save them. Electrocardiography monitors were either beeping too fast or too slow, serving as a tempo to which the moans of the crippled sang in rhyme to.
Farlorn had been fought through the bloodiest conflicts in the past two decades. He had seen entire armies wiped out in seconds and had walked across battlefields in their aftermath, so covered in bodies that one could walk from one end of a continent to the other with their feet never touching the ground. But this right here made him sick to his stomach, double so by the fact these were men he had promised that he would make their deaths mean something.
What could ever be gained from such miserable deaths?
He found his regimental Chief-Medic Sapper Redwood, carrying a tray of clattering surgical tools. She was dressed in Khaki fatigues and a surgeon's apron tied around her waist that was smeared with someone else's blood, as well as a red scarf she used as a headband.
Farlorn was about to say something when there was a commotion at the entrance. A pair of corpsmen rushed in, carrying between them both a horribly wounded Ranger on a stretcher. They were so drenched in blood that it was impossible to tell who it was or even their gender.
“We’ve got a critical case!” the corpsman at the front called out.
“Needs stabilization at once! We”
“Over here,” Redwood's voice was calm and professional cleared the way to a steel surgical table. Farlorn was jostled out of the way by her arms as she led them to it.
“Name?”
“According to the tags, it’s Sergeant Moray.” He spat out.
“What’s his condition?”
“He’s got two gunshot wounds to his lower left leg.” The corpsman was out of breath but the glaring stare from Redwood kept him going despite that.
“Solid-rounds. Point blank. They’ve hit his arteries. We tried to bind them on the spot but I don’t know how much longer they’ll heal.”
“Probably some bleeding internally as well. Anything else?”
“Oh, and he’s got a broken-off bayonet stuck on his left rib cage, between four and five. I don’t know how deep it is.”
“More than likely punctured his lungs.”
“On the count of three… one, two, three!” she ordered and with hefty grunts, they carefully heaved the limp body up onto the slab. Redwood unclipped a pen-light from her apron and lifted up Moray’s torn eyelid. At the same time, the other two hooked Moray up to a bio-monitor.
“Reacting to stimulus without any delay. Dilation is within acceptable boundaries. No signs of concussion.”
Someone shouted from the doorway.
“We’ve got more! I need hands to help!”
Looking up, Redwood said,
“Best you boys be going off, you’ll do more good out there than here. We’ll handle this one.”
“Yes, ma’am,” The corpsmen turned and ran out as Redwood went to work.
“Pass me the Bacta-spray,” she said.
Farlorn looked around. All the other medics were occupied trying to cope with the sudden intake. According to the micro-bead squawking in her ear, a regiment to their left flank had been hit hard, and wounded were spilling over to their sector.
“You, yes, you!” Her voice was fierce as he pointed at Farlorn with a free hand, without a single regard for his rank,
“Help out or get out.”
He grabbed the can and rushed over to her side. He handed it to her and she made sure to shake it.
“What do I need to do?”
“You’ve got some medical experience, right?” She sealed the wounds on Moray with several blasts of bacta. She would have to remove them and examine for any internal bleeding in time but he had to be alive for that in the first place.
“Of course, I went through a Field Combat Casualty Course last year,” She glanced up for a moment with a look on his face that was basically asking if Farlorn was making a joke. She actually looked worried when the look on his told her it wasn’t.
“It’ll have to do,” She shook her head.
“Here, hold this scanner and play it over his chest. I want to see how deep it went.”
He played the wand three times from top to bottom until a black-and-white image showed up on the screen. Five ribs were broken on both sides. One lung was half-collapsed and had blood pooling around its cavity. The blade showed up as a foreign contaminant that had been coated in toxins of some sort and the computing system recommended immediate withdrawal.
Moray suddenly came to the table. The whites of his eyes seemed very white against the crimson blood on his face, the pupils very black.
“Sir?” coughed out, blood aspirating from his mouth.
Farlorn said.
“Save your strength, sergeant,”
“He’s definitely had his lungs punctured,” Redwood disturbingly calmly stated. She grabbed a pair of stainless steel tongs.
“We definitely have to extract it now.”
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!” Moray cried out, convulsing.
“I got my men killed!”
“Hold him down, Colonel! Hold him down!” Farlorn desperately pushed down with all his weight but Moray was going into seizures. Redwood swabbed the area around the sunken bayonet with disinfectant.
He yelled.
“Sergeant, stay down, that’s an order! It happens! You screw up but now’s not the time!”
“I deserve this,” he mumbled, his head lolling to the side.
“Not like this, Sergeant! If you’ll receive reprimand it’ll be by my blade and my blade only, not fate’s, and certainly not by those kriffing Insurgents!” Farlorn shouted. The struggle opened up the wound and blood sprayed out, some of it splattering on the side of Farlorn’s face. The surgical table became slick and blood drooled off onto the concrete floor in a rapidly-growing pool.
Redwood gasped.
“If that blade’s not removed he’s gone in a minute. Damn it! Hold him down, Farlorn, you useless bastard! Hold him still!”
“Mommy?” Moray gurgled.
“What’s for supper?”
“What?” Farlorn exclaimed.
Moray opened his mouth. Blood rolled out of it like lava from a volcano.
The bio-monitors a low whining sound. Flatline.
“We’re losing him!” Redwood pulled in a defibrillator on a cart. She rubbed the shock-paddles against each other to charge them. Farlorn stepped aside. She applied the paddles to Moray’s breast.
“Clear!”
*************
Redwood let the water from the tap fun over her fingers, staring at the blood being washed off mixed in the sink, swirling in a whirlpool around the strainer as it emptied out.
Farlorn stood just behind her. He had a reason that he had come here and he suspected that she knew but even then, the Colonel was hesitant to ask the question. It clearly wasn’t the right time or place. But he went ahead anyway, he didn’t have any time to spare.
“What’s the count, Redwood?”
His heart dropped when the chief medic sighed.
“You’ve got sixty-seven out of action for the near future.” She dried her hands off with a sterile boiled rag.
“I’ve had to send fifteen critical cases that I’ve had moved to the rear for better care, five of which might actually have to be moved up to orbit if they want a chance to survive.”
“I’ll pull all the strings that I can and make sure they get a shuttle,” Farlorn took off his hat and held it to his chest, dreading what he was about to say.
“How many dead?”
“Twenty-two confirmed,” Twenty-two steps closer to extinction. Some of the men regarded him as a butcherer, a murderer with no regard for life. Farlorn couldn’t really argue with them on that. The promise he made on that transport vessel to four thousand broken men whose souls had been ripped out of them seemed so much more distant and impossible to achieve now.
”And that’s just at this post, reports are still coming in from other stations closer to the front on the death count.” Her voice was cold but it was clear she was clearly holding back a lot. Only then did he realize how rough she was rubbing her hands with the rag, to the point where they were red-raw.
“Redwood…” He began, not sure where he was really going.
“I’m fine, sir, I really am.” She tossed aside the piece of cloth.
“Forgive me for my lapse. I shouldn’t let myself get caught up just because I’ve seen a little blood. You said it yourself, it happens. You sometimes fail, that’s the reality of this Galaxy.”
Farlorn had always considered himself a social animal. He was at home in his habitat of the luxurious ball-galas where the fine wine always flowed, in clandestine board-room meetings amongst top Confederate military staff where the fate of entire worlds was held in question, or celebrating with his men after a great victory and getting hammered to the point where he couldn’t recall the events of the night previous.
But right here, amongst mud and blood, at this moment, across a woman who he was personally responsible for the death of her family and possibly of her people, he found himself quite lost.
“We’ll make them pay for this, Redwood, I can assure you that. Every single kriffing one of them.” All he could really say was in a language he had spoken in the day he had enlisted.
The language of indiscriminate violence, raging fury, and merciless vengeance.
Gerwald Lechner
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Kyyrk
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Adron Malvern
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Acantha Malvern
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Dreidi Xeraic
