I M P E R A T O R
NEW IMPERIAL ORDER
TASK FORCE 'BLIZZARD'
501st LEGION | 12th ARMORED DIVISION
OPERATION JAWBREAKER
THRAWN'S REST | CSILLA
Kascalion Giedfield
JAWBREAKER
+8:14 Hour
UTM Grid Point 42 Easting
Zone Of Operation Designation 'Thrawn's Rest'
501st Stormtrooper Legion | Imperator Irveric Tavlar 'Enigma Actual'
12th Armored Assault Division | Colonel Konrad Bolter 'Tyrant Actual'
What began as machine like, cold touched precision soon degraded as each and every meticulous plan did at the first contact which was melt away, the burden shifting from the high chair commanders and battleminds into the hands of the non commissioned officers, the boots on the ground, the grunts. That was the nucleus of the military force. Perhaps, if Tavlar's force was green, the risk of a route or outright destruction would've been more tangible but here, the 501st knew their objective. Deep operation, kill and destroy.
So too did the mailed fist of the 12th Armored remain resolute. The Hell's Hammers were bogged down immediately, the flesh sinew of the Sithspawn clashing against heavy metal in a horrid symphony. One where while, Imperial armor might see an advantage at range, when their weapons systems could reach out and touch these dark creatures with little reproach, it was in close quarters that they began to take losses, HMPs, the missile and artillery platforms attached to the Cataphract units surely became the first victim, more tact at medium and longe ranges with little by the way of hull or pintle weaponry to defend them. Outdated and less robust in defensive systems, the larger Sithspawn and their more mobile counterparts had little quarrel ripping them apart.
The Cataphracts had the shielding and composite armor to withstand the punishment, certainly when set down in Siege mode, but this only saved so many. One of the Cataphracts in Bolter's view, looking down the sights of his Reaper Chaingun, rarely ever letting his thumbs off the triggers came under the hellish brutality of one of the hulking Sithspawn, the shield shimmering away with a savage crackle of the electric blue net before the mauling fist came down under explosive fury, several explosive reaction armor contact plates firing out at the violent contact, blowing more shambling flesh apart only for the nigh automaton like hellish monstrosity to continue its charge, emerging from the aft emergency exit hatch, two Imperial Army crewmen bailed out, rifles with underfolders fixed beneath the reciever in hand before they began to open fire on the surroundings. Left in the vehicle, the armored commander set the power plant to self destruct, enveloping the Cataphract and hulking Sithspawn in energetic fire.
Within the trenches, the Imperator's Fist continued to claw towards it rendezvous with destiny. The soft and slick packed snow making for far less desirable conditions for war, but it never was. War was always hell. And that's why its being fought between demons today. Conscripts, pressganged into peasant rabbles to fight a soldier's war had only numbers in their advantage against the stormtrooper. The stormtrooper had been through training which ripped apart the fabrics of the civilian, replacing names with designation numbers and citizens into troopers. They could kill on command, at will, with ease. Bladed maces, blades and blaster bolts continued to cut through the conscripts as they advanced through the trenches hastily cut into blue and argent ice, following the slow roll and march of the Siege Breakers and Turbo tanks crushing the snow above them, artillery fire missions and explosions be damned, they'd kill more and march further.
The air assault units dropped deeper behind enemy lines faced a far more punishing resistance, digging their talons into the soft heart of the enemy. But immediately came the risk of counter envelopment, one they banked on the slow roll of Tavlar's army to soften the blow of, Megacaliber Six cannons prioritizing those Sith tanks that emerged to cut the 501st air dropped behind enemy lines down, where the gunships couldn't cover. It was known and expected that RDAGs would be lost on the offensive, with those remaining unable to pull evac at the shorting of vital systems or still able to remain combat effective continued their grueling strafes into the Sith Warlor forces, missiles, autocannons, chainguns all ripping through targets but soft and armored, the heavy metal hinds ever the difficult bird of prey to sink and pull from the skies.
Once more, the artillery set their sights on the Sith counterparts, the airdropped troopers doing well if nothing else, in marking those positions and with the loss of shielding deep into Kascalion's defensive formation, they let iron rain fall once more unto the opposing artillery positions, to revoke his ability to reach out and touch so that they could descend the needs of the battle.
Through thickened argent fog and smoke, the Hell's Hammers continued their vaunted infernal voyage through these ice cold circles of the underworld of which the Warlords of the Sith had laid out for them. The name inflicted unto the Company felt like a twist of poetic irony far more than anything else by now, given their adversary, given the circumstances.
The kinetic fury of the chaingun in his hands silenced him to the machinations below. The strained announcement of each target acquired, each shot taken, each move made of the tank, Konrad could not do well in micro managing that, not now. Every hand was needed in staving off these monstrosities. He could barely take into view through the short range visibility of the cold wind many of his countparts taking up the pintle mounted guns alongside him, almost all of them rigorously mounted with a grade above the standard equip, magcannons, chainguns, autocannons. Each of them fired a hail of explosive fury down unto the enemy, enveloping them, large in profile, they were nigh impossible to miss.
"We're gonna make it, boys! Don't give these animals an inch! Keep firing!" Konrad barked out, his voice strained, voice at the edge of cracking to its ability.
The view of one of his own making that sacred sacrifice twisted a knot in his stomach of foreboding failure again. Shades of previous defeats awash on his frozen face, concealed in Archaisian Brushstroke, the tropical camouflage pattern all but wholly ineffective in the snow. But it was Archaisian tradition, not to go in without it. It was a symbol of home, a home they'd fought valiantly to protect generations after generations. The strife, the struggle to live all manifested in that immortal saying, one that a Galidraani comrade, beneath the service of
DECEASED Erskine Barran
would do well in reminding Konrad of in the thick of death.
'Gowrie to Tyrant Actual! Stay in the fight! You hear me, Konrad? "Archaisians Never Die!", isn't that what they say? If you can survive the Shadow Dome on Generis, you can survive anything! Show the galaxy it isn't just a myth - show the cosmos that Archaisians really are too angry to die!'
<"I hear you, Gowrie. I hear you...Archaisians Never Die."> He'd test that again, his hands releasing from the controls of the chaincannon, reaching down into the pouch attached to the leather webbing over his armor and padded fatigues, grasping ahold of a thermal imploder, pulling the activation before heaving it into a nearby Mournfang before it ever had the chance to enact its awful fury on his own command tank.
The Bastard. Immediately after the silent suction at the air before detonation, he unfurled the destructive volley of the chaingun unto the beast to finish it rightly.
The longer the battle stretched, the more he was bewildered at the lack of any indication to Kascalion's presence here. But he was here, of that, Irveric could not be more certain. There was no question that The Devil would come to carry the reign of Hell unto Csilla. The 501st fought in the trenches, drenching this horrid landscape in shades of pink, blood drenched snow. Those cold weather cowls of the snowtrooper showing nothing but the innate rage within them. The Turbo Tanks continued their punishing roll forward, dumping more of the Imperator's own into the battlefield along with the Siege Breakers though soon the punishment of close quarters warfare wrought one of them to buckle collapse beneath the collective firepower, the horrid screech and scream of the steel monsters plummeting to the frozen earth beneath.
That was the silent clock, the unspoken timer drawing its dread alarm in Tavlar's head. There was little more input he could supply from here, the battle would be fought on the decree of his subordinates, the battalion, platoon and squad commanders enacting his will on the field. They knew his will by now, if it was nothing else, it was to kill the enemy. He looked across Vizek, nodding his helmeted head once. The Pantoran knew that to mean one thing at all.
He was due to charge into the fray, endearing his presence to string together the nodes of defiance and pull the will of the New Order together once more for one glorious push, to kill the enemy. Though it was never as concrete or story book as this, only the mechanical slaughter house that was this form of war.
He stepped down into the troop bay of the Turbo Tank, the last battalion of 501st troopers waiting for their task ahead, barely picking up the violent cracks of explosions and blaster fire from the other sides of the Turbo Tanks composite armor. A wait most dreadful. Irveric Tavlar readied for war was a vaunted sight among the Imperial armed forces, the Stormtrooper Corps in particular, the branch which he'd ressurrected by his own will. Nothing else could embody the intangible fighting spirit of the Imperial any better. They all rose to attention in salute as he approached, his grey and cobalt Enigma-pattern armor dotted the scars and indents of battle. Armor fit for the Imperator it might have been, but it did not go without use. The etchings of the fallen were present, but fading beneath the cold weather additions fixed to the plates.
Clutching the battle rifle fixed to the single point sling over his chest he looked into the expressionless green-black lenses of his Stormtroopers.
<"Fight for each other...no one else. I will be with you...and we will leave these demons buried in the ice, where they belong."> Irveric said before each of them, pounding his fist above his heart once alone and then another...and another in sequence with his troopers, welding them each to the sacred duty.
<"Onward.">
He gave the word of command and the troop bay doors opened on either side for stormtroopers to turn and surge into the frozen fray ahead of them. Irveric was one of the first out of the breach, his boots printing into the packed snow beneath before he turned in parallel to his command vehicle, walking upright, slow, comfortable. His rifle still slung over his chest. Contempt for danger was the value instilled in him by the Sith Empire and one he would be damned not to carry down into the Stormtrooper Corps. They each had to know that he did not fear death, he welcomed the struggle, the strife for it was the machination of greatness, what molded men. And most importantly, he was bait for the hunter, one of the most effective killers to live in this burning Galaxy, Giedfield.
BATTLE OF THRAWN'S REST
IRVERIC TAVLAR | KASCALION GIEDFIELD
NEW IMPERIAL ORDER | WARLORDS OF THE SITH
STAGE FOUR - BLOOD AND ICE
NIO artillery targets WOTS artillery
Heavy armor moves up to assist and bail out the Air Assault 501st
Hell's Hammers remained bogged down but continue fighting
Spearpoint Besh continues its approach, surging gunships ahead of the armor to provide strafing runs and air support to the offensive push.
