Fourteen Minutes Prior to
Zachariel Steelblood
decided to Nuke The Site From Orbit, It's The Only Way To Be Sure...
The Battalion, badly weakened and degraded, and a badly damaged Max, fought against a relentless onslaught of Mawites.
The Battalion had seized her pilfered Lightsaber and was ruthlessly cutting the Mawites down while Max was shooting them, but they just kept coming. The emaciated Witch, furious at being humiliated by this scum, viciously, violently cut them down more cruelly than usual, slaking her hatred and bloodthirst. Determined to mend her wounded ego at the hands of these...these...
ruffians...
(Cutaway of The Battalion sitting in an elegant chair by the fireplace.)
(The Battalion: Really? You couldn't think of something more demeaning?)
(Narrator:
Lowers countdown time until Zachariel's orbital strike to 7 minutes for this post)
(The Battalion (Facepalming at own stupidity): Shutting up now)
The Battalion thrashed these
ruffians and the Dark Side began to hiss danger and The Battalion wondered what it could be that was driving her wild with sudden fear, like a burning coal in the pit of her half decayed body's stomach, slowly getting stronger.
Why were so many Maw focusing their attacks. This is more than they would need to destroy a Generator.
In a flash she understood. The Heathen Priests--they were sending orders to the Mawites through the Dark Side. The goal was to
delay them!
"Citizen!" The emaciated Witch called out in a haggard, half rotted breath as she brutally beheaded another Mawite, grabbing another and ripping away her life Force. But she was still so
hungry!
"Little busy!" Max called back, dropping another four one handed.
"Something is coming! Something bad. They want to keep us here!"
"Purpose!"
The Battalion scrambled to think why they would scramble all these people to just pin them down over a nothing Generator they'd eventually punch through anyway...
"BOMBARDMENT!" she yelled. "They're going to hit US! And they don't care how many they sacrifice!"
In that moment, The Battalion started to develop the same level of hatred towards The Maw that Xiphos had.
"We have to fight through these lines!" Max said.
"No we don't!" The Battalion sneered, though it would cost her.
After there were forced through another minute of fighting screaming hoardes coming in from
everywhere, a damaged Battalion. missing an arm grabbed Max with her remaining good one and flew out of the hole at high speed, still being fired at from the air by
hundreds of Mawites.
She felt herself rapidly weakening, the body withering in the air and slowing down, descending as fast as she dared. By the time she landed, she was barely keeping the body active with the Dark Side Energy being drawn from the charged atmosphere.
But she had landed where her old body had been destroyed, and had retrieved her armor, her weapons, and her wedding ring.
"
Seriously?" Max exclaimed.
"Look, the wedding ring
alone would have made me go back..." The Battalion hissed, body weakening. "But gear like that is
very hard to replace."
"Fethin'
figures!" Max snapped in annoyance.
But his problems just got worse, for the Battalion's body disintegrated completely, and the Battalion's multi-spirit coalesced into a hissing ball of purple energy that went into the Lightsaber blade she had just stolen.
Max gave a digital sigh.
"And now I just became the most important Droid in House Io..." Max grumbled, scooping the weapons, armor, and wedding ring up and desperately scrambling for a new blaster when his circuits went cold at the sounds of dozens and dozens of mawites approaching, howling for his parts.
"Feth
that..." Max said and ran, or hobbled, as best as his damaged Droid body could allow, which wasn't much.
He started running as he heard the warbands close, ducking into a bloody alley. He knew it would only buy him so much time. The hoardes were gaining fast. He had maybe thirty seconds. Max had no ammo left. All his onboard weapons were damaged. They caught him with this blade...
They would have a massive bargaining chip over House Io. They might even destroy her out of spite. Or they could try and enslave her...The Mawites possessed terrible methods of torture. Were they as depraved and ghastly as what he had seen the Cultists do to victims in the snowy forests of Khemost? He didn't know, but he was certain The Battalion didn't want to find out.
In desperation he used a comlink on House frequencies as he turned into another street, dodging blaster fire.
"This is Max! I'm on the verge of being overwhelmed! I need backup immediately!" he called out as he ran.
Max came to a stop as he was cut off by a Mawite in the distance, armed with a Z-6 rotary cannon. That was it Nowhere to go. He was done. Captured.
As the Mawites chasing him cut off his escape, Max looked around them, some already preparing restraining bolts.
The Mawite that held the Cannon smiled.
"Duck." he said.
Max hit the ground as the "Mawite" opened fire.
The bolts tore into the surprised hoard, putting them down as bolt after bolt ripped apart their bodies. He swept the firing arc across the whole of the streetbutchering Mawites until they were forced into a retreat momentarily from the surprise attack.
Max looked up as the Mawite morphed back into Lyssa Io.
"Brother!" she called out happily. "What are we doing here?"
"Never mind that!" Max snapped. "We need a vehicle! They're gonna bombard the surface!"
Lyssa's serene expression became one of
mild alarm.
"We musn't waste time then." Lyssa replied, gesturing for him to follow her to an old weapons depo that looked
completely destroyed, with Maw corpses everywhere
"All House Io Personnel, this is Max!" Max snapped on his comlink. "Take off
now! The surface is about to be bombarded! We may have only minutes left!"
Max then hopped on the Speederbike with Lyssa, who followed his direction to the evac site House Io had set up for its own evac efforts.
"You think they'll wait for us?" Lyssa asked.
"I wouldn't." Max replied as she gunned the bike in the direction he pointed.
Approximately one minute later, the blast struck the shield generator directly, and the explosion caused a massive Chain Reaction.
The single minute and thirty seconds the House Io ships at the spaceport had gotten would save two of the four vessels that had been sent to provide relief to the Pananthans. They waited as long as they could. They even let Mandalorians aboard, and broadcast the warning they had received to the forces of
Adenn Kyramud
in an attempt to try and save some of them also.
If they had all taken off just fifteen seconds earlier...
Alas, two House Io Corvettes would be destroyed, but the minute and a half warning had allowed a very few number of ships to also escape...
The Refugee ships in space were extremely vulnerable. The House Io TIE's swarmed, tried to provide basic defense, but there were a
lot of Mawite ships firing.
Something came out of Hyperspace. Big. Nearly the size of a Battle Cruiser.
It was painted in Black, with the triple arrow symbol of the Eternal Empire to disguise its affiliation It was father away than other ships, but
not where its weapons were concerned.
Electrical Turbolasers lanced white bolts of burning fury from Scion Shipyards
newest Star Destroyer. They provided covering fire for fleeing refugee vessels, blasting at anything smaller that looked like it was thinking of targeting the ships. It let loose a devastating salvo of its entire torpedo compliment at the Devourer in retaliation for the surface strike, as the the remaining Nuetralizer TIE Bombers rushed in on its Orbital Cannon...
Meanwhile...
Lyssa raced on the speederbike, desperately trying to outrun the encroaching explosion spreading outward, engulfing whole buildings. Fanatical Mawites, still being directed by the Heathen Priests to try and stop them any way they could, including throwing themselves in front of the path of the bike. Max spotted a light repeating blaster clutched in the hands of some dead Mawite and scooped it up as they passed by it.
Max then noticed the Mawites were so effin' crazy they were chasing behind them on speeder bikes
while both of them were trying to outrun the explosion
Max fired behind him, but they weaved around the bolts effortlessly, like they did with the debris, firing Disruptor pistols at the both of them.
Lyssa was not the Advanced Prototype for nothing however, and effortlessly weaved through the bolts herself, while Max fired at them trying to throw off their aiming attempts.
The Mawites started firing the cannons on their own bikes, trying to hit them. These were
much harder to dodge.
Lyssa slowed a bit, allowing the Maw to overshoot her position, but now the fast approaching explosion was
much closer, and the ground shook terribly as the shockwave chased them with seemingly a mind of its own.
Max adjusted his targeting protocols as he aimed at the lead Mawite's bike, only he missed as Lyssa was forced to violently swerve out of the way from a Disruptor bolt he fired. Even
Lyssa couldn't survive a shot from one of those.
"Feth this!" Max shouted at Lyssa, "Get me close to him!"
"Are you NUTS?!" Lyssa shouted.
"I'm not just nuts, I'm
bolts!" Max declared.
Lyssa raised
both eyebrows in seeming awe at the boast but complied, gunning the engines at Max as buildings were shredded behind them both.
Lyssa's bike was right next to the Mawite's that had been shooting at them. He shot at them again, and Lyssa side-rammed his bike. He side rammed her back, and they
both had to pull away to avoid the overturned vehicle they had approached with their crazy speeds (For only the craziest speeds could outrun what chased them and then only
just barely)
The next time their bikes got close,
Max leapt to the enemy's bike, tossed him face first into a building which was quickly annihilated by the shockwave behind them, getting ever closer. (ROTJ REFERENCE# 978463673820!: 21000 XP!)
The Remaining Mawite aggressively pursued until Max managed to finally shoot ahead of his travel path and winged his bike, sending him spinning into a wall and turning into Ludicrous Gibs seconds later, and their situation got worse when Lyssa spotted a tank ahead, firing at them, piloted by Maw determined to prevent The Battalion's escape at all costs.
"We have a PROBLEM!" Lyssa shouted, but it was impossible to hear her now over the roar of the encroaching shockwave and the destruction of the buildings.
Max gunned it as the tank fired it heavy blaster cannon at them. He activated the Lightsaber the Battalion's spirit was trapped in, the Red Blade sizziling with Dark Power as he jumped the bike over an obstacle, spinning it with the lightsaber in mid air over the tank barrel, cutting it off, Lyssa flipped the pilots off as they caught fire from a malfunction in the tank due to the damage he had inflicted. The shockwave annihilated the tank and them a few seconds later.
But they were fast closing now on a dead in in the street, and there were no obstacles to jump.
That was when Lyssa saw it.
A
House Io A-Wing, fast approaching from above at max speeed, it flew real low, as low as it dared, matching their speed.
"Hi Boss!" the Autopilot controlling the fighter announced over comms to Lyssa.
"Boss?" Lyssa said in curiousity. But not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth she signalled to Max and they both jumped off their bikes and onto its hull, when it veered up in a shallow pattern, increasing its speed as much as it dared so its passengers wouldn't fly off.
They spotted one remaining House Io Corvette just barely taking off at high speed when it sent a transmission to open its spare hangar and fly low to the street.
"Are you OUT OF YOUR MIND?!" the captain of the other ship yelled.
"We have the Matriarch's Daughter!"
"Chit!" the other pilot swore, flying low. Only their superhuman strength allowed them to cling to the hull at such speeds as the A-Wing gunned the engines slightly more, keeping the craft level as the shockwave crept closer.
The Autopilot veered the craft violently into the hangar, barely missing a building scraping by underneath both craft as it skittered violently on the landing area where a shuttle normally waited,
Lyssa and Max were flung off the vehicle violently into the Bay, Max smashed into a wall and deactivated as his powersource was too damaged, the possessed Lightsaber The Battalion's spirit was in skittering away, no one knowing the significance of it as House Citizens rushed in, putting out minor fires as Lyssa rose up first, rattled by whatever was going on, her minor memory wipe of the past two weeks making her current situation almost a total mystery to her.
Lyssa, however, did
not miss the significance of the items that had been in Max's death grip.
The damaged, but curiously self repairing suit, the wedding ring, the Lightsaber.
The Battalion had fallen in battle...
The very thought sent
chills down Lyssa's entire nanite cluster at how her Mother would react...
The Corvette barely escaped the terrible shockwave, rocketing into the atmospher under escort of the House Io starfighters and Sarka Class Frigates, now all heavily damaged as they fended off attack after attack from Maw fighters and other ships, the covering fire from the friendly star destroyer as they egressed with the refugee ships the only real relief they had beyond their own allied fighters.
They lost another two Corvettes full of Refugees, but the rest had made it, non allied vessels jumped to their own destinations, while the ones under control of the House, would slowly egress, the Scion Destroyer taking a massive beating so the Refugeee ships didn't have too as they left under
severe fire, but every escaped vessel was another middle finger to the Brotherhood, and House Citizens
loved to thwart the Maw when possible, as violently as possible. Tython had proved this.
The refugee convoy at last jumped to hyperspace...
Tegan Starfall
@Tovald Kahmen''a
Asanté Tsilor
Mykel Fellheart
Shani
Onrai
Asudai Rapux
Trinity Harris
Bella
Rebirth
Akûz the Ravager
