Jedi Insurgency 286 (Interlude 47)

AN: I'm sort of telling this chapter in the style of the old Clone Battlefront 2 campaign. Sorry if there's formatting errors as I'm experimenting with a story telling style new to me. This is what I'm referencing, btw: 

https://youtu.be/iWOq1Tg-Jdw?is=Hylp4dJBvP_hHqYC

~~~~~~~~~~~

THE KUAT CAMPAIGN

Extracts from the Field Journal of Clone Commander Pots, Starcrusher Corps

---

DAY ONE

Kuat City – Beneath the Planetary Shield

The invasion of Kuat began on the same day General Revan confronted Crown Prince Vader on Coruscant.

Commander Pots did not know what passed between them. None of the clones did. All they knew was that while the General fought for the capital, the Starcrusher Corps had been ordered to cut the heart out of the Imperial war machine.

On that day, one million clone troopers descended upon Kuat.

They were veterans, every one of them. The last true sons of the Republic, bred for a war that had ended in betrayal and reforged them into the personal army of Revan. Their General had forged them armor made of beskar, and equipped them with personal energy shields. Their rifles were built to punch through durasteel, their discipline had been tested against droids, Sith, and brothers who had forgotten what loyalty meant.

Their landing had been smooth thanks to the subterfuge of General Revan and his crafty droids. 

People still argue over whether taking the CEO’s daughter hostage was honorable. I never cared much for the argument. Honor was something politicians discussed after soldiers had done the bleeding.

She gave us the clearance codes. The planetary batteries watched us descend and never fired a shot. 

For twelve glorious minutes, Kuat belonged to us.

The first landers struck the upper platforms of Kuat City before the Imperial garrison understood that an invasion was underway. Clone breaching teams seized the shield-control towers. Gunships poured through industrial canyons, firing missiles into barracks and communications spires. Republic slicers flooded local networks with false orders, directing Imperial reinforcements toward landing zones that did not exist.

Pots had led the assault upon the Kuat Drive Yards administrative citadel personally.

They took forty levels in the first hour. Then they discovered the redundancies that had been put into place. 

The Kuati had prepared for coups, invasions, sabotage, and orbital bombardment for millenia. Every command system possessed another buried beneath it. Once they destroyed a power relay, the men of the Republic discovered that the enemy had three replacements. Blast doors dropped from ceilings & rose from floors, entire corridors rotated, and hidden sentry turrets clicked out of panels, transforming this easy victory into a killing ground.

By nightfall, three Imperial Legions had responded to Kuat's distress. Three million men against Revan’s million.

The promise of a swift victory died before the first sunset.

---

DAY FOUR

Administrative Citadel – Level 862

The fighting became condensed into a large section of lifts, and innumerable, mind numbing stairs. Floor by agonizing floor the men fought within the meatgrinder. 

Every office became a bunker, where leaving one holdout was asking to be flanked. To clear a floor or one hallway was but the promise of knowing that you couldn't rest until a hundred more were swept clean. Despite this, not a single man complained. They were brothers, afterall. 

During those first few days, the men blasted through walls because the corridors were mined. They crawled through ventilation ducts because the walls concealed auto-turrets. When even the ducts became death traps, they climbed the outside of the towers beneath the cover of darkness. The Legions-Republic & Imperial-were trained on the same tactics, and thought the same. As a result, the fighting was incredibly brutal. 

Beskar and shields gave the Starcrusher Corp an advantage, but the Imperials adapted.

They began using ion grenades to collapse the shields, repeating blasters to overwhelm the beskar weave, and heavy cannons powerful enough to throw armored clones through walls. They flooded captured floors with gas, vented entire sectors into the atmosphere, and rigged heavy loads to drop upon their position from untold heights. 

The instructors on Kamino taught us that superior equipment could win a battle. Experience taught us that equipment only decided how many mistakes a man was allowed to make before he joined the Force. 

Our armor gave us more chances than the Imperials. There were three times as many of them, though.

They could afford more mistakes.

---

DAY SEVEN

Kuat Orbital Tether – Lower Anchor

The Republic fleet was forced to retreat.

Imperial reinforcements emerged from hyperspace in numbers Clip was unwilling to face. For eleven hours the sky burned with turbolaser fire, and broken cruisers fell through the atmosphere, crashing upon the surface every so often. When that happened, many a man would pray. Pray to the Force that it didn't come crashing down on their heads. Pray that those poor brothers of ours-Republic or Imperial-found peace in death. 

As the fleet retreated, the men of the Starcrusher Corps were left behind. That was when the Imperial broadcasts began. 

They promised fair treatment to any clone who surrendered. Claiming Revan had abandoned them, the Imperials reported that Vader had killed the General on Coruscant and that the Republic was already collapsing.

Pots ordered the communications frequencies jammed. He feared the worst, and in his heart of hearts was tempted to put down his blaster. To put the war behind him. After all, hadn't enough clone blood been spilt?...but the General had promised him a fix for their lifespan, even now, the Kaminoan scientists were hard at work on Eriadu. They had shed blood together, sworn oaths at one another. Even if his brother was dead, Pots would not quit. He would fight to the last man. 

The clones went to ground. They abandoned exposed landing fields and withdrew into the lower industrial districts, turning assembly lines into defensive trenches. They buried ammunition beneath worker habs, connected isolated positions through maintenance tunnels and converted unfinished starship hulls into armored forts.

The Imperials controlled the sky.

The Republic controlled whatever ground they stood upon.

For the next four days, that had to be enough.

---

DAY ELEVEN

Foundry District Aurek-Seven

The Republic fleet returned with a vengeance.

It emerged from hyperspace at close range, struck the Imperial formations before their ships could establish a proper battle line, and poured fire into Kuat’s orbital defenses. The Republic cruisers did not remain long though. They came to bloody the enemy, open a corridor and disappear before the Empire’s numerical strength could crush them.

Pots understood what was required before the first message reached him. The clones had to clear the landing zones for a fresh wave of reinforcements. 

They had launched their sortie at dawn.

The Starcrusher Corps erupted from the industrial underlevels and struck the Imperial perimeter from beneath. Clone sappers detonated buried charges, collapsing whole avenues under Imperial armored columns. As the infantry advanced, enemy artillery pieces hidden inside half-constructed starships fired at point-blank range.

Pots led from the front, as he always had.

His DC-17 spat blue bolts through the haze. Around him, clones fought beneath banners bearing the old Republic crest. By now, many of their beskar sets had become heavily blackened, not a man was spotless during this near-suicidal death march. 

They lost eighteen thousand brothers opening that corridor. All for a little relief. Although they weren't clones, they were brothers all the same. 

Tens of millions of soldiers from Eriadu descended from the transports in gray-green armor, carrying mass-produced rifles and the wrath of a world that had chosen the Republic. They came from factories, universities, farms and merchant fleets. Some had received only weeks of training. 

Unfortunately, their momentum was short-lived, as Imperial Army regulars arrived later the same day. Tens of millions of them. Man for man, army for army, the Empire matched the Republic again.

The landing zones became slaughterhouses.

---

DAYS TWELVE THROUGH SIXTEEN

The Five-Day Rain

The storm began when a ruptured atmospheric processor bled industrial chemicals into the clouds.

Rain fell upon Kuat for five days.

It was oily, freezing and faintly luminous like a neon sign. It washed soot from the towers and blood from the streets, carrying both into drains clogged with rubble and bodies. Static energy crawled between buildings, turning the clouds violet whenever lightning struck the planetary shield.

By this point, communications became unreliable.

Squads vanished for hours at a time. Orders arrived garbled or not at all. Artillery coordinates shifted halfway through transmission. Air support became impossible in districts where the rain was thickest.

The leaking fuel was worse.

Refineries burned throughout the industrial quarter, pouring rivers of flaming propellant into the streets. Soldiers fought with water around their knees and fire floating across its surface. A single blaster bolt could ignite an entire intersection. Men learned to recognize the rainbow sheen of fuel before stepping into it.

The Republic and Imperial armies tore at one another in the storm. There were no grand maneuvers. No sweeping encirclements. There was only the next building, the next barricade, the next warm meal if fortune permitted it. When all seemed bleak, that was when Hondo Ohnaka became a hero.

No one trusted the pirate, but he was the only friendly face within several parsecs. He appeared on our tactical frequency during the second night of rain and informed us that he had bravely liberated several Imperial supply transports. He then offered to sell their cargo back to us at what he called a wartime friendship rate.

I threatened to shoot him for that. He laughed and landed anyway. Hondo’s pirate ships skimmed beneath Imperial sensors, using the static-choked storm as cover. His Weequay crews raided ammunition convoys, medical depots and field kitchens. They stole fuel from Imperial walkers and power cells from terminals. 

Once, Hondo piloted a burning freighter through anti-aircraft fire because the Republic western line had gone two days without ammunition. He crash-landed within the perimeter, climbed out of the wreck with his coat aflame, and demanded that Pots acknowledge the great Pirate King. 

Another time, he delivered bacta to a surrounded Eriaduan regiment, then returned for the wounded after Imperial fighters had already discovered his route.

He risked his neck again and again.

Sometimes for credits.

Sometimes for loot.

And sometimes-though the pirate would never have admitted it-because thousands of men would die if he did not.

Without Hondo, the Republic positions would have collapsed during the rain.

That was no exaggeration or joke. 

To this day, I am proud to name him…

Brother. 

---

DAYS SEVENTEEN THROUGH TWENTY

Shipyard Trenchworks – Southern Arc

The rain had stopped. For five days, the war became strangely quiet.

There were skirmishes in the transit tunnels. Snipers traded shots across factory chasms, Imperial probes tested Republic defenses, whilst clone commandos slipped across the lines to destroy generators and capture officers. Spooks and spies interacted with one another, but the main armies rarely met one another. We were all just so tired. So mind numbingly tired. 

Mostly, the men dug.

They reinforced their holes with starship plating, stretched sensor wire across avenues, dragged the dead away, catalogued weapons and divided ammunition. Eriaduan volunteers learned from clones who had been fighting since Geonosis. Meanwhile, Clones learned that the volunteers could hold a line as stubbornly as any soldier bred for war.

The silence should have brought relief.

It did not.

Imperial and Republic soldiers alike sensed it.

Something was coming.

I've got a bad feeling about this. 

---

DAY TWENTY-ONE

Tower KDY-19 – The Broken Spine

The Sith Acolytes arrived before dawn.

There were only a handful of them, but the men knew what to expect from a Force Sensitive. 

They struck the Republic center wearing dark armor and carrying crimson blades. One tore apart a defensive barricade with the Force. Another redirected an artillery shell into the trench that had fired it. Blaster bolts curved away from them or returned toward the men who had fired.

The Eriaduan volunteers broke first.

Not from cowardice. They had fought Imperial armor, artillery and five days of burning rain. But most had never seen a Sith charge through cannon fire untouched.

Their retreat exposed the clone flank, and the withdrawal became a rout.

Pots rallied what remained of his command inside the shattered atrium of Tower KDY-19. From there, bodies covered the floor in the thousands, and fires climbed the walls. Every doorway flashed red with approaching lightsabers. The claustrophobic area had transformed into a slaughter. 

An Acolyte leapt down from the upper gallery, to which Pots had met the man with a shotgun blast. The solid slug went through the red lightsaber, striking the Sith in the chest dead. 

A second Acolyte rushed him through the smoke. The Sith’s blade sheared through Pots’s rifle and scorched a molten line across his breastplate. Pots caught the attacker’s sword arm with both hands. His shield burst beneath the blade, spraying sparks across his visor. The Acolyte expected him to retreat.

However, instead, he drove his vibroknife beneath the Sith’s ribs and twisted until the crimson blade fell from numb fingers.

When the body collapsed, Pots ripped the knife free. Blood ran down his gauntlet and dripped from its humming edge. 

The surviving Acolytes entered the atrium from three directions, with Imperial infantry filling the galleries above. Pots stood among the dead and chambered his final round into his shotgun. 

There are moments when a soldier knows he is going to die. And Pots knew that this was his time. He was ready. 

As Pots was ready to meet the General in the afterlife, the ceiling exploded. Metal fragments rained across the atrium, and through the breach descended HK-51 assassinatiom droids with glowing red photoreceptors, and lethal weapons. 

One Imperial officer lost his head before he could shout an order. Three heavy gunners fell in the same second. An HK unit caught a Sith’s lightsaber between reinforced palms, held it there despite its fingers melting, and fired a concealed chest blaster directly into the Acolyte’s face.

Then the Ongree arrived.

Tens of thousands of Revanite cultist warriors stormed the tower in power armor, their amphibious faces concealed behind angular masks. Force pikes crackled in their hands, proving to be highly effective stabbing tools within the tight corridors of Kuat. 

The Sith tried to hold on, but were broken by the most elite of the General's troops. 

“Statement: Mobility has been successfully reduced. Addendum: Life expectancy will now be reduced accordingly.”

For the first time in twenty-one days, Commander Pots laughed.

---

DAY THIRTY

Republic Forward Command – Kuat Drive Yards

The war had returned to stalemate.

The Republic held the southern shipyard arc, seven major foundries, two orbital tether anchors and nearly a third of Kuat City. Clone veterans trained fresh Eriaduan replacements. Revanite Ongree guarded the breach points. HK-51 units prowled the Imperial rear, leaving dead officers and sabotaged generators behind them.

Hondo continued arriving with stolen supplies, each delivery accompanied by a larger invoice and a more heroic version of how he had acquired them.

However, the Empire still possessed millions of soldiers, and their fleets still contested the system. Their banners still controlled the northern city. Yet every day, those banners moved a little farther back. Every day, Kuat inched closer to Republic control.

Pots stood at the edge of the command platform and gazed across the endless Drive Yards. Smoke rose from the city beneath him, and distant artillery boomed across the horizon. 

Thirty days had passed. 

Thirty days of blood, rain, fire, screams, and murder. 

Thirty days without surrender.

By now, the Imperials were growing tired. Their counterattacks were getting smaller, and supplies weren't as readily available. Already, several tens of thousands of Imperial Army regulars had surrendered to them 

Victory was close, he could feel it. Pots only wished the General had been there to see what his soldiers had accomplished.

Perhaps he was still fighting Vader, or perhaps the rumors from Coruscant held more truth than any of them wanted to admit.

It did not matter, they had their orders.

They would take Kuat.

And when General Revan returned, his army would be waiting for him.