Chapter 43;
Ashes of Nal Hutta
The first of the Valkyries came to ground beyond the shields of the Hutt compound and Sergeant Vasquez slammed back the door and stepped out in her void sealed Carapace armour. Not that long ago she'd have had to made this drop armoured in Flak with little more than a prayer to sustain her. But she carried the mark of the first of the reformations being made. The brand new stamped Hellgun was held with ease despite its increased weight, the small repulsorlift cell served as a cheaper alternative to the suspensors that would normally be required. And as the rest of her squad emerged from the gunship it pulsed up into the air on jets as it pulled back in time for the other landing craft to touch down.
It was a Valkyrie carrier and it landed just long enough to deploy their Chimera. Across the plateau half her regiment was being deployed similarly. Every squad had been upgraded into armored fists. "Pask, status?"
"Safe Drop Sarg." The tracks rattled as it moved up towards them. "Get in, we don't want you to soak in more rads than you need to."
The rear hatch dropped and one by one she shoved her men into the rear. "What armored support have we got?" She asked climbing up, all they had been told was that they would be receiving some extra support. There was a long pause as Pask consulted his own dataslate.
"Malcadors left nut... he said almost too low to be heard, almost, "Four Medusa Bombards, Eight Griffons and... a Super-heavy Regiment, the 41st Tanakred Armored, One Baneblade, two Shadowswords and a Stormblade."
She moved into the Chimera and thumped the ramp close button and it levered up before the personnel cabin was blasted with air to form the positive pressure system to keep the bad shit outside.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Arok looked out from his palace in mounting horror at the clouds rising over the horizon. In other places cameras on his holdings that had survived showed some sort of cybernetic infatry assaulting his agricultural holdings on the planet, while not too numerous, the sensors that were part of the camera packages showed that when they opened fire the radiation levels were spiking far beyond what even the nuclear bombardment had acheived. The assault by the Rogue Trader was far above anything that the Hutts could have expected, the loss of their ancient homeworld Varl didn't even feel as catastrophic as what was now occuring.
But for all that, his attention was being forcibly turned to the army assembling on the plateau outside of his palace beyond the shield. He couldn't pull it in any closer, the shield wasn't designed for that, and like many such it was permeable to slow moving forces. It was why the radiation levels would breach the shields sooner than later. But at the moment the enemy didn't seem willing to try and pass under the shield. Why?
They already had more than enough to overwhelm him, he was no so arrogant as to miss that point. There were at least five hundred vehicles... But four much much more massive than the rest were rolling forwards and only his recon droids revealed any details at all.
And then the world went brilliant white. Arok screamed and fell back from the screens, and windows behind them.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Pask had covered his eyes just in time to protect his vision, the instruction coming down from orbit to prepare for a single orbital strike from the
Glory of Profit. The lance fire was restrained, it's power calculated not to kill the forces that had been deployed around it. No... not lance fire. A second shell hammered in and Pask realised that it was the flagships bombardment cannons sending carefully calibrated magma cannon shells into the shield protecting the palace. And in moments the shells stopped firing, the shields of the Palace glowing a cherry red when...
The two Shadowswords fired, concentrating their beam at a single point as the Stormblade fired its plasma blastgun. The shield failed a moment before the bolt of plasma reached it and the blue white raging bolt of plasma as hot as the heart of a star. And when it encountered the main gate of the Hutt compound it erupted as its containment field was disrupted by the contact and everyone within its radius simply ceased to exist along with most of the structure, the edges of its radius turning into a running molten slag.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Luminie ran from the walls, the twilek slave feeling the crashing power of terror crashing in on her as hundreds of vehicles charged across the short plateau to assault the compound, two turbolaser towers came live and turned on the assaulting forces, ruby bolts stabbing down at the incoming tanks, three of them were annihilated before return fire from siege vehicles annihilated one, causing its capacitors to overload which killed everyone else within fifty metres of the emplacement. The other tower simply became the central focus of fire from a hundred or more of the incoming vehicle, spraying it was variously laser fire, some sort of armour piercing ballistics, or when they got close enough, some sort of heat ray that turned it into molten metal.
She continued to run as the first of the vehicles breached the courtyard and ramps on their rear slammed down and armoured men and women emerged and levelled laser weapons that sprayed sweeping curtains of intensely powerful firepower that simply melted through any armour or obstacle before their thermal power caused flesh and blood to explosively vaporise where such contact was made.
Bodyguards, criminals currently residing in the palace, the occasional battle droid, they did nothing. The incoming forces moving from cover to cover and any time a hard point of resistance was formed one of the tanks would turn its weapons on the area instead. Luminie tripped over a bodiless corpse, only arms and legs to define the existence of a former person, the accident saved her life as one of the colossal tanks fired its terrible beam weapon and she saw the men setting up an e-web simply get vaporised by the beam, their weapon detonating almost unnoticeably through the blinding light.
They weren't taking prisoners Luminie noticed. Whether they fought or run the attackers were simply killing everyone. She scrambled to her feet and ran once more, trying to reach the building when something struck her. She fell once more, wailing and screaming in horror and agony. "Stop it." The words were mechanical, barked from a device on her attackers chest. She continued to wail, he wanted her to hold still so he could kill her! "I said stop it dumbass." She realised the armored figure wasn't equipped with the laserlight guns the others were.
"Please don't kill me!?" She wailed.
"Hold still." He snarled and aimed his rifle at her and she wailed and held her hands up. There was a thok and a dart appeared in her left breast. She stopped her wailing as she pulled it out in surprise. The empy vial of a hypodermic dart visible to her. Then there were two of them as her vision unfocussed. "Idiot Xenos, we're trying not to kill too many slaves if we can free you." She slumped, only half conscious as he moved in and her horror grew at how helpless she was, she knew what human males liked to do when they got a helpless twilek, especially one cursed with beaut...
He took out a tool and broke her shackles. The ones whose chains had saved her life earlier by causing her to trip on body parts. Then he stabbed her with another needle. "Potassium Iodide, Radiogardase and diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid. For the radiation." He continued. "We've got another slave for bringing to the clean tank."
As she was picked up by two other men wearing white armbands bearing a stave with a
winged skull and two intertwined snakes running around it.
The last thing she heard befor the tranq completed knocking her out was almost snarled. "Why are we wasting valuable resources on this xenos ... maybe abhuman ... filth."
