Chapter Text
Scratch hated this. He’d been through hell before. Christophsis, Ryloth, Mygeeto, Scarif, the lot of it. Kriff, though. Caros XII is awful. Rainy, muddy, and cold. Covered in hot springs. That’s be nice if most of ‘em didn’t try to either boil you to death or drag you down in quicksand. The one he was sitting in now was thankfully not scalding. Behind a dirt berm, the Seppies laid it down thick from a bunker about half a click away. General Tamm, crazy Polis Massan he was, had led them 17 clicks through the nastiest mountains the 248th had seen in just 3 rotations. Now, they were pinned down. AA was too thick for Y-wings to get through, so now it was up to blood, sweat, tears, and a lot of thermal detonators. They’d dug in to besiege the bunker. If all else fails, they would fix vibro blades and charge. That was 8 rotations ago. The trenches were flooding with spring and rain water, and the resupplies had failed so far. So yeah. Scratch HATED Caros.
He was snapped out of his thoughts by the E-Web going off. Kriff that was bad news. Whipping around, he sees about 60 clankers barreling down hill. Commandos. Sithspit. “ATTACK! OPEN UP LADS!” Captain Howzer and Commander Fossil came running from the command tent, practically ramming their heads into their buckets. They were nearly done mowing down the first wave, when another came. This wasn’t going to end well.
SIX WEEKS EARLIER:
Spook watched as the new shinies filtered off the gunships. Scarif had been costly. A weeks long island hopping campaign cost them nearly 1/4th of the corps. Entire battalions had been wiped out. He sighed and turned back to Sabacc. He was one turn away from winning when Wyvern hit him with a royal flush. Everyone blinks. The Commander. Zigzag. The Lieutenant. The Sarge. Even the general, who was watching, seemed to grimace. Spook needed some of the spotchka that Weaver smuggled off world. A few of the shinies wandered up to the general, and introduced themselves. All of the by numbers. The generic old “CT-#### REPORTING FOR DUTY, SIR!”