The Hot Gates

[Tyler Ward]

Sullust is a hot destination in the galaxy. Not as in popular but literally since it's a barren volcanic world. It's obsidian landscape is also depressing but Sullust is a site of a major strategic resource with it's starfighter production capabilities. The only problem is there is this alien warlord has set up shop and frequently terrorizes and plunders the natives. To pave the way to advance Galactic Alliance interests on the planet, this 'Warlord Xorvo' must be eliminated.

Reports have came in that the Warlord is sending his goons to raid a settlement that isn't fond of the Warlord's regime. It is said to be a sizable force. The settlement is located in a mountain valley, which conveniently leaves a lot of options for defending and not a whole lot for the attackers.

Warlord Xorvo's forces are coming Tyler Ward laying prone on to of a cliff overlooking the mountain pass, with a R5R Blaster Rifle up and readied, with two spare clips on his personin addition to all his other weapons. He also has two frag grenades and two concussion grendes. With him up high and on a cliff against some obsidan rocks, his profile is pretty minimized. Tyler would also have a comlink on his ear, in communication with the team.

There are sixteen Sullustians that are assisting the rebels. The goal is to ambush the Warlord's men and then hold them off until the Sullustians are able to break a dam that will bring lava on them through the mountain pass. If the Sullustians had more time this ambush wouldn't be necessary to pin them down, but alas.

The enemy is on the march, the mountainous terrain makes covers a lot of field of view, but Tyler can see a total of eight enemies, lightly equiped, moving at a decent pace. Looks like a scouting party. On his comlink Tyler would relay "Alright, eight enemies incoming. Looks like a scouting force." to the Rebels and Sullustian resistance. The lava dam coming down when their main force would be more effective than just using it to take down a token force. Patience might be key, if they let them pass unopposed and wait for the main force to come, instead of blowing the surprise outright.

The Sullustians are in position for an ambush as well. Tyler is ready if his fellow GA rebels are.

@Nefieslab @Farnis13

Dice Rolls Here

 

[Verson Tucart]

Well if there was one good thing about having lived on Tatooine for so long it was that hot temperatures didn't bother her at all and now that she was here on Sullest? Verson was glad of that to say the least considering otherwise she might have damn near sweated straight through her armour.

The volcanic ash and the like was something that she was aware of and hated all the more for how much it reminded her of sand from Tatooine. It made maintenance on her blasters something that needed to be done on a regular basis rather than something that could be done when she scheduled it normally. She was finishing up the last touches on her blaster rifle when the alert came down that they were to make ready to do the ambush.

Readying the blaster rifle, she laid herself down in a prone position with a clear line of sight down into the valley that the enemy were looking to be marching through. Verson tapped her com link.

"We let the scouts pass but send some of the Sullustians to shadow them to let us know when they're coming back." she suggested with a small shrug, "No use wasting the big surprise on small fries."

And then, as one, the Sullustians opened fire on the scouts with their blaster rifles. Verson thought to try and stop them but it was too late and when she looked back... every single scout was dead.

"Huh... that was stupidly lucky. Stupid being the key word."

@Farnis13 @Faster Than Light

 

[Evelyn Fest]

Evelyn was leaning against a rock before the scouting party approached. She was just thinking, not messing with her equipment this time. She had a bandolier of four frag grenades, her R5 pistol, R5-R rifle, and a vibro-knife at her hip. The group had been waiting at their positions for about an hour now. Being out in the open for so long had caked any patch of bare skin with a layer of ash that only got spread around when Evelyn tried rubbing it off. She had just sighed and lowered a pair of goggles over her eyes to protect them.

Evelyn jumped up a little as the Sullustans began firing on the scouting party. She readied her rifle but by the time she was ready, the scouts were mowed down by the Sullustans. She frowned and said, "Huh. Yeah, stupidly lucky."

She settled back down for a wait as the Sullustans cleared the bodies from the patrol path. It wouldn't do their ambush any good for the main force to notice the corpses of their allies in what was supposed to be a path leading up to a small, weak village. Best not to put them on alert.

About half an hour later, there was a mental itch in the back of Evelyns mind, so she slowly poked her head over, using her electrobinoculars to scan for the enemies she assumed were arriving now. Her instincts were right and she could see a party of about thirty coming up the path. They were coming up in a convoy of open top land speeders, six vehicles each with five raiders save for one more speeder that only held three.

Evelyn frowned at the number of opposition and nestled back into her hiding spot. She got onto the comms and said, "I've got thirty-three coming up the mountain path, riding seven vehicles."

The sullustan moved up, making their last minute preparations. One of them, an older man with a cloudy eye that had lost sight long ago, sat just a little bit away from her with a detonator in hand. The sullustan held it up, looking excited to press the clapper but Evelyn shook her head. They were too fa away. If they triggered the explosives now, the raiders would have an avenue of escape.

Like all villages on Sullust, the locals made their living mining out the rock at the base of the volcanoes. Sudden lava flows were common during excavations, so the village had a stockpile of remote charges that were used to cause cave ins to stop the flow of lava when such occasions occurred.

Which were also extremely useful in toppling rocks and blocking in groups of raiders in the mountain pass.

Finally, all the vehicles were nestled right where they wanted them. Evelyn gave a thumbs up to the old Sullustan who gave what she was pretty sure was a massive grin and pressed down on the detonator. And for a moment, nothing happened.

Evelyn just frowned at the silence and lack of, well explosion. For a terrifying moment, she was afraid that there was a misfire. if they couldn't trap the vehicles in here, they could just move straight on through to the village. Thankfully however it was only a brief moment as the explosives fired and rocks started falling down the side of the valley.

Both in front and behind them, the avalanche of volcano rock blocked in the vehicle, the rear one even partially crushing the rearmost vehicle as the three riders quickly hopped out. Finally, the vehicles were trapped between a rock and... well more rocks she supposed.

One of the Sullustans raised his rifle and let out a war cry which was punctuated by the report of blaster rifles from all along the mountain side firing down on the vehicles. The raiders were caught completely with their pants down as they scrabbled to reach the cover of their vehicles. So far, no one had died in the opening salvo but that wasn't the goal. They'd never be able to handle thirty three enemies on their own even in an ambush. The sullustans just weren't trained for that. All they had to do was hold them long enough for the Sullustans to open the lava dam and then they could flood the place.

Evelyn felt herself getting excited from the enthusiasm of the other Sullustan and found herself popping up from behind her rock to fire down at the enemy with her own rifle. She wasn't hitting anything, but it felt good to have the advantage this time.

 

[Tyler Ward]

Verson Tucart was saying what Tyler was just thinking on the comms. Letting them pass until the bigger numbers come forth... until the Sullustians starting firing blasters at them. The ex-Imperial Agent was just cringing as he stopped looking through his scope. And afterwards then it looked like the Sullustians just straight up overpowered them and killed them in short order. "Dang..." Tyler muttered. While as impressive of a display that was, Tyler was worried that the blaster shots would echo and then the rest of their force would hear them, or that the scouts would quickly report the ambush before they die. But that's not what happened.

Tyler would afterwards look through his scope again along the path, finding the same incoming enemies that Evelyn is found. Those Sullustians better have that dam broke soon. But for now, the Alliance and their local partners here have to hold them off.

It's almost time for the trap to be sprung. And when it was time, Tyler had a puzzled expression on his face, wondering if the bombs they had in place were duds or if the detonator was unusable with all that volcanic ash in the air. But when given enough times, the explosives worked, making an avalanche that would hinder their convoy. Now it's time. Tyler started firing his blaster, aiming towards the goons towards the front. Tyler's shots made their mark as he aimed towards two targets, firing two shots at each, their would find their mark in their chest and kill them through the armor they had. Although the ambush is working well, it's not doing so well for the Sullustians. The Sullustian resistance fighters aren't trained soldiers and the rag tag fighters are in over their head and garnering an awful lot of attention as well as not sticking to cover (meanwhile in comparison the Warlord's thugs are remorseless killers), resulting in a quarter of them going down not long after the exchange of blaster fire starts.

@Nefieslab @Farnis13

 

[Verson Tucart]

The Sullustians were beginning to take a pounding now and it was clear that the only reason they were doing any kind of comparable damage at all was because they had the element of surprise. As surprise was quickly gone, their allies were dropping at an alarming rate and Verson was beginning to get concerned that they would, at best, leave this mission without their local allies which would be, in a word, BAD for public relations here.

"You lot - get back!" She told a group of the Sullustians, who looked only too happy to remove themselves from the firing line, "Head back to camp and gather up some grenades!"

Busy work but it would be better on the mission report than 'Sent Sullustians back so they would stop dying, the damn cowards' or whatever. Instead of focusing on that, she keyed her com link so that only her fellow rebels could hear her.

"I've sent some of the Sullustians back just in case the guys take much more damage... we don't want the locals blaming us."

Instead of continuing to chat however, she readied her blaster rifle and took a deep breath. She found herself in the moment once again and it was was as easy as breathing. Her finger barely squeezed the trigger before she was sighting down another target. Specifically, she was targeting those who looked like they were attempting to organise some kind of effective defence and counter attack - the officers and the like.

Carefully and methodically, she mowed down five of them, bringing the total number down to 26. If they could keep this up then they would be doing well.

@Farnis13 @Faster Than Light

 

[Evelyn Fest]

Evelyn pulled a grenade from her bandolier, seeing that the enemy was grouped together too much. She pulled the pin, waited a few seconds, and then chucked it overhead into the group of enemies down below. The grenade landed right in between them and they started to scrabble away, panicking.

And yet, nothing happened. Evelyn waited in tense suspense for the explosion, yet none came. She glanced over and saw the small baseball like shape just sitting there, almost mocking her. She sighed and muttered, "You've got to be kriffing with me."

Yet thankfully, the grenade succeeded in forcing a few of them out of cover. Evelyn managed to sight one of them, slowed her breathing, and planted a bolt in his chest. She grinned at the result of her shot and swiveled to find another one, running. She repeated the actions, getting another bolt into the runners chest.

Yet as she turned to sight another, too late she realized she was out of cover too long. For a moment everything turned red and white and something slammed into her face. Her helmet went flying and Evelyn found herself on her back. She wanted to open her eyes, to try and right herself, but everything just burned. Her face felt on fire and she could only barely open her eyes before they too stung too much to try and open them again.

"Kriff I, argh!" She said on the comms. "I think im hit, everything kriffing hurts."

 

[Verson Tucart]

The second Evelyn went down, Verson was moving towards the other fighter.

She didn't really know why - it was like her body moved on it's own - but in the first moment after Evelyn let out a cry of pain, Verson was up and moving towards her ally. It was a stupid move. She was up and moving towards Evelyn but that meant that she wasn't being cautious enough about her own, personal safety. She was so focused on helping Evelyn that she actually turned her back on the battle and she was immediately punished for it.

Two blaster bolts slammed into her upper back, breaching her armour and frying and breaking the skin at the same time as sending her flying forwards. Screaming in pain, Verson was lucky not to be dead she knew (in an abstract kind of way) but that didn't stop her from screaming in raw pain, half of her back missing chunks, bleeding freely and burnt. This was the kind of battlefield wound that people died from if medical attention wasn't on hand before too long.

She groaned in pain and grit her teeth against it long enough to press her coms.

"Medic!"

But there was no medic on hand - which meant that they would need to wrap this up quickly to get her to one instead.

The Sullustians, seeing their allies go down, seemed refreshed and renewed their fire on the enemy, pinning them down completely and utterly. The enemy were barely able to poke their heads out, lowering the risk of Tyler being included on the list of the wounded as well.

@Farnis13 @Faster Than Light

 

[Tyler Ward]

The battle is going well. The Sullustians, although are taking a few more losses are holding the enemy in where they should be, where when the dam explodes the will all be consumed by a river of lava flowing their way. But suddenly out of nowhere things became more dire all in a flash. Just as Tyler was about to fire some more carefully aimed shots he heard on his comms Evalyn crying in pain.

It sounded really bad.

Tyler figured that with the Sullustians already taking a brunt of the fire and keeping the Warlord's goons in check that he go go over and tend to her. The ex-Imperial Agent would spring out of prone position and then start making his way over to Evelyn with all due haste. Before he could register that Verson took bad hits as well, Tyler would get nailed with a blaster bolt as well, managing to nail him in his left abdomen while he was making haste.

The impact from the shot knocked him down over forward, leaving him to hit the obsidian ground front first. Although armor protected him from outright having his abdomen blown off in a gory manner, he can still feel the burning sting from the blaster shot.

Hopefully Evelyn will be okay. Looking around Verson is badly wounded too. They will both be okay. Those Sullustians better have that dam blown up soon...

@Farnis13 @Nefieslab

 

[Evelyn Fest]

Evelyn felt the pain receding a bit. Although it still hurt for her to even open her eyes she found it didn't affect her too much. Would she have preferred to actually see where the enemy was coming from? By far. But she found herself able to somehow feel where the enemy was coming from, what fire was heading towards her.

So she was only mildly surprised when she heard someone in front of her, hearing the click of their rifle as it primed and aimed down at her. Evelyn drew her pistol, aiming forward and firing a trio of three shots. A second later, a body hit the ground, grunting in pain. It didn't sound like a Sullustan so she likely hit someone she needed to.

But wait, the enemy shouldn't be making it up this far. She knew somehow that the raiders were starting to regroup and were making their way up the hill. On the other side, seeing the three rebels take hits spooked the Sullustans. Although most of them stayed behind, a few did start to retreat and the ones who stayed were shaken and their effectiveness reduced.

Slowly the enemy were starting to move up, although it was still possible to hold them long enough for the dam to blow.

 

[Verson Tucart]

Apparently some of the Sullustians knew what they were doing when it came to getting a wounded fighter back on their feet.

Indeed, one of them came over her her with some kind of cream she had never seen before and a bunch of syrettes. Lying there, she wasn't in any position to refuse even the strangest of treatments. And then something happened - it bloody worked! The Sullustian spread the cream across her back and it worked to stop the bleeding almost immediately, filling the cracks and breaks in her skin, soothing the burns, before forming a solid shell. It was like the whole thing was a castle that fitted the groves of her injuries perfectly.

Then the Sullustian began to use the syrettes, one after the other.

The first took the pain away almost instantly, the second made her fingers and toes tingle. The third and fourth he already knew what they were... they were adrenals. Suddenly her heart was going ten-to-the-dozen and she felt like she could benchpress a tank. A medium battle tank of course - she wasn't crazy.

Her blaster rifle had been dropped but the enemy were here... so it was time to get things and take them up a notch.

Rolling over onto her side, she raised her blaster pistol, blasting half of the skull of an attacking enemy away with one shot as she used the shock value to pick herself up off the ground. Firing twice, she blasted apart two kneecaps, sending their owners sprawling to the ground, before she callously executed them both with her vibrosword - cutting their throats. A woman probably still near deaths door, Verson grabbed a mercenary by the hair and dragged him to the edge of the hill before slowly opening his throat in front of all of his allies.

Some of them were intimidated enough to back off... others fired and Verson had to hide behind the new corpse she'd made until she could get back to cover.

@Faster Than Light @Farnis13

 

[Tyler Ward]

As Tyler was getting himself up, he heard confirmation. Confirmation that the Sullustians have successfully rigged bombs at the dam and they have now exploded. Tyler would look in the direction of where he could hear the explosions in the distance. They've done it... the Imperial Agent could still feel the burning sting of the blaster bolt he took previously he was hesitant to get up again lest he get hit again soon after.

Before too long, he lava would be running down the valley and eventually it would run down the mountain pass where the majority of the Warlord's raiders are at. In the meantime, the Galactic Alliance would be very prompt with sending a Rebel Transport over to their location for a quick extraction as the lava flowing along it's intended path. There would be GA soldiers as gunners manning the autoblasters at port and starboard sides.

The lava is coming, the Warlord's flunkies could see it flowing like a tide, they would scramble. Quite a bit of them were able to move away from the trap by this point in time, but the others would have no chance and would drown in firey doom. But for the others, the rebel transport would descend, landing close to the rebels on safe ground. As it is landing and after it is landing, the gunners would be bringing their autoblasters to bare effectively on the enemy. The autoblaster fire was to there to not only provide covering fire, suppress any enemies if not gun them down where they stood outright.

Mission was accomplished. The dam is destroyed, the Warlord's men have been held off and their advance was stopped, a lot of their number battered, beaten, and killed. Not only that and most importantly the settlement they sought to destroy is safe.

Now they can go home. With it being mostly safe now, Tyler would advance onto the transport and his fellow GA comrades can leave a job well done once they embark.

@Farnis13 post @Nefieslab

 

[Evelyn Fest]

As the ships touched down, Evelyn got up and began to make her way for the ships. She followed the thrumming sounds of them landing and could see their blurry forms through stinging eyes. Worries about her sight filled her as she stumbled along. A sullustan she didn't recognize came up to her and looped her arm around the back of his neck, letting her rest on him and lean on him.

Evelyn appreciated it, willing to let the Sullustan guide her to the ship. Once she was aboard, a medic had her sit on a chair and looked over her. At one point the medic brushed against her face, causing a spasm of pain. The medic sighed and said, "You're lucky. If it weren't for your helmet? You'd be dead. Even if you somehow survived you would've gone blind."

Evelyn nodded, appreciating the severity of the situation. Next time she had to be more careful. But at least this mission was a success.

 

[Verson Tucart]

It was over?

It certainly looked over.

Verson groaned in pain and began to head on over to the transport. They were done here and the trap had been sprung - and she was going to need serious medical attention once this whole thing was over and she was back on some form of civilised ship. Groaning, she waved to Tyler and Everlyn.

They had done... well none of them had done amazingly well but they'd done enough to get the mission done and, despite the best efforts of both herself and Evelyn?

None of them had died!

That was a win in her book.

/Exit&End Thread
@Faster Than Light @Farnis13