From: rrc3813@yahoo.com (MKSheppard)
Newsgroups: alt.startrek.vs.starwars
Subject: [FANFIC] The Division Chapter 1
Date: 11 May 2002 13:19:14 -0700


*****************************

"THE DIVISION"

The Sequel to "THE OUTPOST"

BY

MARK SHEPPARD

******************************

[voice over by narrator]

Autumn 2273.

In a stunning two-month blitzkreig, 
the Empire's armies have overrun
world after world, crushing race after
race under their iron heel, while in
space, the Imperial Navy has dealt
blow after blow to the Empire's 
enemies.

Now, all that remains of the once proud
Klingon Empire, is a world called Ikonos, 
where for the last three weeks, the battered 
remnants of the Klingon Army has held off 
against overwhelming odds.

[/voice over by narrator]

[ISS PALPATINE'S WRATH]

The Star Destroyer slid through the orbital belt
of wreckage that surrounded Ikonos, some of it 
from Imperial ships, some of it from Federation 
ships, but most of it Klingon, destroyed in a 
last-ditch effort to prevent the Empire from
landing on the planet.

Inside the Troop bays of the ISD, the 14,000 men 
of the 999th Corellian Line Division stirred, still 
groggy and tired from spending the last couple of 
days in a troop space designed for only 9,000 troops.

Three hours later, the entire division had been 
offloaded onto landing barges, towards the Divisional
offloading point on the planet below.

[999th Division Staging Area - Four Hours Later]

Corporal Mark Sheppard watched as cargo loaders flew 
around in the sky like angry hornets, while on the ground 
below, thousands of men milled about. 

"Company, ATTEN-SHUN!" shouted their CO, one Captain O'Shea.

Both Sheppard and his best friend, Corporal Heinz Falkenhorst,
came to attention, along with the other 182 men who made
up Able Company of the 1st of the 1st Battalion of the 
1st Regiment in the 999th Corellian Infantry Division.

As they stood at attention under the blazing hot sun, Captain
O'Shea gave them a pep talk. 

"Men! By this afternoon, we shall be in battle against the
Klingons! Remember, you are not just any trooper, you are
a Fighting Triple Niner!

"HELL YEAH!" came the throaty reply from the assembled 
troopers of Sheppard's company.

"What do Triple Niners do to the enemy?"

"WE KILL THEM!" roared the reply.

"DAMN RIGHT!" yelled O'Shea. "Compn'ee, 
forward...march!"

With that, the 182 troopers of Able Company
began to march down the dusty road that led to
the capital city of this benighted planet,
followed closely by the other three line infantry
companies of the First of the Triple Ninth, and
the lone repulsorlift company taking the lead,
scouting ahead of the marching column of men.

[HEADQUARTERS, 999th INFANTRY DIVISION]

Major General Sonnenburg sat at his desk,
working on his masterpiece, a 1/164th scale
replica of the RCS Gradium, the legendary
extra-galactic sleeper ship of the Old
Republic, when suddenly the door of his 
quarters opened, and in stepped Major Bridello.

"Sir, the Regimental commanders are here to 
see you."

Sighing, Chuck put down the tweezers he had
been using to assemble the model and turned
around to face his aide.

"Let's go, Haim." 

"Yessir."

[15 MINUTES LATER - 999th PLANNING ROOM]

The Lieutenant Colonels who commanded
the 999th's four Regiments sat clustered
around the holoprojector, chatting up a
small storm while they waited for their
superior.

"How long do you think this campaign will 
last?" asked Lt. Colonel Robert Dalton, one 
of Sonnenburg's four regimental commanders.

"A month or two at the most. Five if we don't
use chems." chimed in Lt. Col. Ian Samuels, 
another regimental commander.

"Fuck that, let's just use the red pellet shells,
we won't even have to fucking enter the place
once the red pellets are through with them."
added Lt. Col. C.S. Strowbridge, the next to
last regimental commander in the 999th.

"Why do we even have to be here? Just do an
orbital bombardment from that ISD that brought
us here, and that's all she wrote," finished
Lt. Colonel Phong Nguyen, who rounded out 
Sonnenburg's four regimental commanders, and
not incidentially was the most inexperienced,
having only taken command a few months ago.

The moment Sonnenburg entered the room, the four
Lt. Colonels stopped talking, and stood up, saluting
him in the process.

"At ease. We've got a lot ahead of us."

After everyone had been seated, Sonnenburg 
started up the holoprojector.

"You may all be wondering why we've been sent here,
when we could just simply BDZ the place from orbit,"
he said, answering everyone's unasked question.

On the holoprojector, a strange curved sword appeared,
and began to rotate lazily in the phosphorescent glow
of the holotank.

"Gentlemen, I give you the Sword of Kahless. One of these
Klingons' more enduring legends. They hold that their 
demi-god Kahless once wielded this blade after forging it
from a lock of his hair. As such, it has a place in their
society all out of proportion in relation to it's actual
importance."

"The Ubiqtorate managed to locate the Temple on the
planet where the sword's being held, and in light of
an analysis by the Destab boys, the decision was made
to capture this world without the initial preliminary
orbital bombardment."

Dalton raised his hand.

"Yes, Colonel?"

"Sir, if the Ubiqtorate could find it's location 
out, why do we have to even be here? Just send a 
Storm Commando detachment to grab it in the middle 
of the night."

"Destab again, people." replied Sonnenburg. "They felt
that in light of the Klingon cultural mindset, a raid
to steal the blade would be viewed as dirty and 
underhanded, and would only serve to further inspire them
in combat."

"They concluded that if we did capture the blade in combat
against a superior force, the Klingons would suffer a total
moral collapse, because you see, this blade is tended to by
the House of the Ruling Family currently in power. It is the
symbol of their sovereign's ruling might."

Everyone smiled at that, as they finally began to comprehend.

"Exactly! Take the blade, and they might suffer a total
governmental collapse, which we can exploit even more!"
shouted Samuels.

"Yeah, you're getting it now," added Sonnenburg. "To this
end, the 999th has been ordered to begin the assault against
the capital city of the planet. The temple is in the exact
center of the capital city, as this planet was originally
founded as a religious retreat hundreds of years ago."

Pressing a button on his control stick, a 3-D topological map
of the surrounding terrain around the capital city appeared,
followed by red and blue lines a moment later, with the blue line 
showing a moderate penetration to the outskirts of the city.

"This is where we stand. We invaded two weeks ago, approximately 
200 kilometers from the city, and we've managed to penetrate a 
little into the outer suburbs of the city in this area, as of now."

He pushed the button again, causing the blue mini-sailent section
of the line to begin flashing.

"This will be our area of operations tomorrow. We're taking over
from the 102nd Corellian Assault Division, which by last count,
had suffered 40% casualties and is due to be withdrawn from the
campaign for rebuilding back home."

Another push caused sections in the line to the left and right
of the mini-sailent to glow green, with text appearing on top
of each flank.

Looks of shock appeared on the four regimental commander's faces.

"It can't be..." muttered Nguyen.

"You're not imagining things, and yes, that is no typo. Our 
left and right flanks are being guarded by the 1st and 2nd 
Coruscant Battlegroups, "Palpatine" and "Emperor's Fist".

Sonnenburg pressed the button again, causing a green blob to 
appear behind the mini-sailent, along with more text.

"Bringing up our rear is the 60th Coruscant Battlegroup, also 
known popularly as the 'Mailed Fist'." Scratching his chin, he 
added; "They're fresh off a rebuilding action following 30% 
casualties taking Romulus; that's why they're in reserve."

Sonnenburg looked up from the holotank, towards his regimental 
comanders.

"I expect our people to be in their divisional laager by 0200 
hours at the most, for we assault the city at 0500 hours. Slacking 
off will not be tolerated. Your commanders are authorized to use 
whatever methods they deem necessary to keep the men moving."

"Colonel Dalton! Your regiment is in the lead tomorrow! Are
your men up to it?"

"Sir, they're the best in the Army. They're more than ready
for whatever these Klingon losers throw at them!" replied Dalton,
sniffing in semi-disgust over the fact that his men were being
questioned in their fortitude.

"Good to hear it. Samuels' and Strowbridge's regiments will be 
supporting your flanks, while Nguyen will bring up the rear and 
be our reserve force."

"Intel says you'll be up against mostly second-line forces, and
some third-liners, because it appears that our deception operations
involving the 'Palpatine' Battlegroup have succeeded, causing
the Klingons to think the main force of the assault will be
over in 'Palpatine's operational area, not in ours."
 
Sonnenburg paused for a moment, contemplating the fact that his
orders were about to kill and maim a lot of his men in the coming
battle. He pushed those thoughts to the back of his head, and in
the professional tone of an Imperial Army General Officer, spoke up;

"That's all. You're dismissed."

[999th Division Line of March]

Sheppard moaned and shifted his BlasTech A280 on his
shoulders, trying to focus on something else other than
the brutal heat and humidity, along with the fierce sunlight
that beat down on him as he and the other men of the 999th
who didn't have repulsorlifts to ride on in marched towards
the capital city.

They had been marching since 0500 that morning, and it was
now 1700, and the setting sun was burning right into his 
eyes, no matter how tightly he shut his eyelids. His legs,
well, he could no longer feel them, due to the brutal
marching that had allowed the 999th to cover half the
distance to the capital city in only 12 hours. They had
covered nearly twenty-five kilometers, and had another
twenty to go before they could rest for the night.

In the background, they could hear the low rumbling
in the distance of the artillery on both sides
hammering away at each other. On the horizon,
a pall of smoke rose languidly into the sky, tinted
orange by the setting sun, the funeral pyre for
thousands of sentinents.

Tomorrow, they would assault the city.

[0200 hours the next day - 2 km west of the capital city]

Sheppard and Falkenhorst finally sat down for the first time in 
over twenty hours, their feet full of painful blisters, making
each step like stepping on needles.

Slowly pulling off their boots, they slapped bacta patches onto
the bloody masses that were their feet before curling up under
their regulation Imperial Army-issue blankets for a few fitful
hours of sleep, for the assault was scheduled to begin at
0500. Closing their eyes tightly, they tried to sleep despite
the roar of artillery ripping through the night sky, and the bright
flashes on the horizon as shells detonated in the city.

Every ten minutes or so, the shriek of engines shattered the sounds
of artillery, as TIEs whipped overhead on bombing runs in the city,
and they could feel the almost continuous vibration of explosions 
in the ground as they slept.

[0430 Hours]

"UP! UP! EVERYONE UP!" roared Sergeant Ancaris, punctuating 
his words with the high pitched shrieking of a whistle he held 
between his lips to wake even the soundest sleepers.

"YOU KNOW THE DRILL! Leave your sleeping mats and excess gear behind!"
barked Ancaris as he walked between the ranks of sleeping men as they
stirred.

"Kriff that, man," muttered Falkenhorst as he and Sheppard woke up.
"They always say to leave your shit behind. I got a bad feeling about
this one, Mark," said Falkenhorst as he unpacked his gunbelt with
it's matched pair of DL-44s.

In the background, they could see other men in their company praying
to whatever God(s) they believed in, while some of the more sinful
of them were paying off gambling debts.

[0450 Hours]

"Captain O'Shea! The Company is ready and awaits your orders, sir!"
barked Sgt. Ancaris.

"Excellent. We attack in ten minutes."

Sheppard broke down his A-280, and examined the firing mechanism,
making sure the parts were in right. He had illegally modified his 
issued A-280 to fire full automatic, and even though he had had
the Divisional Machine Shop make up some special custom made parts
for his firing mechanism to take the extra stress, he liked to check
before battle to make sure none of them had any cracks in them.

Falk spit into the dust as he tightened his gunbelt around his waist, 
twirling his matched DL-44s before slipping them into the polished 
leather holsters. The Sarge had given him some grief before Falk had
had a 'friendly' chat with him, and now the Sarge didn't care as long 
as Falk followed orders.

Dawn was breaking the horizon just barely when the clock hit
0500 hours, and the entire horizon lit up in flame as hundreds
of batteries fired, raining death and destruction onto the city
in nice 30 kilogram packages.

"GO! GO! GO!" yelled O'Shea as he pulled out his DL-44 and pointed
it towards the city.

Running like possessed men, the men of the 999th made good the two
kilometers separating them from the city's outskirts in no time at all,
minus about 30 men who were killed along the way by Klingon shells.

As they moved into the city suburbs, they started to see more of the overt
signs of war, like denuded trees and shattered houses. In some of the houses,
makeshift casualty collection points had been established, and as the men
of the 999th passed them, they couldn't help but look at the shattered wrecks
who had been whole men mere hours before.

The private in front of Falk began to puke, and was about to collapse when
Falk kicked him in the ass with his size fourteen steel-toed jackboots. "Kriff
that, numbnuts! Keep moving or I'll smoke your kriffing ass myself!"

As they passed the ruins of a bombed out building, Sheppard saw a chaplain saying
the last rites over a corpse as an attendant closed the corpse's eyes and pulled
the Imperial War Flag over it. Two more attendants lifted the now flag-wrapped 
corpse and moved it off to a ever-growing line on the ground as another corpse 
was brought up for the chaplain to say the last rites for.

The new private couldn't help himself and he began puking harder, falling 
behind more and more, until Sergeant Ancaris shot him in the back of the 
head, shouting "Kriffing Coward! If you're gonna puke, do it in your enemies face!"

The other men in the company looked at the half-insane grin on Ancaris' 
face, and began jogging even faster, so they could get away from their 
insane sergeant. Compared to him, the Klingons were babies.

[0650 Hours - Kahless Courtyard]

The Division had finally reached what passed for the front-lines in the city,
and Sheppard and Falk crouched behind a pile of rubble, chewing noisily
on their rations. 

"So, heard about that new ALK-912?" muttered Falk in between shells landing
in the square ahead of them. "No, what's it?" 

Falk smiled evilly. "Torture 'droid. Supposedly can crack even the toughest
Reb in five minutes flat."

"Nice. Look at this fool." muttered Shep as he raised his A-280 and took
aim at a Klingon scurrying across the square, wearing nothing but a loin
cloth and waving a curved sword of some sort. Unlike the other Klingon
dead they had seen up to that point, his face looked like someone had hit
him in the chin with a bat, and caused the bones to thrust upwards.

"Bye bye, sweetie." crooned Sheppard as he squeezed the trigger. A moment
later, the Klingon tumbled to the ground, his torso landing ten feet away
from his legs. 

"The BlasTech A-280. When you absolutely, positively, have to send the very
best!" shouted Sheppard as he lowered his rifle.

Down the street, Captain O'Shea was recieving his orders from 
Major Björn Paulsen, who in turn, was recieving his orders from 
Lt. Colonel Dalton. 

"Affirm. O'Shea out." yelled O'Shea as he tried to make his voice 
audible over the din of shells landing. Putting down his headset, 
he switched it from the Battalion TacNet to the Company TacNet, 
and issuing orders to his individual platoons.

"Able Platoon, I want you to skirt those buildings on the green 
side of Kahless square, and use your demo equipment to move from 
building to building. Under no circumstances are you to cross 
that square in the open!"

"Bravo Platoon, Move from building to building on the red side 
of Kahless courtyard, and blow your way from building to building, 
and DO NOT MOVE IN THE OPEN!"

"Charlie Platoon, give fire support to Able and Bravo as they 
move across the Square!"

"Delta Platoon, you're the Company Reserve! Get under cover!"

"Fuckin O'Shea. Why is it that we're always on the point?" 
moaned Falk as he readied his A-280.

"Shut up, Falkenhorst!" snapped Lieutenant Smallwood, the CO 
of Able Platoon. "Falk, Shep, you're on point!"

Sheppard gave Falk an evil look. "Thanks a kriffin' lot."

Raising their weapons, Falkenhorst and Sheppard slowly inched
over to the right side of the street, trying to hide themselves
against the sides of the buildings, while Sheppard fired his A-280 
on full auto, adding to the din from Charlie Platoon to keep the 
Klings heads down, while Falk took the point with his rifle, alert 
for any sudden threats.

Coming to the door of the first house on the Green side of
the street, Falk blew the door lock off and kicked the door
in, revealing a Klingon woman clutching her child. The moment
she saw Falk, she screamed and began charging him, bringing
a butcher knife from behind her back.

Without any remorse, Falkenhorst burned them down where they
stood. "Entrance cleared!" he shouted over the Platoon TacNet.

While Sheppard slammed a fresh powercell into his A-280, Falk
quickly scanned the entranceway with his rifle. When Shep had
finished reloading his weapon, they quickly moved off, clearing
the house with short bursts of blasterfire.

"House Cleared!" yelled Falk as Sheppard poked his rifle out of
the top windows, picking off a stray Klingon across the square
with a single shot.

One by one, the rest of Able Platoon ran through the street towards
the now-cleared building, making it across all unscratched, unlike 
Bravo, which lost a man making the perilous crossing across the open
grounds of the streets to the relative safety of the buildings.

For a moment, everyone caught their breath while the demo experts
readied the breaching charges and attached them to the wall 
adjoining the next house in the row.

With a muted *wumpf* that shook the entire house to it's 
foundations, the charges were detonated a minute later.

A second later, frag grenades were thrown through the gaping 
hole in the wall, and the moment after they detonated, Shep 
and Falk were first through the hole, landing right in the 
middle of a bunch of Klingons moaning on the ground with 
shrapnel in their guts.

Smiling wickedly, Shep gunned them down in one long burst, 
splattering purple gore all over his body armor and the 
walls of the room.

"Breach Cleared! Five Hostiles Down!" yelled Shep as Falk 
threw a frag round the corner to clear the hallway of 
hostiles too.

A few minutes later, Falk and Shep were standing in the 
hallway, pointing their rifles upstairs warily while the 
rest of the platoon moved into the lower floor. One of 
the new recruits, a Timothy Jones, if Shep remembered 
correctly, ran past them and up the stairs yelling at 
the top of his lungs, disregarding Sheppard and 
Falkenhorst's warnings not to go up there yet, as it 
was still 'hot'.

A few moments later, the whine of disruptor fire echoed 
off the walls, followed by a short scream that was cut 
off abruptly.

"FNG," muttered Falk, shaking his head sadly.

Lt. Smallwood suddenly came running up to them, his 
face ashen. "Was that Private Jones?"

"Unfortunately for him, yes." replied Sheppard, his 
voice deadpan.

"Kriff, no!" shrieked Smallwood.

"What's the big deal?" snarled Falk. "He was a FNG, 
and he disregarded our warnings and got wasted."

A look of abject fear was in Smallwood's face as he 
replied wearily, "Maybe, but his old man is 
Surface Marshal Jones."

"Vader's breath! Does that mean we have to go and recover 
his worthless corpse?" muttered Shep.

"'fraid so." ordered Smallwood.

Shep and Falk pulled a fresh pair of frags from their vests, 
when Smallwood spoke up. "Can't use frags. His corpse needs 
to be returned intact."

"He should have thought of THAT before he ran upstairs!" 
yelled Sheppard as he threw his frag upstairs, followed 
by Falkenhorst.

A moment later, the low *wumpf* of frags sounded, and 
Shep and Falk charged upstairs, firing their weapons 
as they ran, stiching holes in the walls, followed by 
high pitched shrieks then low thumps as the bodies 
hit the floor.

Their eyes tracked to the floor momentarily as purple 
blood began to run from under the doors, staining the 
floor a color that would last forever.

Falk motioned towards a door, and Shep nodded as he 
moved into position, fired a short burst through the 
door into the room, then kicked the door in, revealing 
a room bare of everything except a horribly mutated 
version of a children's crib, complete with barbed 
wire.

"Shit, these Klings are hardcore, man," muttered Falk 
upon seeing the crib.

Looking at the pictures littering the floor, Sheppard 
picked one up, noting that the family seemed to be one 
of those "krinkle-headed" klings, rather than the smooth 
forehead types. "What's with these fuckers and pain?"
remarked Shep.

"Aren't we forgetting something?" asked Falk.

"What?" snarled Sheppard.

"Him." finished Falk, pointing his rifle towards a 
horribly mangled corpse lying on the floor. "Man, those 
frags really didn't improve his complexion,"
cracked Shep.

"Upper floor secure, and we've recovered Private Jones' 
corpse. Recommend a closed casket funeral, though." 
reported Falkenhorst.

"Shep, Falk, I want you two psychopaths off point!" 
snarled Smallwood over the Platoon TacNet. "Riggs, 
Owens, take the point!"

"Shit man, I think we've earned a siesta, don't you think?" 
cracked Falkenhorst as he sat down and pulled out a file, 
and began scratching notches in the barrel of his weapon, 
while Shep counted the corpses in the upper level and reported 
back the number to Falk.

"Add a half notch for that little baby klingon, he wasn't 
that big!" yelled Sheppard as he took up his overwatch position, 
keeping the Black side of the house free from infiltration by 
the Klingons through the alleys and backdoors.

The low rumble of breaching charges detonating rolled through the
building and up the soles of their boots, while a wave of heat
rushed up the stairs, followed by shouts, screams, and the sharp
sizzle of blasterfire.

In the street below, Sheppard spotted movement. He carefully
raised his rifle, watching for any sign that they might be 
Imperials. Finding none, he let loose a short burst, which
was replied to with the characteristic whine of disruptors.

Yep. These weren't friendlies, all right, thought Shep as he
cut loose with his A-280's full cyclic rate, shredding 
everything that moved in the alleyway below him, fighting 
the horrible recoil from his rifle.

An eerie silence filled the alleyway as the only sound that
could be heard was the slow sizzling of hundreds of blaster
holes as they slowly cooled down. 

"Attempted infiltration, black sector!" reported Shep, "But
it's been taken care of!"

Suddenly, over the Platoon intercoms, screaming and weapons
fire could be heard, much more than usual. "Falk, Shep, get up
there and help Red Squad!" yelled Smallwood as he took aim
at a charging Klingon with his rifle, dropping the kling in
one clean shot.

"We're on our way," replied Falk as he got up, blowing the dust
off the latest notch in his rifle. "Time to add some more notches,
Shep."

Thundering downstairs, both Shep and Falk rushed through the
breach into the next building, past Smallwood, who was shooting
frantically out the window at a column of charging krinkle-headed
Klings.
 
Rushing through the smoke-filled corridors of the house, 
Shep was the first to come upon what was left of Red Squad, 
a blood-stained corporal firing his illegally procured E-11 
around the corner on full automatic, his left leg ending below
the knee in a bloody stump that had been tied off with a 
tourqinet.

"Where's Red Squad?" shouted Shep above the din of battle in the
next room. "In there! We walked right into a kriffin' ambush!
Wierzbowski, Crowe, and Dietrich are gone, man, gone!"

Suddenly, as Cpl Apone was talking, a cylindrical device came 
sailing through the doorway, causing everyone to throw themselves 
to the floor.

A moment later the Kling grenade blew, showering everyone with 
shrapnel and battering their eardrums. Sheppard rolled around in
pain, his buttocks a fiery mass of searing hot pain, and as his
hearing slowly came back, all he heard was non-stop screaming,
and the scary thing was, it was coming from himself.

Falk slowly lifted himself up, and took hold of the situation.
He'd dove for the floor a fraction of a second faster than 
Sheppard and being behind Mark, had escaped relatively unscathed, 
while Shep had taken most of the shrapnel.

In the doorway, a dark-skinned humanoid appeared, wearing a 
grey uniform adorned with a dull grey sash embroidered with 
various words in the Kling language. In his hands was a 
disruptor carbine, and hanging from his belt were several 
grey cylinders.

Falk feigned death as he watched more of the dark-skinned
humanoids appear in the doorway, who rapidly moved towards 
the prone forms of Shep and Apone, ignoring Falk, who appeared 
to be dead, thanks to the nearly half-gallon of Sheppard's blood 
that was splattered all over him, plus his open, sightless eyes.

Falk grinned inwardly. He knew all those hours when he was a kid
staring down the family cat in a blinking contest would one
day come in handy as he slowly unsnapped the holsters holding his
twin DL-44s.

The lead smoothie, as he had already taken to calling them was
barking something out in the Kling language when Falk did his
move, whipping his DL-44s out of their holsters like greased
lightning, faster than the eye could see.

The heavy blaster pistols in his hands roared almost continuously
as Falk pulled the trigger at a near in-human speed, pegging
the lead Kling twice in the head, then stiching the one behind
the leader twice in the chest, finishing off the third with a 
trio of shots that led downwards from the sternum, ending in
the Kling's groin.

Falk barely had a chance to catch his breath when a Krink poked
his ugly puss around the opposite door, and Falk nailed him right
between the eyes with both pistols, burning half his head off 
in a beautiful shot.

Slowly, he stood up, and walked up to each corpse, shooting them 
each in the head once, just to make sure they were dead, before
he began dragging the remnants of Red Squad towards the secured
part of the house. 

By this time, Sheppard had regained the capacity for rational 
speech, and was cursing Falk as he was dragged across the 
blood-slicked floor towards the platoon medic.

Smallwood was waiting for him there.

"What went wrong up there, Falk?"

"Dunno, Loot. Seems like we got another race of Klings,
they're as dark-skinned as the one's we've been wasting,
but a hell of a lot smarter. They know how to use frags,
and apparently how to set up ambushes. They wiped out
all of Red Squad except for Corporal Apone, and damn
nearly killed me and Shep."

Turning away from Smallwood, Falk looked at Private Meeks,
their platoon medic. "Is he gonna be OK?"

Meeks didn't even look up as he pulled another piece of 
jagged metal from Shep's ass. "I dunno. He's got a kriffload
of shrap in him. Give me ten to get all this crap out of him."

"GODDAMN FUCKING SHITHEAD!" yowled Sheppard as a particularly
long piece of metal was pulled out by Meeks, who was using a 
needle-nosed pliers to pull the stuff out.

In the background, barely audible over Shep's screaming 
and bitching, he heard Smallwood talking on the TacNet 
with Captain O'Shea.

"Smallwood here, sir. We've bogged down. Red Squad
is gone. I'm sending Blue Squad forward to replace
them, but I don't have a reserve anymore now."

All of a sudden, an enormous explosion rocked the 
entire house, and from the shattered windows to the 
east, a massive fireball could be seen rising into 
the sky.

[100 Meters South]

O'Shea ground his teeth as he listened to Smallwood 
explaining what had gone wrong, when all of a sudden
Bravo Platoon went off the TacNet.

"What the hell was that?" he screamed, covering the
reciever so Smallwood wouldn't hear it.

"Fuck, sir, we don't know!" came the garbled reply
from Charlie Platoon, which had seen Bravo Platoon
breach into that house through their electrobinocs.

Everything had gone OK, and then it had gone up in
a massive explosion.

O'Shea thought for a few seconds before making his 
decision.

"Have you met any serious resistance so far?"

"Sir, no, except for that one group of smoothies."

"Smoothies?"

"Sir, I'll explain later when we meet up, sir!"

"Good. I'm diverting Charlie and Delta platoons 
over to your position, they will link up with you,
and you will thrust through that row, towards your
objective, the replicator factory! "

"I'm going to have the Heavy Weps Company
lay in a smokescreen over Kahless square
to cover Charlie and Delta's link up with
your position two minutes from now, then ten
minutes later, it will shell the Replicator
Factory to prep it for assault. Understood?"

"Yessir! Alpha Platoon out!"
 
Smallwood put down the reciever and walked
from firing position to firing position,
telling each trooper on watch what was
going to happen, so they wouldn't waste
friendlies during the Company link-up.

Two minutes later, on the dot, the
first smoke rounds began to land,
quickly obscuring Kahless square in
a dense white fog that quickly cut
visibility to a few meters.

Through the mist, the troops on watch,
including Falk, heard shouts through the
mist as the rest of the company broke cover
and began to charge towards them. Hearing it,
Sheppard slowly moved onto his knees, trying 
to keep his still painful ass off any kind 
of pressure. The bacta patches and injections 
by Meeks were doing wonders, but Meeks still 
had to pull the rest of the shrapnel out
of his arms, causing Sheppard more pain
every few seconds as another piece of 
shrapnel was extracted by Meeks.

[Five Minutes Later]

O'Shea walked through the cramped hallways, which
were jammed full of tired and filthy troopers covered 
in dust and blood, as he tried to find Smallwood.

The entire row of houses, through the judicious use
of explosives had been converted into one long row
of linked houses, and the men of Able Company lay 
inside their new home for at least the next few
minutes. Walking to the house closest to the 
front-lines, he found a tired Smallwood trying to 
sleep in the corner.

"SMALLWOOD! Report!" shouted O'Shea, annoyed at
seeing his subordinate trying to shirk his duties.

Smallwood slowly extracted himself off the floor,
and began to walk around, pointing at several
Klingon corpses littering the hallways.

Picking up one of the numerous krinkle-headed
corpses up from the floor, Smallwood held it
at eye level so O'Shea could see the cranial
features more closely.

"See this, sir? These son-of-a-bitches are
dumb as rocks, and look like they were hit
in the chin one too many times as a kid, sir."

O'Shea nodded.

Turning to a smooth-headed Klingon they'd killed, 
Smallwood picked it up. "Now, these ones are very 
rare, but they're smart cunning motherfuckers.
They use frag grenades, and covering fire,
while the other ones just like to scream and
charge us with swords."

All of a sudden, a huge roaring noise echoed through
the hallway, causing everyone to look out any windows
or holes in the buildings.

Thousands of krinks were charging them, screaming their lungs
off, the glint of those curved swords reflecting off the 
noon-sun.

"AUTOMATIC WEAPON PLATOON TO THE FRONT! NOW!" O'Shea
yelled over his lip mic, as he began to shoot at the
leading rank with his E-11, which he had finangled from
a Stormie on their last deployment.

[Down the Row of Houses]

"What the kriff is that noi---AAAAAAAAAAAGH!" screamed
Shep as the last piece of shrapnel was extracted from
his ass by Meeks.

Falk quickly stood up, stealing a glance outside, before
dropping back down to the floor, readying his weapons for
hard use.

"Our welcoming committee is on it's way. Thousands of those
krink bastards."

"We don't get no rest, do we?" muttered Shep as he hobbled over
to his assigned position and began to fire his A-280 along with
the rest of the platoon.

The screams of the charging Krinks quickly blended with the wailings
of the wounded, and the roar of weapons fire as blaster clip after
blaster clip dropped to the ground and their weapon barrels began
to glow red hot.

"OUT OF THE WAY!" shouted a machinegunner as he pushed Shep 
out of the way and onto his ass, sending red-hot spikes of pain 
through Sheppard's brain, making him scream in agony for what 
seemed like the thousandth time that day.

Before Shep could do something bad to the gunner, the man
was vaporized by a lucky Kling disruptor shot that passed
through a hole in the building, and struck him. He screamed 
in agony through the entire process, which took a few seconds.

Picking up the gunner's T-21, which the gunner no longer needed
now, Shep unfolded the tripod and centered the barrel dead center 
into the charging mass of Krinks and pulled the trigger.

The T-21 opened up with a roar sounding like a huge giant ripping 
an equally huge sheet of canvas, and the first rank of Klings simply 
flew back, their faces and toros reduced to hot steaming plasma.

Grinning evilly, Shep began to rake the T-21 across the onrushing 
horde, chopping down hundreds of Krinks, when all of a sudden, a 
loud hammering noise came from the southern end of the square, which 
was controlled by Imperial Forces.

Huge fat bolts slammed into the horde from the south, reducing entire
squads of krinks into steaming meat where they stood. 

[Company HQ]

O'Shea looked out the window, wincing in pain from all the noise of
the fighting. "YES, THAT'S RIGHT. I WANT A FULL FUCKING BARRIAGE
OF 203s. YES, I KNOW WE'RE WITHIN THE DANGER ZONE, BUT WE'RE UNDER
HEAVY ATTACK! I WANT THOSE GUNS NOW!"

[Shep's position]

"They ain't stoppin!" shouted a private as he emptied the last
charge in his second to last blaster power cell.

"Sithspawn, are these losers brave or stupid? I can't tell." 
yelled Shep over the din of his T-21. He was down to about
his 3rd to last powercell, and he had only a single spare barrel
left over. From the looks of it, his current barrel wouldn't last
much longer, as it had begun to glow white hot, and he could
actually see it beginning to droop.

Reaching out with his gloved hand, he tried to turn the barrel 
release lever, but it wouldn't budge. "KRIIFFF! THE PIG'S 
FUCKED!" he screamed over the carnage, dumping the now-useless
T-21 to the ground and pulling out the DL-44 he'd taken off the
body of a Rebel officer about ten battles ago.

Shep didn't even bother to aim, just simply pulling the barrel
up to the general vinicity and firing. Surprisingly the Klingons
were still coming, even after they had taken fearsome losses from
the company's automatic weapons and the three E-WEBs positioned
at the southern end of the courtyard they were charging across.

Moments later, the Klingons were on top of them. Cursing, Falk
dumped his A-280, which was now too bulky for the kind of fighting
they'd be doing now, and pulled out his twin DL-44s, firing from
the hip at the Klingons leaping into the house through holes
in the wall from the fighting, and climbing into the windows.

"Fall BACK! FALL BACK!" yelled Shep as he squeezed off
shot after shot at the Klingons who were swarming the windows
and entrances and waving their curvy swords wickedly.

[Company HQ]

"ABLE, BE ADVISED ROUNDS ARE INCOMING. REPEAT, ABLE, ROUNDS INCOMING. 
OVER." crackled the voice over O'Shea's headset as his whole world 
rocked around him from the fighting. Suddenly, the door to the room 
where O'Shea was shacked up in splintered from the Bat'leth being 
driven through it.

Without missing a beat, O'Shea fired twice through the wall, blasting 
fist-sized chunks in the door. From the other side, he heard a short, 
sharp scream, then a thud. From below the door, a bright purple liquid
began to flow.

O'Shea ran down the corridor, blasting Klingons whenever they popped 
their filthy heads around corners, yelling at the top of his lungs. 
"INCOMING! INCOMING!"

[Shep's Position]

Over the din, Shep thought he could hear someone yelling INCOMING, 
so he motioned towards the basement door. Opening the door, he found 
a reasonably big cellar.

Bringing his free hand up to his helmet, he activicated his tac-comm.

"INCOMING ROUNDS...IMPACT IN FIFTEEN SECONDS....FOURTEEN...THIRTEEN..."
croaked the TacAI in his helmet.

"FAAAAAAAAAALK! INCOMING!" he screamed, motioning violently towards the
cellar. Falk didn't need any convincing, as he flew down the stairs
like a banshee, continuously firing from the hip as he went, blowing off
the head of a Kling who'd poked his head round the corner.

As the rest of his platoon ran down the stairs Sheppard kept a lookout
for LT Smallwood. At the last second, Smallwood appeared around the
corner, his leg bandaged and bloody. Sheppard had begun to scream
"HURRY UP!" when the first 203mm HE round impacted aprroximately 200
meters away.

Sheppard's last vision of Smallwood before he blacked out was of 
the LT disappearing in an avalanche of debris as the roof collapsed
in on him.

[OUTSIDE]

The first round landed right in the middle of a mob of Klingons, 
vaporizing 15 of them before they knew what had hit them, and
sending 30 flying skywards from the concussion wave, riddling
a further 50 with shrapnel, and knocking over an additional
75.

Twenty more rounds impacted in rapid succession, churning up the
dirt beneath the courtyard's tricrete and turning the entire
courtyard into a charnel house, with limbs sticking out of the
ground grotesquely.

Sheppard felt nothing. Nothing at all. For what seemed like an 
endlesss period of time, he fell into the darkness. All of a sudden, 
a ray of light burst out of the darkness, half-blinding Shep, as he 
heard what seemed to be faint voices in the background.

"Shep's still under there, right?"

"Yeah."

"Think he's still alive?"

"Kriff no."

A low rustling noise was heard as chunks of plastisteel were 
pulled away from his prone form, and a pair of hands reached 
out from the light to grasp Shep's neck, followed by a muttered 
curse.

"Kriff, he's still alive. I guess I owe you twenty."

Shep felt himself being lifted free of the rubble and placed 
onto a stretcher. Slowly, his eyesight returned, the blurry 
blob of light resolving itself into a sight he would never forget 
as long as he lived.

Tank after tank was rolling across the courtyard, their treads churning 
the mass of klingon bodies into pulp, their commanders hanging 
out of their cupolas, basking in the brilliant late-afternoon sun.

[Several hours later]

Falk spat on the duracrete floor of the basement in the Kling house 
they had confiscated from its former owners a few hours ago. The former
owners were now lying in a crumpled heap over in one corner, their brains 
splatted all over the wall by hot plasma.

Wiping the spittle from his lips, Falk turned up the power to the 
small propane stove he carried in his rucksack to heat 
up his meal. The stove was strictly non-reg, but nobody 
cared. 

The stairway out of the basement was lit in that eerie red lighting 
that the Klingons preferred for everything from streetlights to 
battlelamps. They had tried everything to disable it, but those
lights were some tough fuckers, and wouldn't go out unless hit
dead on with an E-11 turned up to full power.

From the holes in the door at the top of the stairway, Falk could hear
wild Targs running around in the night air, growling and snarling as they
tore into the Klingon dead in the courtyard.

Looking to his right, Falk saw Sheppard sleeping on a folding cot, 
recuperating from having a building fall on him. What was left of their 
company was spread across the massive underground wine cellar. Apparently
the former owners of the building had really liked their bloodwine, and
they had built a massive series of cactacombs going down as far as 50 
meters to hold all of their wine.

Over in the corner, Corporal Frick was busily stuffing torn up sheets
of clothing into the mouths of bloodwine bottles. He already had made
about a hundred or so firebombs. 

That was probably the only thing this bloodwine crap was good for,
thought Falkenhorst.

The others had tried drinking it, only to spit it out in disgust
at the wretched taste. Only other use for this shit would probably
be as motor fuel.

[30 km away, 999th ID HQ]

Sonnenburg looked over the situational display table, 
which was nothing but a giant display screen turned into 
a table, and studied the frontlines after a day's fighting.

Pointing at a blue mass of symbols thrusting into the city 
like a dagger, Sonnenburg remarked; "Dalton's made some 
progress, hasn't he?"

"That he has, sir. The latest reports from Dalton's HQ 
are that he suffered about seven percent casualties across the 
board during that assault. Some of his companies are down to 
only seven men though."

Sonnenburg looked at the map pensively. "Captain Archbold, are 
the Klingons planning anything?" 

"SIGINT is picking up almost nothing...they finally wised up 
that we were using their transmissions and using them to direct 
artillery. What we're getting is from captured Klings, and even 
then that's rare," replied Archbold.

"How are our forces doing? Casualties, and all that." asked 
Sonnenburg, causing Archbold to pick up a datapad. "Sir, we're 
doing pretty well. The 1st Regiment managed to push to the Q'on 
Factory complex before the daily cessation of offensive operations."

"The 2nd and 3rd Regiments managed to secure the 1st's flanks, 
while the 4th was held back in reserve, sir"

Sonnenburg sat back, sipping his coffee as he examined the situation 
map. To the left of his division, was the "Emperor's Finest", the
1st Battlegroup, detached from guard duty on Coruscant to insure the
success of pacification operations in this strange new galaxy.

Suddenly, there was a commotion from outside the map room. The door
opened, and in came one of the soldiers assigned to guard the Divisional
HQ. He saluted Sonnenburg, before replying. "Sir, Major Wilson is here
to see you."

A man dressed in a grey uniform with the rank plaque of a Major walked 
into the room, his eyes searching the room before settling on Sonnenburg. 
Both Sonnenburg and Archbold noticed that he was wearing the pauldron 
of the Carida sniper school, and they both bumped him up in importance 
a notch.

After exchanging salutes with Sonnenburg, Wilson began to speak. 
"General, my unit has been assigned to your division by the General Staff 
due to the rather high numbers of casualities you are taking during your
invasion of this world."

Sonnenburg blinked for a moment, before replying. "I appreciate all the
help I can get. I'd like for your people to work with my 1st Regiment,
as it took some rather heavy casualties yesterday attacking the suburbs
of this blasted city."

Wilson glanced at the map for a brief moment, but that was all he needed
to memorize the important details. "My men will need transportation to
Sector G. We're a light infantry unit, with no organic transportation."

"Transportation will be provided by my Ib/Kfz, Captain Talashia. You'll
find him at the Divisional Motor pool, bossing people around," replied
Sonnenburg.

"Good. My men will move up to the front lines tonight, and we will begin
supporting you tonight as well." replied Wilson, who snapped off a salute
before he turned around and left.

"Did you see his eyes?" asked Archbold, who shuddered involuntarily at the
thought. "Yes, Ted. I saw his eyes. They're the eyes of a trained killer 
with no remorse whatsoever. May the Force have mercy on their souls," 
finished Sonnenburg.

[30 km away - Sector G - 30 minutes later]

"Get the hell away from those corpses!" yelled 
Sergeant Lee as he saw Falkenhorst trying to lever 
the golden teeth out of the mouths of the dead 
Klingon family with his bayonet.

"Shit man, I'm just tryin' to supplement my income, man!"
said Falkenhost as he succeeded in prying out a gold tooth 
from the former man of the house, who was now only a man of 
the maggots.

"Fucking scum, you're worse than the Ferengi," snarled 
Lee, who was now in command of Falk and Shep's platoon 
since Smallwood had bought it in the shelling.

Falk leered in reply. "Maybe, but I've got enough here to 
get laid on Risa, while you got jack shit."

Before Lee could snap off a reply, a rattling noise came 
from the top of the stairs, causing everyone to grab their
weapons and aim it at the door.

"Emperor's!" yelled Lee. For a few tense seconds, everyone's 
fingers began to contract on the triggers of their weapons, 
ready to unleash Hell onto whoever was up there, when the 
countersign was shouted back.

"Hammer!" came the shouted reply. Everyone sighed and lowered
their weapons, a few keeping theirs aimed at the doorway
just in case.

The door opened, and several men in adaptive camouflage suits 
walked down the stairs, their suits changing colors to match
their backgrounds. The only emblems on their suits were blue
pauldrons with black rank bars on them.

The leader of this strange group walked up to Lee, eyed him
up and spoke in a cold, clipped tone of voice.

"My name is Major Robert Wilson, and these are my men, the
12th Corellian Sniper Company. I have been sent here to 
ensure you peons stop dicking around and start taking yardage."

"Sir, in case you haven't noticed, the Klings have this entire
courtyard sighted in with heavy weapons. Anyone who tries to
cross it is cut down...sir," replied Lee.

"You and your entire company WILL assault the courtyard in 
two hours. That is an order you WILL obey to the letter
...SERGEANT," ordered Wilson.

With that, Wilson walked back up the stairs, leaving a 
dejected Lee to get on the horn with Captain O'Shea, informing
him of the attack that was to take place in two hours.

Turning to Sheppard, Lee said; "Get the lazy fuck up, we're
going to need him in two hours."

[Two Hours later]

Everyone huddled at the base of the stairs nervously, trying 
not to think of the hordes of Klingons aiming at them with 
unimaginable amounts of heavy weapons at this very moment.

Then the order came. Everyone clambered up the stairs, and 
charged into the inky-black night. For a moment, everyone
was a bit shocked at having run into pitch blackness.

What had happened to all the lights?

They recieved their answer a moment later when they heard 
the low sizzle of a blaster rifle, but no bolt appeared.

"Fuck, Wilson's men must have those damned Nightstingers!" 
shouted Lee. "GO GO GO GO!"

Sheppard and Falkenhorst had both put on their night vision 
gear right away, and they saw Klingons sitting behind sandbags 
in the shattered doorway of a building on the other side of 
the courtyard, some 400 meters distant. The Klingons suddenly
began to turn around a heavy disruptor cannon towards the 
advancing Imperials, when all of a sudden their chests disappeared 
into steaming vapor.

Seconds later, A new set of Klingons replaced the first
pair behind the disruptor cannon, but these too, died.

[Major Wilson's Hide]

Wilson centered the reticle over another Klingon's head and squeezed
the trigger again, causing the Nightstinger to kick back into his
shoulder, and a second later, the target's head exploded from
an invisible bolt.

Wilson no longer cared about such infantile things as kill counts,
although he estimated that he had killed in excess of five thousand
beings during his fifteen years as a sniper.

He knew that he was also violating a cardinal rule of his profession;
Never To Stay In One Position After One Shot, but the roar of the
battle and the fire from the Imperial advance across the courtyard
effectively masked his position.

Working in concert with the other members of his sniper company,
Wilson quickly cleared the entire courtyard of Klingons so fast
and so quickly that within five minutes, all resistance had stopped 
as the Klingons were either all dead, or hiding in terror from
the dishonorable p'tak who was shooting them dead with an invisible
weapon.
 
[In the Courtyard]

Sheppard and Falkenhorst were gasping for breath as they covered the
hundred meters to the other side of the courtyard. "Damn, I guess
that Major wasn't a blowhard after all," said Falkenhorst as he scanned 
the building in front of them for Klingons with his goggles, which in 
addition to acting as low-light goggles, also homed in onto and highlited 
specific biosigns.

Sheppard closed his eyes as he tried to ignore the sweat that was running
down his face under the goggles, causing his skin to itch, as his legs
pounded across the rubble of the courtyard. Only a few more minutes,
and they'd all be under cover.

_Only fifty more meters...OH KRIFF!_ thought Shep as dozens of Klingons
who had been hiding from Wilson's barriage of sniper fire, leaped up at
the last minute to repeel the invaders.

Both sides screamed as they brought their weapons up and let them rip,
disruptor fire mixing with blaster bolts as both sides slammed into each
other in the rubble of the courtyard and inside the buildings.

[10 kilometers away - 1/999th Line Regiment HQ]

Lieutenant Colonel Robert "Roby" Dalton stood up on the roof of the 
building that was now acting as his Regimental HQ and raised the 
macrobinoculars to his eyes. 

The electronics in the binos quickly amplified all of the available light 
and compensated for sudden flashes of light from explosions, and displayed
it in the soft red tint of the night mode to preserve his eyesight.

Dalton watched a column of smoke drift up into the sky from what appeared
to be about ten kilometers away, where the fighting was taking place.

Occasionally, a stray blaster bolt or disruptor line would lance into the sky,
but for the most part, the only indication of the fighting taking place
ten klicks away was the weapons fire being reflected off the column of smoke
rising into the night sky, along with the muted roar of battle.

He studied it for several minutes, before lowering his binoculars and climbing
down the ladder to the second floor of the building, where he had his command
room set up. A portable holoprojector sat in the middle of the room, displaying
the current frontlines on a 3D topographic map, while to the side, a bank of 
communications equipment hummed away, the operators answering calls in their 
sealed commo tech helmets, which were heavily modified Stormtrooper helmets.

"Sir, Major Paulsen here to see you, sir." said Dalton's aide, Lieutenant 
Shogoki, who gestured towards a filthy, dust caked man standing at the
entrance to the map room.

"Björn! How's your Battalion doing?" Dalton asked as he shook the Major's
hand.

"I saw you a few minutes ago on the roof watching the fighting in my sector,"
Paulsen said in an amused tone of voice. "It's going good. We've taken Kahless 
Courtyard completely, as of a few minutes ago, and my men are now in hand to hand 
fighting for the Q'on replicator factory complex. We should have it by morning."

"Good. Tomorrow, you and your men can rest. I'll make Major Hyde's battalion relieve
your men as soon as possible. I'm sorry I can't talk with you anymore, but I have
more pressing matters to see to." finished Dalton.

"Thank you, sir. My men will appreciate the rest." finished Paulsen, who snapped
off a salute, which Dalton returned.

[THE NEXT MORNING]

Colonel Stuart Mackey of the Imperial Propaganda Ministry sat in an easy chair 
along the dusty road, watching as hundreds of soldiers marched past him, the 
dust caking their features, while he sipped a cool Coruscant Sun Beer.

"Skayhan! Are you sure you're getting all of this? The audiences back home 
will eat this up!"

Lieutenant Phil Skayhan growled. That fucker Mackey had been ordering him 
around for the last two weeks on Ikonos, 'set up the camera there', or 'over 
there', 'get me that beer'.

He wouldn't be a lackey forever. One day, he'd have his own show on the
HoloNet, like Mackey, and he would be ordering other people around,
not being ordered around like a slave, which he was in a way.

"SKAYHAN! GET YOUR CAMERA!" shouted Mackey as he slammed down his
Coruscant Sun, causing some of the precious beer, which had been 
imported over nearly a million light years, to spill onto the dusty
ground.

Mackey quickly took out a sani-wipe and quickly wiped the dust off
his face until he was clean enough for public consumption, and pulling
out a microphone, he walked over to a group of soldiers who were marching
down the street who looked like they had been in a battle recently.

"Colonel Stuart Mackey of the IPM here, what's your name?" he asked as
he slammed the microphone into the face of the nearest soldier.

"Uhm, Sergeant Ancaris," replied the soldier.

"Do you have a first name, Sergeant?" asked Mackey.

"Ancaris, and I don't like YOU." came the reply.

Before Stuart could reply, a pair of Soldiers who appeared to be in
the same unit as Sergeant Ancaris came up. "Don't worry Sarge, we'll
deal with the press for you!"

Glad to be rid of that uncooperative Sergeant, Mackey thrust his
mike in between the two soldiers. "And what are YOUR names, my
friends?"

"Corporal Mark Sheppard," said the taller one on the left, 
while the shorter one on the right replied, "Corporal Heinz
Wilhelm von Falkenhorst."

"Is it ok if I call you Mark and Heinz?" asked Mackey.

"Yeah." 

"No prob."

"So Mark and Heinz, what's been going on?" asked Mackey,
eager to get a scoop on every other combat reporter in
the Propaganda Ministry.

"Last night was real rugged, wasn't it, Heinz?" said Shep.

"Yep. Rugged. It was horrible, having to fight through
all those damn Klings." replied Falk.

"Show him your necklace, Falkenhorst!" shouted one of the men
in the passing column.

"Yeah, Stuart, it was real rugged yesterday, but I got 
this too," he said as he pulled out his necklace consisting
of all of the gold teeth he had pulled from the corpses
of the Klingons.

"Like it?" he asked in a sing-song voice.

"CUT! CUT!" yelled Mackey as he felt himself becoming
physically ill. 

"What's the matter, Stuart, don't you like it?" asked
Falk.

Stuart then had enough and began to vomit on the ground,
causing Sheppard and Falk to wrinkle their noses in 
disgust.

Mackey's cameraman then took the holo-cam off his shoulder 
and began to talk. "Names Skayhan. Lieutenant Phil Skayhan.
For some reason, old Stuart here can't take the sight
of blood, or body parts. That's why he's in the Propaganda
Ministry, and not in the infantry like you. Oh yeah, and
stuff like this isn't what mom and dad back home
want to see on the nightly news."

Both Falkenhorst and Sheppard chuckled at that.

"Well, Phil, We'd love to hang around and chat, but our unit has all of 
today off, and we don't want to miss the movie at noon!" shouted
Falk as he and Shep walked away to rejoin the marching column.

Skayhan simply shook his head and wondered how he was going to
get enough footage shot by the noon deadline. Usually, Stuart
when he was like this, was useless for the rest of the day.

This could be his big chance to strike it big and get promoted.

With an evil grin, Phil picked the mike up from the ground, where
Stuart had dropped it when he began to vomit, and walked away, the
holo-cam on his shoulder.

He had footage to shoot and a promotion to get.

END CHAPTER 1


Chapter 2


[546th Surface Army HQ - 1200 hours that day] 

Surface Marshal Kenneth von Lowe knelt in front of the 
holo-emitter, and tried to hide his fear of the figure 
in front of him. 

"Marshal, why have you not taken the Sword of Kahless yet?" 
rasped Palpatine across several million light years through 
the magic of intra-wormhole transmission technology. 

Lowe gulped. "My lord...resistance amongst the Klingons is 
proving to be much heavier than initial calculations figured. 
Casualties amongst our units are heavy, my lord." 

Anger flared up in Palpatine's eyes. "Casualties don't concern 
me, Marshal. You have had three weeks to deliver the sword. You 
have one more week, or else Lord Vader will rectify the situation." 

Lowe tried to hide the beads of sweat beginning to appear on his 
forehead and nodded servilely. "Yes, my lord. I shall redouble 
my attacks on the city." 

"Good, see that you do. It would be most...unfortunate if I did 
not have the sword in time for the COMPNOR inaugaration ceremony 
at the Palace in a week's time." 

With that, the holo of Palpatine faded away, leaving Lowe completely 
unnerved. 

He had already suffered twenty percent casualties the last three weeks

trying to fitnesse his way into the city, and now Palpie wanted the
job 
done in a week? Impossible...unless of course, he issued orders for
one 
last all out assault, with no regard for casualties. 

Lowe thought for a moment about the thousands of Imperial soldiers who

would die if he obeyed the Emperor's orders, and then realized it made

no difference if he refused or obeyed the orders. The Emperor would
just 
have him removed and appoint another Surface Marshal in his place, one

more compliant to the Emperor's wishes. The men would still die
anyway, 
but at least he could insure that their deaths would ensure his
continued 
survival. 

[Klingon Planetary Headquarters - The same Time] 

A smooth-faced Klingon, the Aide-De-Camp to the General who commanded
the 
Armies of Ikonos, knelt before his leader in his command bunker, which

stood nearly two hundred metres underground, invunerable to all but
the 
heaviest turbolaser strikes. 

"Sir, the Sword has been placed into its container, and the moment you

give the word, a cloaked Bird of Prey will run the blockade of the
planet 
to pick up the sword to insure it doesn't fall into the P'tak
Imperials' 
hands." 

"Good," replied General Klor. "And what of the evacuation of my men?
They 
are no good to the Empire if they're dead." 

The Aide-De-Camp nodded again. "That's been taken care of too, sir. 
Admiral Klothos has assured us that he will be able to commit over 
a hundred cloaked Birds of Prey to the evacuation of the Army." 

"Excellent. Begin the evacuation. We must not let two million of our
finest 
troops fall to the P'tak dogs that are these Imperials." ordered Klor 
as he looked at the map on the wall showing the Imperial pincers
slowly 
encircling the city. 

Suddenly, from the back of the map room came a commotion as the guards

standing by the entrance found daggers sticking out of their chests, 
and collapsed to the floor in pools of purple blood. 

A fierce looking older smooth-faced Klingon strode into the room, his 
eyes locking onto General Klor and his ADC. His uniform wasn't like 
anything they had ever see before. Rather than the silver color 
of typical Klingon uniforms, it was a flat black with red piping, 
and adorned by the symbol of the House of Kahless in red on his 
breast. 

The men who had killed the guards silently wore the same uniform as
the 
newcomer, and they quickly pushed the bodies out of the way and took
up 
their positions, replacing the dead guards like nothing had happened. 

"What's the meaning of this, you dog?" stuttered Klor, as the newcomer

came face-to-face with him, a look of disgust on his face. 

With a sneer, the newcomer thrust a ceremonial dagger with blinding
speed 
into Klor's chest, and then pulled it upwards with all of his
strength, 
slicing Klor's three hearts in half. 

"The meaning of this, General, is your 'retirement'. The Sword of
Kahless 
has never been held by a non-klingon ever, and it will NEVER be
carried 
away by fleeing dogs!" 

The newcomer watched as Klor's eyes glazed over and the body sagged
towards 
the ground, held upright only by his strength and the dagger thrust
into 
the former General's chest. 

Pulling the dagger out with a sucking noise, the newcomer wiped the
blade 
clean of blood on Klor's tunic, which he wouldn't be needing now. He
then 
let the body fall to the floor with a sickening thud. 

Bringing a communicator to his lips, he spoke. "The traitor has been
taken 
care of. My forces are seizing control of the Ikonos military command
as 
we speak." 

"Excellent," came the staticky voice over several thousand lightyears 
from the Klingon homeworld of Kronos. "You shall not fail me like
General 
Klor did. Hold Ikonos at all costs, General Klugoth." 

"Yes, my Emperor. The sword shall be held at all costs!" replied
Klugoth. 

"Good. I am ordering the 96th Fleet to begin supplying you no matter 
what the cost. According to my advisors, we have several captured
Imperial 
field pieces coming in on the first birds of prey scheduled to land at

Kalogada Starport tonight. Use them well, Klugoth. Many Klingons shed
their 
blood and honor for you to recieve those weapons." 

"I will not dishonor their sacrifice, Emperor, but has Admiral Klothos

been taken care of too? He was part of the conspiracy with General
Klor." 
replied Klugoth. 

"He's been taken care of, General. Repel the human invaders, no matter

what the cost. For the Empire!" finished the Emperor of the Klingon
Empire. 

"For the Empire!" replied Klugoth, echoing his master's statement. 

[10 AUs outside the orbit of Ikonos] 

The frozen corpse of Admiral Klothos tumbled end over end through the
eternal 
darkness, his visage still frozen in those horrible last moments when
the 
Emperor's Assassins had boarded his flagship and jettisoned him out of

the bridge airlock for high treason. 

Suddenly, the corpse was pulverized into it's component atoms when it
smashed 
into the raised shields of the cloaked Bird of Prey KH-1245. The crew
inside 
the bird of prey barely noticed a spike of activity on their sheild
grid as 
the corpse was vaporized. _Just another speck of space dust_, thought
the helms 
man as he steered the Bird of Prey towards Ikonos and through the
Imperial blockade. 

[Victory Star Destroyer _Emperor's Will_] 

The crewer manning his station in the port crew pit of the VSD watched
as out of 
nowhere a spike of energy appeared. Most likely it was from debris
from the 
innumerable battles fought over this planet colliding in a paroxymn of
energy, 
but just to be sure, he slaved one of the VSD's Crystal Grav Trap
arrays onto 
the location of the energy spike. 

On his screen, the faint outline of a Bird of Prey appeared. He
immediately called 
out his discovery to the bridge crew. "Sir, Bird of Prey located at
Bearing 120, 
azimuth minus fifty!" 

The duty officer simply nodded and motioned for the gun crews to begin
firing with 
the long range HTLs. He wondered how these aliens could be so kriffing
stubborn. 
They knew they didn't have a chance of getting past them, yet they
still kept on 
coming. 

Below his feet, the deck rumbled as the heavy turbolasers volley-fired
towards 
the offending patch of space. 

[Bird of Prey KH-1245] 

The ship's captain coughed in the dank humid air, and cursed 
the dishonor of being a mere transport captain and one that 
hid, but the aliens were too powerful for them to attempt to 
force the blockade by sheer force alone. 

In the cargo hold, two hundred Klingon soldiers, nearly a full 
company, huddled in the damp air, around a single captured 
Imperial Speizoc energy cannon. Twelve of them had been 
captured in the fighting on Korph, and they were being sent 
to the fighters on Ikonos to help defeat the Alien juggernauts 
laying waste to the city with impunity. 

Suddenly, all over the Bird of Prey, lights dimmed dangerously, and 
computer monitors scrambled into static. "Sir, we're being bracketed 
by enemy weapons - that was the interference from all that energized 
plasma passing so close," said the sensor officer in a fearful voice. 

"Take evasi-" growled the Captain, but before he could finish his 
sentence, a heavy turbolaser bolt from the _Emperor's Will_ smashed 
into the Bird of Prey's engineering hull, burning through the
shielding 
and the hull in a nanosecond, and everyone inside the main section 
died within a few tenths of a second as the air inside was superheated

by the plasma flashing through the hole in the hull, and all flammable

substances inside ignited. 

The Klingons in the bridge section survived one tenth of a second
longer 
due to the long neck separating them from the engineering section, but

once the plasma burned it's way through the armored doors, it was all 
over for them. 

One fifth of a second later, the matter-antimatter core failed 
from the intense pressures and heat from the plasma-fuelled inferno 
raging inside the Bird of Prey, and exploded in a violently 
uncontrolled matter/anti-matter reaction. 

As the only funeral marker the crew of KH-1245 would have spread 
across space in a cloud of slowly expanding gasses, the gun director 
crews on the _Emperor's Will_ got out of their seats and ceremonially 
applied another ship silhoulette onto their bulkhead's walls. Over 40 
ships adorned the gun director compartment walls now. 

Out of the 12 Birds of Prey that made up the 12th Squadron of the 
96th Fleet that attempted to run the blockade that night, six were 
destroyed by the Imperial fleet even before they had closed to within 
one AU of Ikonos. 

TIE fighters then followed the trail of ionized gasses left behind by 
the Birds' of Prey fiery re-entry wakes and destroyed a further three.


All three of the surviving Birds of Prey managed to make it to
Kalogada 
Starport, where under the protection of the starport's batteries, they

were allowed to land and unload the three Speizoc guns and six hundred

troops they had carried safely through the inferno above their heads. 

During the unloading procedures, a surprise night raid by a squadron 
of TIE Bombers occured, destroying another of the Birds of Prey as 
it sat on the landing pad, and killing a further hundred troops. 

Out of 12 guns and 2,400 troops, these 500 were the lucky few. 

[999th Division - Same time] 

Falkenhorst looked up at what seemed to be a shooting star streak 
across the night sky at a fantastic rate of speed before it slammed 
into the ground beyond the horizon. The shockwaves from the destroyed 
bird of prey's impact rumbled across the ground, waking up the men 
of the lucky units of the 999th who had earned a nights rest away 
from the Inferno that was Ikonos city. 

"Make a wish, Falk!" Sheppard said as he tuned his comm-unit to the 
fleet main band and listened to the reports of another enemy ship 
shot down. 

"I wish for a ship full of Orion Slave Girls to crash right here, 
right now, and that we have to 'help' them out!" cackled Falkenhorst 
as he cleaned his twin DL-44s in antipitation of the next day's 
hard fighting. 

Meanwhile, in his room in the posh Ikonos Grand Hotel, across from the

courtyard where his battalion was encamped in for their night of 
rest and relaxation, Major Bjorn Paulsen, who commanded the Battalion 
that Sheppard and Falkenhorst were in, relaxed to the sound of
artillery 
fire in the background, and a cheap holonovel playing on the table,
along 
with a bottle of Corellian ale in his hand. 

Suddenly, his communicator started chirping annoyingly. Bjorn picked
it up, 
and growled into it, "Major Paulsen here. What's up?" 

"Dalton here. I'm afraid I'll have to pull your Battalion back into
the 
line tomorrow," said Lt. Colonel Robert Dalton, Paulsen's regimental 
commander. 

"Why, goddammit!?" shouted Paulsen, who was slightly drunk at the
time. 

"Sorry, Bjorn. Orders from on high for a big push towards that damned 
temple." said Dalton apologetically. 

Paulsen growled and slammed the communicator down in a fit of rage. 

_Kriff them all, Kriff 'em all!_ 

[50th Corellian Army HQ - 50 km west of Ikonos City] 

General Pablo Sanchez watched as Surface Marshal von Lowe stepped into

his map room, a determined look on his face. 

Before Sanchez could reply, Lowe got the first word in. 

"Sanchez, why the kriff are you the only Army commander whose men 
haven't achieved their objectives?!?" 

Sanchez ignored the insult, replying in as level a tone of voice 
as he could. "Surface Marshal, my men are having to fight for every 
square meter of that kriffing city. In some cases, entire companies 
have been reduced to just eight men and an officer in just three 
hours of fighting, SIR." 

"I don't care what happens to your men, GENERAL. I want that 
Temple taken by this time next week, or else. Since your men 
have been showing a relative LACK of WILL, I am assigning High Colonel

Arminius and his COMPNOR division to...stiffen your mens' spines." 

With that, Lowe spun around and marched out of Sanchez's command post,

leaving him enraged. The sacrifices that the men of his sixteen 
divisions wasn't enough for that fucker Lowe. Instead, he was getting 
saddled with those fucking retards from COMPNOR. 

Sanchez' rage still hadn't cooled off when High Colonel Arminius
marched 
into the command post with his hand picked COMPNOR staff members. 

******************** 

COMMAND HIERARCHY: 

60th Surface Army : Surface Marshal Kenneth von Lowe 
        50th Corellian Army: General Pablo Sanchez 
                124th Corellian Inf. Corps : Major General Charles
Bean
                         999th Corellian Inf. Division : High Colonel
Charles Sonnenburg


THE DIVISION Chapter 3

Continued from Ch 2......Gen. Sanchez has to deal with ARMINUS......

**************************

Sanchez looked over Arminus, seeing an evil looking man wearing 
the standard Imperial Army uniform, but in white. The High Colonel 
snapped to attention and saluted Sanchez with the typical "FOR THE 
EMPEROR!" blather that only COMPFORCE used.

"Yes? What is it? I don't need amateurs fucking up my operations, 
HIGH COLONEL." replied Sanchez, placing great emphasis on Arminus' 
rank.

Unfazed by the hostility towards him, Arminus replied with a sneer
on his face, "The Emperor is tired of your men's unwillingness to
press home attacks on the alien scum on this misbegotten world, and
has sent me and my men to show you Army pukes how it's done."

Sanchez fought the urge to roll his eyes. "I'm assigning you to
support the 999th Corellian Division. They're going to lead 
the assault on the city tomorrow morning."

Arminus laughed, a short hideous outburst that sounded like a nerf
snorting half a line of spice. "Corellians? We'll show them how
it's done!"

"I think not, you blathering fool." came a voice from the entrance
to the 50th Army command bunker.

>From the darkness stepped High Colonel Sonnenburg and Captain Ted
Archbold, his Intelligence officer. "All you COMPFORCE fools know
is how to get killed." finished Sonnenburg.

"All you Corellians know is how to get drunk off hydraulic
fluid, Sonnenburg." retorted Arminus, his face turning slightly
beet red at the unexpected insult towards his men. It was well
known that there was a great deal of rivalry and hatred between
COMPFORCE and the regular armed forces, but this hadn't prepared
Arminus for being taken down a notch by Sonnenburg.

Mentally, Arminus was preparing his report back to COMPFORCE HQ about 
General Sanchez and High Colonel Sonnenburg. They were apparently
reactionary elements against COMPNOR and the New Order.

"ENOUGH!" shouted Pablo, who was getting fed up with this fool
screwing with him and his men. Everyone stopped dead in their
tracks and looked at the enraged General.

"Now that we're past the stage of childish insults, could we possibly
get down to business?" asked Sanchez as he called up a map of the
city on his holoprojector.

"Tomorrow, the 50th Army will assault the city, with the 999th Corellian
taking the lead through the city center. Supporting the 999th will be
the 1st and 2nd Coruscant Battlegroups, 'Palpatine' and 'Emperor's Fist',
along with the 60th Coruscant Battlegroup, 'Mailed Fist'."

"Didn't we do this before?" asked Chuck, who was seeing a repetition of
the last day's orders here.

"No," replied Sanchez. "That was a probing action. March from a phase 
line, grab a few vital locations and set up observers for the next 
day's operations."

Arminus at that moment interrupted. 

"No wonder you need my Battlegroup's help! You're a bunch of weak-willed
cowards! My men could have taken all this in the time you've been dicking
around with probes!"

It was Sonnenburg who replied in a voice as cold as interstellar space. 

"High Colonel, one of my companies lost half it's strength in one of your 
'dicking around with probes' actions, so I'm kindly asking you to shut 
the kriff up as you obviously don't know what you're talking about."

Arminus retreated into stony silence, mentally lengthening his list
against this rebellious High Colonel, while Sanchez continued with the
briefing.

"We have identified several concentrations of Klingons in these buildings
along your routes of march, and these buildings will receive a preliminary
TIE bombardment, reducing them to rubble, as well as killing the enemies
within them," Pablo said as he pointed to several glowing sections of Ikonos
city.

"Once these strongpoints have been reduced to rubble, you are to bypass
them, striking towards the heart of the city - the Ferry Terminals to
the Temple of Kahless. Once we're in control of the Ferries, the sword
will be virtually ours."

Throughout this briefing, Sonnenburg's Intelligence officer, Captain Archbold,
had been sucking on his teeth, deep in thought, trying to ignore the disturbing
facts that were now appearing before him on the map.

He could take it no longer, and with a final disgust-filled look at the 
holomap, he raised his voice. 

"Sir, how the fuck do you expect us to attack and succeed with shit 
intelligence....sir?"

Sanchez scowled at this insubordination, but decided to ignore it for 
the time being. "I have called in the full support elements of the other
three Armies on Ikonos with the support of Surface Marshal von Lowe. 
Your division will have the full support of the entire 50th Army's 
support artillery and TIE wing for it's assault, plus I'm attaching 
an entire battalion of Floating Fortresses to provide support for your 
attack. Also, the first Assault Guns are being delivered
to your assault units from Army supply."

"That still doesn't answer my question, sir," countered Archbold. "We 
have no concrete intelligence on where the Kling strongpoints are other 
than the ones just in front of our forces, and we have no intel on their 
movements throughout the city, or how many reinforcements they're getting 
from off planet."

Sanchez growled again. Archbold was pushing dangerously close to 
insubordination here. One more outburst like that, and he'd order 
Archbold sent to the front lines of the new assault. "I've recieved 
permission from High Command to use Fex-M3 to blanket the Kling 
frontlines to soften them up before the assault. They have no 
experience  as far as we know, in fighting chemical warfare."

Pablo paused for a moment before continuing.

"In addition,  General Crierie's 51st Starfighter Corps will be 
conducting a preemptive bombardment of the city, delivering the 
aforementioned Fex-M3 and large quantities of conventional explosives."

Archbold then handed over a piece of flimsiplast to Sanchez.

"What's this?"

"Evidence that captured Imperial weapons are being delivered through
the Naval blockade, and of the extensive fortification efforts underway
in the city. We may be in for a tougher time than you think, sir."

"That may be so," replied Sanchez. "But at this moment, it's too late
to stop it. General Crierie and his men took off from their bases
an hour ago. They should be arriving over us now."

At that moment, a low thrumming noise filled the air, and the maps on
desks around the command post began to rattle and shake, as the sound
of hundreds of Twin Ion Engines filled the night skies.

"You had best be going now. We push off at dawn, which is in four hours."
finished Sanchez as he deactivicated the holoprojector.

As Sonnenburg and Archbold left the entrance to the 50th Army's command HQ,
they saw the night sky filled with thousands of bright red streaks of flame -
the engine trails of the countless numbers of TIEs roaring over their heads
towards the city, some 50 kilometers away.

"I almost feel sorry for the poor Klingon bastards, you know. They don't 
deserve the pounding Crierie is about to give them," muttered Sonnenburg.

General Crierie had become infamous within the Imperial Military for his
love of indiscriminate terror bombing, with a trail of shattered cities across
the galaxy his resume.

"Too late to stop him now. We can only hope he doesn't blow the hell out
of Ikonos City too much, because then we're in for a harder time as the
rubble will afford better protection to the defender." replied Archbold,
adding a pensive note.

[LEAD TIE BOMBER - Gamma 1 - 50,000 feet]

General Crierie grinned evilly as the first targets came up on
his HUD. They were SAM sites and other important military installations
that his recon flights had identified the day before. As befitting his
rank, he always led from the front, being the first over the target,
and the last to leave the target.

"This is the General to all the crews of the Fifty-First. Your target
is before you. I want every building you can see flattened as far
as the eye can see. Let's get to work."

His speech over, Crierie pressed the fire button on his control yoke,
and from his TIE Bomber, dozens of Concussion missiles leapt forth,
tracking to their targets in the inky blackness below.

Seconds later, the first fireballs erupted below as the air defense
sites were blotted out of existence by the concussion warheads, opening
the way for the 51st Starfighter Corps' Reign of Terror that night.

[Temple of Kahless - 443th Klingon Army HQ]

"What the Devil is that noise?" shouted Klugoth as he leapt from his bed
and walked over to his window to see what was causing such an infernal
noise.

What greeted his eyes was a sight straight out of Hell. The entire city
of Ikonos was on fire, a mighty sheet of flame stretching as far as the 
eye could see. Several fast moving points of light in the skies above
caught his eye, and he grabbed a pair of binoculars and trained them
on the skies.

Small fast moving craft were darting through the skies, and dropping
their payloads of terror. Grabbing his communicator, he screamed at
the Comm officer on duty to put him through to the 41st Air Defense
Wing, which was based at Kalogada Starport.

A few moments later, he was speaking to the Wing commander.

"I want all fighters scrambled immediately to put a stop to this!"
ordered Klugoth.

"I'm sorry, sir, we can't do that," replied the Wing Commander in
an almost apologetic tone of voice. "We're stretched to the limit
trying to provide security for the Starport. Are the civilians in the
city worth losing your only source of fresh troops and supplies?"

Klugoth gnashed his teeth together. The Wing Commander was right.

He turned off his communicator and spent the rest of the early morning
hours watching the city burn from his quarters, unable to do anything.

[TIE Bomber Gamma 1 - 0100 Hours]

Crierie watched the city burn below his cockpit, lighting up the inside
with an eerie bright red glow, and causing enormous wind gusts
that caused his craft to jump nearly 10,000 feet in less than
fifteen seconds.

Reports coming in over the comm had indicated that everything was
going well, with losses being light - a half-dozen craft had lost 
control due to the firestorm-generated wind and had crashed into 
the inferno below.

_Poor bastards_ thought Crierie, never thinking for a moment about
the hundreds of thousands of Klingons whose lives were being snuffed
out like a candle in a hurricane by the firestorm below.

[0200 Hours - 999th I.D HQ]

"GODDAMN THAT ASSHOLE CRIERIE!" shouted Archbold, causing Sonnenburg
to look up from his holoprojector.

"What's the problem?"

"The problem is Crierie exceeded his orders by several magnitude.
He was supposed to soften the fucking city up, not INCINERATE IT!
Now all of our hard earned intelligence and pre-fire bombardment
plans are FUCKING WORTHLESS!" exploded Archbold.

Sonnenburg shrugged. "Sanchez should have known that Crierie would
do something like this. He after all, levelled half of San Francisco
when he was only supposed to level Starfleet Headquarters during the
initial raids on the Federation."

"Either way, Ted, Crierie has left us a big fucking mess to clean up."
finished Chuck as he pulled out the now-worthless orders he had issued
earlier to his subordinate commanders.

"We've got a long night ahead of us, Ted, thanks to Sanchez's underestimation
of Crierie's destructive streak."

Three hours later, the now throroughly tired High Colonel and his Intelligence
Aide retired to their beds after working their way through hundreds of individual
orders and modifying them to reflect the new operational reality brought upon
by Crierie's devastating attack on the city.

The attack would have to go on without them, but Sonnenburg had issued orders
that he was to be awakened if they ran into unexpected resistance or events.

[0530 hours - 999th I.D.; 1st Regiment; 1st Line Battalion Jump-Off Point]

"Whoo, did you see that firepower demo around midnight?" asked Falk 
as he and Shep checked their weapons in preparation of jumping off 
for the day's battles.

"Hell yeah, man! That Crierie is one sick crazed motherfucker!" replied 
Shep as he slapped in a fresh powercell for his E-11. "He sure did a 
number on the city last night!"

The massive firestorms which had swept the city hours ago had died out from
lack of combustile material - anything that could burn had burned, including
bodies and building materials. Only a few hundred small fires were still burning,
lighting up the pre-dawn sky with an eerie red glow and giant plumes of smoke.

>From behind Falk and Shep came a low rumbling noise that filled the darkness,
causing them both to turn around to see what was coming up. They were greeted
by the sight of the platoon of Assault guns that was going to support them 
for the day clanking up to their jump-off positions, their paint still fresh 
from the 50th Army's maintenance depots, which had modified old tracked vehicle 
hulls to mount a variety of projectile weapons ranging from 105mm to 305mm to
deal with the problem of blasters not being able to penetrate building walls and 
explode inside for maximum damage to the building's occupants.

In front of them, Lieutenant Ford, their replacement for the late, lamented
Lt. Smallwood, was getting to know his Sergeant. Ancaris already had scared
the shit out of him, with his typical brand of inspired insanity.

Everything was going fine, until The Order Came. With a shout, Ford waved his
E-11 forward, and the men and the vehicles of the 1st Battalion of the 1st
Regiment of the 999th Division crept forwards into the smoke-filled darkness
of the City.



THE DIVISION CH 4

Through the smoke, they could hear the sounds of battle up ahead. Crouching over
low so that shots aimed at where a man would be standing in the smoke would miss,
Ford led his platoon over to the HQ of what appeared to be one of the COMPFORCE
battlegroup's companies, which was crouching in a heavily-damaged building. 

Walking through the door, Ford saw a COMPFORCE Colonel order a human wave 
assault on the Kling positions. From outside came loud URRAHS and shouts of
"FOR THE EMPEROR!", followed by the sound of clattering boots, and then the
whine of disruptors and the high-pitched screams of wounded or dying men.

"What's going on here, Colonel?" asked Ford, while in the background, 
a laser cannon began hammering away. The COMPFORCE Colonel looked at 
Ford with venemous eyes. No, he didn't need help from the Army, no sir.

"We've been trying to take this damned building for the last half an hour. 
We've tried everything from Caspels to laser cannons to blast the walls 
down, but they're too thick for blasters."

Ford smiled thinly. "I think I may have the solution to your problem, sir."

Activicating his helmet mike, Ford opened a channel to the lead Assault Gun 
assigned to his unit. "Skimmer! Get up here! We need you!" 

"On my way, sir." replied John "Sea Skimmer" Pardel

A few minutes later, the clattering of tank treads off pavement was heard, 
and from around a corner, the short barrelled snout of the Assault Gun 
"Skimmer's Pride" poked it's way out.

"Skimmer, We got a problem here. The COMPFORCE boys are stopped by this Kling 
stronghold across the street. We need you to liquidate it." ordered Ford.

"Okay. I'm on it. Is it the one with all the holes on it and the sign KRETH'S HOUSE
OF EXOTICS hanging by a thread?"

Ford lowered the boom mic and shouted across the room towards the COMPFORCE Colonel.
"Is it the whorehouse?"

"YEAH!" shouted the COMPFORCE Colonel in reply.

Inside the dimly lit fighting compartment of the gun, still warm from the 
plasma welding carried out on it's armor plates the night before, Sergeant 
John Pardel, who also went by the name "Skimmer" most of the time, centered 
the targeting crosshairs dead center onto one of the windows of the now-defunct 
whorehouse, and pressed the "quickfire" fuzing option on the flat panel next 
to him.

Next to him, his gunner was doing final last minute ranging checks until 
he gave a thumbs up, his white teeth shining through the dimness like a 
beacon as he grinned evilly.

"Time to pop her cherry!" shouted Skimmer as he squeezed the firing trigger 
as hard as he could.

With that, the Assault Gun Type 123, Chassis number #001 fired her first shot
in anger from her 175mm short barrelled howitzer.

The Krink standing in the window that Skimmer had picked had watched the squat, 
ugly vehicle come grinding to a stop in the square, disruptor bolts dissipating 
harmlessly off it's armor, and wondered what this new infernal Imperial weapon
was when he noticed that it's massive gun barrel was elevating towards his 
position. He had barely made it towards the door when the massive dust-bin sized 
175mm shell sailed through the window, and struck a wall, detonating in a flash 
as the quickfiring fuze struck the wall.

A massive overpressure wave crushed the fleeing Krink against a wall, pounding 
him into purple paste, while all over the building, Klings eardrums burst and 
began to bleed purple.

Skimmer and his crew watched smoke and dust pour forth from the window they 
had selected for a test firing. They seemed to have cleared out the snipers 
from the upper levels with that shell.

Switching his commander's sight to thermal view combined with millimetric 
wave radar scanning, Skimmer saw the positions of the klings inside the 
building pop out with startling clarity. He grinned again as the autoloader
slammed a fresh shell into the breech with a high pitched clang.

Picking a particularly large concentration of Klings, Skimmer estimated 
how many walls were between him and them, and then fuzed the fresh shell 
with a time delay.

The howitzer then bellowed again, filling the entire square with smoke from 
the propellant.

Ford watched from his perch on the 2nd floor of the COMPFORCE HQ building
as the second shot slammed into the Kling strongpoint before detonating
deep inside with a shudder that rumbled across the pre-dawn darkness.

With a low rumble, half of the wall that was facing the square began collapsing
in a shower of shattered building materials, revealing scenes of carnage inside,
of Kling body parts strewn all over the place and mixed in with bulding materials,
staining the walls inside purple with their blood.

>From the smoke and dust of the half-ruined building came some sporadic disruptor 
fire from a few surviving die-hards, causing Skimmer to sigh as he activicated the
remotely-controlled external T-21 repeating blasters mounted on the hull of the 
Assault Guns and swivelled them to spray the inside while the howitzer reloaded, 
a process which took only seconds.

Once again, the big 175mm howitzer belched smoke and flame again, and this time,
there was no return fire after the event.

As Ford watched the dust settle, his helmet's built in comm came to life. "Target 
liquidated, sir. Ammunition expenditure, three rounds. Twenty-two rounds
remaining."

"Good work, Sergeant." 

Switching to his platoon's Tac-Net, he got Ancaris on the line. "Sergeant Ancaris,
bring your men up, along with the other Assault gun for a sweep of the former enemy
strongpoint. Kill all survivors."

[50 meters away]

Ancaris grinned as he heard his orders. He was beginning to like his new Platoon
Lieutenant.

When he told his squad the news, Falk was the first to bitch. "Dammit, 
let the COMPFORCE weenies check it out, that's all they're good for: mass 
charges and clean-up work, not the kind of precision work we do." 

Ancaris scowled at Falk, and Falk quickly shut the hell up, seeing as
Ancaris had killed a private the day before for simply vomiting at
a corpse, deciding it wasn't worth it to push your luck with the
insane Sergeant.

As the second assault gun began to rattle it's way towards the now-dust
filled square, Ancaris' platoon began to move with it, keeping a close
look at the windows of the ruined buildings around them for Klings 
toting demo charges. That was how they'd managed to take out a Juggernaut
the day before in the 60th Coruscant Battlegroup's sector.

As they entered the square, visibility dropped to near-zero, causing 
Sheppard to comment "Kriff, man, I can't see my own hand, and it's a 
meter in front of me!"

Seeing a group of figures ahead of them in the dust, Shep raised his
E-11 and almost fired, a split-second before he recognized the bone-white
uniforms of COMPFORCE shock troops, who wore the same armor he wore, but in
white instead of gray like the Army.

One of the murky COMPFORCE figures walked up to Shep, and as it got closer,
he saw that it had a Colonel's bars on it's breast. "Corporal, Name's Colonel
Ray Cavendish, I'll be taking over the assault. Where's your commanding
officer?"

"Uh, Kriff, he's somewhere in this mess," replied Shep, waving his hand around
in the dust.

"That's fine, Son! You're under MY command, now Corporal, unless your officer
outranks me!"

"Uhm, yeah you do outrank him, sir!" replied Shep, remembering to say 
it as 'cur'.

With that, Shep fell in line behind the COMPFORCE colonel, making sure 
that the Colonel was always blocking Kling lines of fire to him with 
his body.

But this plan fell to pieces as the Colonel started to run towards 
the shattered Whorehouse, his DL-44 at arms as he shouted exhortations
to his men.

"COME ON YOU KRIFFING BASTARDS! MOVE IT MOVE IT!"

_Kriff it,_ thought Sheppard. Why did he always have to get the 
medal freaks?

As they reached the doorway of the whorehouse, the Colonel 
shattered the lock with a single bolt from his DL-44 and then 
splintered the door with a mighty boot to it, causing it to 
swing inwards in a shower of splinters.

Lying on the floor inside the doorway was a single Krink, 
bleeding heavily from both ears, holding a disruptor rifle.
Cavendish laughed a soulless laugh as he shot the Krink between 
the eyes with his pistol, bone and flesh boiling away from the 
ruined crater that was now it's face.

"COME ON ASSHOLES, THEY'RE HALF DEAD! MOVE IT!" shouted 
Cavendish as he pumped a few more bolts into the corpse for 
good measure.

Sheppard followed close behind the Colonel, his E-11 at the ready,
the safety off and his finger dancing on the trigger, ready
to unleah a hail of bolts at the lightest twitch.

He raised his voice slightly. "Sir, don't you think it isn't wise
to be doing it like this?"

The Colonel spun around to face him, his DL-44 aimed directly
between Shep's eyes. "Don't ever question me again, Corporal...
say, what the kriff is your name?"

"Sheppard, sir."

"Corporal Sheppard, in COMPFORCE, we shoot non-hackers, and I
say YOU'RE dangerously close to being a non-hacker."

"Sir, how can I be a non-hacker if YOU'RE doing all the
kriffing work?"

The Colonel thought about that for a moment. "You know, You're right.
You take the point instead." finished Cavendish with a fiendish
grin.

Muttering under his breath, Sheppard switched positions with 
the Colonel, and they continued deeper into the smoke-filled
house, all their senses primed and operating at 200% efficiency,
ready to pick up the slightest noise and respond to it.

Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, Sheppard caught movement, 
and he swung his E-11 around, firing from the hip wildly as he
shouted "AMBUSH LEFT! AMBUSH LEFT!"

When the smoke had cleared from that, the Colonel walked over to
where Sheppard had emptied almost a quarter of a magazine and picked
up what was left of a klingon rat. 

"Nice shooting, Corporal Sheppard. Can we try to be a little less
high strung the next time?"

Suddenly, at that moment, a hail of blaster fire was heard from above,
followed by a loud splintering noise, and both Cavendish and Sheppard 
had barely enough time to move out of the way to avoid a Smoothie 
corpse from falling onto them from the floor above. Noticing the 
smoking holes in the corpse's chest, Sheppard looked up and shouted 
out the callsign for the morning.

"Corporate!"

"Pride!" came the shouted reply, and a moment later Falk stuck his
head over the opening in the ceiling. "Sorry about that, Shep. This
fuckface surprised us and I had to shoot him point-blank, man."

"Remind me never to have an orgy in a Kling building. Damn shoddy
construction," cracked Cavendish.

"Who's the shithead from COMPFORCE?" asked Falk, not seeing Cavendish's
rank bars, or conviently ignoring them.

"That's *Colonel* Raymond Cavendish to you, you worthless scumbucket!"
shot back Cavendish as he raised his DL-44 towards the ceiling before
Shep lowered it with his hands. "He ain't worth it, man."

"I'll remember THAT, Shep, you FUCKFACE!" shouted Falk as he moved away 
from the hole in the ceiling to help the rest of their platoon clear
the second floor.

"You've got some nice friends there Corporal," sneered Cavendish as
he examined a heavily armored hatch set into the floor that had been
uncovered by the Smoothie's fall from above. Apparently it had survived 
the shelling from the Assault Gun with minimal damage, and using the 
rudimentary hacking skills that were taught to every member of the 
Imperial Military, he quickly bypassed the flimsy electronic lock 
on the hatch.

Opening the hatch, he pulled a stun grenade off his belt and primed it
to detonate in ten seconds and dropped it down through
the hatch, closing it to shield him and the Corporal from the stun
grenade's effect.

Several high-pitched screams came from below, and Cavendish quickly
pulled the hatch open again and dropped down into the basement of
the building. It seemed to be heavily reinforced, and had survived the
near-destruction of the building with only a few scratches.

But what interested him the most was the group of what could only
be Kling whores cowering in the corner, their faces revealed by
his emergency flashlight.

>From behind him, a grunting noise was heard as Sheppard also jumped 
into the basement. When he saw the whores, he did a double take
before speaking. 

"Sithspit, I know they're Klings, but damn, the Divisional Morale 
Eggheads are gonna want them!" he remarked as he tried to raise 
Divisional HQ on his helmet comm.

He failed to take notice of the Colonel slowly holstering his DL-44
and unslinging the flechette rifle he had been carrying during the
battle for just this opporturnity. 

With a twisted grin appearing on his face, Cavendish released the
safety on the rifle, and with a final laugh that was choked
off by an insane giggle, he emptied an entire magazine into the whores,
his eyes reflecting an insane glimmer as he watched the flechettes tear
into their bodies, splattering purple gore all over the walls.

With a look of abject horror on his face, Sheppard ran up to the mad Colonel
and tried to knock the rifle out of his hands, but the Colonel easily
backhanded Sheppard into the duracrete wall and calmly ejected the spent
magazine from his rifle and loaded a fresh magazine.

Licking his lips like he was about to devour a nerf steak, Cavendish 
walked up to the whores and methodically fired several more short bursts 
into what was left of their bodies, enjoying how the purple gore was 
splattering onto his once-white armor.

He was so caught up in the delicate ballet of flechettes striking
womanflesh that he failed to notice several newcomers coming down
the hatch behind him.

Before he could do any more, he was tackled from behind by both 
Falkenhorst and Sheppard, while Lieutenant Ford looked at the 
charnel house that the basement had become with an ashen look on 
his face.

"Sith.....SPIT! Get me the Divisional JAG corps, they'll want 
to have a nice little...talk with our 'friend' Colonel Cavendish 
here." ordered Ford as he motioned for the platoon medic, 
Specialist 1st Class Kelly Antilles, to check out what was left
of the whores on the off chance that one of them had survived 
Cavendish's insane rampage.

Antilles, or as everyone else in the platoon called her, 'Mom',
took out her portable medscanner and was checking the corpses
of the prositutes when all of a sudden she leapt back, cursing
a blue streak.

"SITH SPIT! THEY HAVE THE ROT!"

"KRIIFFF!" shouted the entire platoon in unison, and they all 
scrambled for the hatch, eager to get away from the infected 
bodies, leaving behind Colonel Cavendish in their haste.

He looked longingly at the bloody corpses before deciding that
having his dick cut off to save him from the ROT wasn't a nice
exchange for this moment of intimacy.

He bolted from the whorehouse just as the Assault Guns fired
their 175mm inciendary rounds into the top floors of the infected
building, while Ford and his men began lighting the lower floors
up with their hand-held flame projectors.

After laying in a particularly long burst through a window with
the flame rifle that had been supplied to him by the Divisional 
medical units for sterilization, Falkenhorst noticed that Cavendish 
had escaped.

"KRIFF! HE ESCAPED!" shouted Falk as he swung the flame rifle towards
Cavendish.

No one could tell if the ROT hadn't infected someone until a sadly
fatal brain probe, so it was better to just kill anyone who was
suspected of having the ROT, rather than spending the time to
quarantine them.

"NO! Don't kill him!" shouted 'Mom' as she knocked Falk's flame rifle
from his hands, causing him to look sharply at her.

"And why shouldn't we? He's probably infected, what with the nearly
half a liter of Kling blood on him."

Kelly sighed. Men could be so difficult at times. "If he hadn't 
killed those whores, do you know how many soldiers would have 
come down with the ROT?"

"Y'know, Falk, 'Mom' does have a point..." replied Shep as 
he lowered his flame rifle.

"Kriffin' waste of life..." growled Falk as he lowered his 
flamer. "Get the Meat Wagon here NOW. I don't want this fuckface 
walking around here any longer than he has to, spewing his filthy 
germs all over us..."

Thirty Standard Time Units later, after the Colonel had been taken 
away by a heavily modified Quarantine LAV, and after they had all 
burned their old uniforms and changed into fresh new ones after
going through a decontam shower, the platoon gathered in front
of the burning whorehouse.

"You know guys, this calls for a song." chimed in Falk.

"What shall we sing then?" asked Lt. Ford.

"How about the Mickey Mouse Club Song?" suggested Corporal Spyda,
who had just returned from a bout of leave on Earth.

"How about you lead us off, Spyda?" replied Ford as he shifted his
weapon and called the platoon to attention.

"OK, Sir." Coughing slightly to clear his throat, Spyda began to sing
the song the Federation had banned for the last 500 years.

"Who's the leader of the club that's made for you and me?"

"M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E."

Sounding off to the beat of the song, the platoon marched
further into Ikonos city, silhouletted against the burning
whorehouse as the men sang the song lustily.

"Hey there. Hi there. Ho there. You're as welcome as can be."

"M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E."
     
"Mickey Mouse. (Mickey Mouse.)"
     
"Mickey Mouse. (Mickey Mouse.)"
     
"Forever let us hold our banner high."
     
"High. High. High."
     
"Come along and sing a song and join the jamboree."
     
"M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E."

"Here we go a-marching and a-shouting merrily."
    
"M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E."

"We play fair and we work hard and we're in harmony."
     
"M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E."
     
"Mickey Mouse. (Mickey Mouse.)"
     
"Mickey Mouse. (Mickey Mouse.)"
     
"Forever let us hold our banner high."
    
"High. High. High."

"Boys and girls from far and near you're as welcome as can be."

"M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E."

"Who's the leader of the club that's made for you and me?"
     
"M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E."

"Who is marching coast to coast and far across the sea?"
     
"M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E."

"Mickey Mouse. (Mickey Mouse.)"
     
"Mickey Mouse. (Mickey Mouse.)"

"Forever let us hold his banner high."
     
"High. High. High."
     
"Come along and sing a song and join the family."

"M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E....."



THE DIVISION CH 5

[124th Corellian Infantry Corps HQ Officers' Mess Hall]

"More wine, sir?" asked the servant.

"I think I shall indulge myself in that Chardonnay
of 2007 vintage you have." replied Major General
Charles Bean, who commanded the 124th Corellian
Infantry Corps, which was made up of the 999th
and 1000th Corellian Infantry Divisions.

"I must say, this meal is quite good, sir."
added Captain Ted Archbold, who was sitting next
to his superior officer, High Colonel Sonnenburg
as they both partook their superior's hospitality.

Sitting across the table was an unexpected guest
for their morning meal, General Crierie of the 51st 
Starfighter Corps and his chief lieutenant, High
Colonel Nathan Yates.

It had been a surprise when Crierie showed up earlier,
asking if he could dine with his fellow Corellians.

Bean could see nothing wrong with accepting Crierie's
presence, while on the other hand, both Archbold and
Sonnenburg stared at the flamboyant starfighter
general with undisguised hatred in their eyes.

"Yes indeed, it is." said Crierie as he took another
bite of the freshly cooked imported salmon from Mytos
IV that was his breakfast.

"Was it really necessary to level the entire city, General?"
asked Sonnenburg as he sipped on his cream royale coffee.

"I have found that terror is the best method of cowing the 
peoples of this galaxy to our will. If it makes life harder
for your troops, well that's too bad, Sonnenburg. War isn't
a cakewalk." shot back Crierie.

Suddenly, before anyone could reply, a dark figure walked into 
the officer's mess hall. A figure everyone in the Empire lived
in fear of - the Dread Lord himself, Darth Vader.

Everyone automatically snapped to attention, trying to contain
their fear.

"My Lord, what is it you want?" asked Bean unsteadily, a million
thoughts running through his mind at that point. He hadn't done
anything bad lately, so why was Vader here?

"General Crierie," rasped Vader in that terrifying metallic voice of his.

"Why did you disobey the Emperor's orders not  to carpet bomb Ikonos City?"

Crierie could feel an invisible hand constricting on his throat,
and he struggled to reply.

"My...lord...I thought it was best to cow the populace with an
overwhelming display of force rather than with ineffectual pinpricks."

He felt the grip on his throat tighten even more. 

"The Emperor put the area around the Temple of Kahless off-limits from bombing."

"My lord, my bombers stayed well outside that exclusion zon..."

"Then why are the walls of the Temple scorched? You're as incompetent 
as you are stupid."

Everyone winced at the sound of Crierie's vertebrae shattering 
under the Dark Lord's invisible grip.

Vader turned to face down High Colonel Yates, and bored straight into
his eyes.

"*General* Yates, you are now in command of the Fifty-First."

With that, Vader released his grip on Crierie's corpse, and it fell 
face-first into the expensive salmon dish, ruining it utterly.

"Yes, My Lord!" replied a shaken Yates, trying to comprehend his
sudden promotion.

Vader left the mess hall as quickly as he had arrived, like a human 
whirlwind that left death in it's wake.

Slowly, the stunned officers sat down at their seats and resumed
eating their breakfasts, trying their best to ignore the corpse
of General Crierie slumped face down in his salmon meal.

"This Pasta is rather good, General, where did your chef get the
recipe?" asked Archbold as he dabbled at his lips with a napkin.

"Why, he picked it up when I was assigned to the region of Earth
known as Italy. We also picked up the fine stock of wines you're
enjoying right now," replied Bean.

An aide walked into the room, and handed a note to Sonnenburg.

"What? What is it?" asked an annoyed Sonnenburg.

"Sir, the attack has bogged down around the Ikonos Disruptor 
Factory." replied the aide in a terse voice.

After taking a quick look at the dispatch, Sonnenburg put it down
and took another sip of wine from his crystal glass. "Reinforce
Lieutenant Colonel Dalton's regiment with men from Strowbridge's
regiment. Instruct them to press home the assault, no matter
what the cost."

"Yessir!" replied the aide as he spun around to relay the order
to the front.

"Now where were we..." replied Sonnenburg as he took another
sip of wine.

[Ikonos Disruptor Factory]

"MOVE IT MOVE IT YOU MAGGOTS!" shouted Sheppard as the Kling
disruptor rifle sliced across the rubble-choked streets towards
a company of troopers.

His shouted warning was too late for several of the troopers,
and they were vaporized as they screamed horrible blood-curdling
screams.

"Fuck!" cursed Sheppard as he saw them get cut down.



The Division
Chapter Six

"Take that fucking gun nest the fuck out now!" screamed an officer 
Shep couldn't identify in the din of combat, and out of the corner 
of his left eye, he saw an anti-tank team rushing forward, their PLX-2M 
tubes at the ready on their shoulders. 

Suddenly, one of the men stepped on a land mine and disappeared in a 
thunderous explosion, knocking down the other man flat on his face 
as the cloud of smoke and dust that had been a trooper slowly rose into 
the night sky. 

"Kriff, Kriff! Why do we always have to be the fucking spearhead of the 
fucking division?" bitched Falk as he huddled behind a burnt out hovercar 
along with Shep and the other survivors of their squad. 

"Because we're the best, or haven't you heard?" sarcastically commented 
another trooper, who appeared to be from Strowbridge's regiment, according 
to the markings on his helmet. 

"According to who? The bastards back at headquarters who tote up all those 
kriffing statistics from our battle computers on our fucking kill ratio per 
shots fired?" muttered Falk as he examined their new-found cover. 

It was a hovercar of the type used by the Klingons, and a horrible smell enamated 
from within it. Falk didn't want to think about what was causing the smell, but 
he looked anyway. 

Inside, the charred corpses of a Klingon woman and a Klingon child 
remained strapped to their seats, and judging by their state of decomposition, 
they had been dead for a few days at least. 

"A bit late for the barbecue, eh folks?" cracked Falk. 

Suddenly, a hand grabbed the back of his battle vest and yanked him back down 
to the ground. "You'll end up being barbecued yourself, Falk, if you don't stop 
taking stupid risks. This entire fuckin' street is ranged down to the last crack 
in the pavement by that disruptor nest," replied Sheppard. 

"Sithspit, I don't believe this!" shouted a trooper next to Sheppard, and everyone 
turned their heads to watch the sight of the sole survivor of the anti-tank squad 
staggering to his feet, hefting the heavy PLX-2 launcher on his shoulder. 

Suddenly, a disruptor bolt lanced the man straight through the chest, but the man 
didn't drop, even as blood began to run from between his lips. A moment later, the 
PLX-2 fired, and the unknown soldier stood standing long enough to see the disruptor 
nest explode in a fiery thermobaric explosion that fried the Klingons manning the nest, 
and then he dropped dead. 

"Someone, find out who the kriff that was! I'm recommending him for the Palpatine's Cross!" 
shouted Lieutenant Ford as he waved forward what was left of his platoon. 

"Sir, it was PFC Robbins!" came the shout from a soldier who had reached the unknown 
soldiers' corpse and had turned it over to expose the face and nameplate. 

"Mark him for graves retreval! Who got vaped?" ordered Ford. A few minutes later, 
they had their answer. Apparently Privates K.J. Anderson, D. Brin, D. Brown, and 
T. Clancy had been vaped, and the only thing their families would get would 
be an empty coffin weighted down with bricks. 

"All right. All right. Let's get back on track here," muttered Ford as he pulled 
out a pair of electrobinocs and scanned the facade of the factory. It appeared 
to be mostly silent, now that the disruptor nest had been silenced messily. 

Taking out a gold-plated container, Ford opened it and took out a death stick 
and lit it. 

"We ain't gonna do shit until the Assault guns get up here. Skimmer should be here 
in a few minutes." 

"Sir, doesn't headquarters want us to take the factory post-haste?" asked a private. 

"Fuck headquarters. What they don't know won't hurt them." mumbled Ford as he smoked 
the death stick. 

"Aren't those things bad for you, sir?" asked Falk. 

"Kriff you, Private. Five minute break, everyone. Smoke 'em if you got 'em." ordered 
Ford. 

A surprisingly large number of troopers took out death sticks and started puffing 
on them. What was a few years off your life, considering the fact that you were 
more likely to die violently and messily here, rather than live to a ripe old age 
in a veterans hostel? 

Five minutes later, Skimmer rumbled up in his assault gun. "What's up, 
Lieutenant?" he shouted from the cupola of his vehicle. 

"We need you to support us as we breach the factory. Anything looks suspicious, 
blast it to shit." 

Taking his stick out of his mouth, Ford threw it to the ground, where he put it out 
with his bootheel. "Okay, ladies, break's over! War's back on!" 

The assault gun rumbled forward a few meters before stopping. Inside "Skimmer's Pride" 
the driver shouted back at Pardel. "Sir, car's blocking our way!" 

"Kriff that shit, man! Run it over!" 

With a low grinding of gears, 'Skimmers Pride' slowly ran over the 
wrecked hovercar, crushing it into a unrecognizable mass of mangled steel 
and rotting flesh. 

Behind 'Skimmers Pride', the men of A Platoon, Able Company followed, 
staying in the tread marks of the assault gun, where no mines would be. 

[Klingon Army Group Ikonos HQ - 30 metres below Ikonos City] 

General Klugoth sat at a table in his headquarters deep beneath the ruined 
city as the ground shook, and dust snowed from the ceiling from the near-continuous 
imperial artillery bombardment of the city. 

Taking out a copy of the latest intel reports from his deployed recon teams, he tried 
to figure out where the Empire was attacking at the moment. 

The recon groups were a new invention of the Klingon Empire. A small group of highly 
trained warriors would be sent behind enemy lines not to fight, but to gather 
intelligence and send it back to friendly forces, who would then use that information 
to destroy the enemy. The concept had been proven in battle against the honorless 
Romulans, where the conservative hardliners were at their weakest, due to the fact 
that the Romulans had no honor. 

The reports from Targ Group indicated that the Empire was moving large amounts of 
men and materiel towards the Ikonos Factory, which was exactly midway between the 
Klanth river bridge and the Imperial frontlines. 

Klugoth thought about that for a split-second. The bridge could not be 
allowed to be seized. It was their only way of getting reinforcements 
in from Kalogada starport after they had arrived on-planet. 

After studying the map on the wall, which was constantly updated in grease 
pencil with the latest reported frontlines for several minutes, Klugoth turned 
to an aide and began barking out questions and orders. 

"How many divisions have arrived at Kalogada?" 

"Sir, three divisions, but I must warn you, they're all dangerously understrength-- 
the Empire has a vicious blockade on the planet. The casualty rates of our Birds of 
Prey are running at around 66 percen..." 

"Casualties do not concern me, Captain. What concerns me is that I get enough men to 
make the Empire bleed here." 

The aide nodded. "Very well, sir. The 323th Imperal Division, the 32nd Guards, 
and the 9th Guards are currently at Kalogada. If we merged them all, we'd get the 
equivalent of a division of troops." 

"Merge them," ordered Klugoth without a second thought. 

"What shall we name our new division?" asked the aide. 

"The Kor Division. They shall stand and fight here at Ikonos, or they shall 
perish," Klugoth ordered. 

"How many guns do we have ready?" 

"Three hundred around the city, sir." replied the aide. 

"I want them to open up on the sectors surrounding Ikonos factory now, 
and not to let up until the Kor Division reaches the frontlines." 

"Sir, that will decimate our units already fighting in the area!" 
protested the aide. 

"So? They'll be decimated anyway. This gives us a chance to weaken this 
999th Infantry Division from what is the name...Corellia, I believe, 
before it meets the Kor division." 

"Go now! Carry out my orders before it's too late and we have lost the factory!" 
thundered Klugoth. 

[The Banks of the River Klanth - 5 minutes later] 

The crews of the squat 200mm mortars lounged around in their carefully prepared 
firing positions, which had been built with great care as to conceal them from 
roving Imperial TIE patrols over the city. 

Suddenly, a officer ran up and down the firing line, shouting orders. 

The artillerymen quickly moved to their tasks, the smooth-faced Klings quickly 
computing the neccessary elevation and bearing to hit their targets, while the 
heavily muscled Krinks moved and prepared the massive 200mm shells for loading 
into the mortars breech blocks. 

Several minutes later, the first mortars belched flame into the night sky, as 
hundreds of other klingon artillery pieces opened up in a massive bombardment, 
sending a rain of shells into the sectors around the factory. 

[The Kor Division - 5 km from the Factory] 

The Klingon troops marching towards the Factory across the bridge cheered as 
they saw the night sky light up from all directions as the Empire struck back 
at the humans. The cheering didn't last long, however, before the humans began 
counterbattery fire. 

On the plains around Ikonos city, Imperial gunners elevated their artillery pieces 
and countered Klingon steel with Imperial steel, wiping out entire batteries 
of Klingon artillery with a few well aimed rounds. 

The artillery battle quickly shifted from a tremendous bombardment of the factory 
area to a mathematical battle fought between both sides' counterbattery radars 
and the quickness of their gun crews. 

That however, wasn't any consolation to the men on both sides who had died in the 
steel rain around the factory in those first terrible minutes. 

[Around the factory] 

When the first shells had begun landing, everyone had scattered for the nearest 
cover available, while Pardel and his crew in "Skimmers' Pride" had to batten 
down and hope to God that the Klings weren't using anti-armor munitions. 

All around them, the ground shook and heaved from the artillery raining down 
on them, and dozens of men died in an instant when the hide outs they were 
cowering in were wiped out by Klingon shells. 

The bombardment lasted for two terrible minutes before it slackened off as 
the Klingon artillery began to fight for it's life against their opposing 
Imperial counterparts and the TIEs. 

All around the factory, the landscape had been turned into a moonscape, 
with buildings shattered, and rubble choking the streets. 

Sheppard was the first to poke his head out of the makeshift shelter he 
had dove under; a partially collapsed wall that had collapsed from an earlier 
bombardment. 

"Hello? Anyone still alive?" asked Sheppard as he surveyed the moonscape 
that the bombardment had left behind. 

"I'm still here," came a voice from under the assault gun, that of Lt. Ford. 

Ford had dove for the nearest cover the moment the shells had begun 
landing - under the assault gun. 

"Me too," chimed in Falkenhorst, who had also dove under the assault gun. 

All around them, several more voices chimed in, until everyone had reported 
in but a couple of men. 

"Mark 'em dead. We'll let graves' registration scan for their DNA after this 
mess is over," growled Ford as he lit a death stick to try and calm his nerves 
down after the shelling. 

Slowly, everyone began to move towards the factory again, minus the Assault Gun, 
which had broken a tread during the shelling. Pardel and his crew were working 
frantically to replace the tread, but they had told Ford not to expect any support 
for a couple of hours. . . 

[END CH 6]