F-5; The Ballo'Krechka System

F-5; The Ballo'Krechka System
Planet of Yunvaro,
Ruins of Hasakar


"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.."

The trio of humans had been running for at least ten minutes down the right side of a debris-ridden street in the 'suburbs' of the Kal'Bavakorian city of Hasakar. Breathing in the thick, murky air was bad enough when they weren't in the midst of a radiation zone, but it was made wholly worse when they were being chased.

"SHUT THE FUCK UP AND RUN," shrieked Staff Sergeant Chambers as she, Corporal Williams and Specialist Takai ran through a puddle of irradiated water; sending splashes of the goopy mess flying. They quickly hoisted themselves through a smashed, crumbling Kal'Bavakorian structure to take cover. It seemed to be some sort of indoor trading market with all the old metallic stands and odd hanging garb and items, although it's build was too alien to tell. Humanity had not been able to see a Kal'Bavakorian world up close until now, and even looking at it they couldn't tell what half of their stuff did, or what it represented. Even their damned keyboards were too alien to discern; strange orbs that had hexagonal keys that took serious time for the untrained hand to manipulate.

Staff Sergeant Chambers quickly ducked through some of these hanging garbs and, spotting an overturned hexagonal shelf, quickly took a knee beside it. Panting and trembling, the Corporal and the Specialist took cover beside them. Specialist Takai was already shaking his head angrily.

"I told the fuckin' armory to give us power armor, but fuckin' no! Of course not! What good did a 'stealthy' approach do us anyway?"

"Calm down, Takai. There's nothing panicking is gonna get us," said Corporal Williams with a light sigh. He quickly gazed over at the Staff Sergeant.

"What did we manage to get from the run?"

The Staff Sergeant, peering over towards their entrance and, listening as hard as she could, took a moment to respond. Her finger was on her conventional assault rifle's trigger, nearly tight enough to send off a round at a moments notice.

"Nearly nothing; not enough to help feed those on the 'Resilience'. We lost most of it when we lost the privates and Sergeant Halberd. Just have some anti-rad's for the walk back to the ship."

"The Admiral really fucked us here. We should have just waited for the trade caravan from the 'Usurper' to get here, instead of trying to scavenge around a goddamned Kal'Bavakorian settlement. A-28 of all places," muttered Takai with a grunt.

Staff Sergeant Chambers quickly shushed Takai with a wave of her hand. Peering over her shoulder at the two, she lets off a quick series of orders.

"Corporal, find me a good exit point; we're heading home for the night."

The Corporal quickly nodded. Pushing himself up and off the moist, dirt-covered floor, he'd hoist himself over the collapsed shelf they were taking cover by, and began making a move towards the rear of the small store. They were in the middle of a Kal'Bavakorian residential area, just outside their city, so this place had plenty of small spaces to escape from. They'd even managed to mark a few for travel.

CRUNCH.

The Staff Sergeant immediately held up a hand, and slowly pulled her rifle up to her chest. Specialist Takai followed, slowly adjusting himself to cover the Sergeant's rear; his rifle up and prepared to fire.

CRUNCH, CRUNCH. The sound was getting closer, and picking up speed.

Takai gulped and whispered,"...Is that them?"

The Sergeant merely nodded. The sounds were becoming louder; she could hear the metallic footsteps outside the store now. A few splashes as their thick metallic boots stepped through puddles of water or a thick crunch as they stepped on dead corral branches and old vehicle parts.

CRUNCH, CRUNCH CRUNCH... CRUNCH. And they stopped. The air was completely silent.

The Sergeant and the Specialist held their breaths; keeping their rifles up as they slowly, slowly surveyed the room. The decades old Kal'Bavakorian cloth hanging on the ceiling was blocking any visuals on their position, and they seemed to be safe for the moment..

Suddenly, the crunches began again, although much faster and hurried. What followed after was sickening; the sound of bone snapping and flesh tearing, as if someone just ripped a chicken leg from a chicken. The familiar voice of Corporal Williams was heard, although instead of his gentle, calming tone, it was a horrid, blood curdling scream. The sound of automatic gunfire rippled through the store and out into the streets, sending a flock of native Hagas birds fluttering into the sky.

"SHIT, GO!" Shrieked the Staff Sergeant. She and the Specialist hopped to their feet without a moment to spare and, against their better judgement, sprinted toward the exit of the building. They didn't have another exit and they surely didn't want to follow the Corporal's route.

Out onto the murky, cracked metallic streets of the Hasakar suburbs came the two Coalition soldiers. They quickly sprinted full speed down the crackled sidewalk, their path draped in Kal'Bavakorian flora and Yunvaran shrubbery from the years of disuse. One of the secret passageways was a few hundred meters ahead, just over a pile of building debris and a few smashed Kal'Bavakorian speeders...

A loud crack filled the air, the sound of a high-velocity rifle, and the Specialist silently collapsed to the ground with a splattering noise; his chest blown clear open. Leaving the Specialist and his spilled organs upon the ground, the Staff Sergeant continued her mad sprint towards safety. Her eyes darted around wildly as she sought cover and, as she turned round a building's corner into an alleyway to find safety, she ran headfirst into a piece of thick metal.

She collapsed; grasping her now bloodied face with a loud cry of pain. Her ears were ringing, and she struggled to see with the black dots in her eyes. She blinked a few times to clear her vision and, wiping away the reddish blood that began pooling down her face, she let out a scream at what she saw.

Towering over her was a seven foot tall behemoth of machine and metal. It was a resident of A-28. It was a hulking defender of the safest and most technologically advanced settlement of survivors on the planet. It was a Kal'Bavakorian dressed in a suit of powered armor that had been created after the war; a feat that almost no other settlement could manage. The ability to manufacture new equipment and weapons was difficult to even comprehend in this post-war society, and A-28 was more than capable.

The figure slowly raised it's weapon, a Pre-War Alliance assault rifle, down at the fallen human. With it's three-fingered hands holding the weapon's stock tightly against it's shoulder, it took aim..

And fired a three round burst straight into the head of the Staff Sergeant.

Welcome to Yunvaro.

Surface of Yunvaro // USC Designation: 05F 'Tartarus'
USS Resilience, SSBN-11 // Vanguard-class Ballistic Missile Cruiser
Commanding: Rear Admiral Deanna Malcolm
Registry Status: LOST IN ACTION

"We have lost starboard engines, the ship's going into an uncontrolled clockwise spin skipper!"

"Shut the port engines down, switch to backups!"

"No go skipper, backups are not responding! Our orbit's unstable, we are already skimming the atmosphere! "

It had been twenty years since the crash. Twenty years since the Coalition had been pushed so far against the wall that it had resorted to the unthinkable: the complete annihilation of an entire race. But in the absence of the required intel and unable to locate the Kal'bavakorian homeworld, Command had instead decided to take out the colonies. Such an act would, according to them, undoubtedly force the aliens into surrender after they realized their people simply were not safe, even with all of their military might.

Since most of the Kal'bavakorian fleet was fighting in Tefeull, the plan was to make a simple in-and-out attack against Yunvaro using a combination of ISBMs and ship-borne ground-strike ballistic missiles in order to ensure maximal strike efficiency. Three ballistic missile cruisers, ships designed with the sole task of raining nuclear mayhem down on enemy worlds, had been laying low near he Kal'bavakorian border for weeks; all they had to do was jump in, acquire target locks, launch their missiles and then guide the ISBMs in. Resistance had been expected to be minimal.

The intel was wrong.

Instead of finding an undefended world, the three cruisers, the Resilience, the Vanguard and the Dauntless were suddenly pitted against the bulk of the Kal'bavakorian home defense fleet. Any reasonable commander would have retreated, but the Vanguard's commanding officer and commander of the strike group, Vice Admiral Adrian Foster, had insisted that they proceed with the mission: it was a coordinated strike, and now that the plan had been revealed to the Kal'bavakorians, they had to make sure at least some of the target worlds were hit.

The cruisers fought and tore their way through the Kal'bavakorian defenses and into a low orbit around the planet, the perfect position for a nuclear strike, and then begun their target search: for a full rotation they continued to duke it out with the enemy fleet, marking military facilities and population centers for Command to aim the ISBMs at. At the end of the first rotation, the Vanguard's commander ordered the nuclear attack to commence.

Multi-megaton nuclear warheads rained down on the largest cities of Yunvaro, detonating in the atmosphere in apocalyptic blasts the mushroom clouds of which ascended all the way to the upper atmosphere. By the time the three cruisers had expended their nuclear ordinance, the ISBM strike that followed was redundant: Yunvaro was a barren, irradiated wasteland. But with the damage they had taken during the battle, the cruisers found themselves stranded, unable to activate their crippled jump drives. The message from command was clear: they had no ships to spare, no assistance to offer.

For hours the three cruisers tried to fight their way into a higher orbit and out of the planet's gravity well, but it was fruitless. The Vanguard was eventually destroyed, its tormented reactor finally giving in to the demands of the enemy weapons and detonating in a sudden nuclear explosion that took out every single soul aboard. The commanders of the Dauntless and the Resilience had a choice to make: they could either both go down fighting, or save one of the two ships. They drew straws over video-comm; the Resilience's commander, Rear Admiral Deanna Malcolm drew the short one.

A general evacuation was sounded, and all of the Resilience's non-essential staff was moved to the Dauntless along with what remained of the unlucky cruiser's spare parts to repair the jump drive. There was just not enough material to repair both engines. Over the next few hours, the Resilience suicidally protected the Dauntless while the latter repaired one of its FTL engines, ran the necessary calculations and, finally, jumped away into safety.

Almost twelve hours after jumping in, the Resilience crash-landed on Yunvaro with almost a quarter of its 12,000 strong crew aboard. Miraculously, most of the ship (and its crew) survived the crash, and the sections that were breached and exposed to the contaminated air outside were sealed hermetically. Without any rescue coming, the Admiral decided that there was only one thing left to do: survive. Over the next two decades, the Resilience's crew managed to contact other ships that had crashed onto the planet, both military and civilian. And although thus far they had all survived the cruel world they had found themselves stranded on, they all knew the truth: they couldn't do it for much longer.

---

"Admiral."

"Admiral."

"Admiral."

As Rear Admiral Deanna Malcolm walked purposefully through the decayed corridors of the ship she commanded, all of the humans in her path, military and civilian alike, paused their work to salute the revered commander. Amongst the humans on Yunvaro, or 'Tartarus' as they had come to call the planet, the Admiral was treated with respect only a divinity was worthy of: she had protected the human population for two decades, no matter the cost. Although she ruled the Resilience faction, as it had been so aptly named, with an iron fist, she was a just and caring ruler.

And her day had not started well.

Food was running low again, and with almost a full week before the supplies from the hydroponics ship could arrive, she had been forced to send a team deep into the ruins to attempt to scavenge one of the crashed supply shuttles, one that records indicated was filled with Meals-Ready-to-Eat. But power armor was a limited resource: over the past twenty years, they had been forced to salvage more than four fifths of their power armor sets to repair critical systems, or to maintain more advanced versions of the defense system. Only a few sets were authorized for outside use, and those had been granted to a team of commandos she had dispatched on a critical - not to mention classified - mission.

The team she had sent to get the food had failed to check in.

Walking past the guards, the Admiral finally found herself inside the Resilience's bridge, although the image was far different from that one would expect from a Coalition CIC: crudely pieced together pieces of equipment were connected to each-other and the actual computers with thick data cables, most maintenance panels had been ripped open to access their contents, and the officers inside looked more like a gang of pirates than a military outfit, despite their surprisingly well-kept uniforms. The large screen that normally displayed information about the ship had a large crack on it and flickered periodically, since it had been damaged in the attempted mutiny ten years before. Instead of ship systems information, the screen had a massive map of the continent displayed on it, along with camera feeds from the outside.

"XO, talk to me." she stated bluntly as she reached the command table, making brief eye contact with each of the dozen or so officers that had gathered around it.

"The team Chambers was leading hasn't radioed in yet. They either went deeper into the ruins than expected, and thus their signal isn't getting out, or..." The implication the XO was making was clear, and it was a scenario that sounded far more likely to the Admiral. A-28 was a settlement that the Resilience faction had fought a few times, and the only reason the cruiser hadn't launched one of its few nuclear missiles at it was that it housed the last known functioning industrial facilities on the planet. Those facilities were perhaps the most important resource on the planet: with them, the Chief Engineer assured her that they would be able to manufacture the parts needed to repair the tachyon transmitter. With those facilities, they had a chance at a rescue.

"We have to assume they are KIA, but we need those rations. Come on people, I need options here!"

An uncomfortable silence followed as the officers started at each other, unable to come up with a solid plan. The Resilience was not equipped for ground invasions; most Marines had been evacuated prior to the crash, leaving just over a hundred of them to protect an entire cruiser, a cruiser on the surface nevertheless. Over the two decades since the crash, that number had dropped down to seventy-two as some Marines died and others were drafted to more critical roles due to other skills (such as combat engineers). Some non-essential staff was drafted into the Marines instead, but they were kept inside the cruiser because of their nil combat experience, experience that virtual reality couldn't replace. The most promising candidates were the people born on Tartarus: some children had indeed been born on the ship after the crash, and they had been trained from childhood to become experts in various fields. Most of them had ended up in the Marines.

"We could send in the tanks."

"ABSOLUTELY NOT." replied the Admiral furiously at the Supply Officer's suggestion, and she kept herself from banging her fist on the screen table. Two of the battle tanks the Resilience had at its disposal, one its own and the other taken from a crashed destroyer, had been kept in reserve to defend the cruiser. The third, salvaged from a downed troop transport, had disappeared on the Admiral's orders almost as soon as the failed mutiny happened. Rumors claimed that it was protecting some distant, secretive facility that the Admiral hoped could be used to contact the USC.

"Admiral, we can't wait for the supply convoy, and I quite frankly can't see an alternative to going in with force. Even the xenos in A-28 wouldn't try to attack a tank attack group, not when those beasts have kept us safe for two decades."

"These tanks are the only thing holding the rebels from attacking this ship, Major. We can't risk them."

Suddenly, another voice spoke, this one much younger than both of the aging officers. "That's it. The rebels. They are the solution."

As every head in the room turned to look at Lieutenant Irene Dieter, a smug smile formed on the Marine's lips. Lieutenant Dieter was a planet-born, the first planet-born to be precise, and the XO's daughter. Her mother, one of the medical officers, had already been pregnant when the ship crashed. Her daughter had trained from the cradle to become a Marine, but as opposed to the aging soldiers that the Resilience had started with, she did not have their bias towards tactics. Tartarus was her home, and she was fighting in home territory.

"We send in one tank, plus a Marine attack team, at the nearest resistance base. They either give us food, or we take it by force. Remember, we might not be well equipped to fight A-28, the only thing keeping them at bay is our nukes, but we outman and outgun the rebels. We have air support, they do not. They simply can't refuse."

The Lieutenant's plans were always unorthodox, but this was a plan that the Admiral seemed to approve of. "No MBTs. One squad, the APCs to carry them, and one IFV. Lieutenant, it's your plan, you go with. Please try to not need air support, we are already low on fuel."