Another two weeks passed as Adam was so focused on one particular thing he spent every second working on it, away from all the operations as Jaimie manned the bridge. The next planet they hovered over was one unified under one banner. Watching over it. The planet was becoming genocidal and needed action to persevere the current population.
"We want to lead this mission!" Carolina and Minnesota yelled and took charge as Indy hesitated a second.
"I warn you, the legions we deploy you with is all you will get, you eight can do fine." Jaimie felt a sting of pain as Oregon was there and wanted to partake. "For your sake, I will not let you go into combat."
"I agree with her, you can come with us if you stay in the ship." Indy looked at her with tears in her eyes. "We would love to have your help once you are healed, but take it easy and realize this is to prolong your life."
Oregon stomped off followed by Hawaii and Mississippi. Nevada rolled his eyes as he looked at the holo table. "I'm assuming we aren't getting help from Proto, Omaha and Airsoft?"
"Nope, they are still healing from their engagement." Jaimie pointed out the key hotspots. "Between their capital and their infrastructure, its very twentieth century earth tech." Jaimie passed them the reports as she prepared three legions. "So you should have no problems cleaning up the mess."
"Once we save the people we get to sit back and reap the praise." Carolina turned around to walk out as Minn and Wash left with her to go to the ship.
"Same old Cece, she doesn't change no matter what." Utah looked back. "So it's low tier weapons, so we should just steamroll to the capital and kill the leader and go from there?"
"I like that idea, and allow for some smaller units to help resupply and rebuild the smaller communities." Nevada tacked on.
"So we deploy here, fan out three deep here, and charge to the capital. Use the air superiority and allow it to support us. Any objections?" Indy asked softly, he had a bad feeling going into this due to the nature of how one person takes power. "Jaimie, random question, how much influence does Astral have on the civilian district?"
"He only breaks tiebreakers in the high senate. Otherwise, the average person probably doesn't notice him." Jaimie relaxed. "I see the wheels turning, good question." Indy nodded as he waved for the other two to follow him.
The three of them walked down the hall and began to discuss the different plans as they figured it out, Oregon staying back with Carolina and Hawaii for propaganda on the planet. Then split Indy, Minn and Wash on one front with Nevada, Utah and Mississippi on the other.
"How did your date with Omaha go?" Indy's tone of excitement could not be understated. He was this team's father figure and seeing them move forward in life was amazing.
"Jax and Mississippi didn't show up, but that made it much more peaceful for the two of us. She wore a beautiful floral sundress and we went around the different nature preserves around the station." Utah was gushing in pure joy.
"So it went well? That's great to hear!" Nevada gave him a pat on the back as they finally made it to their ship and started to brief the others on the game plan. Informing the clones with the overarching idea. They all agreed with the plans they had and the amount of ground and air support they would have.
All of them would ready their weapons and armored vehicles as they entered low orbit. They started getting hit with armor piercing artillery shells. "Sir, we lost starboard engine three!" An officer on the bridge shouted to Nevada as he looked out down to the surface.
"Send out our fighters and see what the hell is on the surface!" Nevada gave the command gently as the officer launched all the fighter wings. Immediately getting into a dogfight versus the rest of the jets the dictator on the ground had. It was more modern tech than the report said.
Confusion broke out for a fleeting second as the ships didn't know what to do. "Continue as planned." Viper commented into their comms. All of his wings came into orbit with him as they started to sweep away the jets, moving much faster than the jets could. The Viper team cleared the airspace that allowed the three ships to land.
"All forces, airspace is clear! Let's do our part so they don't do theirs in vain!" Nevada shouted through the communications as the deploy doors opened. The clones had a clear mission as the first legion sent a small regiment with Oregon, Carolina and Hawaii as they had recording equipment to wake up the masses.
The second legion deployed from their ship and went to the capital eastward. Being reinforced with half of the remaining first legion. Led by Indy, Utah and Mississippi they charged with great speed. The resistance from the local forces were more than expected, while also not being prepared for what came next.
The third legion was deployed with the other half of the first legion, led by Nevada, Wash and Minnesota they were able to swoop in from the west and encircle the capital, however, they became pinched just before the capital from all sides, being mostly trapped despite their sheer technological advantage they started to suffer casualties.
Oregon, Carolina and Hawaii were pissed in their quest to change the public's viewpoint. The three of them saw a battle happening farther away. It was a slaughterfest by the dictator's personal guard. They had weapons on caliber with them. In pure shock they took a defensive formation while they looked around.
"How did we not know that they had this tech!" Hawaii pushed Oregon to the ground and made sure she was in cover in the hottest battlezone as the clones started dropping like flies.
"I can help!" Oregon shouted as Carolina sprinted to a building to take the high ground. "Let me help."
"No Oregon." Hawaii put binders on her as she resisted for a second before realizing she didn't have a choice. Hawaii peaked over the stone barrier as they had a lot more troops than they did, outnumbered ten to one. She looked down and took the binder off once she saw the numbers they had as the clones kept dying. "Scatter into the buildings!" Hawaii yelled to the clones as they followed her order.
"Fuck!" Oregon used her reflective scope and saw the numbers. "Any plans?"
Carolina had a launcher and aimed directly into the center of the forces as they had a large scale mech that was doing most of the damage to the clone unit. The rocket went skyward after it was fired. It turned to the building and leveled it as Carolina skirted off the backside being propelled by the blast farther and into a rock.
The mech saw the body flying through the air as it locked in and prepared to fire at Carolina lying on the ground as the rocket hit dead center and detonated the mech, the explosion sent shrapnel flying through all of the forces near it. Cutting their forces from one thousand to two hundred.
"Oregon, help Carolina!" Hawaii activated her suit's glimmer, making her shiny and hard to see as she charged in. "Clones pick and choose your targets! They can't keep up with me!" Charging in Hawaii slid into where the mech exploded and started to open fire with her smg.
Oregon went over to Carolina, she was shaking due to the nerve damage from the fall. Oregon got her to stay still as Oregon feared for her. "Stay with me!" A sniper saw what was happening with the two of them. Preparing to take the shot. Oregon felt a pulse and put an emergency evacuation beacon of the highest class.
Hawaii was killing these forces as their armor wasn't up to par to their bullets as she heard the sniper round ring out, but it wasn't at her, looking over she saw the beacon activated and Oregon hunched over Carolina. Grabbing her knife she threw it at the sniper who turned to aim at her as his skull was split into two. The clones all fired at once and dropped the rest of the dictator's forces. Hawaii rushed over to Oregon and Carolina.
Carolina's shaking didn't stop as her nerves were still going nuts while Oregon had a hole through her heart. "NO!" Hawaii put as much pressure as possible on the wound as her heart had stopped. "PLEASE HANG ON! WE CAN'T LOSE MORE OF US!" Hawaii started to cry as she rolled Oregon off, feeling no pulse she tried to do cpr to no avail.
The evacuation shuttle arrived as the medics came out and saw the massacre here, calling for many more ships. Hawaii continued CPR on the lifeless corpse of Oregon as the medics got Carolina and a couple of the clone survivors in critical condition to the Red Merle. Two medics came over and rested their hands on her shoulder. "She is gone."
Hawaii kept going as she felt useless, both of them died because of her. The medic's pulled her off slowly as Hawaii went limp. She fell to her knees and collapsed into a puddle of tears. "IT'S NOT FAIR!" She realized they could still benefit from what happened with the mech. "INDY! NEVADA! THEY HAVE WEAPONS AND MECHS ON PAR WITH US!"
The message came through as Indy, Utah and Mississippi made it successfully to the capital. "Reports had nothing along those lines!" Indy shouted as he peaked over their cover. The statues started to move. She was right.
"Artillery, full barrage on sector thirteen!" Utah called out as shells started ringing past them. Utah took cover as he looked and saw the mechs walking forward and taking the artillery shells.
"Hypersonic rounds are doing nothing?" Indy looked as he was shocked. Mississippi was split farther off than those two.
"I AM STALLER THE GREAT. LEAVE AT ONCE OR I WILL KILL EVERYONE YOU CARE ABOUT!" The middle mech shouted out from its speakers as Indy threw a sticky ball at it. Hitting the hull it did nothing. "HA FOOLISH MAN! NOTHING CAN BREAK MY HULL, DIE!!!" It charged up its main cannon as Indy couldn't react to it.
'You have seen me for more years than anyone else, you saw me grow up and have protected me numerous times, I am forever glad to have been by your side.' Utah sprinted and tackled Indy out of the way. "YOU HAVE YOUR FAMILY, thanks for being mine." Tears were in his eyes as he had his helmet on the ground where he came from, being evaporated by the attack of Staller.
Indy sat on the ground looking over at the helmet as he was at a loss for words. He froze up as their frontline froze with him. A sudden impact was heard far too late as Zeta crashed down and slammed Staller to bits as Zeta turned on his minigun and started to lay down fire on the other mechs as the clones charged with one last push and took down the remaining forces in the capital.
"You tried Zeta, I am sorry I put you in that spot Utah, your loss is my fault." Indy crawled over to the helmet and picked it up. His tears stayed hidden under his helmet. Looking at it only provided deeper sadness.
Minn, Wash and Nevada heard the message from Hawaii. "Regroup with Indy at the capital and help him as fast as possible Hawaii." Nevada gave the message as he opened fire into a crowd of Staller's men. Dropping all of them as his forces were starting to give up versus the clones who were gunning them down. As the hole was made to push to the capital the flanks of Stallers forces retreated into the shadows.
Minn crouched over one of their radios as Wash tapped in. "I can't understand it, and it detects no language under Astral's collection either."
"Weird." Minn made a quiet mental note of it as they made it to the capital successfully with the fewest losses. Meeting up with Indiana and seeing his disturbed state. Hawaii was there and filled the five of them in on what happened in their neck of the woods.