Na'vi...A Tsu'tey FF

Log Entry: 19

On a turbine as it starts to turn. Its rising whine carries over them. Magazines are slammed into automatic weapons. Ammo belts are fed into rotary cannons. Missiles are attached to gunship stub-wings. Blue hands sharpening wooden arrows. Stringing bows. Cinching direhorse harnesses. Troopers drop into ampsuit cockpits. Pilots close gunship canopies. Troopers run up shuttle ramps. Gunships rise in a swarm amid boiling turbine exhaust and blasting rotor wash. Tiltrotors fill the sky. Deadly armored beetles. The dragon leads the formation, flanked by scorpions. Behind that is a wave of Samsons, and last, the two enormous Valkyrie shuttles, packed with troops and ampsuits. Inside the dragon, Quaritch surveys his armada as they skim over the treetops. They sweep toward the Hallelujah mountains in a thundering wave.

Squadrons of banshees darken the sky in waves, led by a single great leonopteryx. Jake sits astride his mount, flanked by Neytiri, Nyami and Tsu'tey on their banshees. The dragon descends on final approach to a large clearing, the LZ. The Samsons flair and touch down, disgorging troops, while the gunships hover protectively. The Valkyries blast the ground with their powerful lift jets. They land. The ramps drop. Troopers pour out, weapons leveled, advancing in a cordon. Ampsuits descend from the Dragon on cables. Their massive feet smash down, and they march forward, leading the army into the forest.

Lyie Wainfleet, walking point in his hydraulic suit, scans his cockpit screens. He sees movement on the FLIR display ghostly thermal signatures.
"Contact. Two hundred meters." A chilling sound echoes through the forest, the ululating war cries of untold Na'vi. The troopers looked around, spooked. They can't tell where the sound is coming from. Then they feel it, the ground itself shaking. They grip their weapons, bracing themselves as three hundred Na'vi horsemen charge through the forest at a full gallop, their hooves pounding the earth. It is an awesome sight. Norm rides with the Na'vi hunters, carrying an assault rifle. The Na'vi charge thunders toward the human line. The hunters raise their bows as the ampsuits raise their GAU-90's. On the thermal imagers, target-cursors track the ghost riders.
"Fire for effect." The entire line of troopers opens fire. Tracers riddle the jungle, blasting foliage into confetti.

Charging direhorses crash down, flipping over. Riders are flung off. The withering fire continues, and the ranks are decimated as riders launch their arrows at a full gallop. A few hit their marks among the troopers. Norm fires his AR on full auto. Two charging direhorses have a heavy log slung between them like a battering ram. At a full gallop they hit an ampsuit, flipping it onto its back with a blown-out canopy. Victory is short lived as the two riders are cut down.

Norm's horse is hit by tracer fire. He is flung off as the creature cartwheels. He hits hard, scrambling for cover as a warrior hurls his spear a moment before his horse is cut down. It slams through an ampsuit's canopy but the merciless fire continues. Horses rear and collapse.
Riders pivot their mounts to flee and the thermal screens show the remaining ghost riders scattering. Wainfleet signals and the line advances, firing sporadically at moving targets.

Overhead, Na'vi hunters stream through the trees, running along the branches. As the troopers advance into bow range, the Na'vi open fire and troopers sprout arrows in throats, legs, masks of their targets as Nyami and Jake taught them, but the firing line aims upward, tracking the thermal targets. Tracers rip through the foliage and Na'vi fall while others retreat as bark and wood is blasted off the limbs beneath their feet. Norm sprints frantically through the woods, shouting into his handset.
"Jake! Jake! We're falling back!" Surviving Na'vi flee the horrific onslaught. It is a total rout.

In the dragon, Quaritch catches glimpses of the figures streaming through the forest below.
"Blue team, switch forties. Fire at will." Quaritch barks. Led by the Dragon, the gunships fire streamers of 40mm rockets ahead of them. The jungle explodes with HE bursts. Circular shock waves flash outward through the jungle. Stroboscopic glimpses sent terrified horses rearing, Na'vi leaping, as the jungle rocks with the concussive onslaught. Hunters look up as a dark shape hovers overhead. The downblast of the Valkyrie's lift jets shreds the forest.

Inside the shuttle's cargo bay, a row of daisy cutters are lined up. Troopers roll the first pallet down the ramp. The pallet falls into the jungle below and an enormous high-explosive blast rips a huge hole in the forest. A white concussion wave flashes out across the ground for hundreds of meters in all directions.

At ground level, it is an apocalypse. Running Na'vi are blasted out of existence by fire and shock waves. Ground Troops advance, firing flamethrowers, AR's and GAU90's. Quaritch's fleet flies into the shadow of the Mountain of Truth.
"Blue team, stay with the ground units. Red team, with me. We're punching for the main target." Quaritch orders. He glances up to see a squadron of winged shapes, diving out of the morning glare like birds of prey. Nyami was rushing straight down, screaming a war cry as she led the charge and scores of banshee slam into the gunships and Samsons like falcons hitting fat turkeys. The air battle is joined.

Jake's great Leonopteryx flairs into its signature crimson X shape just before it knocks a Scorpion tumbling. It coils around the gunship, slashing furiously as they spin together. Jake can barely hang onto the gyrating creature. The pilot of the Scorpion sees nothing but jaws slamming into his canopy. Jake releases the gunship and it careens into a cliff, tearing off one rotor then plummets into the trees. There is a satisfying fireball. Scorpions fall out of formation to pursue individual banshee riders, firing cannons and rockets.

Nyami banks as the cliff face next to him explodes with cannon rounds. Screaming down on her is a Scorpion. Nyami tucks and dives along the cliff, feeling the rounds splitting the air around her. The Scorpions bank after the furiously jinking banshees as they head for cover among the floating mountains, or dive down into the trees. Door gunners in a Samson are shooting down banshees. Tsu'tey banshee in a full delta dive. He swoops in from its blind spot and the gunners swivel too late as Tsu'tey flashes past them, shooting arrows with deadly accuracy. A scorpion gunship dives after a banshee. It fires an air-to-air missile and the banshee vanishes in an explosion. Thirty ships and hundreds of banshees wheel and dive, like the Battle of Britain. Banshees are hit by guns and missiles, falling out of the sky. The occasional trail of smoke and fire marks the demise of a tilt-rotor.