Project Ares Gold Edition

Chapter 4 - Outpost

Rodian System - Asteroid Field

Dropping out of the peaceful blue state of hyperspace, Master Chief started scanning for electronic signals among the thousands of different asteroids. Detecting a strong signal near his current position, Chief steered his borrowed V-19 Torrent starfighter towards the source. Suddenly, multiple warnings appeared on the console, alerting Chief of a hostile presence.

Looking out the canopy, Master Chief counted four vulture droids heading towards him on an intercept trajectory. Banking hard to the left, Chief made the fighters chase him through the asteroid field. Managing to gain a lock on one of his pursuers, Chief made quick work of the droid by blasting it with his starfighter's two large guns.

Unfortunately, the remaining three weren't giving up so easily, remaining on his six and blasting the surrounding rocks to pieces, Chief had to improvise. Going through an opening in one of the larger asteroids, 117 detached his hyperdrive ring and got his ship out of there. It wasn't long before an explosion could be seen erupting from the asteroid as the trio of vulture droids collided with the obstacle.

Continuing on, Chief followed the signal to a large asteroid. Coming around, Master Chief saw the outpost. It wasn't massive, only armed with three light turbolaser batteries, two point defence turrets and a long distance scanner. Luckily for Chief, the scanner was meant for larger ships and his small V-19 was too minute to be picked up by the radar. However, this outpost's strong suit was its abundance of starfighters and boarding ships. If 117 had to guess, the fighters and bombers would immobilize the passing ship before boarding parties got launched and take out the crew. Observing the station, Chief saw two hangars, one large primary hangar and a smaller hangar on the lower levels. Looking into the primary hangar, Chief saw the deadly compliment of vulture droids that he had just faced, however, he had only gone up against four droids. Inside the hangar there were easily a minimum of two dozen vulture droids alongside a larger version that Chief theorized was the bomber variant. Accompanying these fighters were hundreds of battle droids of all different models, deciding to engage 117 looked down at his controls to do a final systems check. Before Chief made his move, a communication came through on his HUD.

"Hello! Is anyone out there?! This is CT-1049, we are pinned down inside the Separatist base and could really use an assist!" The trooper called over the radio, Chief wasn't surprised to find out that the team had already engaged the outpost and were in over their heads. Nonetheless, he made his presence known. "This is Sierra one one seven of the Grand Army of the Republic. Trooper, what's your status?"

"Master Chief?! Captain Rex told us you were coming, man are we glad to hear from friendly forces. When we landed we got separated from our ship and now we are trapped in a corridor about 80 meters from the primary hangar." The clone replied hastily, blaster fire sounding from behind him as the team took incoming fire. "Stay put, I'll rendezvous with you at your current location, one one seven out."

Switching off the comm, Chief gunned the throttle and steered the ship on a direct bearing towards the main hangar. Leaping out from the cockpit moments before impact into the vast coldness of space, Chief observed the starfighter crash into the hangar. Guiding himself inside with his thrusters, 117 landed on the metal floors with a solid thud, sliding across the metal floor, creating a high pitched screeching noise the reverberated across the fiery hangar.

The droids that survived the starfighter onslaught didn't have a much better chance against the sage warrior tearing through their ranks. Using his assault rifle, Chief made quick work of the 40 or so B1 battle droids that stood between him and the hangar's exit. These were relatively easy to destroy compared to the old Sith droids that used heavy photon launchers and machine guns. Only armed with the most basic blasters and took minimum cover when the firing, this was too easy for Chief, the only difficulty being their numbers, but nonetheless, 117 cleared the hangar quite easily. On the other side of the 'fight', the droids were struggling, they had never encountered anything like this or were programmed on how to handle it.