Part 3 The Campaign for Coridan November Counteroffensive - Fallout

Posted on Tue May 13th, 2025 @ 3:51pm by Staff Sergeant Jordon Basset & Colonel Josiah McEntyre & Sub-Commander T'shir & Captain Johnathan Reece & Captain Gaagii & Captain Samuel Hunt & Sergeant Sonny Holt & Lance Corporal Jeremy Kerr

3,363 words; about a 17 minute read

Mission: The Campaign for Coridan
Location: Jorinal Canyon
Timeline: November 30th, 2156, After Part 2

'Kerr, this is Bassett,' the Sergeant opened his comm on a secure channel. 'Withdrawing from the dropship. We have wounded. Lay down suppressing fire on our signal. Acknowledge, over.'

"Yes, Sir. I'll do what I can, Sir," Kerr replied. He'd given his rifle to the sergeant, but he still had his hand phaser and a few flash grenades.

'Kurt, Jenko, you've got Gaagii,' Bassett said curtly as he leaned his head out the door. 'Make sure you don't fall behind.' He turned to Reece, 'Sir, you got this. Bogies at three o'clock, once you lay down the fire, we'll bug out.' He clapped him on the shoulder, 'we'll provide the cover for you to get your ass over our end.'

Gaagii bit his tongue as they lifted him from the ground. The pain shot through his leg all the way to his brain and caused a white hot blindness for a moment. When the pain settled to an ache. Gaagii had his arms wrapped around the necks of Kurt and Jenko. He made sure to keep as much weight off of his right leg as possible.

Kurt heaved the wounded man up, grabbing Gaagii’s armor to help support him. He worked with Jenko to half-carry, half-drag the wounded man clear of the wreckage. Kurt noticed several bogies taking shots at them from cover. But just as Kurt managed to level his rifle at them, they dropped from shots over his shoulder. He presumed it was Bassett, but Kurt was much more focused on getting to cover with Jenko and Gaagii.

On the signal, Johnathan stepped out of the destroyed dropship and began laying down an abusive line of fire on the enemy positions.

Toggling the comm, Bassett radioed Kerr, 'On our way soldier! Now Reece!'

Hearing the second signal, the large Texan stopped firing and turned to follow the troops to safety, his fellow warriors laying cover fire for him as he moved.

Bassett tried to be as clinical as he could. Spotting a Reman popping its helmeted head over a boulder, he shot at it. Only hitting rock, he still caused it to splinter in all direction and the Reman to duck down behind the rock. As Reece and the remaining Marines reached the top of the hill, Bassett ducked down behind the rock he was leaning against. He watched them breathing hard while he counted them.

Most had gotten back. Not all.

'Alright men,' he said firmly, 'I need two men here,' he pointed to his feet, 'and two here,' he pointed to the boulders the other side of the gap they had made their way up to get to cover. 'Get any injured towards the rear there, and get any medics to do their jobs - make em comfortable. Could be a long wait for help.' He looked around at the group. 'Anyone got long-range comms?'

"I'm here sarge," Sonny said. "Whatever ya need."

'Gaagi,' Bassett pointed to the injured MACO. 'He needs medical attention - see what you can do for him.'

"Right!" Sonny said. The medic immediately went to his patients side. He unpacked his gear. "BP looking good. Putting on a tourniquet to manage any bleeding. Also checking pulse "

Gaagii had been placed on the ground and the pain began to be too much. He spoke through gritted teeth. "It is my leg. Compound fracture I think... The bone is sticking out." He grunted as his head rolled from one side to the other.

Sonny proceeded to apply a traction splint. He then administered pain relief. "Sorry I took so long, sir. But I didn't want to mask any symptoms."

Gaagii could feel the medication begin to take effect. However, it was a moment too late to keep him conscious. He fell unconscious due to the severe pain.

'Good work, medic,' Bassett said as he got up on his haunches.

"Thanks," Sonny nodded.

Frowning, Bassett looked around. 'Hansen, you're up, cover the ravine up to our position.' Crouching behind the rocks, he looked down the hill to where the dropship had crashed. He could see more Romulan and Reman troops swarming over the site, their masked helmets glinting in the firelight. He swore under his breath.

'Reece,' he said quietly. 'Wait til they're closer, then lay down a blanket of fire - we've got to keep em off us til Unicorn can extract us. ' Moving back around he flipped his comm. 'Kerr, get your ass down here. We've got wounded, and we need your long range comm, over.'

Kerr's anxiety started to increase as soon as he heard Bassett's order to run. The Romulan's shot to kill, so all odds were that he would either make it, or he wouldn't. There wasn't much in-between. "10-4, Sir. On my way in 3, 2, 1."

Kerr slammed his communicator shut and gripped it tightly in his palm as he took off in a sprint following the path that Bassett had taken a few minutes earlier. It wasn't until he got to the first point of cover that he realized he'd been holding his breath. With no time to waste, he took a big gulp of air and finished out his sprint to where the team had retreated to. There were officers laying down cover for him, and Romulans shooting his way, and towards his comrades, but Kerr couldn't hear any of it over the sound of his heart beating in his chest as he ran. His momentum carried him several meters past the soldiers who had been covering his ass as he ran.

Once Kerr finally stopped he turned around slowly and looked back on the path he'd just ran. He stood there frozen for a moment as the enemy fire continued, in wonder that he was even still standing.

Johnathan gave Bassett a hard look, wondering if his old friend had forgotten that he was now an officer, not that he hadn't also been Bassett's senior, back when he was a Master Dergeant and the Unicorn's CoB. However, now, while they were still under fire, was not the time to pull rank. Afterwards though...

“Covering fire!” The colonel calls to the other at the dropship.

Bassett stood next to Hansen and peering down at Reece's work. The ground between their redoubt and the dropship was littered with Romulan and Reman bodies, mowed down by the minigun the man lugged everywhere. A one-man army, he thought to himself.

'We'll need the long-range comm,' he said to the Colonel. 'We can't stay here much longer. Our position will be overrun before long.'

"Cover me!" Josiah called out as he fell back to the Dropship, climbing onto the wreckage and breaking the glass on the cockpit. He reached in, pulling out the comm pack that was on the pilot before coming down, running back to Bassett and handing him the pack.

"Here, Code it for 206.2."

Hefting the comm, Bassett began keying in the coded frequency to contact the Unicorn. He waited impatiently for the frequency to cycle in and the contact to be made with Unicorn. He looked to the heavens, and was relieved to hear the crackle of static, and a Vulcan voice from across the distance.

Unknown to Basset or to the Sub-Commander, the first nuclear missile had been dropped on the planet. The radiation in the atmosphere was causing an extreme amount of interference with the comms as T'shir responded over the sound of crackling static and the occasional breaks in transmission. "You have SS Unicorn, SOD-Alpha, do you copy?"

'Line is bad, Unicorn, but we copy,' Bassett practically shouted in to the comm, irrationally hoping that shouting would override whatever interference was affecting the channel. 'Our location is surrounded, and we're about to be overrun - requesting immediate evac, do you copy?!'

On the other end, T'shir could find no immediate cause for the bad connection, but she adjusted a few settings to try to boost the signal. "Copy, Sod-Alpha, Negative for immediate evac. Stand by."

"Staff Sergeant! Anytime now would be good!" The Colonel called back to Bassett as he kept firing his rifle, taking down one Romulan after another.

Johnathan was on the other end of the line, pouring energy across the battlefield. Suddenly, an enemy grenade hit the ground a few meters away and detonated, throwing the large Texan back, from the concussion. When he came to a stop, the left side of his body had several shrapnel impacts, though none seemed fatal. He was, however, bleeding fast, and I the medics didn't bandage him soon, he would bleed out.

The Colonel whipped his head around at the sound of the explosion, seeing the large Texan get thrown back and hitting the deck, hard. Josiah turns to Kerr.

"KERR!!! HOLT!! GET TO REECE!!" He barks before turning back around to continue firing at the seemingly never ending horde of Romulans.

Pressing a hand to get to his ear to block out the noise around him, Bassett barked into the comm, 'Anytime is good, Sub-Commander! Just let us know the birds are on their way, over.' He cupped a hand over the comm, and shouted across Reece's body, 'Negative on immediate evac! Negative on immediate evac!'

Josiah broke from his position, dashing over to where Bassett was huddled with the comm unit. "Swap, Staff Sergeant!" Josiah ordered.

Confused, Bassett dropped the comm, and went to the position McEntyre had vacated. He leaned against the rock.

Taking up the comm, Josiah held it to his ear.

“Unicorn, This is Actual, need a SITREP, Over!”

Whitford's voice crackled over the comm, 'we've reached the system's asteroid belt. Currently engaging Romulan warbirds, and defending the flagship and admiral's ship. Cannot disengage at present. Repeat, cannot disengage.'

"Prioritize getting Flagship to evac. We'll hold." McEntyre responded.

Holt grabbed a pistol and his kit and started to make his way over to Reece. He dodged some enemy shots and added some of his own. "Yeah guy! I can shoot too!" Sonny yelled out.

"Damnit." When Sonny started shooting, Kerr ran over and dropped to his knees by Reece's side, and slipped off his back and dug out his medical supplies. "Knock that shit out, you trying to make us targets!"

"Missed the artery, but we still need to get you wrapped up. How's the pain, Captain?" Kerr asked as he applied a compression bandage to the officer's left thigh.

Johnathan grunted in pain. "Feels...feels like...I got kicked by a damn bull!" He gasped as his wounds were quickly treated.

"Yeah Kerr, I get it." Sonny said when he checked BP and pupil response. "It's just that I have a habit of returning fire. Thing is, I'm not always accurate." He looked at his gauges. "BP is on the low side of normal. Pupils equal and reactive."

Watching over his makeshift cover, Bassett noticed something strange. The Romulan assault was trickling off. What had once been a flood of Romulan and Reman soldiers pouring up the hill towards them was slowing. As he sighted along his rifle, picking off a Reman shock trooper, he could see some of the Romulans making a gesture to what he assumed was a helmet comm. They hunkered down, firing on the MACO's positions, but slowly began a firing retreat.

'The Romulans!' he cried, 'they're turning round! They're retreating!?' His voice was elated, but uncertain. Good fortune like this almost never occurred in his experience. There must be something going on. He glanced back at Reece, prone on the floor, and then to the Colonel. Maybe this was all over?

Josiah looked towards the valley. The Romulans were in retreat. How? Why? They had them in a box, ready to make the striking blow. More staticky noise from the comm as the last thing said to the Colonel was lost.

“Unicorn Say again?” The colonel repeated.

'Romulans have launched nukes! Repeat, Romulans have launched nukes!' Whtiford said urgently over the comm. 'Take shelter, Unicorn heading to you, ETA twenty minutes. Hold on Colonel, the cavalry's coming!'

"HAUL ASS COMMANDER, THAT'S AN ORDER! OVERLORD OUT!" Josiah barked into the comms as he clicked his local area comm.

"ALL STATIONS: BROKEN ARROW, REPEAT, BROKEN ARROW!" Josiah tossed down the long range receiver, making a mad dash back to his men, specifically Holt and Kerr.

"Get the wounded into the dropship, it should be enough cover to protect them. We're about 20 minutes from a possible Romulan NUDET!"

He turns his head back to the perimeter and yelled: "Bassett!! Hansen!! Nimitz!! Hunt!!! Pull the line back! We got Nukes incoming!"

Hearing the news, Johnathan struggled to his feet, then started in the direction that the Colonel had indicated. Though, with his injuries and the rough terrain, he ended up stumbling to the side, grimacing in pain, though he didn't cry out. Instead, he fought back to his feet.

Firing off a few more shots down range, Hunt stood up and began to pull back. Looking a few enlisted with him. "You heard the man pull back."

"Captain, please" Jeremy had tried to keep Reece from taking off on his own in the first place as he converted his backpack into something they could carry with. It wasn't as good as a stretcher, but his medical pack had a solid back, and four handles, and could easily be carried by two people while someone with mobility issues sat on top.

As Captain Reece fought his way back to his feet Kerr and the other medic approached Reece. "Captain, please. Your injuries aren't packed that good. Let us help you back," Kerr tried again.

Holt quicky grabbed Reeces left arm and helped to stabilize his dressings. "Come on, let's go sir." He said. "Better to bug out than wait for the bombs!"

Realizing the folly of his actions, the large Texan finally nodded to both medics. "Thanks. Though, I weigh almost as much as the two of you combined." Still, he allowed them to lower him onto the pack, and the trio moved, slowly, to the evac location.

"We got you, Captain. You think medics don't train for this," Kerr replied as he and Holt found a rhythm and picked up their pace.

Organising his team into a sensible perimeter, Bassett and his men ringed a perimeter around the group, and began an orderly withdrawal in the direction of the crashed dropship. It was a grim irony that they were now making their way back to the very place they had tried to retrieve their comrades from. The Romulans only offered token resistance, rapidly performing their own withdrawals. In the far distance, Bassett could fancy he could hear the sound of sirens on the wind.

Holt and Kerr carried Reece into the dropship as three crewmen were carrying a large piece of plating back to the ship to try to over up gaping hole on one side of the dropship. As they brought him inside and helped him onto the floor in the back, other officers and enlisted personnel were battening down the hatches by finding ways to cover and seal any cracks and holes in the ship, ripping up items that weren't bolted down and using them to put layers between the areas that weren't sealed and where they would be hunkering down.

Kerr went to the back of the ship to check on cartons of water. He had some in his pack, maybe enough to survive if they needed to hunker down, and they rationed among the injured, though it wouldn't be comfortable or safe. Ideally they wouldn't be in any kind of fallout zone, and Unicorn could get to them safely soon, but Reece had already lost a lot of blood, and he wasn't the only one.

Samuel looked around surveying the damage. One of the medics pointed at a tear in his uniform that had some minor bleeding. "Don't worry about me go help out the others." Grabbing a bandage, he took a seat on the drop ship and he began to wrap up his own minor wounds.

The Colonel fell back, grabbing hunks of metal and other objects that could be used to help fortify the improvised shelter of the drop ship. Normally it’d be hard shielded against nuclear fallout but with it in its current state a patch job was needed.

“Someone give me a hand with this, we got minutes people before planet fall of those nukes!” The colonel called out.

Bassett slung his borrowed rifle over his shoulder, and began picking up bits of wreckage to start patching the holes in the hull of the dropship. Keeping a plate in place with his boot, he unslung the rifle, and adjusted the power output on it. He used the phaser beam to weld it in place before retrieving another and dragging it over. 'Get inside!' he called to the stragglers as he went about his work.

"Let's make it quick people!!" Josiah called out as he fused more metal onto the holes of the dropship. The minutes ticking down as the nukes got closer and closer to groundfall.

"LET'S GO!!" He calls once the final pieces were welded in place.

Holt put his rear in grar

Bassett stumbled his way inside, making sure that his own squad were ahead of him, and squatted once he was happy his men were situated. The space inside the dropship was going to get cramped quickly, and Bassett wasn't looking forward to riding out the fallout in such close conditions.

Looking over at Bassett, Hunt simply gave an awkward smile trying to make the best of this entire ordeal. "You alright?"

Looking to the Captain, Bassett gave a weak smile. 'Cramped spaces aren't really my style,' he said as other MACO jostled him on the way in to the dropship, filling all the available space. 'Doubly so when there's nukes flying around,' he chuckled dryly. 'Hope you're doing OK, Captain,' he added with a wan grin.

Sonny grabbed his gear, pistol, and himself. He did his impression of the Phoenix and made a mad dash for cover. Naturally he made sure any wounded were safe before doing that.

Josiah got the panels in place once all his MACOs were accounted for. In the nick of time, sealing them up with a quick weld with his pulse rifle alongside Bassett and Reece before they all head the air go still. Eerily still. Then a loud sonic boom, a flash of light and the ground shaking beneath them.

"DUCK!" Josiah called out, diving to the deck as the shockwave rushes over the makeshift shelter, shaking it even further.

The nukes had fallen. They were in this shelter for the foreseeable future.

Bassett crouched against in the incoming wave, bracing himself. The wave of air smashed against the dropship, rattling the hull and whistling through the crude repair job the MACOs had done on their shelter to ride out the storm. As the wave passed over, a deathly silence washed over the planet. He let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.

Now they waited.

"Not bad for my first space duty. Eh?" Sonny thought to himself.

Johnathan groaned softly. "Hopefully we won't glow in the dark after this." He pulled out his scanner, and checked for radiation levels. "Some of the fallout did make its way in here with us," he looked over at Josiah. "We're gonna need extra anti-rad treatments, once we get back to the ship, Sir."

"Noted. For now, we wait til we can be rescued. There should be short term Anti-Rads in your IFAKs. Use them sparingly." Josiah commented to his X.Os suggestions.

::OFF::

Colonel Josiah McEntyre
Commanding Officer
Unicorn NX-151/ MACO SOD-Alpha

Captain Johnathan Reece
MACO-SOD-ALPHA
MACO Executive Officer
Unicorn NX-151

Captain Gaagii
Chief Strategic Intelligence Officer
Unicorn NX-151

Staff Sergeant Jordon Bassett
Platoon Sergeant
Unicorn NX-151
[NPC Saul Whitford]

Lance Corporal Jeremy Kerr
Medic
Unicorn Nx-151

Sergeant Sonny Holt
Field Medic
Unicorn NX-151

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