The rain on Jabiim never ceased, a perpetual deluge that turned the planet's surface into a quagmire of mud and despair. Cordelia Stratus stood atop a low ridge, her cloak plastered to her armor, surveying the assembled might of the Jabiimi Nationalists and their Confederate allies. Six hundred thousand battle droids—B1s, B2s, droidekas, and spider walkers—stood in rigid phalanxes, their photoreceptors glowing faintly through the sheets of water. Flanking them were fifty thousand militiamen, ragged but resolute, their blasters clutched in calloused hands. And at the vanguard, two companies of Nimbus commandos: elite warriors equipped with repulsor boots that allowed them to skim across the air like ghosts, bypassing the sucking mud below. These were Jabiim's finest, trained to sabotage enemy positions with ruthless efficiency.
Cordelia's eyes narrowed as she gazed toward Handuin, the slight elevation where the Republic's ARC Base hunkered down. The invaders had dug in deep, their trenches and bunkers reinforced against the endless assaults. But this time, she had the numbers. Alto had given her everything she'd asked for. "We end this today," she muttered to her adjutant, a grizzled Nimbus captain named Vex. "Push hard, overwhelm their lines. The Nimbuses will flank and disable their walkers before they can bring those cannons to bear."
Vex nodded, his repulsor boots humming faintly. "The mud won't slow us. We'll be on them like lightning."
The order went out via encrypted comms, and the horde surged forward. Droid battalions marched in lockstep, their metallic feet churning the ground into slurry. Militiamen slogged alongside, shouting war cries that were swallowed by the storm. The Nimbuses activated their boots, leaping into low-altitude glides, weaving through the rain like predatory birds. CIS vehicles rumbled in support: AAT tanks with their turret-mounted lasers, IG-227 Hailfire droid tanks launching missile volleys, and dwarf spider droids scuttling on articulated legs, their blaster cannons swiveling for targets.
From the Republic lines, alarms blared. Alpha-Seventeen, positioned in a forward observation post, keyed his comm. "Contact, multiple vectors. Enemy advancing in force—droids, infantry, and those flying commandos. Estimate over half a million total."
General Dagon's voice crackled back, calm as ever. "Hold the line. Walkers, prioritize the aerial threats. Clones, focus fire on the droids. I'll handle the vanguard."
The Republic defenses roared to life. AT-TE walkers—six-legged behemoths with mass-driver cannons—pivoted their turrets, unleashing barrages that tore into the leading droid waves. Explosions bloomed across the plain, vaporizing clusters of B1s in sprays of molten metal and sparking circuitry. Pools of viscous oil began to form in the craters, mixing with the mud to create slick hazards that tripped advancing militiamen.
Cordelia urged her forces on, directing from a mobile command post aboard an AAT tank. "Nimbuses, accelerate! Sabotage those AT-TEs—plant charges on the legs!" The commandos complied, their repulsor boots propelling them in graceful arcs over the battlefield. They dodged initial blaster fire, closing the distance with eerie speed, thermal detonators primed in their gauntlets.
But the Republic was ready. From the heart of the base, Dagon emerged, wielding his custom lightsaber rifle—a hybrid weapon that fused the humming blade of a lightsaber with the long-range precision of a sniper rifle. The hilt extended into a barrel, allowing him to channel Force-enhanced plasma bolts infused with the saber's cutting energy. He knelt on a muddy berm, rain sluicing off his armor, and sighted through the scope.
The first shot lanced out, a crimson streak that pierced a Nimbus mid-leap. The commando's body convulsed as the bolt cauterized through his chest, his repulsor boots failing in a shower of sparks. He plummeted into the mud, body charred and smoking. Dagon fired again, and again—methodical, unrelenting. Each pull of the trigger sent a lightsaber-infused round slicing through the storm, dropping Nimbuses like felled trees. One bolt sheared through a commando's leg, sending him spiraling into a group of militiamen below, his screams lost in the cacophony.
"They're picking us off!" Vex shouted over the comms, his voice edged with panic. He boosted higher, trying to evade, but an AT-AT walker—towering on its four legs, an early prototype deployed to Jabiim's hellish terrain—swiveled its heavy rotary cannons. The guns spun up with a mechanical whine, unleashing a torrent of blaster bolts that filled the air like a horizontal rainstorm. Vex's squad was caught in the crossfire; repulsor boots couldn't outrun the barrage. Bodies erupted in flames, armor melting, limbs vaporized. One Nimbus, his boots malfunctioning from a glancing hit, crashed into the ground, his burned corpse rolling to a stop amid pooling oil from a nearby destroyed droideka.
The AT-ATs advanced slowly but inexorably, their chin-mounted cannons pounding the CIS tanks. An AAT exploded in a fireball, its repulsorlift failing as flames licked the hull, black smoke billowing into the rain. Dwarf spider droids returned fire, their lasers scoring hits on the walkers' armored plating, but the AT-TEs countered with precision strikes, blasting legs off the spiders and leaving them twitching in craters filled with leaking hydraulic fluid and oil.
Cordelia cursed, slamming her fist on the tank's console. "Push the droids forward! Overwhelm them!" The B2 super battle droids charged, wrist blasters chattering, but Republic Juggernauts—massive wheeled turbo tanks like the HAVw A6—rolled out from concealed positions. Their heavy laser cannons and missile launchers decimated the droid ranks. One Juggernaut plowed through a phalanx of B1s, crushing them under its treads, oil spraying like blood from the mangled chassis. Militiamen fired desperately, but clone troopers in phase II armor advanced in disciplined squads, their DC-15 blasters cutting down the nationalists. Bodies piled up—burned flesh blackened by blaster impacts, uniforms smoldering in the wet mud.
High above, the crippled Recusant-class destroyer—deliberately steered during the orbital skirmish—began its final descent. Dagon had planned this: the ship's engines flared erratically, its hull glowing from atmospheric friction. It streaked toward the battlefield like a falling star, aimed at the heart of Cordelia's advance.
"Orbital contact!" a clone shouted. "Incoming wreckage!"
Cordelia's eyes widened as the shadow fell over her forces. "Evade! All units, scatter—"
Too late. The destroyer slammed into the plain kilometers from the base but squarely amid the droid legions. The impact was cataclysmic: a shockwave rippled outward, flattening militiamen and hurling droids like toys. The ship's reactors detonated in a secondary explosion, a mushroom cloud of fire and debris that incinerated thousands. Burned nationalist bodies littered the ground, charred limbs twisted at unnatural angles, faces frozen in agony. Pools of oil from shattered droids mixed with the blood and mud, creating iridescent slicks that reflected the flames. CIS tanks caught in the blast burned fiercely, their armor buckling as ammunition cooked off in staccato bursts. A Hailfire droid walker erupted, its missile racks detonating in a chain reaction that scattered flaming wreckage across the field.
In the chaos, Dagon pressed the advantage. His lightsaber rifle hummed as he targeted stragglers, each shot a precise execution. An IFV—Infantry Fighting Vehicle, a modified MTT transport repurposed for assault—trundled forward, disgorging more droids. But an AT-TE's mass-driver cannon hammered it, the shell punching through the hull and igniting the interior. Droids spilled out, ablaze, their circuits melting into slag.
The Nimbuses, what few remained, tried a desperate push. One company attempted to sabotage an AT-AT, gliding low to plant charges on its knees. But the walker's rotary cannons tracked them mercilessly. Blaster fire shredded the air, cutting down the commandos before they could close. Bodies dropped, repulsor boots sparking and failing, crashing into the mud with wet thuds. Burned flesh sizzled in the rain, the acrid smell mixing with the ozone of blaster discharges.
Clone squads moved in to mop up. Alpha-Seventeen led a fireteam, blasting a retreating militiaman whose body slumped into a pool of droid oil, face-down and twitching. "Secure the gear," Seventeen ordered. "Those repulsor boots—strip them from the corpses. Tech boys will love reverse-engineering that."
His men complied, prying the advanced armor from the burned remains. One clone held up a boot, its repulsor coils still humming faintly. "No survivors here, sir. All down."
Across the field, Juggernauts crushed the last pockets of resistance. A burning CIS tank listed sideways, its turret drooping as flames consumed the interior. Dwarf spider droids lay in heaps, legs curled like dead insects, oil leaking from ruptured joints. The militiamen fared worse: bodies piled in trenches, burned and broken, their simple weapons scattered uselessly.
Cordelia's command tank took a direct hit from an AT-TE. The vehicle bucked, throwing her against the bulkhead. She clawed her way out, blaster in hand, only to face Dagon himself. He stood amid the carnage, lightsaber rifle leveled. "Surrender," he called, voice cutting through the storm.
She fired wildly, but he deflected the bolts with a casual wave, the Force guiding his movements. A final shot from his rifle grazed her shoulder, sending her sprawling into the mud. Clones surrounded her, binders snapping around her wrists.
The battle ended as abruptly as it had escalated. The Republic lines held, the base secure. Fields of destruction stretched before Handuin: burned nationalist bodies heaped in grotesque piles, pools of oil shimmering with rainbow hues amid the rain, burning CIS tanks and walker droids sending plumes of black smoke skyward. No enemy survivors—only the moans of the dying, soon silenced.
Dagon surveyed the wreckage, his expression unreadable. "Collect the tech. Prepare for the next wave. This war isn't over."
But for Cordelia's grand assault, it was. The mud claimed the rest.