Sublight Drive (Star Wars)

Chapter 11

Valkyrie 2929 swerved through the debris field, thick armour shrugging off the worst of the microbodies littering Leesis’ orbit. Clone Sergeant Kano felt his bones rock about as the gunship weaved its way towards the drop point, expertly handled by its pilot.

“Grim Reaper reports ready, Sergeant,” Hawk–their pilot–announced over the intercom.

Kano looked up. Bellow stood beside him in the crowded troop bay, unidentifiable if not for the paint job of his battle armour and his ID number. Kano glanced at the HUD icons set to one side of the main display to make a last-minute headcount, counting the transponder blips and ID numbers of the platoon.

“Right, thanks,” he replied to Hawk, before cycling to his platoon’s circuit, “Are we ready, Bellow?”

Bellow rested his DC-15A on his right pauldron, “Aye sir. All weapons right and ready, and everybody’s suited up. We had to downcheck one set of armour that wasn’t sealed right, but we had a prepped spare.”

Kano nodded at him, and swept the troop bay again–this time without the HUD. One trooper nodded at him, and he returned the gesture. As he dropped into Grim Reaper’s circuit, he was forced to snap his hands around the handles above as Valkyrie violently shuddered.

“Birds got kicked up, boys,” Odd Ball called over common frequency, “We’re moving in to keep ‘em off your backs! Good luck!”

He could hear a screaming fighter rush past their starboard, before his weight disappeared as Hawk forced the gunship into a steep dive. Explosions rocked the ship from above as Flight Squad 7 and droid vultures engaged in a treacherous dogfight amidst the debris. However, it meant that the Seps had lowered their own particle shields to deploy their vultures.

“Reaper, this is Valkyrie,” Kano checked in, urgency colouring his voice, “Do you copy?”

“Reaper copies, Valkyrie. Go ahead.”

“Commence your runs, Reaper,” he nervously glanced over his head as another tremor rocked the gunship, “I say again, start your runs.”

They had to insert before the battleship could recycle its physical deflectors.

He cycled back into his platoon’s comms, greeted by an expected amount of nervous chatter. An expected amount. Because even clones get nervous. In the privacy of their helmets, they can speak with each other undetected. Sometimes odd quips to ease the tension, sometimes meaningless nothings just to keep their minds off things. Sometimes Kano wondered what their Jedi Generals would think about that, if they knew their men were talking behind their backs not two feet away from them.

Kano knew General Skywalker didn’t care, however. Sometimes he even joined in on the fun.

The moment Kano’s ID appeared in the channel, all the talking hushed. Even as the firefight grew further and further away, their faces tightened and nerves clenched as they steeled for the Lucrehulk’s close-in weapons systems to open fire.

But there was none.

Hawk pulled them out of their steep approach, kicking in Valkyrie’s repulsors and riding its thrusters to convert momentum into howling dives straight for their targets. The sensors indicated they had plunged beneath the battleship’s ray shields.

“Coming up on target– arm, arm, arm!” Hawk chanted to his gunners, “Sergeant, get your boys to hold tight!”

The standby lights blinked to red aboard each gunship, and the gunners’ fingers curled around the triggers on their yokes. Over their heads, the mass-driver launchers clanked as a fresh pair of rockets were loaded in. There was a brief moment where Kano could only hear his own artificially calm heartbeat echoing in his helmet.

Quad-mounted armour-piercing rockets ripple-fired from beneath each wing like flaming meteors. Eight of them blasted ahead of each gunship–soon followed by two more heavy concussion missiles–and the gunships charged onwards down their wakes.

The rockets smashed home, spoiled for targets, like a fist of thunder. A second salvo was launched, and then a third, and then a fourth. When the final rounds had finally impacted, the Lucrehulk’s hull had been thoroughly torn open, peeled back like broken bone and revealing its vulnerable organs.

The gunships’ chin-mounted turrets opened fire, ripping into the dust and smoke and scything into the battle droids pouring out of the breaches. The ball-turrets echoed, their gunners precisely cutting into the thinned plating with amplified composite beams to open up portals for the boarding troops to insert through.

A section of Flight Squad 7 peeled off their engagement, pushed over and came in for a run in at the remaining Separatist rectenna arrays. Concussion missiles screamed off their racks, six seconds later they punched in the Lucrehulk’s eyes, and then the gunships rolled back onto their original attack vectors.

The first gunships landed, disgorging their troops before taking off just in time for the next gunship to swoop in and take its place. Valkyrie 2929 followed them in, blast hatches swinging open.

“Move, move, move!”

Kano paid no attention to the roaring firefight surrounding them as he leapt off the gunship and launched his grapple lines–magnetic hook adhering to the battleship’s metal hull–and reeled himself down. There were already droids on the surface, and while many of them had been cut down by air support, as always with droids they seemed endless in numbers. Dozens of his brothers were already shot down by the returning fire, their immobile bodies dragged through space by their reeling cables.

The Clone Sergeant grunted as he hit the ground, thumping as he activated his mag-boots. Kano cursed the surviving members of his platoon to their feet, before leading them into the hellscape of smoke, laser, and murderous shrapnel to find firing positions. More gunships swept in, the whining of their repulsorlifts only faint over the howl of escaping atmosphere, and hundreds more white-armoured men drifted to the surface like lethal snow.

The firefight went on for minutes as the platoons methodically pushed up towards the breaches, stalking from cover to cover while using plumes of white-hot gases to obscure their approach. Red and blue blaster bolts whipped through the void erratically–but with the help of gunship air support, their victory was all but assured.

Boomer’s squad reached the portals first, securing their grapples to the ledge before rappelling into the breaches. Kano’s squad arrived next, and the Sergeant leaned over the ledge to observe the situation below–but couldn’t visually identify anything through escaping gases. All Kano saw were the biosigns of the squad below, and that was all he needed.

Fix grapples, tie cables, deactivate mag-boots, and jump.

A torrent of steam pummelled his visor, scrambling his HUD to bits, and then he was through. After descending to a safe distance off the ground, he cut the cable and dropped onto his feet. One trooper with a rotary cannon had taken point, mowing down an entire company of battle droids at the far end of the corridor.

“How many squads have we got here, Boomer?” Kano asked as he checked the IDs of the troopers present.

Boomer twirled to look at him, and then look at the final troopers entering the gaping hole above them, “Three squads, maybe two.”

“Bellow, this is Kano,” Kano called, “Are you receiving?”

“Loud and clear,” Bellow replied, “We found another way in.”

“All squads, check in!” he ordered.

The clone sergeants called in one after the other. Fourteen voices, Kano counted. Which meant two squads didn’t make it.

He breathed out, “Waterfall Company, find the prisoners. Cascade Company–you’re with me, we’re securing the control room!”

Boots clamoured against the metal flooring as Kano’s squads went down the passage with all the speed their battle armour allowed. With the ship’s atmosphere rapidly deteriorating and its artificial gravity systems failing, the troopers took to advancing with gliding, ten-metre jumps–all their training and instinct taking over until it was as if they lived in low grav their entire lives.

They came to an intersection, identifying a control panel from where they could pinpoint their exact location and orientate themselves. Kano’s group split into two, swivelling perpendicular with carbines raised–blue lights flashing against their stark white armour as they doused the corridors in saturation fire. A techie leapfrogged between them, snatching onto the panel and ripping it open.

Half a minute later, the trooper had transmitted the plans, gave the all-clear, and the squads were moving again.

Kano eyed the integrated chrono on his HUD–the entire boarding action only took thirteen minutes.

⁂

“It’s no good, Admiral,” Lieutenant Klev shook his head, flushed in dismay, “We’ve been calibrating and recalibrating the scanners over and over, but just can’t seem to get it to stick.”

Yularen glared at him, “That is unacceptable, Lieutenant. We weren’t able to locate a Lucrehulk only three-hundred thousand klicks away–a distance even our passives should handle with ease. Not to mention they misidentified a debris field as an asteroid ring. Find the problem, and fix it.”

“It’s not the software, sir,” Klev swallowed, “I had some of our techs run diagnostics, and they found nothing. It must’ve been the battle a week ago; Pioneer didn’t leave without a scratch. If you want, I can get some of the men up top with the droids–see if they can sort it out.”

In an active warzone? Unlikely.

Yularen bit back an unprofessional response. With malfunctioning sensor arrays, they were practically blind–no, worse than blind. They were outright hallucinating. No detection or observation could be trusted without visual confirmation at bare minimum, and that didn’t even include Pioneer’s targeting systems.

“That won’t be necessary,” Yularen resigned, “Find out the extent of the damage. I want to know if our fire-control systems were affected. Do your utmost to rectify any issues you can ID, save for sending engineers out there in vac suits.”

“Right away sir,” Lieutenant Klev nodded sharply, snapping to attention before scampering back into the crew pits.

As the Admiral redirected his attention, he spotted Triumphant and its two escort cruisers just a few hundred klicks forward beyond the bridge’s main viewport. The two warships had fallen into a geosynchronous orbit with the planet below, shadowing the industrial sector and the battle raging underneath. However, it meant they were also quickly approaching the ongoing space action between Admiral Wurtz’ Iron Lance Fleet and recently identified Separatist Admiral Tonith’s orbital blockade.

If Pioneer’s targeting systems also proved unreliable, then Yularen will have little choice but to break away. He had already lost two ships and their experienced crews, he could not risk the safety of another.

Yularen had to wonder if the disastrous First Battle over Christophsis would have gone any differently had he been on the bridge of the Resolute, and had not opted to accompany General Skywalker’s relief mission. Perhaps he would have been convinced in his own skills to recognise the enemy’s deceptively simple stratagem before it was too late, if it was not for been Obi-Wan Kenobi who had taken his place.

The Admiral had many opinions about the role of Jedi in the Grand Army of the Republic, and not many of them were favourable. Yularen considered himself lucky; while Anakin Skywalker and he did not always see eye to eye, he was mollified to know that while the Jedi’s strategies were often aggressive, they were backed by outstanding valour and keen tactical insight. These traits, combined with the trust he and his men had in each other, made General Skywalker a dangerous force on the ground. That was the case with many Jedi.

But that did not translate into naval engagements. To fight a naval battle, you needed tact, and Jedi–for all their renowned patience and diplomacy–had little. Their tactics were often elementary at best, and downright incompetent at worst. There were few exceptions Yularen knew of.

One of them was Obi-Wan Kenobi. Already, his many tactical exploits were being circulated through military channels, and some have even made their way into the textbooks on Prefsbelt IV.

If an esteemed Jedi General with all of his mystical clairvoyance could not see the trap in advance, there was the question whether a mere Admiral–albeit professionally trained–could. It did not help that the newly-coined Battle Hydra tactic was completely novel, as far as he knew.

What-ifs aside, Yularen could now pen a sternly-worded report about the Venator’s glaring weaknesses to the Admiralty, as generously exposed by their enemy. The only way his situation could get any brighter would be if Republic Intelligence could reveal who exactly he was dealing with.

“Admiral sir!” shouted Lieutenant Klev, “We have a situation!”

Yularen swung around, “Your training, Lieutenant!”

“S-Sorry, sir!” Klev fiddled his console with shaking hands, “O-Our sensors are picking up a massive instance of Cronau radiation on the edge of the system! Avrey, are you seeing this?”

Another officer leaned over to double-check, “Looks like a huge object is reverting to realspace. I’m contacting Triumphant right now sir!”

“Could it be another case of sensor malfunction?” Yularen demanded.

“Our sensors are twist out of configuration sir, not not working,” Lieutenant Klev insisted, “There’s still Cronau radiation–if they’re over-reading, then the ship isn’t as large as reported. If they’re under-reading…”

A single narrow finger stroked his moustache–a tick of unease Yularen wasn’t able to refrain from in time.

“Triumphant reports the same thing, sir,” Lieutenant Avrey looked to him nervously, “The magnitude matches… but our sensors are malfunctioning. We only picked up from a single instance, but they’re picking up hundreds. Confidence says it\'s an enemy fleet.”

Yularen only took a second to react– “Comm Indomitable and Coruscant Sky, standby for orders, set Red Alert! All personnel to battle stations! Avrey, get me Admiral Wurtz, now!”

“There’s a line of Munificents between us and him, sir…” Lieutenant Avrey pointed out fairly, but it didn’t make Yularen any less incensed, “I don’t know how much I can do–”

“Then do what you can,” Yularen restrained himself from outright snarling.

The muted red alert lights were flashing now, claxons faintly baying in the Battle Room and throughout the ship.

“Lookout reports visual sighting!” a clone officer reported, “Relative bearing oh-niner-niner, range– range… around a million klicks out!”

“Around?”

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The clone made a face, “Best our rangefinders can do right now, sir.”

Admiral Yularen took a short moment to relax, before steeling himself for action. He marched across the bridge to the starboard side, intently staring out of the transparisteel viewport. Below was Admiral Wurtz fleet. Further afield, Yularen found hundreds of black shadows gliding over the backdrop of stars.

“Combine feeds with Coruscant Sky,” he ordered, “Have them ID those ships.”

This was not the time to panic. They had time. While those ships could only be Separatist reinforcements, they had also made the odd decision to exit hyperspace a million klicks away–far out of range of any conventional laser batteries or even missile systems. First, they had to avoid getting trapped between the two enemy fleets–

There was a streak of purple, cutting straight through the abyss at an acceleration so great Yularen could blink and miss it. He did blink and miss it–and did not realise what had happened until a dim glow to his left caught his attention. The Admiral swivelled around, and saw Triumphant in flames.

Whatever projectile that was, it had pierced through the cruiser’s passive shields and armour, blowing out a gaping hole in Triumphant’s bridge stalk. Yularen was sick to his stomach, realising he could see straight through General Koon’s ship–and able to see the gas giant Erodsis on the other side. The amount of kinetic energy transferred alone had sent Triumphant reeling, snapping the crippled support structure and severing its twin bridges in a single decapitation strike.

Silence overwhelmed Pioneer’s pilothouse.

What in Nine Hells was that–a new type of weapon developed by the Separatists!? Yularen could not name a single weapon system in the Republic’s arsenal that could travel at such speed or distance–existing or in development. If the Separatists could now out-range them in every engagement… it was a thought with horrific implications.

For a brief moment, Yularen desperately clung onto the hope that this new weapon system was slow reloading in order to compensate for its power–but that hope was swiftly dashed as the Separatist fleet fired off three new purple sparks in quick succession. One whizzed right past Pioneer’s viewport, leaving a faint purple afterimage behind; another clipped the prow of Indomitable, blasting off a chunk of its dorsal doors and revealing the starfighters inside; and the last smashed directly into the planet’s atmosphere, and the resulting airburst created a cloud large enough to be seen from low orbit.

“At… at least it\'s not very accurate,” somebody murmured.

“It’s hard to aim,” another officer corrected lowly, “You saw it blow the cap off Triumphant.”

“Evasive action!” Yularen commanded, “Bring us closer to the planet! What’s the status on that ID!?”

Lieutenant Klev whacked his console, cursed, and shot to his feet, “It’s the entire Confederate Second Fleet! We’re looking at three Lucrehulks, fourteen Recusants, thirty Munificents, two Providence destroyers, four Providence carriers, fifty-five Lupus missile frigates, and a hundred and two Diamond-class cruisers. The flagship is a Providence dreadnought… accessing registry…”

That’s an invasion fleet–what warranted a force of that size here…? A thought struck him–Geonosis–has Geonosis already fallen? What about Kamino, then?

“Match!” Klev announced, “Ascendant Sky, personal flagship of General Sev’rance Tann!”

Stang. The name immediately set off alarms in his head. Yularen mentally recited Sev’rance Tann’s registry in the Grand Army’s database; she was of an unidentified species, and was the only Separatist general who managed to reach the Core Worlds, striking as far as Sarapin in her opening campaign. The complete annihilation of a White Cuirass taskforce under the command of Jedi General Shen-Jon in Bothan Space was widely believed to be by her hand.

Extremely dangerous. Engage with excessive caution, and only with a superior force.

“We got a downlink to General Kenobi’s rear command post, Admiral sir!” Lieutenant Avrey said, “They’re forwarding the comms up to Admiral Wurtz–it’s our best bet of bypassing the jamming.”

“Very well,” Yularen replied with forced calm, “Inform them of the current situation, and advise for immediate withdrawal. I want a sitrep on the prisoner extraction, and get me in touch with General Skywalker and General Koon.”

“Extraction is proceeding on target, sir!” a clone reported, “An Acclamator has moved into position to begin evac. Prisoners were found well and unharmed.”

That warranted a sigh of relief, if the wider situation wasn’t so dire.

“We got a connection!” Avrey nearly threw her headset in glee, before sobering, “I mean– we have Admiral Wurtz patched in, sir. Holo isn’t so great, but we have good audio.”

“Reroute it to my panel,” the Admiral said sternly.

“Right away sir.”

Admiral Wurtz’s disembodied figure shimmered in front of Yularen, parts of his body glitching and fragmenting. But as the comms officer mentioned, what’s important was that they could communicate.

“Yularen, good to see you,” Wurtz said gravely, “Listen: we’re retreating. The Separatists caught us in a bad spot, and our position is untenable.”

“Couldn’t agree more,” Yularen agreed.

“Extract our ground forces posthaste and withdraw to Zhar through Mon Gazza. You’ll have to go through Separatist space for a bit, but Tann has us blocked from the south so we’ve no choice,” Wurtz’s figure almost disintegrated as his ship was pummelled by a strike, “I’ll occupy Tann and Ponith to buy you some time– I’m already trapped, so don’t try arguing.”

Yularen swallowed thickly, “How?”

He could make out a bitter smile through the terrible connection, “With the Tarkin Rush, of course. Tann is holding position and taking potshots at me with her new weapon, so I’m going to close the distance between us. With some luck, Tonith will pursue– don’t look at me like that, Yularen. I don’t intend on ending my service to the Republic here.”

“Where will you retreat to?” Yularen asked concernedly, “Any retreat vector will have to run through Separatist space, and with me going to Zhar, you don’t have many choices.”

“Manda is a Republic stronghold, and on the opposite end of the Manda Merchant Route. I can make a stand there, and retreat into Bothan and Hutt Space if things go awry,” Admiral Wurtz explained, “I’ll be taking Negotiator and Tranquility to bait the Separatists after me. Tann targeted Triumphant and Pioneer first, so it’s clear she’s after the Jedi–which means it\'s paramount that the Jedi escape. You hear me?”

“I hear you,” Yularen sighed, “Best of luck, Admiral.”

“Same to you.”

The connection dissolved. Yularen stood there for a time, watching the Iron Lance Fleet double around and surge towards the Confederate Second Fleet. Another purple streak ripped out of the darkness, cleaving straight through another cruiser like a lightsaber.

“Get our troopships down to the surface,” he ordered, “And get me Skywalker!”

⁂

“Stay light on that, Kix,” Appo told the squad medic, “We don’t know how much longer we have here.”

Appo gazed out of the shelter of a factory doorway, the ruined structure behind him turned into an ad-hoc field hospital. The Clone Commander retrieved his datapad to check the casualty counts coming in, watching over an injured trooper sitting on an upturned piece of machinery while the medic patched him up with a hemostatic hypospray.

“You’ll be alright, Ince?” he asked.

“Just some shrapnel, sir,” Ince grinned, “Nothing any of us can’t handle.”

There was clinking as Kix retrieved a bloody hand, dropping tiny jagged fragments onto a tray.

Plastoid armour was said to be the best credits could buy, and the relatively short list of ID numbers on his datapad could attest to that. It wasn’t perfect–there were still joints and gaps–but it got the job done, and kept them alive. Appo looked over the report again; light casualties for a battle, he decided.

Doesn’t feel like that, though.

Kix checked the fluid level on the hypospray, tapping the can, “We’re on our last batch of bacta anyway, sir. Honestly speaking, we should be done here–how long do you think the General is going to make us stick around?”

“I’ll go ask,” Appo grunted as he stood up.

Just as he stepped back outside, his helmet sensors suddenly beeped.

“Incoming!” the Commander shouted, leaping backwards and shoving Kix to the ground just as something crashed into the street behind them.

A massive explosion shook the building, and then another. Debris clattered down from above, hanging chains clinking as they swayed from the blast.

“Think it\'s another spotter, sir?” Kix groaned as he lifted himself back up.

“...Yeah.”

The 501st had swiftly recaptured the districts behind the advancing droid army, spreading out to search for survivors while launching probing strikes into the enemy’s rear. All they found were blasted droids and blackened armour–and two Jedi corpses, ruined beyond recognition, as if done in by a wild animal. If a wild animal had lightsabers, because the cuts were too cauterised and clean for anything else. Appears the Separatists found a new pet monster.

The Seppies clearly intend on capturing the industrial sector, because there was little to no damage done to the existing infrastructure. That didn’t stop them from periodically shelling the 501st’s positions, however, whenever a droid patrol spotted them and reported back before they could be dispatched. It meant that despite the lull in actual conflict, there was no time to take a breather–they had to keep moving around else the tinnies would catch them.

In spite of his buzzing head, Appo hastily grabbed his rifle and sprinted out onto the street, dodging an impact crater. He was greeted with burnt out skylines and ruined highways, the industrial cogs of war replaced with war itself. There was no time or space for burials–not like clones ever received burials–so what dead they found were stripped and thrown to a corner of the compound, their wrists scanned for ID codes and armour dismantled for salvage.

The two Jedi they found were thrown in a pyre–their lightsabers were never found.

“Commander,” a comms officer hailed him from their temporary command post, “The One-Oh-Fourth reports eighty-percent of the survivors have been evacuated. They advise prep for extraction.”

“I’ll speak to the General,” Appo promised.

He found his Jedi General, Skywalker, already in the open, cutting down the last of the battle droid patrol with an almost feral prejudice. Despite the damning lack of survivors, General Skywalker insisted on pushing onwards, extending the 501st’s lines far beyond their intended operational scope, in what Appo dare described as reckless desperation. All they found were more bodies.

But that was the work of the Droid Army. When they marched, they were a wall, rank upon rank, with skin-crawlingly synchronous rhythm. Not even the finest drilled clone troopers in the Grand Army could match that. Droid precision was cold, unthinking, and inexorable. Their base programming was shoot to kill, no prisoners, and trample over anything in their path.

On an eradication mission, they were a fine toothed comb. Appo could picture the columns of droids marching down every street and clearing out every building, systematically purging all lifeforms block by block and sweeping all resistance out into the open to gun them down.

“General,” Appo saluted.

“Commander,” Skywalker huffed, retracting his saber, “What do you have for me?”

“We are running low on supplies, and the men are getting tired, sir,” Appo told him, “General Koon has already given the green light for extraction.”

“Have all of the Marines been evacuated?”

“One-Oh-Fourth estimates eighty-percent of the way there, General,” he reported, “Best we get a leg up on it sir. It’ll be bad if the tinnies decide to about-face and catch us mid-evac.”

General Skywalker clenched his saber, a muscle in his jaw tightening. The Jedi stared down the deserted streets and alleyways–the local population had fled the place a long time ago, and none of them had seen a live Christophsian since… ever. Plenty of dead ones, though. Plenty.

“Have we swept Sector Fifteen for survivors?” Skywalker asked.

Appo glanced at the chart on his heads-up display. Sector 15 was right on the edge of their operation theatre, and one the last few districts they haven’t made a ground sweep of. He sighed in the privacy of his helmet–the General was still holding out on the chance there were survivors.

“No,” he answered simply, knowing no amount of excuses–even reasonable–would dissuade General Skywalker once he has his mind set on something.

“Air Control, this is General Skywalker,” the Jedi General tapped his comlink, “Prep for full extraction at Sector Fifteen, transmitting coords now.”

“Copy that, General,” Air Control replied, “Dispatching larties for you.”

Skywalker turned around and nodded at him, “We’ll regroup in Sector Fifteen, how about that?”

Are you kidding me? You already called for an evac there. I mean, it’s riskier than I’d like, but it’s not like we can’t make it.

“Sounds good, sir,” Appo said politely, “I’ll get the men ready.”

The Clone Commander swivelled on a heel and started the trek back to base, cycling to the common channel and transmitting the coordinates via his helmet’s comlink. A chart of the streets leading to the district appeared in the HUD of every trooper\'s helmet. Once he was in eyeline of the command post, Appo made the signal to move out. He didn’t have to, with all their comms tech, but it was good to make a habit of something in the case their HUDs went dark.

“I snatched us an evac, boys,” he said in the circuit, “But it’s a bit off, in Sector Fifteen. The General wants a ground sweep of the place before that, so all platoons start moving out. You don’t want to miss the larties.”

“Seriously?” a trooper complained, “We already pre-scanned the place, and didn’t catch any trooper biotags. What’s wrong with right here?”

“Have to agree, sir,” another said, “Our men in Seventeen will have to trek a long way around, and so much movement will expose us to artillery spotters.”

“Some of the boys are too injured,” Kix’s ID brightened, “I can fix up some splints, but a few are in a real bad spot. I do my best, but I can’t unscramble a leg. What the fark is the General thinking?”

“Then load them on a six legs–we aren’t leaving anyone behind,” Appo said, “We’re finally out of here, so pack up and get moving. You don’t want to take any more chances? Save your breath for the march.”

“Stang… my legs already hurt.”

“Shut your trap and pick up your blaster, Ince. Let’s get a move on.”

They melted back into the alleyways and complexes, using the interconnected refineries and factories to avoid aerial detection. His nightvision filters snapped on as Appo followed Skywalker’s billowing robes into the darkness–taking in the green-writ chaos within. Shattered permacrete allowed some passages of light from above, machinery like monsters gnawing at the darkness, their conveyor belt tails wrapping around the facilities. Chains and cables fell from the ceiling–whatever they were once attached to missing–and vast arrays of pipelines lay dormant.

A winking light caught his attention, but there was no sensor warning. Not a trap–shouldn’t be anyway, they screened the place already–it was just a crystal refracting a thin shaft of sunlight. A lot of crystals, in fact, like a table of glittering stars.

Appo kept an eye fixed on the icons on the side of his HUD, counting the transponder blips and checking for stragglers in the platoon. There was an AT-TE stomping alongside outside, filled up with casualties. They were an open target for anyone looking, but it was the best they’ve got. A picket line of scout walkers ran close to the droids’ rear lines, watching out for any surprises.

Kix came running up right behind him, along with the injured trooper–who was hobbling along with a rifle-cum-crutch.

“You could’ve taken a ride,” Appo commented.

“What? With the bodies?” Ince joked, “I don’t want to feel more dead than I already am.”

Appo smiled beneath his helmet, “You look spry to me… want me to hold onto your radio pack?”

“You just said I looked spry!” he moaned.

It took maybe half an hour’s march to reach their destination. The first squads that arrived ahead of them were already conducting preliminary sweeps, making a show of using handheld scanners despite having the ones integrated into their helmets.

“Just like I said,” a trooper grumbled, “There’s nobody here. Not even clankers. Hey, can we get an ETA on that– oh, what?”

“What is it?”

“...Drat, the General’s not going to like this. Transmitting coords–we found a Jedi.”

A series of numbers crawled onto Appo’s HUD.

“General Skywalker,” he immediately switched to open communication, “We found a Jedi.”

Skywalker visibly hastened his pace, “Alive?”

“Alive?” Appo repeated on circuit.

“Don’t scare me. I’d hate to be alive like that.”

“No, sir.”

“Bring me there,” there was a crack in the General’s voice.

They found the maroon armoured bodies of the Marines first, or what was left of them. They just had to follow the trail of vivisected corpses to find the warehouse where the squad of Marines had bunkered down. The building in question was an island in a sea of battle droid remains–but the doors had been blasted open regardless.

Inside, there were more corpses. Some with blaster holes, but most had been cut and diced by a saber. Multiple sabers, from how the bodies fell. This was a final stand. The Separatist commander was hunting Jedi specifically, Appo realised. He had seen the exact same scene three times now–the Jedi hunter had a telling mode of operation, one defined by sheer brutality.

“Up there, sir.”

Appo looked up, flicking on his flashlight.

“Holy kriff,” Kix muttered, “That’s… wow.”

“Yeah,” Ince agreed, “That ain’t gonna to buff out.”

That’s a Jedi, alright. Arms and legs hung from the ceiling by chains, jabbed into a mauled torso with twisted rods of rebar–like an extended metal skeleton–as if the perpetrator dismembered them by accident and had hastily attempted to fix them together again. A head with an elongated cranium hung upside down from a hook in the skull, severed at the neck with eyes wide open, viscous black blood trailing from the lips.

Appo recognised the Jedi from the strategy briefing.

General Skywalker was silent.

“Did any of you find a lightsaber?” Appo asked lowly.

He didn’t have to, as he was speaking on circuit–Skywalker couldn’t hear him–but he instinctively whispered just in case.

“No lightsaber, sir,” said the trooper who found the body, “I reckon it\'s the same killer. A real nutjob, this one.”

All three Jedi they found thus far had been found in varying states of opprobrium. One was crucified to a wall, another hung from a lamp post, and this one was… whatever this was. Whoever did this was either having the time of their lives arranging body parts into grotesque depictions, or knew someone was bound to come looking for the Jedi, and wanted to send a certain message.

Appo switched off his flashlight, “Get the body down from there.”

“Right away sir.”

“Uh– Commander,” Ince’s voice was unusually timid, “Can you tell the General that we’ve got a transmission from the Admiral? It’s something urgent.”