Planet fall on G'behr.
There was a flash near one of the gray, dusty moons circling a small yellow-green planet on the outer rim of the galaxy. A shuttle silently appeared from hyperspace. It's design was roughly based on the Republic gunships of the clone army, but this vessel was larger, bulkier and possessed hyperdrive engines slung beneath it's long angled wings. Along the side of it, the word Polarity could just be read, in faded black paint against the dirty white hull. The word was partly erased by carbon scoring from an unknown conflict. The shuttle ignited it's sub-light engines, adjusted it's course and headed for the planet.
Clone captain Matt stood in the centre of Polarity's small bridge in his shining white clone armour. His squad pilot, Jet, sat in front of him, steering the shuttle towards the small yellow-green planet called G'behr shown on the screen, the destination of his squad. They had been tasked to investigate worlds which could be used for colonies trying to escape the war between the Republic and the Separatists.
Matt looked around the bridge. His men were all professionals, their full concentration on the jobs they had been given.
"Any sensor reading from the surface?" He asked without turning his head.
Fingers, the squad's technical expert, raised his head from the screen he'd been studying. "Nothing really, captain," He replied, "but there is something odd in the readings."
"Odd?" Said Matt, turning to his right to face Fingers. "What do you mean?"
"Well, I can't really say, but I'd call it a smudge."
"Some kind of cloaking shield?" Ask Matt.
"That's my guess," Replied Fingers. "But I've never seen a cloaking shield this big - it covers about ten square kilometres."
Matt pondered this for a moment. Ten square kilometres? That's enough to hide a small city, plus spaceport. What was going on down there?
Mouse spoke up from his seat at the main computer terminal. "Sir, G'behr isn't populated, according to the records back on Coruscant."
"Those records have been wrong before." Matt replied.
"True sir, but the last records were updated just two months ago."
Matt didn't like this. Two months to build a shield generator capable of hiding a city? Impossible. He had been told that clones weren't supposed to feel tremors in the Force, but this situation just didn't feel right.
He turned back to his pilot. "Take us down, Jet. Set us down 20 clicks from the edge of that area."
"Aye sir." replied Jet and started making adjustments for landing.
Twenty clicks was a morning jog to a clone trooper. They could cover that ground easily in three hours, even carrying their backpacks.
The shuttle tilted as it descended, but then jolted violently sideways as it entered the atmosphere.
"What was that?" Matt asked, holding on to the back of Jet's seat to stop himself from falling.
"Rockets sir, coming from the planet." Replied Fingers.
"Jet, evasive manoeuvres. Mouse, tell the guys back there to get strapped in." "Aye sir."
Matt strapped himself into the commander's chair in the centre of the bridge as the shuttle began veering left and right, trying to avoid the missiles that were streaming up through the atmosphere to blow them out of the sky. Gunner and Hammer, the squad's heavy weapon experts, manned the side pulse guns and started shooting at the oncoming missiles. They took some of them out, but there were just too many. The Polarity jolted again and pitched steeply downward.
"Are we hit?" Matt shouted over several damage control warning sirens that screamed in his ears.
"We've lost our port engine sir." Jet reported as he fought the joystick to regain control of the shuttle. "And the rear half of our landing repulsors. I'm not going to be able to dodge many missiles with just one engine, but I have a plan..."
"Get us on the surface as fast as you can." Matt told him. He was aware that if Jet had a plan it was going to be a wild one. "All hands, brace!" He shouted into his helmet microphone.
"Aye sir." Said Jet, pushing the joystick forward and aiming the shuttle straight down at the planet below.
The shuttle tumbled and spun downwards toward the ground, pushed by it's single engine. The two closest missiles that had been tracking it tried to follow it down, their trajectories getting closer and closer until they collided, creating a ball of fire that the following missiles entered and also exploded.
"Good work!" Matt shouted to Jet. "Where did you learn that trick?"
"Jedi Master Skywalker." Jet replied, smiling. He watched the controls in front of him, especially the altitude meter. It was ticking down at an alarming rate. Ten thousand feet, six thousand feet, five, four, three. As soon as it hit two thousand feet, Jet used the forward repulsors to flip the shuttle end over end, so the nose was pointing at the sky. The repulsors whined and the shuttle creaked ominously. The devices were not supposed to be used for such manoeuvres, and Jet thought he felt a small explosion as one of them gave out completely. As soon as the nose was pointing straight up, he forced the remaining engine on the back of the shuttle to full thrust in an attempt to slow their descent. The altitude meter still counted down, but now in jumps of hundreds of feet, not thousands. Their rate of descent slowed and the shuttle finally stopped falling about ten feet from the ground, the engine burning a fifty metre circle in the yellow-green grass. Jet reduced the engine's power slowly, and the back end of the shuttle touched down gently, then fell forward and slammed into the ground hard.
"Nice landing, Jet!" Called Doc over their helmet intercom. "You trying to give me extra work by injuring the squad?"
"That's enough, Doc." Said Matt. He preferred a clone doctor instead of a droid, and although Doc had been top of his class during training, his sense of humour was annoying. But Matt wouldn't be without him - he just didn't trust a droid with something as important as the health of his squad. "Anyone hurt?"
"Only Boxer. Fell against a bulkhead, but he'll be ok. He says grunts don't get hurt easily."
Matt knew what he meant. Boxer, and his clone brother Stomp, were first generation clones, very tough and would follow their orders to the letter. Later clones had modified DNA to make them a little leaner and faster, but sometimes brute strength could be very useful. He'd found Boxer and Stomp on Geonosis after their squads had been wiped out by droid missiles. They had proved themselves time and time again in Matt's squad and he couldn't do without them.
He gathered his squad in the rear of the shuttle to assess damage. The speeders in the rearmost compartment had been completely destroyed by the missile.
"Looks like we're walking then." Doc quipped. Matt would have to have a word with Doc sometime. The battlefield was no place for jokes.
Luckily, the weapon lockers were undamaged. He ordered his men to break out their DC-17m blaster rifles, heavier than the DC-15 which had been the clones' weapon of choice since the army was first created. The new DC-17m rifle had three attachments - standard blaster, sniper and heavy blaster plus grenade launcher. The latter was the preferred choice of Gunner and Hammer as it caused more damage than the standard attachment but it drained the power cells a lot faster.
Only Mouse carrier one of the old DC-15 blasters, as his expertise was stealth, and the DC-17m was just too bulky to carry when you're sneaking around.
Matt opened the hatch on the side of the shuttle and the men crept out, keeping a lookout for enemy activity. They had landed in a grassy clearing, or rather it would have been grassy before they arrived. There was a large brown circle around the ship where the engine had burnt the grass away.
"Which way?" asked Matt. Fingers held up a scanner and pointed. "Five clicks, that way."
"Gunner, you take point. Let's head out."
Gunner took off through the trees in the direction that Fingers had transmitted to his helmet display. The going was easy, and they covered the ground with good speed until Fingers' scanner beeped that there was movement up ahead. Matt signalled to the rest of the group and they all found cover on the side of the shallow valley.
Matt scanned the other side of the valley with his binoculars. He saw movement in the trees and zoomed in. Five white figures were creeping through the trees, their white armour glinting in the sunshine. Clones? Thought Matt. What are clones doing here?
"Scope, can you tell which regiment they're from?"
Scope called to him via the helmet intercom. "They're not what they seem." He said, as though reading Matt's thoughts. "They look like clones, but they're not."
Scope's DC-17m snipe rifle attachment had a higher magnification than the standard binoculars they all carried, and he could see things a lot clearer.
He transmitted the images to the rest of the squad. Matt saw it on the inside of his visor.
The white figures looked like clone troopers, but when Scope zoomed in, you could see between the plates of white armour to what lay underneath - the thin arms and legs of a battle droid. The figures moved more like clones than battle droids as well, making the deception even more convincing.
"This is worrying." Matt muttered to himself. If the Separatists were making a new type of battle droid that looked like a clone trooper then they could get closer to the Republic's bases before anyone realised it was too late.
Matt was shaken from his thoughts by Scope's cry. "They've seen us!"
One of the battle droids pointed in the squad's direction, and was ordering two others to fire. Raising their weapons, they fired off several shots at the troopers.
"Return fire!" Matt shouted, his own weapon already raised and against his shoulder. He fired at one of the battle droids and watched, stunned, as the battle droid dropped to one knee, spun and dodged the blaster bolt that Matt had just aimed at it's chest. Matt fired again, and again the droid side-stepped his shot.
"Hammer, Gunner! Grenades!"
The two heavy weapons experts sent grenades arcing through the trees within seconds of Matt's command, which landed neatly in the middle of the droid group. The explosion disabled all five robots.
"Let's get down there." Matt said, "I need to have a look at those droids."
They made their way slowly across the valley to the droids, checking the skies and surrounding area for more enemies. Most of the droids were in pieces.
"Looks like just a software upgrade, not mechanical." Said Fingers at Matt's side.
"See if you can get any data out of them." Matt ordered.
Fingers got to work with a head from one of the droids, plugging his portable computer into it. After five minutes he reported back to Matt.
"Sir, I can't get much info from this head. It seems they were just programmed to patrol the area and return to base after six hours, which is probably the life of their power cells."
"Any idea where the base is from here?"
"No. They're running an odd co-ordinate system. I can't work it out. I could try and program it to return to base immediately, so we could follow it."
"Do it." Ordered Matt.
Fingers took the head he was working on and fitted it to one of the other droids which had had it's head blown off by the grenades. After a bit of work he got the droid ready and switched it back on. After a few seconds, the droid stood up, looked blankly around the area, seeming not to see the clone troopers, and then walked out of the small clearing, roughly back the way the droids had come when the squad had first seen them.
"Fall out." Said Matt. "Follow that droid."
The squad followed the droid at what they hoped was a safe distance until the path disappeared and the trees thinned out. Up ahead the caught a glimpse of a tall fence with a gateway, guarded by two destroyer droids. Beyond the fence Matt could see a large, flat roofed building and some sort of ship over to the right hand side. The men held back as the droid marched up to the gateway, but didn't stop and walked straight into the closed gates. The destroyer droids stared at it for a moment, then opened fire, turning the droid into a pile of twisted and melted metal.
"Fall back!" Matt whispered into his intercom, and the squad moved back into the shelter of the trees.
Matt scanned the area with his binoculars. Over to the far left, the fence came very close to the tree line, so they made their way slowly around there, keeping an eye on the two destroyer droids and the fence. Pairs of standard battle droids occasionally marched along the fence but didn't spot them.
When they arrived at the narrow gap between the trees and the fence, Matt ordered Hammer to make them a hole in the fence.
"Looks like a job for the new acid bomb." Hammer smiled.
He sneaked up to the fence and attached a small cylinder to it at head height. He just made it back into the trees before another pair of battle droids marched up and stopped.
"What's that?" One the droids said.
"It looks like an explosive." Said the other.
"Are you sure?" Said the first, tapping the explosive with a metal finger. The droid was answered by the device exploding. The force of the blast was not large, but enough to blow the heads off both droids.
"You were right." Said the first droids' head, just before Boxer flattened it's metal skull with his boot.
The small explosive had contained a small amount of acid, which had melted the fence below the device, leaving a neat hole for the clones to walk through and toward the wall of the building. They gathered with their backs against the wall.
"We've only got a few minutes before the next droid patrol." Matt said.
"How about that, sir?" Asked Mouse. He'd spotted something around the back of the building. Matt peered around the end of the wall and smiled. The building's power generator stood seemingly unguarded. A door next to it led into the building.
"Mouse , check out that door."
"Aye sir." Said Mouse, creeping up to the door. Inching it open, he looked inside. "Sir, you might want to take a look at this."
"What is it?" Matt replied, following Mouse's footprints towards the door.
"Looks like a droid factory." Said Mouse as Matt arrived behind him.
Over Mouse's shoulder, Matt could see the huge conveyor belts with various droid parts on them. There were also other belts with parts of white armour on them. Several hundred completed droids stood in an open area next to a large door on the far side of the building.
"Hammer, get some explosives on that power generator." Matt called. "The rest of you, over here."
Hammer set three packs of explosives around the base of the generator, easily enough to blow it up. Then he joined the others at the doorway.
"Let's give them every grenade we have." Matt said, already holding the belt of grenades from his waist. The others removed their belts. Pulling a pin of one grenade on each belt, they threw them into the factory area. Hammer and Gunner used their grenade launchers to fire at the battle droids assembled at the far side of the building.
When all the grenades had been thrown, the squad ran for the fence. The ground shook as the grenades started to explode behind them, and part of the building's roof caved in, probably burying half the completed droids in the process. Then Hammer's explosives went off, and the power generator tower toppled forward onto the building, crushing more of it's roof. One of the far walls blew outwards, showering the nearby ship with pieces of wall. The ship's front landing gear collapsed and the stubby nose cone hit the landing pad, buckling the ship's hull. Matt watched the carnage as he ran and smiled.
The troopers made it safely back to the fence, but just as they were all squeezing through the gap, the two destroyer droids rolled up from the gateway. The squad dropped for cover in the yellow grass and opened fire on them before the two droids had even unrolled themselves. They managed to damage one of them slightly, but then they both engaged their shields which meant no more of their blaster bolts could get through.
"Grenades, anyone?" Matt shouted.
The squad replied in the negative. They had used all the grenades and explosives destroying the droid factory.
"Concentrate your fire on the left one." Shouted Matt. The squad all aimed at the left droid, which was the stronger and fastest firing after the right one had been damaged. Even with the full power of their combined weapons, the droid still advanced.
Suddenly, something passed overhead and blotted out the sun. The white belly of a Republic gunship circled above them, green bolts of light emanating from it's forward guns. The two destroyer droids were blown to pieces.
The gunship fired at a couple of other droids around the base, then left the job to three other gunships circling the area. The first gunship sank almost silently to the ground in front a Captain Matt and his stunned squad. As the side doors opened, a Jedi ignited his lightsaber and jumped down.
As he walked towards them, the Jedi gave orders to the clone troopers who had also jumped off the gunship. They busied themselves checking the area was secure and collecting evidence from the demolished factory.
"Jedi Skywalker!" Matt exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"
"Captain Matt." The Jedi nodded. "We were investigating a possible droid factory on this planet, but it seems you've destroyed it for us before we arrived. Nice job"
"Thank you sir."
The Jedi lowered his lightsaber and looked around the squad. "Jet," He said smiling. "Good to see you again."
"You too sir." Replied Jet.
Skywalker turned back to captain Matt. "I expect to see a full report about this factory when we get back to the ship. Should make interesting reading."
"Er, about that sir..."
"The Polarity?" Skywalker said, as if reading his thoughts. Knowing Jedi, he probably was. "Don't worry. A drop ship picked up the Polarity a little while ago. We'll get her fixed up for you - it's mostly cosmetic apart from a missing engine. Looked like you had a bit of trouble landing."
"No trouble at all thanks to your training, sir." Said Jet.
"Keep hold of him." Skywalker told Matt. "He's one of the best pilots in the fleet. After me, of course."
Matt smiled at the joke. He had no intention of losing any of his men after fighting so hard to get some of them in his squad.
Matt and his squad boarded the gunship and it glided gently up into the air, heading for the ship in orbit. As the sky around them darkened to the star-speckled black of space, captain Matt wondered where this war would take his squad next.