Dust filled his lungs at the first breath on waking. Dense, hazy waves of smoke mingled with the dull brown of dust overhead where Obi-Wan struggled to sit upright on the cracked desert ground. The rancid air around him was thick with shriveled ash and hot soot, exacerbated by the roar of fresh flames pricking him every now and then from the heap of wrecked metal just out of arm's reach. Conscious now, he became acutely aware of the layer of sand seeming to coat all of his internal organs. He shot forward and retched, coughing ceaselessly until the pain behind his ribs overtook the shredding feeling inside his throat. The familiar sound of blaster fire piqued his attention in that short lapse of noise: the battle continued without him far atop the canyon's eastern cliffside. The fight was still on. And he wasn't there to help. In a surge of stubbornness he tore an arm from his burning side, gathered the tattered remnants of his balance, and thrust himself ungracefully onto his feet. A wave of agony scratched down his spine and split through his legs. It felt as if his bones had been rearranged while he was unconscious, carefully refitted to stab into his muscles no matter how he moved. Against his will he dropped back against the flaming tank beside him. The metal was scorching through his glove where he gripped the open side hatch, but it was all he could do to support himself while he brought the comm on his wrist just below his mouth.
"Cody! Come in, Cody!" he shouted above the angry flames and muffled blaster fire.
No response.
"Cody!" he reiterated, hoping against hope that the urgency in his rasping voice might prompt his Commander to respond. Obi-Wan tried to reach him several more times, each attempt punctuated with fits of dry coughing that rent his lungs like broken glass. It was during one of these excruciating bouts that he discovered his comm unit's light was out. In fact, now that Obi-Wan considered, it had never been on since he woke up: the unit was simply nonfunctional. He sighed with a noise that was more akin to a growl than an actual sigh. Not a second had gone by in the past eight days that failed to present some new form of frustration. He knew he'd given Anakin the easy half of the mission this time, always reluctant to order the knight into the desert climate he so loathed, but he hadn't realized that the other half would have him stretched between guerilla bombings, snipers, and kidnappings of his men every other day.
Slowly, and with not a small amount of self-discipline, Obi-Wan released his emotions into the Force. He shrouded himself in the light, layer upon layer, piece by piece, until his pain was no more than a vague sensation of discomfort percolating in and around his skin. Anger is futile. The mission must always come first. He then opened his eyes to a saturated display of cloudless desert sky. The crossfire above grew in volume as his senses sharpened to peak acuity. The lives of his troops shone brightly in the Force. Without hesitation, he leapt backward to the downed tank's muzzle. He then jumped deftly from one ridge in the cliff's face to the next, needing no more than a few centimeters of terrace to spring from before he at last caught the edge in one hand and vaulted high into the air. The Nikto pilot of one early model assault walker jostled in surprise when he was met with the Jedi, who suddenly stood balanced on the craft's twin frontal cannons. Obi-Wan calmly surveyed the battlefield from there, eyes grey and calculating, scanning over the enemy's formation, creating and discarding plans at a dizzying pace with each new detail observed. For a moment the armored Nikto was stunned in his confusion, neglecting to continue fire on the clones darting around the minimal desert cover. When his senses returned to him, he rose from his gunner seat and drew a vibrosword from his belt. Leaning forward, he slashed over the front shield in rapid succession, shouting a vile string of Huttese curses while Obi-Wan dodged with apparent disregard for the Nikto's existence. 'Wild slashing' wasn't considered a serious attack in Obi-Wan's book, so he was content to leave the upset Nikto to his affairs while he prioritized identification of the fastest end to the ongoing battle. Serendipitously, the perfect entrance into the enemy's defenses appeared before him just then, in the form of a tiny clearing behind one heavily modified land speeder outfitted with an oversized railgun.
The skirmish ended within minutes, but seemed to stretch on for hours. Thirty-six clones wouldn't fit together behind the two short boulders at the site of ambush, so many had adopted the bold, unsavory tactic of dancing amidst the enemy. The hope was to discourage enemy fire within their lines, and to in turn cause some amount of friendly fire against the enemy vehicles. In the chaos, a clone might even be lucky enough to hijack a vehicle on his own. Obi-Wan recognized the situation at first glance, and elected to use it to his advantage. He bounded off the raging Nikto's assault walker in a tight somersault, lightsaber slicing cleanly through the barrels he'd just used to stand upon for better vantage. The pair of Nikto manning the speeder ahead had no time to react before their ship was at once sideways, controls slashed and fuming, railgun severed and propped up on the ground. In the next instant, they were propelled half a klick across the desert with a sweep of Obi-Wan's arm. Next, he needed some volunteers.
The loss of two of the Nikto's assault vehicles seemed only to kindle their fervor for the clone company's slaughter, and as a result they abandoned their concern over friendly fire. Heavy shots pierced the air at short range, blowing wide craters inside enemy lines and casting huge plumes of rocks and sand all around. Visibility quickly deteriorated to a mist of powdery dust and smoke. The clones were at a loss to predict the direction of the next shot aimed for them. Blind, outnumbered and outgunned, a collective panic began to trickle through the company. They didn't dare continue firing for fear of killing a brother, and so instead fell defenseless and lost amidst the hail of red bolts and cannon beams. Relief cascaded over every one of them when they were each rounded up succinctly by their General, guided through the haze by the lantern-like beacons each man unknowingly projected into the Force. Ten clones in total ended up behind the grounded, sideways speeder. They needed no instruction to brace themselves bodily against the craft from the side opposite the enemy fire.
"Sir!" One clone called out, the unique markings adorning his armor all but sand-blasted into nothingness, "We can't take 'em! They've still got four walkers, another speeder and a tank!" The makeshift speeder-barrier rumbled and creaked at the impact of an assault walker's heavy bolts.
"Actually, they've only three walkers, now." Obi-Wan crouched near the center of the protesting sideways craft and impaled his saber through the floor.
"But sir! What should we do?!" the same clone barked, giving voice to his rising panic.
The beam cut in a careful rectangle, from which Obi-Wan's attention did not waver. "We're going to borrow this railgun," he replied cheerfully, thrusting the rectangular panel of speeder flooring out and away using the Force. "Gander. Clips. You two move this gun and position it to shoot from this opening." He stood and directed the clones with his hands.
Clips was first to catch on, but Gander was hesitant to leave his place against the speeder while it yet rattled against he and his brothers with every bolt it caught from the other side. "General, we can't see what we're shooting out there!"
"You'll see this," the Jedi explained and held out his saber, blue and vibrant through the dull grit blotting out the sun.
Ducking low where he positioned the railgun at the freshly-hewn window in the speeder, Clips' eyes widened beneath his helmet. A third clone jumped in before he could say what each of them were thinking. "We're not gonna shoot at you, General, are you mad?!"
Obi-Wan couldn't help but smile at the informality. "Oh please. We train younglings to deflect blaster fire while blinded. Think of it as target practice."
"Target practice?! This is treason!"
"No, Sander, it is an order."
Obi-Wan's bearing changed then: stout and imposing, disarming nonchalance vanished, his eyes addressing each clone in series to make his command solid and reassert his place as High General. That seemed to do the trick, because in the seconds that followed, Sander, Gander and Clips issued a terse salute and fell silent.
"Ready to fire, General." Clips kneeled before the railgun.
"Very good," Obi-Wan approved, nodded, and launched out from behind the speeder, set to land aboard the nearest active assault walker.