The dry sands of Tatooine clouded Boss's visor as he moved forward towards base camp. His legs ached after the long hike around the 25 kilometer perimeter him and the rest of Delta had drawn up. It had seemed like a feasible idea, until it was his turn to make the rounds.
"Why the hell do I have to do this? I'm the blasted leader. Shoulda just made Scorch do it, doubt anyone'd have a problem with that"
He'd been grumbling since the 20 kilo mark. Sure he was a commando, and he'd ran far worse than this. Of course he was always running on the hard, sturdy surfaces that made up Kamino.
The bottom of his HUD flashed with three unmistakeable signatures. Each of them green. His indicator pointed forwards, and he recieved a ping as he crossed over the motion sensor surrounding base camp.
"Finally" Boss sighed in relief as the structure of Base Camp came into view.
"Base Camp" was a simple sand cave, with a holo-sheet splayed over it. The tiny micro-computers inside the sheet projecting a picture of, what else; sand. The sheet made it look like one of the millions of sand dunes in the Dune Sea.
Boss lifted the sheet above his head, and slipped inside. The inside of Base Camp wasn't at all impressive. Some rations stolen from shipments that came by now and then were stacked in one corner, the other corner was full of moniters, computers, broken down parts, anything techy you could think of. On a chair seated infront of the moniters sat Forty, the squads slicer and general tech guy' considering the rest of the squad would rather sun bathe out in the desert than sit in front of a bunch of screens all day.
"Finally back sarge?" Fixer quiped, never turning away from the screens.
"Can it Four-Oh" Boss grumbled as he sat down on top of a ration container. "How's surveillance coming along?"
Fixer leaned back into his chair and pulled his attention away from the screens. "Nominal. We have surveillance equipment set up in all sectors except for gamma." One of the deactivated moniters suddenly burst to life. "And there's gamma, looks like those two finally got it working."
The audio of the camera activated, and the voices of Scorch and Sev flooded into the room. "You worthless peice of bantha-shit, your supposed to turn it that way!" The camera suddenly shifted, turning to look into Sev's visor.
Sev was suddenly tackled to the side as Scorch grabbed hold of the camera. "Like you'd know anything about tech!" He stated.
A armed boot came into contact with Scorch's side and he was flung out of view as the camera dropped to the ground. After rolling, it finally came to a rest with its lens pointed straight at Scorch and Sev.
Sev reached for Scorch's pack, and pulled out a breaching charge. "Oh so your a techie now huh? Well you wont be needing this!" He threw the charge off to the side and it flew out of view.
"No!" With a sudden burst of strength Scorch shoved Sev off of him and pinned him to the sand. Just as he was about to bring his raised fist down into Sev's armored face, Fixer spoke up.
"Ahem, gentlemen" A microphone could be seen next to his keyboard.
The two's glances quickly shot up to the camera.
"The equipment is operational, I would recommend you stop screwing around and hurry back here."
Scorch was the first to recover. "Heh, yeah-yeah of course Four-Oh. We were just bu- ..uhh. Doing... things" He rubbed the back of his helm.
"I can see that."
Sev quickly scrambled to his feet and approached the camera, shoving Scorch on his way. "Re-setting camera" The camera shifted back to it's orginal position looking out into the desert.
The sound of retreating footsteps could be heard until nothing but the wind came through the speakers. Fixer cut the audio, and shifted his attention to another screen.
Boss reclined against the cave wall as Scorch and Sev entered the cave. "Report" He ordered
"Camera in Gamma sector's been set up-"
"I saw" Boss cut in, stiffling a chuckle.
"-and the seas are calm, so to speak"
Boss nodded as he pushed himself off the wall and began walking deeper into the cave. His two squadmates followed, and each left to go to their own little "space" in the cave. Sev simply sat in the, unfortuantely spacious, ammuntion corner. He unlocked his DC-17 from it's magnetic lock on the back of his armor and began to clean it. Scorch collapsed onto a hammock he constructed out of some cloth they had come across in an abandoned tusken camp. Four-Oh was still in his chair typing away.
Boss sighed as he took in their "new home's" surroundings for what seemed like the thousandth time. Things certainly haven't been easy for Delta squad. He sat down on a ration crate and ejected his vibroblade. He took it in his gloves and began examining it. It was one of the few things they'd managed to take with them when they left, along with his armor and gun. Although, as he thought about it, he was rather lucky. Most clones didn't have much of a choice when the order came down. Him, and the rest of Delta were very far from any republic assets when they'd gotten the signal. The signal, a simple holo message of the Chancellor saying Order 66 was now in effect. He knew what it was, or at least he thought he knew. As far as his knowledge went it was an excecutive order, given when one of their own betrayed the Republic, specifically a jedi. What Boss didn't know was that it could be used on such a scale. There wasn't much point dwindling on it though, that was a long 14 years ago. Hell, there wasn't even a Republic anymore. Just a Galatic Empire. An empire, he and the rest of Delta technically deserted from. Their "desertion" was just a simple mishap Scorch had with a few tons of explosives. It had happened before, after all Scorch wasn't the squad demolition expert because he was an expert, more so that he just really liked to see things go boom. The new command really didn't like that, so they gave him and the rest of the squad a discharge from the Commando Corps, along with a few squads of stormtroopers to see them out. Not that Boss cared about it all too much, the Empire left a bad taste in his mouth anyways.
A warning tone suddenly sounded from Fixer's station, dragging Boss out of his thoughts. He shot up, shoving his blade back into its slot, and jogged over to the monitors, the rest of the squad behind him.
"What's going on?" Boss asked as he eyed the flashing buttons.
Fixer didn't seem all too alarmed, this fact calming the squad down a little. "Hmm, perimeter breach. Aerial vehicle if I'm reading the sensors correctly"
Boss leaned forward and eyed the readouts on one of the moniters. "Location?" More of an order than a question.
"Sit tight" Fixer's armored fingers tapped away at the control panel. "Looks like it flew over Bravo, heading southeast. We should be able to get visual through surveillance in Echo sector. With a few taps of the keyboard a moniter on the left flashed to life over looking a valley.
"Hey you see that?" Scorch asked as he pointed to what looked like a small shuttle. The shuttle was about the size of 2 speeders stacked on top each other. It sported two impressive looking cannons on the front, and a smaller turrent on the top facing backwards.
Sev nodded "Never seen a shuttle like that, what's something so small doing here?"
Suddenly, two TIE fighters blasted into view and began firing at the shuttle.
"What the-" Scorch started
Boss cut him off "Fixer, check Imperial data logs for that shuttle"
"Roger that boss" Fixer responded "Just give me a few seconds to hack into the internal databases"
Boss nodded and returned his attention to the moniter. The TIEs cannons fired away at the small ship, but none of the shots scored hits. The shuttle, proving to be more agile than the larger TIEs, was nimbly avoiding the supercharged bolts. 'whoever's flying must be one hell of a pilot, though the Imperial Navy has deffinetly detoriated over the years'
"I'm in" Fixer said as a moniter flashed displaying lines of text. "Now I just have to filter through the logs, hold on" He pressed a button on his control panel "Got a pic, inputing filters" With a final press of a button, the screen of text began to change. Text's being filtered off were simply thrown off the screen. Eventually the texts gave way to different files. The moniter zoomed in on one file named "Ghost". "Damn, files encypted, give me a few more seconds Boss"
Boss glanced back at the screen just as a TIE Interceptor came into view. "Hurry it up, I have a feeling that buckets not going to remain airborne much longer"
Sev nodded in a greement. "That's an Interceptor. They don't just anyone fly those, not to mention the guns." He scratched his armored chin "I give them thirty seconds, minute tops"
"Whoa hold on" Scorch interrupted. "Why bother searching for this ship" He paused "I mean, we're not gonna do anything... are we?"
Boss didn't answer
"Boss?" Scorch pushed, still no answer; but he knew that look. Even if he couldn't see past the visor, you learn to get past that when you know someone so well. "Oh come on..."
"Well I'm going with squad lead here, bout time I got to kill something" Sev chuckled "Good thing those troopers ain't clones anymore"
Scorch sighed "Well... it has been a long time since I actually breached a door... "
Boss patted him on the back. "Thats the Six-Two I know!" He looked back to Fixer "Status?"
"Just about Boss" His fingers typed away, becoming a blur. "But by the looks of it 'just about' isn't gonna cut it"
The squad looked back at the moniter. The Interceptor had closed it. With a flick of a finger, the camera zoomed up, getting a closer view of the fight. The turret on the back had begun firing red bolts at the pursuing fighters. One of the bolts struck a TIE fighter's left wing, consuming it in flame. It fell from the sky, spinning until it smashed into the ground. The other two fighters seemed undeterred by the loss and continued firing. As the Interceptor pulled in, multiple bolts struck it; but the shields surrounding it simply brushed them off.
"Got it!" Fixer cheered as the files contents spilled open "Took longer than I thought"
Boss tore his attention away from the moniter to focus on the database. "What have we got Four-Oh?"
Fixer 'hmmed' as he went through the information. Eventually four pictures were pulled up. One, detailing a man who looked to be in his twenties, with a bit of armored plating covering his left shoulder. Another, of a Twi'lek who looked to be the same age as the man before. And a interesting one of a Lasat
'guess the empire missed one' Boss mused
Finally, one that really caught Boss's eye, was a girl; couldn't be older than 17, decked out in mandalorian armor. The old stuff too. It looked to be custom painted.
A ping sounded from one of the terminals "Boss... I'm getting a transmission..." said Fixer.
"What?" They hadn't even known that old sattelite still worked. It had been set up not two weeks ago, it dated back to the Old Republic. "Put it through."
Fixer pressed a button on the terminal and static filled the room. A voice could be heard breaking the static every once in awhile.
"This is-of-need asistance-Imperial Figh-Tatooine-Dune Sea.-Repe-AHHH!" The message cut out abruptly, as a scream was heard in the backround along with an explosion. In the corner of his eye, Boss could see the Interceptor fire off a clean shot into the back of the shuttle. Back of the shuttle erupted into flames, as the small ship dropped down into the desert. Eventually the shuttle fell out of the camera's view.
The entire squad was dead silent, only when the smoke trail disapeared did one of them speak.
"Well... I suppose we should do something" Scorch muttered. The squad, not used to having to make their own decisions outside of combat; instinctively turned to their leader. However, Boss was having conflicting thougts as well. Command would usually sort this type of thing out, they'd just have to work out the kinks of their plan on the field.
'Blast... no easy way to go about this. Either way we need to do this. We've been here too long' Boss nodded to himself before stepping infront of his squad
"We've been here too long, we can't stay in this cave forever... hiding." He looked to his team, all of them looking at him. No one made a move to stop him so he continued on. "I don't know where this'll take us, but it has to be better than this"
Scorch interrupted him with a chuckle. "Sorry Boss, but did ya miss the conversation earlier? We already got out minds made up, and hey! Even if we didn't, your our leade; we'd go with you anyway" He gave Boss's shoulder-pad a pat. "Because ya know you'd probably have us do laps around the Dune Sea if we didn't"
Everyone let out a chuckle.
"Well then" Boss started "Lets go save us some criminals"
"I've always wanted to be the bad guy" Sev's wicked grin could practically be seen through the helmet.
"I'm with you squad lead"
Boss smiled proudly at his team
"Delat squad, form up!"
