The wind was cold and chilling to the bone.
The force. The force is a joke.
The LAAT/I screamed over treetops at 600 kilometers. In the open cargo bay, the winds assaulted Nobi Khun's unprotected body. The coldness, the numbness seeping in.
May the force be with you, the greatest lie of all.
"Commander." There was no response. "Commander!" yelled Sergeant Howe.
Nobi Khun looked up at the towering white figure. His whole body is covered by an assortment of white armored plates. Over that, a black tactical vest, held various ammo clips and grenades. Nobi was looking at a Republic commando. A clone bred in the icy vats of Kamino, trained from birth to fight the last war, Sergeant Howe did really seem to radiate that kind of aura.
"Sitrep commander! The V-19 Torrents expected heavier than expected air defenses around the city. Command is diverting all of them for air defense suppression. They'll probably be needed there if we're going to clear our ingress route. And that's the good news. The bad news is we're just lost our air cover. Close air support will not be available except for our gunships. I recommend we abort, but it's your call sir! " The last sentence came out as an accusation more than a question.
Nobi looked around the cargo bay. There was Doc, sitting calmly in the corner with his boot dangling out the gunship, as if on a pleasure cruise. Doc looked like the other commandos, except with a medical rucksack on his back. Doc, as everybody taken to calling him was a clone combat medic. Trained to save lives in an organization that lives to do the opposite, how's that for a contradiction?
Then there was her. She was busy stuffing some ammo in her pouches. In her hands held the largest sniper rifle Nobi has ever seen. Her name was Kayla. A republic intelligence agent by training, her marksmanship skilled later pushed her into Group Echo: the Republic's secret assassination team. Totally deniable, they killed without trace. Anyone, anywhere was their motto.
Then there was Sat. Sat was a combat controller. On his back are radios that enable him to communicate with anyone on and off the planet. Calling in artillery and coordinating air strikes was his specialty. His head is always dropped down, concentrating on some coms traffic or another.
"Sir what are your orders?"
Nobi took a deep breath, just then the gunship was rocked by a loud explosion. Before he could exhale, a wounded clone fell on top of him. His shriek drowned out by the slipstream in the open troop bay.
"Medic! Corpsman!" screamed Nobi, not knowing what the GAR called its own medical personnel. But Doc is already on the case.
"Clean hit through the shoulder, not life threatening. You'll live ner vod. So stop screaming already." Doc said is such a dead pan voice, that the entire cabin looked over.
"84 is our slicer. We can't get through the securities without him. We gotta abort!" observed Sergeant Howe.
"No! We do not abort!" screamed Nobi. He reached for the intercom on the bulkhead. Task Force 69, this is Jedi Paddawan Nobi, mission is go, I repeat the mission is a go. Acknowledge. "
"Lucy copies." Lucy is the V-19 torrent flight leader conducting suppression of enemy air defenses around the city.
"Barber roger." Barber is the mission commander on the RAS Majestic orbiting the planet.
"Bishop wilco." Bishop is the lead LAAT/I.
The mission element leaders chimed in over the command circuit.
"All elements green light."
Howe fairly glared at him. "Respectfully sir, I know I'm just a line grunt, and you're a divine Jedi officer. But you've only been at this for 3 days, while I've conducting airborne assaults before I could talk. We need our hacker, and 84 is non mission capable. Look at him, he can barely walk." Sergeant Howe reminded himself, that he is talking to an officer, and took a deep breath. "This assault is based in speed and surprise. They out number us 20 to one. In order to do so, we need to disable and jam their security system. It's black art. None of us knows how to do it, 'cept 84 down here. I won't be leading my men, my brothers, in a suicidal frontal assault….sir."
"I can be your slicer. I've been doing it before I could read," said Nobi.
Howe looked over at this pip squeak of an officer. One more try to abort this whole mess.
"Alright, sir, I see that you don't have your lightsaber with you. How 'bout this?" Howe tossed him a Verpine SA-15. A compact assault rifle. It can shoot 300 spiked slugs per second. And the best thing about it, it made absolutely no sound. The whole assault team is equipped with some version of it. Blaster rifles were lighter and more accurate. But the Verp has more penetration, in addition to its silence.
The whole cabin full of elite assaulters now looked at Nobi, the pip squeak officer. What does he know about Verpine rifles eh? Maybe this will shut him up. To the surprise of everybody, Nobi expertly loaded a magazine, chambered a round, and switch the fire selector position to single shot.
"You got any assault scopes and tac lights?" One of the assaulters handed him one from the arms box.
Sergeant Howe was slightly annoyed, but impressed.
The two gunships are now are skimming the rooftops towards the Hutt palace on Tatooine. The roof sentries never saw them coming, for their attention is focused on the V-19 Torrents doing their deadly craft to the east. The LAAT/I popped up at the last minute and dived down on to the roof.
"30 seconds!" screamed Howe. The assaulters replied with an animal like grunt.
After being with these guys for a day, it surely have rubbed on the novice Jedi. Nobi couldn't help but let out a battle cry of his own.
Nobi felt the gunship decelerate, his heart was in his throat.
The gunships kicked up a millennia of dust on the roof so much that the pilot couldn't see anything, but his radar altimeter.
"Go go go!" First in, last out, the noncoms' creed, Howe chuckled, and kicked out his fast rope and fairly jumped after it.
It was the shortest fast rope in the entire di kut universe. They were only a foot off the roof.
The assault team split up in to 7 four man teams.
The first team started rappelling down the ledge, upside down. It's called the Nar assault. The fastest assault rappel known. Side arms drawn, they started down.
A small explosion startled Nobi out of his reverie. The breacher has begun his work on the roof access door. Howe and company roared right through. They rushed down stairs as quick as they can.
No opposition yet hmm.
Red team began to systematically clear the 10th floor. In the films at Coroscant theaters, commandos would be seen to barge in and clear each room. Not so with these guys. Howe used a silver looking canister to spray at the door edges. It's a fast hardening cement. If a room needn't to be cleared, they just sealed it with cement. Anybody who wants to come out, would take at least a couple of hours.
Nobi was with the Gold team. The lead man had a shotgun slung beneath his assault Verp. He fairly blew holes in the doors they encountered, instead of the more slow and traditional breaching charge method. "Gotta remember to get me one of those."
The assault train kept going down the stairs toward the security rooms,sealing the doors with cement as they went. They came to a slimy looking door marked in some strange language. The breacher motioned with his hands for Nobi to come forward. He tapped two fingers to his helmet, reduced it to one. Nobi understood, the universal sign for a quiet entry, he'd seen them in the arcade games often enough.
While in the corridor Howe is trading shots with the-force-knows-what alien mercenaries, their staccato blaster fire echoed with Red Team's silenced shots.
Nobi took a pocket sized box, covered with stickers from Coruscant comic books out. The breacher and assaulters stacked up on either side shook their heads in quiet dismay. He took out Min, his favorite disruptor, and held it over the door access port. He held out his fingers 3,2,1, and jabbed it in.
The door hissed open at once. Nobi now had the perfect opportunity to see the clones conduct a textbook perfect takedown. The first man goes right, the second man right behind him sweeps his Verp left to clear the room. The electronics are humming quietly.
All clear.
It's quiet.
Too quiet.
Howe came in from the corridor.
"It's your show sir. Disable the security systems, jam the doors…and" Howe never did finish his sentence.
A large swine looking creature swinging the largest axe Nobi has ever seen sprung out from the behind the chair with foam in its mouth. It's shriek almost ruptured Nobi's eardrums.
Before it could take a swing, the breacher blew the axe out with his shotgun. That didn't seem to slow the creature down at all. The clones fired their Verps at point blank range. They bounced of its thick skin. The breacher was thrown towards the wall, the rest of the team seeing that their rifles have no effect on the creature, extended their Vibroblates sheath in their gauntlets, and jumped on the mad creature.
Howe hung on its arm, and kept stabbing trying to find a weak spot. He was smashed against the console and chairs, but he hung on.
Nobi ran behind the creature.
"AHHHH!" screamed Nobi, and stuck the muzzle of his weapon point blank in the creatures head and pulled the trigger on full auto.
The head exploded like a watermelon.
Suddenly Nobi's stomach turned into an acid ball. He ran over to the corner and started retching, belching out the previous breakfast, lunch and dinner.
"Have a drink sir," it was the breacher, "that was real dikut."
Nobi still looked pale. "Thanks, uh……" Nobi glanced at a purple spraypaint graffiti on the breacher's armor, "Slug."
"Doc!" barked Howe, "Make sure everybody's REALLY okay. Nobi, sir, get cracking on the terminal. We don't have much time."
While doc ran his armor analyzer over every one, prescribing a few pain medications here and there, Nobi sat down at the strange console.
Back on the roof of Jabba's Palace.
"Target, heavy repeating blaster, 821 meters, push two left," whispered Sat into his helmet comlink. Sat was behind a spotting scope, basically a portable telescope with laser range finders and wind computers, calling out targets for Kayla.
Wham. The sound of a slug the size of warra nuts can, magnetically accelerated over 5 times the speed of sound, washed over Kayla.
"Hit, hit, hit," observed Sat.
Kayla and the roof security team were using oversized magnetic rail sniper rifles to pick off targets below. The palace itself is situated on a small hill, while the village below, popularly called Merc Ville, sits in the valley. To approach the palace one must cross a stone bridge, that is lined with shanty shacks, of the poor trying to sell their wares to the rich inside the palace. The whole village is a hive of the force-knows-what. Criminals, mercs, convicts, escaped or not, lived there to do Jaba's bidding.
Chink kink! The sound of Kayla cycling the oversized sniper rifle's bolt. "Call it out."
"No more targets on the bridge this time, Kay, I….down!" screamed Sat.
Wham, a huge explosion rocked just below their position.
"Target tank, beyond the ridge, range 1,850 meters, fire when ready," observed Sat.
Before Kayla could squeeze of another shot, the tank's heavy machine guns opened up on them. Everybody scrambled for cover, as thick lead poured around them. Kayla snuck a quick look.
"Sat, there's 6 tanks charging for us right now. The mercs are running behind them, using the tanks for cover. I don't have a shot. We can't let them cross the bridge to reinforce the palace. Howe's team will be clobbered on the inside, along with that newbie Jedi. "
Another wham! Three clones were down screaming, hit by shrapnel.
"Osik," muttered Sat, he accessed his radio control panel mounted on his arm. "Juliet six four, target grid square 1/24 requesting roba shells over."
"What's roba?" inquired Kayla.
"Radiation burst shells, from the Majestic, should knock the electronics of their tanks to osik."
The radio crackled, "………unable,……….reposition……….."
Another wham! This time the shells when high and detonated on flag pole above them.
"Sat you gotta get rid of that tank. It's killing us. Get those torrent fighters back to blast them! " yelled Kayla over the din noise. Never met a creative clone before.
Suddenly she heard Sat scream into his radio, "Lucy Lucy, need you on the bridge. We are on top of the palace I say again on top of the palace. Your targets are 6 brown tanks, 6 brown tanks on the bridge. Friendly position is marked by a flagpole on top of the palace. Requesting you strafe them. Acknowledge!"
For a second nobody could spot them. The Torrent pilots flew in low, up sun, on the deck.
The tank drivers never knew what hit them. The lead Torrent blasted them to oblivion.
"BDA is 100! 6 Tanks destroyed. Thanks guys," said Sat.
Suddenly a missile streaked out from one of the flimsy huts and struck the Torrent fighter right behind the ion engines. The heavy fighter began losing altitude and crashed into the dry river bed.
"No chute! I don't see no chute!" screamed one of the clones.
"They'll be more where that came from. That village, that whole village, ain't real Republic lovers, tell Howe he'd better hurry, or we'll be running out of ammo real soon." Kayla resumed her heavy sniping.
Back in the control room.
All right, just like old times. So much for the stand up, feel-the-force, do nothin' bad, steal nothin'bad jedi.
Howe was standing over his shoulder. "Unlock the cell blocks, should keep the guards busy, while we do our sneaky peaky," said Howe. His armor still caked by the monster's vaporized brain matter.
Nobi's fingers were a whirl on the keyboard, he was in his element, hacking, corrupting data. All in the name of good fun. "The doors are coming open, now!" said Nobi excitedly.
The clones crowded around the security cam monitors. The cell doors swung open.
But no prisoners come rushing out. Something was wrong.
"Hey where are the prisoners? The Hutts usually have thousands locked up in this place," observed Howe.
A big explosion knocked them of their feet.
The Hutt mercs are in the corridor. Howe's clones were holding them off. Suddenly there were big holes appearing in the wall. Somebody found themselves a heavy repeating machine blaster.
"Down!" screamed Howe, yanking Nobi down.
"Grenade!"
The raiding party all rolled away on the ground, as two grenades were lobbed towards them. The explosion lifted Slug a foot off the ground. Nobi hasn't noticed he's still busy typing away madly on the controls.
"My turn," said Slug. He undid his bandolier, and proceeded to pull out all the pins in the grenades. "Cover me!" Howe laid down a burst of Verp fire to keep the heads down. Slug tossed the whole bandolier down the hall. The mercs seeing that, were running wild, trying to get away from the ticking bandolier. Howe cooly picked them off. But there were more and more of them.
Nob was perplexed. He opened all the cell doors, peaked through all the security cams. Where are the prisoners? Have the dikut Hutt fed them all to his Rancor pet? But there's one door he couldn't hack open. It was a cell behind the Hutt's throne room.
"Hey Howe, take a look at this," said Nobi.
Howe waltzed over through the gunfire like nothing was going on.
"I've opened every cell door, and all the security doors on 3 levels. No prisoners. Wouldn't be the first time the dikut intel weenies get it wrong. I've also released the fire sprinklers on all level 'cept our level, cool eh? Make 'em wet."
Howe was flipping through his rifle's selector switch in a rhythmic click click. He was clearly getting impatient with this young pip squeak of a Jedi. "Your point?" asked Howe impatiently.
"If you stop that annoying click click, I'll come right to it. There is this one cell block right behind the Hutt's throne room. It has a manual lock, not connected to any system. An old fashioned Tate's rebarred iron lock with a key. And it's occupied."
"Your point?" Howe was getting impatient.
"Whoever is in that cell must be pretty important, for the Hutt to keep him isolated from the system like that."
The gunfire was picking up.
"Our mission objectives are to…. " Howe took a moment to realize that nobody had actually told him what the mission objectives were. He was just a Sergeant. A good one, but not an officer. This little Jedi here WAS the officer. And nobody had told him either.
"Look, Howe, this could the intelligence coup of the century. The Hutt's utmost secret," said Nobi.
Suddenly Howe relented. "We're going to need more men. The Hutt's throne room is on the second floor. There's only two access points. The veranda in front, and from the dungeons underneath. Both ways are no go. It's too heavily guarded. Unless…."
"Look, Sir, on the way in I spotted a large glass thing. They must let natural light in somehow right? So we rappel down on the outside walls, I blow the windows with charges, we lob some incendiaries in, should cause a commotion, we swing right through after that," said Slug.
"Slug, why does all your plans require an innately large amount of bombs and grenades?" asked Howe acidly.
"Well, I like things that go boom," said Slug deadpan.
"To the roof then, Slug you have the lead. If it's not screaming Republic blow it away. Nobi you're in the middle with Doc. We can't have our lovely officer scratch a fingernail. The rest of you men, you know the drill," barked Howe.
Howe's team burst on to the roof to find Sat crouched behind a ledge with a comlink to his ear, his broken helmet lay beside him.
"Danger close! Fire for effect! "
Nobi saw the clones all tuck in with the helmets against their chin. He was peering over the edge to see the village below.
"Dumbass get down!" a hand yanked him down.
At first it seemed like multiple lightning flashes, except that they were green. They came like fingers of an angry deity, streaking down. Where ever the beams touched, there was an enormous thunderclap explosion. Speeder bikes, huts, people and aliens all fell a like. Nobi could feel the shockwaves reaching him on the roof. The Majestic in low orbit was firing her canons in support of the raid.
"Check fire! Check fire! Nothing left to shoot, " Sat yelled into his comlink.
"Some Jedi," snickered Kayla. Then she turned to Howe, "What's up?"
"Our Jedi officer here wants to storm the Hutt throne room. Slug's idea was we rappel down and conduct an explosive forced entry from the roof. Some kind of locked up cell he wants to look at," replied Howe.
"Two days a Jedi and you're already starting to turn mystic on us," Kayla shook her head.
"Two days? I thought Jedi were trained from birth." Howe was a little shocked.
"Not this one," said Kayla.
"Sir?"
"Later Sergeant Howe, later, long story," Nobi was trying to shrug it off.
"And it's not Nobi, it's Noobs Bee, the infamous hacker kid who trashed the Republic Treasury system," revealed Kayla.
"I was trying to optimize it Kayla," said Nobi.
"Wow nice to meet you in person sir! Didn't know you were a Jedi. Your firewall suppression code was a beaut, and your Trojan? Don't get me started," Sat looked like he was about the fall to the ground and worship Nobi. The tight world of hackers, Nobi was on the top rung.
"Can it Sat," said Kayla, "but yeah, he's got a point. Why would you keep one cell nearby and isolated like that? Must be somebody real valuable."
Howe felt he had to take charge again. "Rope up men! We got a date with the evil Hutt."
Howe and his team plus Sat and Kayla, tied the rappelling gear which looked like a cigar folding out to a flower petal.
The ALC harness made it easy. They could just walk down the walls vertical. All of the clone assaulters had small handheld blasters out.
The view was breathtaking, the smoking city and a 2 kilometer cliff below them.
They said help the weak, feed the poor, nothing about hanging by a thin rope over 800 meters of nothingness. Nobi was getting slightly scared.
They walked down the walls slowly, and deliberately, trying not to make a sound. Suddenly Howe held up a fist. Everybody went motionless. Howe then, in a show of great climbing skills, went inverted, and crawled down the last few meters, to peer down the giant glass window.
Nobi strained to look. Howe flipped himself up right and made a series of confusing hand gestures, indicating the enemy and room positions. Everybody nodded, except Nobi. Then Slug went inverted and began his deadly work. He placed a long line of Det Cord along the edges, and stuck a big satchel charge right above the frame, for extra shock effect. The Det Cord would unhinge the glass and the satchel charge would blow the fragments right into the room. After five agonizing minutes, Slug swung back up and gave a thumbs up.
Slug made a fist. Everybody froze. He tapped his grenade pouch and pointed to everybody. The clones began passing their flash grenades to Slug. He then wrapped it in duct tape, all together 12 of
them into one big ball, and passed the Howe. Howe seemed to like the contraption immensely. Nobi could feel the man was actually smiling beneath his helmet.
The Howe started their count down over the comlink.
"Stand by, Stand by, in 3, 2,"
Nobi never got to hear the one. Slug twisted the handle on his H-204 remote box, or more popularly known as the Hell Box. It was a fitting name. The frame charges blew first. The glass now stood without support, then the satchel charge blew, sending the deadly fragments at supersonic speed into the room. The ringing hasn't stopped in Nobi's ear, when Howe went inverted, pulled the pin on his deadly gift and tossed the whole package inside.
What followed was right up there with a super nova. The magnesium lined grenades produced a brightness the rivaled the sun, Howe has just tossed in a dozen. Any unprotected eye would have the retinas burned out of their socket.
Nobi gripped his SA-15 compact assault rifle harder, this is it. When Doc grabbed his arm and shook his head. Howe had told the Doc that Nobi were going to wait hanging up here with him, until the baddies were taken cared off. Nobi was disappointed.
Howe and his team swung through the broken window. Nobi looked to the right and saw Kayla, with her oversized sniper rifle, swung down with him.
Nobi heard two shotgun blasts, and the all hell broke loose. There was more gunfire than Nobi has ever heard in all his life. The rhythmic tones of repeating blasters, the smaller clack of projectile launchers, the occasion woosh of a rocket launcher. Since the clones' Verp rifles did not make a sound, it was difficult to keep the score by listening alone. It seemed to him that the gunfire, is being silenced one by one. Then the distinctive sound of Kayla's magnetically accelerated sniper rifle roared, answered by another frenzy of shooting, then all was silent.
Doc nodded in his helmet, and gave Nobi a thumbs up. Nobi swung down to the window after him. His feet landed on some shards of glass. On a second look, the glass was black, burned by the superheated air blast of the explosion.
The scene was a complete mess. What was once a Hutt throne room, looked like a tornado has swept through it. No furniture was without holes, no table was left upturned. And there were 60-70 moaning, groaning bodies of various species. Nobi glanced over to see Sat putting a Verp round in each one of them.
"Rule number 33, always make sure they're dead," shrugged Doc.
"After they were blinded, the dikuts were shooting each other blind," said Slug jovially. "All we had to do was duck," he chuckled. "When they realized they're killing each other, they stopped
shooting. Smart, but not enough. Then our Republic Intel agent friend fired a shot, a single shot. Then they opened up on each other again. Ducking, great weapon," observed Slug.
Sat was finished with his grim duty and was bending over a door behind the Hutt throne. "It's a triple cipher lock, never seen one of these before."
"Enter the wrong code three times, and it goes into auto lock down for 24 hours, yeah I know. You can crack it, but it's gonna take a while to compute the permutations," said Nobi. Sat was treating every word from Nobi as divine.
"So we need a password," said Howe. Suddenly Howe kicked the brown mass the Nobi first thought was some weird sofa from Utapau. "I know you're not dead. I'm here to make sure,"
A deep rumbling voice.
Ho Ho Ho. The mighty Jedai. Come into my home. Ho Ho Ho. Your clone pets too, ho ho ho.
Nobi suddenly confronted with this creature who ran protection rackets, prostitution, drugs trafficking, and a lot other bad stuff, suddenly felt very small.
"What is the password?" he asked in a shaky voice.
Ho Ho Ho, they run out of Jedai? They send children now.
"Answer the Jedi!" yelled Howe, and put his boot down on the Hutt's long tail.
OHWG! We Hutts can withstand a lot of pain, that method does not work with my kind. Ho Ho Ho.
"Doc! Bring the judge. We don't have a lot of time," bellowed Howe.
Doc walked over with the biggest syringe Nobi has ever seen in his entire life. It was a foot in length, that was only the needle. It was filled with some clear liquid Nobi couldn't decipher.
Ho Ho Ho, truth serum won't work with me, Ho Ho Ho.
"It's not truth serum," said Howe. "It's water from your public 'freshers."
The Hutt's eyes went wide as a dinner plate. If there was one thing Hutts were afraid off, this was it.
."You know, all your guests, your mercs, they eat your good food, gotta dump it somewhere. Imagine all that microorganisms, all those cutey little germs eating you up from the inside. Oh you're gonna live, it's not gonna be pleasant though. So what's the password?" asked Howe pleasantly.
Howe stuck the syringe in the Hutt's tail, green slimey blood sputtered out.
You Jedai. You cannot do this. Love, peace, you Jedai!
Nobi said nothing.
Howe started to plunge the needle.
I don't know.
The syringe is now down halfway.
You fools just shot the jailer. He knows the code.
Everybody stopped to look around the corpses.
"Oh what the hell, life's short," chuckled Howe, and continue to plunge the needle.
"Cover, everybody! Cover!" screamed Kayla.
There was a mad scramble. Now everybody was taking cover behind the Hutt's wide throne. There were footsteps, it grew louder and louder. Sounded like an army. The Hutt's reinforcement has finally arrived.
A scaly Transdoshan with a nasty looking submachine gun mumbled something to the effect of You are surrounded.
Wham. Kayla shot him dead where he stand.
Don't shoot! Fools Don't shoot! You will hit me, not them.
The Hutt screamed, caught in the cross fire.
The mercs were thinking, should they save this creature, their hideous boss, or should they take their luck with the new one. They decided with the latter, and opened fire with everything they got.
"This sucks! Men, use the Hutt as cover they won't shoot at him!" yelled Howe.
Just then the Hutt slumped over dead.
"Crap! There goes our cover!" said Slug who was in the middle changing magazines.
"No! Crap! There goes our code!" screamed Sat over the gunfire.
"Nobi can you get the door open?" asked Howe.
"Not this week Sergeant," said Nobi, frantically trying to clear his jammed weapon.
Howe looked around; they were not a good situation. The assaulters relied upon speed and surprise to overwhelm their foes, but this was turning out into an evenly matched gunfight, the worst
kind of situation. He had 5 of the best assaulters in the galaxy, plus a sniper, and a Jedi, but it will all be worthless if he couldn't get the damn door open and flank the enemy.
"Osik!" cursed Howe. He looked around and spotted a statue of some scaly Transdoshan war hero hanging to one side off the now dead Hutt's throne. "Kayla, full cover! Slug you're with me!"
Kayla raised to her full profile and head shot two mercs in rapid succession. Sat was firing on full automatic, sweeping the mercs' position with a hail storm of projectiles.
"Try aiming," said Doc, "it helps." Sat didn't hear him.
Howe and Slug ran full speed to the statue. Howe tried to move it, but the head was fixed to the ceiling. Slug read his mind, and blew off the head of with the shotgun mounted under his rifle.
The Transdoshans were enraged, and were preparing for an all out charge. How dare the test tube clones desecrate their holy leader like that. The charge was over before it began as Nobi picked off the leaders before they could run three steps.
"Smoke! I need smoke!" screamed Howe. Sat tossed two black smoke grenades from his position behind the dead Hutt. Thick black smoke belched from the grenades.
Now they had some cover. Howe and Slug dragged the statue over.
"Sergeant, this ain't a good time for souvenirs," said Kayla as she was snapping on a thermal scope to her sniper rifle, to see through the smoke.
"So much for hi-tech slice and dice three wrong codes and it locks. Let's do this the old fashioned way. Doc, Sat help me out. We're going to use this as a battering ram. I saw it in a holovid."
Kayla and Nobi looked each other. Clones LOVED holovid serials.
"Kayla, Nobi, you two are going to have to cover us, we need all the big muscle we can get," said Howe. The clones began stripping their ammo pouches, grenades, and rifles off and tossing them to Kayla and Nobi. The two would have to hold off the invading horde. 30 against 2.
Kayla glanced at Nobi gauging for reactions. The kid was scared, but he wasn't about to back down. "Okay, Howe, on my mark, three, two, one go go go!"
Nobi tossed 2 grenades in rapid succession, while Kayla swept the area with automatic gunfire from Howe's Verp.
Howe and his party rammed the statue in the steel door. It made a dent.
"Heave ho!"
They rammed it again, and again.
Kayla's Verp jammed again. "Osik!" she switched to her handheld blaster. They were beginning to work in rhythm. One would provide covering fire, while one would be reloading.
Nobi concentrated first on moving targets. But pretty soon he realized that accurate fire was coming from the non moving targets! The running guys can't hit anything, the guys who take their time to aim, those are the dangerous ones.
Slam! "Put your backs into it," commanded Howe. A hole, the size of a trash ball was beginning to emerge.
One merc tried to flank them, but Nobi shot him before he could get anywhere. "Loading!" yelled Nobi to let Kayla know that he's reloading. Pop the magazine release, slam in a new clip, press the bolt release button. Piece of cake, 'cept for all these guys trying to kill me.
Kayla dumped her sniper rifle, as was using Slug's shotgun. It made a deafening roar, while the slugs tore heads and limbs right off the owner.
Then Slug landed right next to Nobi along with Howe's team. Panting, hard, he said, "Sir, we made a hole, around your size. You're our smallest team member. I think you can fit in. Here these are shaped charges, crawl inside, and place them on the hinges. They will blow outwards, you should be quite safe."
Nobi had the imagination off being stuck in the door, with mercs shooting his butt off. Okay, he had to run to the door without being shot, wriggle through the hole, go face to face with the force-knows-what inside, place the charges, blow the locks. Yeah, real simple.
"Look I'll go, he's just a kid," said Kayla, stripping off her web gear.
"No. I'll go, I'm a Jedi, I'm bulletproof," said with determination.
Kayla started to say something profane.
Nobi stripped off his helmet that Howe insists he wear, his ammo pouch, his backup blaster, his hacking tools emblazoned with comic characters, and finally his Jedi coat. Only two days old, and it looked so old, soaked with sweat and grime.
"Sir, here's a flare, it's gonna be dark in there. When you get in, twist and pull the top," said Sat helpfully.
"Twist and pull," Nobi was scared. But he was the officer, the Jedi, a Jedi knows no fear. But somehow, Nobi was full of it right now.
The gun fire was overwhelming, the mercs has stopped flanking tactics, they were just pouring lead on.
"Hey Howe!"
"Yes Nobi?"
"Cover me," they both laughed out loud, knowing that was impossible.
"Suppression fire!" ordered Howe. The whole team opened up with everything they got.
Nobi ran with all his might to the door. Bullets and blasters splattered behind him as he ran. Now that he saw the hole. How am I gonna fit through that? Nobi tossed the soap bar like explosives, and flare in first, then he wedged himself in the hold. He could feel the hot ion blasts of blaster zinging by his exposed butt.
Sat was past aiming, he was just burning through magazines on full automatic. The laws of probability guarantee he had to hit something. They had to keep the fire off Nobi.
By now Nobi had wriggled half of his body through. But his waist was stuck. Dikut, gotta lay off those nerf strips. Then he realized, what a funny thing that is. One more squeeze, AHHH the force is with me, and he was through.
The room felt dry and cold, not like a prison at all. Nobi swept his hands on the ground, ah yes, found the explosives, but where was his flare? With a great concentration he kept his imagination of Jedi eating Rancor monsters lurking in the darkness in check.
Nobi screamed through the hole in the door, "Give me a…" a blaster ricochet, rung against the door. Osik. They can't hear me through the gunfire. I am going to be shot if I stick my head through. Damn, where's my com link? In the helmet .Great
Nobi felt his way around the door, ah yes, there's the hinge. He put the rubber like explosives on them. One hinge, two hinge. Three hinge.
Back outside.
"Slug," asked Howe over the mayhem, "got anymore grenades?"
There was a muted explosion. Howe turned to look at the steel door.
"You dikut! You didn't pack enough charge!" screamed Howe.
"Wait and see," said Slug smugly.
The heavy steel door slow tipped over and fell with a big bang, there stood Nobi, all blackened from head to toe from the explosion, his clothes were torn, his hair was zinged, but was he was there smiling.
"Alright let's move!" ordered Howe. Each man covered each other as they ran into the door. The mercs saw this chance and began their desperate charge. Howe stood outside the corridor covering everybody as they ran, after a head count, he and Slug hauled the door back up and sealed it with the spray can cement they had used earlier.
The assaulters' helmet mounted spot lamps casted an eerie glow on the room.
It was that dark.
"Sarge, I think I found the power switch," said Sat.
"Why do you think that?" asked Howe, still panting hard after their ordeal.
"It says power on the box," came the smartass answer.
Suddenly they could hear the turbine generators spinning up, the room was slowly lit up. To everybody's shock, it was a very large room, all coated in white paint, spotlessly clean, it was without a question of a doubt, Kaminoian interior, that all the clones know so well.
"This is getting freaky," said Slug, "reminds me of home." For once, no one could argue with him.
Further down the room, they were work tables, with computer systems for crunching DNA data. Test tubes, scopes. It was a small sized genetics lab.
Kayla, noticed on further inspections, there were chairs with restraints, holding cells. What in the force was going on in this place? What kind of monsters are they breeding?
As everybody fanned out, to explore, Nobi noticed a big steel cylinder with a maze of wires and hose plugged into it. Its surface was made of some unidentifiable plastic. Nobi put his hand to touch it.
Suddenly he felt a surge of energy through the force, so strong, flowing right into his veins. With a voice, a voice saying something.
"As I was saying, the Hutts and the Kaminoians illegal exporting cloning technology, the chancellor is going to have a fit," said Kayla.
They all turned to see Nobi banging on the cylinder. "Hello? Are you in there? Knock back if you can hear me."
"Sir, why don't you have a drink, it's been a rough couple of days," said a concerned Howe.
"Howe! There is somebody inside thing. Help me get it open," ordered Nobi. He was brooking no arguments for this one.
"Sat, Slug! See if you can find some kind of switch. To open this thing," barked Howe, always the Sergeant. The kid had proved to him and his men, that he was not afraid to put his life on the line, by wiggling through the door with his butt getting shot at.
The mercs were trying to get through the door, but the cement was holding.
Nobi was probing around the cylinder, the same strong force flowing through him. Then the cylinder popped with a hiss. It unfolded like a flower to reveal a……. a woman with long flowing green hair. Tied up in a straight jacket.
When she opened her eyes, it was blood red. Nobi removed the torture gag from her and cut her arms free.
Upon closer inspection, she was a very beautiful woman, a bit older than Nobi. Nobi was 16. She looked back at him with those blood red eyes, where the whites are supposed to be. Nobi found himself lost for words.
Out of nowhere, Kayla pointed a gun at her. "Careful Nobi, I saw all these restraints, if she wasn't dangerous why would they lock her up so tight like that?"
"Back off Kayla!" argued Nobi. "Look she's probably part of some freaky Kaminoian, Hutt experiment. I don't know what those bums did to her, we're getting her out."
Suddenly the woman raised herself to her full height, she was as tall as the clone commandos. She was very very fit and muscular. She was a lot taller than Nobi for sure. More rifle safeties clicked off.
"Stand down Sergeant!" ordered Nobi. "All of you, stand down!"
After a moment, "At ease men," echoed Howe. The clones relaxed a little.
Nobi turned to the woman, "Sorry about that, they can get pretty jumpy sometimes. Hi I'm Nobi. Jedi, Paddawan, of the eh, Jedi Order," Why was he blabbering anyway? "Please to meet you, please to rescue you."
Nobi could feel Kayla and the clones rolling their eyes.
Her eyes soften, "Uh, nice to meet you too. Uh my name is……. Uh I don't know my name. Strange that I don't, " she said, all childish cuteness.
"I hate to spoil the moment for you guys," interrupted Sat, "But the rest of the assault force is now extracting, and I saw a doorway down the hall, that says emergency exit."
"Count on Sat to look for exits, Fleet people," snickered Slug.
"Look," argued Kayla, "we don't even know she's a human or some strange genetics contraption, a virus carrier, or something weird."
"Can it Kayla, we're going. Sergeant Howe, Sat, scout out the exit, Slug rig a trap for the door, see if we can discourage the mercs not to follow us."
The clones were impressed, first he braved getting shot in the butt, now he's acting like a real officer for a change.
Nobi gave the red eyed woman a wink. She gave him back an innocent smile.
Nobi watched Slug, the explosives expert do his handiwork. "You see commander, traps for the most part work on a psychological level," said Slug, as if telling a bed time story. "You set up one off, you destroy the morale of the guys following you. Everybody is afraid to move one step." Nobi observed Slug strung up a cable that leads to the pin of a sonic grenade, he set it at eye level. "Everybody looks for something to trip, nobody ever looks straight ahead when looking for traps," explained Slug.
"Alright let's move. Doc you take her, Slug, bring up the rear."
The whole assault train moved forward through the emergency exit. The exit leads to an underground tunnel. Howe reported that he doesn't see the end in sight, but it's a better alternative than having to fight through the mercs again.
They heard a muted explosion behind them. Somebody has set off the first trap. The whole team naturally quickened their pace.
"Doc you got some water?" asked Nobi, "lost mine somewhere."
Doc tossed him a full canteen. Before he could take a pull, he noticed the red eyed woman looking teary eyed at him, he handed the canteen over to her without preamble.
She accepted the canteen with a smile, and drank the whole thing in one gulp. "Never had water so long," she stammered. "Thank you Mister," she paused, "Nobi."
Suddenly Sat's head jerked up. "Sergeant Howe, command just broadcasted that that a massive formation of Sep droid tanks has just appeared out of nowhere. It's headed right for the palace. It's a hole army group, complete with air support, everything. Republic forces are pulling out. They must want this place bad."
"Or specifically, our red eyed friend," observed Kayla.
"Don't matter, we're still getting out of here," replied Howe. "Sat tell command to get us a gun ship for extraction, where ever this tunnel leads.
"Can't broadcast in here Sarge. No signal. We can receive over the low frequencies command net though," said Sat.
Another explosion, somebody hit another trap.
They all ran, hard.