Dantooine had been great, once. Rex could feel it in the ground.
"Send scouts up the ridge," Anakin said, and the clone captain nodded her helmeted head toward him. The woman who had accompanied his military campaigns since the formation of the 501st saluted and turned away toward her troopers. The clones stood in rigid lines that waved with the foothills, all predatory back-swept masks and black guns in hand.
Dantooine had a Jedi enclave once, and maybe that was why the Separatists had landed droids here for a fight or a feint, Rex thought. The space lanes were desirable too, pointing the clankers in a neat line toward Coruscant. The Force felt impatient, distorting his priorities and drawing his eyes to the horizon. Part of his mind expected to see skylines there, but instead caught only the empty plain.
Fresh from Christophsis, Rex was not used to fighting an enemy he couldn't sense except as a general feeling of malice. Yellow-green grass grew out of dark brown dirt for as far as he could see, punctuated with outcroppings of rock or small stands of trees with bulbous trunks. Someone could hide in those trunks, if they needed to in a war. Jedi students could climb inside, using lightsabers to cut into the damp, richly scented bark and through. Jedi students could have died on this plain and fertilized the grass, leaving portents, green patches scattered like tea leaves in the bottom of a cup.
Anakin could sense it too, but he wasn't telling.
Some of the clones crested the first hill. Their montrals, sheathed in starship-grade transparisteel, would be able to sense the dimensions of the droid enemy even before their HUD-enhanced vision gave them line of sight magnification. This was, Rex and the other Jedi had been told, one of the reasons why Togruta were genetically suited for use as clone soldiers. Master Obi-Wan, who now stood beside the two other Jedi on the plain (old Dantooine dead waiting for new Dantooine scrap), still seemed cold toward the clones, although he had been assigned his own captain and battle group.
Wind blew Master Kenobi's tabard tails and Anakin's ragged hair, smacked Rex's yellow-dyed Padawan braid against his cheek and then back against his shaved head.
"Will we be advancing too?" Rex asked, hoping for a more complete look at the lay of the land.
His new Master looked down at him. Anakin's arms were crossed inside his muddy-colored robes. "Yes. She'll probably order a group of the clone troopers to move forward to the north. We'll come around from the south."
Rex nodded. On the hillside, the scouts had disappeared over the ridge.
"This is the calm before the storm," Obi-Wan said sharply.
There's always a storm with Anakin, Rex thought just as Anakin replied. Or maybe Obi-Wan had sensed the planet's distress too, had started to form someone else's escape plans.
"That's nothing new." He smiled distantly, eyes fixed on the hillside. He could probably feel the clones returning; Rex thought he sensed the martial flicker of a group so intertwined as to feel like one person.
"We'll get some caf at the Temple after," Rex said.
Obi-Wan nodded with approval that surprised Rex. Acknowledgement was rare from Anakin's Master: knowing him now as an unattached general, Rex always thought of Kenobi as intentionally unflappable.
"I like how you think," Obi-Wan said.
"I taught him that," Anakin said, chuffed.
"No you didn't. He's far too law-abiding."
"I'm right here," Rex said, in on the joke.
It helped to just talk, to distract himself from the battle that was about to begin and the one that had been over thousands of years ago.
Anakin said, "Waiting for the rain with the rest of us."
The scouts returned over the hill and joined the lines of clones. Rex could just barely see them talking to the captain at the front of the group. Then the captain moved back toward the Jedi, walking fast with heel-toe strides that devoured the ground. No wonder the Republic had chosen Togruta for its clone army: when they wanted to, they could make a casual walk look like they were on their way to destroy something.
"Three tanks," the captain reported to Anakin immediately, meeting his eyes from almost the same height. With the montrals included, she overshadowed him. "We'll be able to take that with minimal loss, as long as we have Jedi support."
"If there are tanks and an army, where are the carriers and the lander, Captain Tano?" Obi-Wan said. He quirked an eyebrow, looking quizzically toward the north as if the droids were a disappointing student.
"Moved to the west," Tano said. "The Marshall Commander has an eye on a second group there."
Anakin nodded.
Tano said, "Go around on the plains, cut them off from that way. We'll take the hill."
"Just what I was going to suggest," said Anakin, truthfully; Rex wondered whether it was strange that the clones consulted their general on such matters, but did not know. The captain had the military experience, after al, fed to her during an accelerated childhood on Kamino: the Jedi had only read about war. Rex wondered whether Anakin had studied more than his own class had had to, whether or not he counted his own interest in military history. It was an untouchable era for the Jedi, the days of the massive battles, and while Rex did not pine - he was not imaginative - he felt the war around him like a rather interesting rumor.
"Have you radioed up to the command ship?" Obi-Wan asked.
"Cody's giving us the support up there," Anakin said as if the older Jedi didn't know it. "You want to ask her? Clearing this area was our objective."
"That was before we knew they split into two groups."
"We've got to get rid of all of them either way," Anakin said.
Obi-Wan shrugged. "If they don't know where to find us, it's your fault."
"If they don't know where to find us, Rex's homing beacon will. Right?" Anakin smiled at the clone.
"That's right," she said calmly.
The Jedi flanked the army at a jog.
The three AATs were rounded hillsides in a straight line. The battle started like a living thing, a breath as hundreds of feet started to move on the loose, rich dirt. Rex ran with his lightsaber held low near his right leg, not active yet.
Anakin activated his own lightsaber when they were within sight of the first tank. The droids in the nearest column were turning to look at the Jedi, muttering prissy and nervous, even as the two armies engaged. The front lines began to splinter, droids in the back shuffling into new configurations. Rex could sense the clones, a heightened calm clarity massing to the east.
"Pick off the guards around the edges," Anakin said quietly. A myriad of noises, including both the whirr and prattle of the battle droids and the hum of Anakin's lightsaber, made the words difficult to tell apart. They were there in the Force, though, infusing their Master-Padawan bond with the idea, almost a foretelling, that Rex should circle around the back of the tanks. In his head he killed small droids, cartoonish but sharp-edged versions of the real ones bristling with blasters at his right.
Anakin leapt onto the top hatch of the first tank and drove his lightsaber into the lock. Beneath him, the engine turned and kicked the tank into roaring movement. As Obi-Wan broke into a run ahead of Rex, more droids dropped from their positions at the tank's handholds. Anakin tottered and wrenched his saber backward, drawing a laborious line through the hatch and, skewering the droid underneath with a juddering slash. Rex faced the six droids that had been clinging to the sides of the tank.
He lit his lightsaber. Over the top of the blue blade he saw Anakin catapult himself from the higher hatch to the lower, flipping once in the air before coming down and driving his lightsaber into the lock.
Rex took two droids apart with a combination lifted right from class, a low stab spinning into a loop up and a slash across. Beyond the fading figure eight of the light trail, he saw Obi-Wan stop just behind the second tank and rattle it with one Force push just as the exterior droids were starting to scramble to the ground. Before they could fire, Obi-Wan pushed again, both hands at the level of his hunched shoulders, the three fingers of his right hand spread while two still gripped the lightsaber. The tank lurched forward into the skirmish line ahead of it, colliding with droids.
Clone fire was beginning to sound closer to Rex, chain guns cycling and blaster bolts whining. The second and third tanks began to fire too, though, loosing slug shells that sent up plumes of dirt behind the Republic lines.
Anakin's tank was smoking and listing, Obi-Wan's still firing while the Jedi Master methodically crushed its sides in from a meter away. Another duo of droids appeared behind Rex. He stabbed one through before the other could fire, narrowly missing his left sleeve. He caught another shot that went wide, ducked and spun on one foot to bring the lightsaber around and cut the legs out from under the droid.
It fired again on the way down, close enough that he felt heat on the top of his head. When he stabbed it he pushed nearly almost all of his weight onto the lightsaber hilt, pressing it against his collarbone and driving the blade into the ground through the droid's chassis. His breathless anger surprised him, and when an explosion from behind kicked dirt up around him and set his ears ringing, he jumped aside in fear and anger, shoulders tensing as he waited for another shot to come from behind.
He spun to look and sucked in a deep breath at the same time, Jedi mantras flashing through his mind almost too fast for the words to register. His awareness widened, had only been tunnel visioned for a split second. Things happened fast but one at a time, neatly, and he saw how they were all connected so tightly to each other:
Anakin, cutting into an arm of the droid squad that had reached out toward him, surrounding the debilitated tank. Obi-Wan, chasing down a tank not yet dead while more droids swarmed him, driving him further into the thick of the battle. Rank-blazed clones holding together ragged columns. And Tano -
She had a DC-17 in each hand, and pointed them over his head. He turned to follow her line of sight and saw Obi-Wan's tank turned over on its side, a tan wall blocking out the view of both Jedi generals. A droid was still inside, and firing. The sideways cannon blasted another shell out onto a battlefield becoming more sparse and fierce. The disciplined lines of fighters had broken off into vicious little skirmishes, wounded clones shooting one-handed while droids ganged up on them in nervous clusters, or smaller groups of clones advancing in even lines, still progressing slowly in box formations against ever-weakening droids. Anakin, all cold calm, was alive and working his way toward the fight's perimeter in the opposite direction from Rex's tank.
The third tank was untouched, and its pilot had decided to enter the battle at a different angle: it was hauling itself around to point the cannon at Rex. He caught a deep breath too vivid with the smell of cut grass and smoke. Another squad of droids swarmed him, and he deflected blaster bolts back while Tano took his six.
"Suggestion, sir?" she said.
"Go ahead, captain." Her blastershots, distorted by the lightsaber buzz in front of him as he shielded himself, sounded like the shriek of an animal.
"Get to that pilot and shoot the other tank."
Rex ducked a flurry of blaster bolts that seemed to fly by his head slowly. He was in the rhythm of it now, the Force flowing under his skin and into the dirt. Tano hadn't been hit. "I don't think that was part of Master Skywalker's plan."
"Rex, you're going to have to learn to trust me."
The toppled tank had started to smoke, while the third one had wheeled around. As Rex bounced another three blaster bolts back to their owners with quick flicks of his lightsaber, the tank moved close enough to drop its shadow over him, the smell of the engine overwhelming him. It moved closer, trying to drive him between the two as if between two walls.
Rex flipped up and backward. His first leap didn't take him as far as Anakin's; instead, he teetered on the side of a handhold, watching Tano blast at the underside of the second tank. He looked up and jumped again, and set himself down on the smaller, higher hatch. He stabbed his lightsaber in two-handed, just as Anakin had done, and slammed the hatch open with the Force. He looked down on the droid commander's head, dimply aware of Anakin and Master Kenobi fighting in the distance.
"What?" The droid looked up. Rex flicked his lightsaber through its neck, careful not to touch the controls. He hauled the scrap out by its shoulder, pushing it with the Force the last few inches because the weight had started to pull at his shoulder. The droid clattered down the side of the tank, and he swung down into the seat.
The gunner kept firing as he turned the tank around. He wasn't sure whether he would be able to hear when it caught on, but the red and green controls in front of him clearly corresponded to the weaponry. One flashed each time the cannon rang out, aiming for more clones. The tank turned. He stabbed the button, sending off friendly fire warnings and possibly a thousand digital protests he couldn't detect. Controls designed for droids were simple and unmarked.
The gunner whined audibly through a speaker. "No, no, no!"
The shell tore into the underside of the tank and opened up an orange-edged canyon in its inner workings. Rex could see the gunner's feet dangling. He fired again to destroy the nose. When the smoke cleared it was a spiky hunk of black metal, the droid buried somewhere inside.
Rex cut the engine, drew his lightsaber and activated the blade a centimeter away from the console. The gunner's protests stopped as the comm burnt.
He climbed out of the hatch and immediately caught movement below and to his left: Tano, pouring blasterfire into the lock of the hatch. She stamped down hard with her heel, and he saw metal pieces fly off, spattering harmlessly against her helmet. The next kick got through. The gunner droid was ready, popping out with a hold-out blaster. As Rex swung down, Tano shot it through the chest.
"Thanks," he said. "I had most of them."
"You did okay, kid." He could hear the smile in her voice.
The battle wasn't over after the tanks had been taken out. Anakin jumped over the ruins of the second tank, his clothes flapping with each Force-assisted leap, and waved at both Padawan and captain.
"They're curling around to the west."
"Kriffing clankers probably want to rejoin the main group," Tano said, and slid down the tank's side with only a bit less grace than the Jedi, grabbing a handhold once to slow her descent.
"If they dig in there we'll just have to rout them out again so that they don't get a foothold," she said, her tone choppy but not winded. A droid careened into her range and she shot two bolts into its head, disintegrating the control box. Rex steadied his own breath and blinked away spots in his vision from looking too closely at the lightsaber, thinking of Jedi meditation. In for the count of seven, out for the count of seven. The breath enabled everything else.
"Then we go there next," Master Kenobi said.
The rest was a dangerous cleanup. Rex fought beside Anakin, his Master's lightsaber flashing in erratic arcs out of the corner of his eye. When the area was cleared Obi-Wan joined them, pawing loose strands of his hair away from his eyes.
The clones overwhelmed the survivors. Rex watched one woman shoot a droid that had fallen on the ground, the mouth of her blaster almost touching the dirt. Grass had been torn and earth raked up. He squinted while he rubbed dirt from his eye, and the world became a blotchy painting of white figures on a brown field, slow scavengers picking at the bones as birds began to circle above, a flat blur of the earth and the creatures on the earth.
They took off for the second site at a run, Tano's headtails shifting slightly as she ran but weighed down by the armor.
Obi-Wan turned to glance at Obi-Wan. "I've told Cody we're moving on."
"And she's perfectly happy with us getting rid of these clankers, isn't she, Master?"
"She is," Obi-Wan said, not so much resigned as amused. His face fell afterward, though, and Rex thought he finally understood what Jedi meant when they said they weren't suited to war. Obi-Wan over-thought communication sometimes, but never strategy.
Tano was a funny match for Anakin in that she usually agreed with him, Rex thought. On cue, she said, "We'll offer her some of that caf your apprentice mentioned."
Her creativity in combat wasn't something bred in the clones, although perhaps their bounty hunter template had had some of it in her nature. Tano had tended to go her own way before. Anakin didn't mind, while Obi-Wan scoffed at it. Rex's opinions leaned toward Obi-Wan's, but to be a good warrior - no, a fighter but never a warrior, isn't that what Master Yoda said? - one had to know when improvisation was best. Tano had once told him that ingenuity could trump experience, and Rex didn't yet have the experience to know whether it was true. He knew when a battle had been won, though. He could feel it in the air, the Force prickling to the west but settling here, dew over grass.
Dantooine would be great and forgotten and great again, Rex thought. He felt it in the Force and in the torn ground. Ahead of him, the sound of droid footsteps was a buzz in the distance, like a groan before the dam breaks. Something that had been and something still to come.