Chapter 2

(Alderaan, 22 BBY)

He didn't even know how he landed all he remembered was that he did and was now helping Marcus whose foot got stuck in between two branches. It took a few minutes for the branch to loosen under Razer's swings but when it finally did Marcus let out a growl of pain as he hit the ground full on. Luckily for him he fell less than a meter otherwise he might've actually sustained injuries.

"Thanks," Marcus said as he was dusting himself off.

"Don't mention it," Razer said putting his knife back in its sheath while scanning the area for hostiles. "Have you seen where the other guys landed?"

"No. This orchard's way bigger than it looked in the holo," Marcus said. He picked his weapon off the floor and checked it. A soldier's worst nightmare was a broken weapon.

"Guess we'll have to find them later. For now let's focus on finding that jammer. Do you have the EMPs?"

He opened one of the pouches on his vest and brought out the EMP grenade. "I have one. I gave the other to Flash," he said handing it to Razer. In normal circumstances they could've contacted the other squad members over their comms but due to the jammer they were unable to do so.

Razer exchanged a thermal detonator for the EMP. "Keep low and quiet." Marcus nodded, and they began to make their way further into the orchard.

It only took them a minute to find the first delinquents – two Weequays dressed in ragged clothing with old and rusty blaster rifles slung over their shoulders as they tore down and apple each.

"I'm gonna take the one on the left, you get the other," Razer ordered. Marcus immediately began moving farther to the right in order to flank them while Razer headed into the other direction. Due to the lamp that was the pirates placed on the ground they couldn't get too close before attacking which presented them with a problem – if they were too slow once they attacked the pirates could shoot and jeopardize the whole mission so they had to be quick.

Razer got as close as he could and waited for Marcus to do the same. Luckily for the latter his area was covered in thick bushes that were much closer to their targets. So, when Marcus popped out of the bush and grabbed the Weequay Razer had to get up and cover a distance of fifteen meters in a blink of an eye. Luckily he did so, grabbing the other Weequay from behind and slitting its throat. They dragged the bodies into the bushes and extinguished the lantern.

"You see that?" Marcus asked, looking over the bushes. Razer looked where he was looking and spotted a line of lights in the distance.

"Must be a path or something. Let's check it out it might lead us to the jammer," Razer said. He cleaned his knife before they headed out towards the lights.

Razer turned out to be right. It seemed like the stone paved path led covered a straight line through the entire orchard. They heard distant mumbling, so they hid behind the trees and waited. Another Weequay patrol walked down the path. Marcus already had his knife out ready to attack. Just as he was about to jump out Razer pulled him back. "Wait." They both looked over at the Weequay patrol as two men jumped out from the darkness of the trees and bushes on the other side of the path. The two pirates met the same fate as their colleagues as they were quickly disposed off. The two figures dressed in black began dragging the bodies into the bushes when Razer let out a whistle – not too loud as too attract much attention but not quit enough for them to not hear it.

The two immediately dropped the bodies and raised their rifles. Razer began slowly rising from the bush with his hands in the air. After they realized they were aiming at friendlies they immediately lowered their blaster rifles and dragged the bodies into the bushes before joining Razer and Marcus on the other side of the pathway.

"Rommy, Sage," Razer greeted them. "Have you seen any of the others?"

"No, but we found a couple of fuel canisters with some signs of struggle. I don't know who it was but they've been captured," Rommy reported.

"Just great," Marcus said under his breath.

"But we think we found their trail. We found drag marks close to the canisters which led directly to this path. We already followed it the other way and came up on a wall so we're guessing that wherever they took them it had to be that way," Sage said, pointing down the pathway.

"We'll follow the path then," Razer said.

"We also found something weird," Rommy began. "Close to the canisters were two long parallel scorch marks, but we they were way too long to be blaster marks."

"We'll have to worry about what caused that later. You two get back on the other side and advance at the same pace as us," he ordered.

It didn't take them long to find a large open area with a large wooden pavilion in the middle. The structure was large enough to host a family of three. "That wasn't in the holo as well," Marcus said irritably. Bad intel was usually the main cause of casualties and Razer knew that well. There was a large device with an antenna under the pavilion alongside the two missing soldiers which turned out to be Cutler and Duke. The place was flooded with pirates, most of them drunk. They drank, danced and talked all the while listening to their version of "good music" which made Razer's ears want to bleed.

Cutler and Duke were being interrogated by a pirate that by his clothing looked like a higher up. He continuously yelled at them and hit them with the butt of his rifle. Every hit was met by cheers of the drunken audience. Razer didn't know whether they were answering the question neither did he care. In his head he was making a plan on how to deal with the situation. Stealth was impossible and going in guns blazing would severely reduce the chance of the B team members making it out alive.

But Razer's hope of making a plan that would save everyone was shattered when he was brought of his thoughts by the sound of a blaster going off. It took him a few moments to realize that Cutler had been shot. And it took Marcus shaking him violently and calling his name to realize the fact that they were getting shot at. The whole event reminded him of how powerless he truly was. Powerless to save his family and powerless to save his captured friends but that didn't mean that he wouldn't get revenge. He finally managed to pull himself out of the minor panic attack and started returning fire.

He knew better than to underestimate his opponent. Even though most of the pirates were drunk a stray shot could end his life so he regularly returned his head and body behind cover and worked with Marcus as best as he could. Just as the number of pirates began thinning reinforcements began showing up. The fresh reinforcements who weren't drunk proved to be more of a challenge as they found themselves pinned down. Razer had begun losing hope as the number of bolts heading into his and Marcus's direction increased by the second. If his death came in battle he always wished he had time to remember his family and it seemed that his time came. He began running through his memories as he slowly loosened the grip on his rifle.

"Razer! Razer!" He was pulled out of his thoughts once again, this time by Marcus who was pointing towards the pavilion. "Look."

As the frequency of bolts lessened, he peeked out from behind the tree and saw that the Weequays were now split between attacking two sides. He looked over to where Rommy and Sage were as he thought that they flanked the pirates, but they were still there returning fire which only meant that some other Vipers joined the fight. Putting his family aside for a moment and returning to the fight he began returning fire. He and Marcus began advancing as the number of pirates thinned and before long they were already taking cover behind the large concrete platform on top of which the pavilion lay.

The pirates now encircled they couldn't do anything but surrender. The firing stopped as the last five pirates approached the stairs with their hands raised high in the air. Razer wanted to start issuing commands to their prisoners but he was prevented from doing so by a flurry of blue bolts that rained past him and into the pirates, killing all of them.

He saw the smoke of the blaster rifle out of the corner of his eye. He forced it out of Rommy's hands and threw it. "What's wrong with you?"

"I… I…" Rommy's breathing was quick and heavy.

Seeing as it wasn't the best situation to cause divides within the teams Razer let it go and issued him a warning. "We'll have a word about this later."

Chief and Hawker awaited them at the top. Chief was staring down at the bodies of his teammates that were executed by the pirate. He joined him at his side with the rest of the men. "They were good men," Chief said holding his helmet close to his chest, paying respect to his fallen brothers.

"We'll avenge them," Razer said, patting Chief's shoulder. In situations like this Chief always adopted an undecipherable blank stare. It could've been a stare of hate, sadness or something else but Razer knew that whatever the case was it was best to leave him alone so he turned his attention to Hawker.

"Did you see Flash and Mute by any chance?" he asked. Hawker shook his head as an answer before heading off to one of the sides of the pavilion to check for incoming pirates. Rommy did the same albeit on the other side of the pavilion while Razer, Sage and Marcus checked out the jammer.

"It's impossible," Sage said checking out the antenna. A team didn't have a member that knew a lot about the inner workings of such technologies. Out of all of them Sage was the best at it so whenever they were in a situation like that they let him analyze those types of installations. "This is high-tech military equipment," he said. "There's no way pirates would've been able to get their hands on something like this alone." Razer's bad feeling only grew as a result. He knew something felt off about this whole thing.

"Then who did they get this from?" Marcus asked.

"I have no idea and we also don't have the time to find out so let's get rid of this thing," Sage said.

"Agreed. You two pass on the word to Hawker and Rommy that we're moving out. I'll talk to chief."

"Got it," they said almost in unison.

Razer approached Chief who was still standing in the same spot as before. "I'm sorry about your loss but we have to move out," he said. Without uttering a word Chief put his helmet back on and headed for the stairs the others descended moments earlier. Walking over there himself, Razer primed the EMP grenade and rolled it towards the device before running down the stairs. A low frequency tone followed by a flash of blue light emitted from the pavilion as the EMP grenade detonated.

"This can't be happening!" Marcus exclaimed with a hand on his forehead.

After disabling the jammer, they managed to reestablish communications. After multiple attempts to contact Flash and Mute were met by static the team decided to locate them via their tracking beacons inside their comms. The morale was already low but it dropped even further after arriving at the location where the tracking beacons said they were.

They found Flash hanging off a tree with a blaster mark on his face while Mute lay beneath the tree with two small and round holes in his back. They had landed closer to the mansion than anybody else which meant that they had to have been seen by a patrol as the frequency of those raised the closer, they got to the mansion.

They were taught to keep calm during even the most difficult situations, but it was hard to ignore a teammate's death. Regardless they had to keep moving and rescue Senator Organa. After a few short firefights they finally managed to get a first glance at the luxurious white and blue mansion.

"This certainly is odd," Chief commented upon a closer inspection. There was nobody outside the mansion and also there was nobody they could see on the balconies or through the windows. All of the lights were turned off as well except in the room where the hostages were held.

"Probably an ambush," Razer deduced. "Sage, Marcus, Hawker you three will go in one of the side entrances and clear the bottom floor while we enter the top floor and clear it." The tree of them acknowledged the command and headed off leaving Razer, Chief and Rommy alone.

"Let's get up on that balcony," Chief said pointing at the balcony closest to them. They ran through the clearing that separated the orchard from the mansion while keeping their heads low. They took covered Chief as he prepared the grapple. After throwing it up the balcony he checked if it was safe and soon they were already stacked at the glass door that led into the mansion. Razer tapped chief on the shoulder signaling that they were ready to go in. Chief pushed the door open and they entered the room one by one each clearing their own side. They entered the inner pool area which turned out to be empty.

"Whoah," Rommy exclaimed as he took in the luxurious room. "I wouldn't mind living here." All around the walls were painted with scenes from the Alderaanian countryside while an enormous golden chandelier hanged from the ceiling.

"Let's keep moving," Chief ordered as he got into position at the room's two-door entrance. They kept doing the same thing, clearing out every room one by one.

"Get ready." They were at the door of the room where the hostages were held. The entire upper floor was clear of activity and he also hadn't heard anything from the team downstairs so he thought that they probably hadn't found anything as well.

It was Razer's time to go in first. The few moments he still had before he would receive the tap on the shoulder were spent thinking of what would await him on the other side. A hundred pirates or perhaps it would be the same story as for every other room. He took one last deep breath and readied himself. He took a step back and kicked in the door after he received the tap. But instead of pirates he was met with a force he couldn't even sense that pushed him into the wall as soon as he stepped into the room, knocking him out.

The next few minutes were only images for him. First, he saw a person dressed in a garb a cowl as the void of space. Next, he saw her holding two red swords of energy. After that he was pretty sure he saw Rommy's bolts get deflected back to him, killing him immediately. And then came the image that shocked him the most. The person had one of their arms extended while Chief floated in the air and clawed at his neck as if something was strangling him. The last thing before he was plunged into eternal darkness was the glass shattering as two men with the same energy swords but blue entered the room through the windows.