Chapter 3
Outer Rim, Temishi IV, 421 days after Geonosis
It had taken five seconds of combat to realize there was a right way to hit a battle droid with flesh, bone, and combat padding. It had taken five minutes to puzzle that out for the common B-1 and B-2 battle droids. It had taken five days to perfect this method so that it became fully integrated into the bare-handed fighting style of a Teras Kasi master. How many shattered battle droids it had taken, Chloe Vell couldn't have said.
She did know that she needed to increase the total by a solid seven sometime in the next five minutes, at which point she would run out of ice canyon and give her pursuers a clear shot. Exactly how she would do this, while dodging, weaving and jumping over terrain consisting entirely of ice, not all of it from water, at temperatures so cold it would shatter many durasteel tools when struck, with knife sharp edges on a billion seismic break lines, was momentarily eluding her.
The droids were apparently getting smarter, there were functioning in two groups of three with a trailer, though whether that was by design or because of microbial deviations in their terrain processing software the martial artist didn't know and wasn't worrying about. It was one of the many problems relegated below the survival priority that was presently occupying her complete attention.
Two droids at once, no problem, three at once, doable with a trick or two, but with a group behind it meant getting shot up by the second group, or even if she did evade, by the trailer. She needed a break point, something that would prevent the droids from supporting each other, and she needed it yesterday.
Thankfully, when it came to chaotic, incomprehensibly hostile terrain, the Shattered Glacier clearly intended to take home some sort of galactic prize. So when Chloe saw a diamond shaped panel of ice about the size of a speeder and the thickness of her leg hanging suspended on one point at the bottom of the canyon after a sickeningly tight turn, it wasn't unusual, it was ordinary.
Blaster bots sent small explosions of suddenly liberated methane ice bursting free of millennia old glaciation all around her as the artist ducked and, having familiarized herself with this environment, slid instead of rolled underneath the icy block. She came up behind, slightly off center but knowing that the droids' programming didn't include a subroutine to aim for the feet when that was all they could see.
B-1 battle droids weren't smart, but they weren't complete idiots, at least not in most things. They didn't come charging up to a target they had just lost, they tried to stop beforehand and blow the mixed element ice apart while their target hid behind it. However, they hadn't been programmed for this terrain, and by now Chloe realized it.
The front three droids, already moving at above red line speed in an attempt to catch the swift and surefooted martial artist, attempted to stop and instead went skidding forward through the bottom of the ice canyon.
Exerting all her strength the warrior smashed the block of ice down onto the three of them. Flipping herself up along with it.
The next three droids, slightly more stable, got off a few wild shots as Chloe planted her left foot on an icy outcropping, whirled through the air, and snap-kicked the right hand droid in the line to take the head right off at the pivot joint.
She let her body fall after that, but grabbed the headless droid on the way down, hurling its body into its fellows. The center droid failed to dodge this absurd projectile, and one on the left managed to pitch itself forward to slam flat on the ice with a cry of tortured circuits as it successfully evaded.
Staying down, knowing shots were coming from the one behind, the marital artist flowed, there was no other suitable word, over the fallen droids, slamming elbows and knees with precision to kill the critical circuits and render them inoperative.
The droid in the back came up, closing in, but the sloping nature of the canyon meant that all Chloe need do was stand straight and suddenly she presented a much smaller target profile while the droid, not conscious of micro-topography changes in this fashion, was totally vulnerable. She took its head clean off using the head of one of its fellows as a projectile, smiling a little behind the environment suit's transparent composite helmet mask. She was getting quite good at that.
Two hundred kilos of ice wouldn't crush three battle droids, but Chloe didn't need to get hand to hand to finish the job, she borrowed one of the droid's E-5 blaster rifles and, with a stream of not particularly well aimed shots, poured enough energy into the surrounding ice to release volatile gases and turn them into roast droid, as the troopers joked.
Then she started running again, it was time to clear the canyon, attempt to cross half a klick of surface ice, or at least what the C&Es, the Cybins and Euthons, insisted on referred to as a surface, without being spotted by aerial recon or the dwarf spider droids now swarming everywhere in these glaciers, then navigate through a crevasse to an ice tunnel where she could rejoin the Ice Daggers in what would hopefully be a camp suitable for a day's layover. She wasn't getting her hopes up about that last one. The droids were lousy trackers, and trying to search for someone out here was like trying to find a cotton ball in a pool of glass shards, but someone was directing the search effectively and there were just too many of the 'brittleboxes' as some of the commandos called them.
Well, Chloe, she told herself. You wanted a challenge, and war certainly delivered.
Crossing over to the surface was easy enough, she could jump, scramble, and scurry as well as any, better than even most of the C&Es, and they lived in this stuff. Getting anywhere on what remained of the top of the glacier, though, that was a bit more complicated.
If you took a tourist out to Temishi IVs Shattered Glacier, someone with a good appreciation for natural formations, they probably would have said it was beautiful. If you'd then asked them to hike across it for any distance they would have said you were insane. The glacier had been stable, just moving back and forth across about one hundred thousand square kilometers of surface according to the flow and counter flow of tidal heating from the gas giant Temishi, the great blue globe hanging above them, for twenty thousand years. Then, about ten millennia back, before anyone had been crazy enough to live on the binary moons, something big had hit Temishi IV smack in the middle of the glacier. The result was rather like taking a big chunk of ice, hitting it with a huge sledgehammer, and then hurling all the scattered shards back into it like giant darts.
There were places in the universe where gravity had a sense of humor, in the Shattered Glacier it was hard to keep laughing.
Great spires and ridges and mountains of ice made up of chemicals that in some cases Chloe couldn't remember their names they were so long sprouted, burrowed, furrowed, and generally made the horizon look like a blue-stained microscope image from the inside. Recalling that the ambient temperature was presently something like one hundred Kelvin, only a few degrees above the point at which oxygen in her breath would actually start to liquefy if not for the suit's protection, didn't help her enthusiasm. The Ice Daggers seemed to think that fact was funny. Then again, they could be odd sometimes, it was pretty obvious. Most commando groups had nervous habits involving their blasters, these one's all centered on the suits.
They were good builders, she admitted as she skated and sprinted in quick bursts from the shadow of one massive ice pylon to another, scrambled over a third, and generally did her best impression of a cricket as she moved. A lot better than the Epicanthix, who preferred to take and master the best things from other cultures, sometimes even refining or improving them. She was a good example of the species, a master of the imported Teras Kasi fighting style. She'd had teachers and rivals from many species in her study, including the C&Es, who were mad about the art. They'd learned from the Epicanthix, because it gave them the strength to rebel, while Chloe had her own reasons for mastering the ancient way of fighting.
She could hear a spider droid in the distance, but a few careful glances turned up nothing, it must not have angle to her position, and the martial artist trusted the chaotic terrain to keep things that way for a little longer. Even the spiders, designed to move in complex environments like mining tunnels, had trouble out here, the Separatists had been forced to modify their heat exhaust ports so they didn't melt their way into the ice as they walked and set off an eventual explosion. Chloe figured a smart army would have realized that when your troops destroyed themselves just walking on the ground that you should go invade a different planet, but it was probably what you ought to have expected when you let a bunch of merchants decide to go to war.
She checked her HUD display for the topographic holomap when she hit the crevasse, making sure she was where they'd planned to be. Uncertain Chloe took a few deep breaths and focused on looking past the world. Yes, she could feel them out there alright, and headed in what seemed to be the appropriate direction. There were no weird spikes or fluxes either, the only words she had to describe such impressions, so it seemed the situation was more or less stable.
The Epicanthix martial artist leapt down into the crevasse, using her elbows and knees to produce friction, control her rate of descent, and then move from ledge to ledge so she could walk with something resembling consistent motion. It was slow going, and vulnerable if anyone should spot her, but considering she couldn't see the massive blue marble of Temishi hanging in the sky that wasn't likely unless someone snaked a wire camera down here. Thermal imaging wasn't a worry, the environment suit handled that fine, she looked just like another block of ice, and all the precious heat was saved by being reflected back into her body. It still wasn't enough to keep her warm, but Chloe could manage, she'd been put through extended privations before in her training and this was much the same.
They said a Jedi could have walked across the icy surface of Temishi IV naked, clothed only in the Force, and lived. The C&Es even claimed that the Jedi who'd secretly aided their rebellion against the Impergium had done it, but Chloe was deeply skeptical. She could feel the Force, even use it, some, and her Teras Kasi training had given her control over the one real talent she possessed, but fighting off this cold seemed out of reach even for that. Then again, they said Jedi Masters could lift starships with their minds, and she couldn't move a hairpin. Perhaps if the Jedi had bothered to come looking for students in the Epicanthix Impergium she'd have found out, but they hadn't, so she'd settle for knowing how to break every bone in a humanoid's body with a minimum of effort.
The ice tunnel was where it was supposed to be, though it was disturbingly dark. Temishi IV was a binary moon orbiting a gas giant in a red giant system. Night was something that didn't truly happen, just like day. Truly dark places here could be dangerous, even though it was actually warmer when you got away from the frozen surface. Chloe's nightvision was good, but she couldn't she into the infrared like the Cybins could. Thankfully there was light amplification in her helmet's options, though it turned everything a freakish unnatural turquoise. She didn't want to get into a fight using such conditions, it might be better to fight blind.
Now the Force was comforting, because it was empty, meaning there ought not to be any of the truly nasty predators that lurked rarely in the ice tunnels of this world. There wasn't enough of an ecology to sustain many such things, and fleshy lifeforms weren't high on their menu, but they could smash you to pulp all the same. It struck the marital artist as a particularly pathetic way to be killed.
How far the tunnel went Chloe didn't know, but eventually, just as she was loosing even the last vestige of surface light, she picked up some artificial ones. The HUD was quickly able to confirm that the spectral pattern was the one the natives used, not the different pattern, based on non-human physiology, used by the droids. It seemed the Ice Daggers, or at least someone friendly, was ahead.
She didn't try to sneak up on the encampment. She wasn't without some stealthy methods, but moving down a circular tunnel of ice in absolute darkness with a trained commando staring up at you was beyond her ability. There was no reason to test anyone's already frayed nerves after five days of evasion by pushing when it wasn't necessary.
The challenge came at three hundred meters, the first point where there was a reasonable angle for a shot from the edge of the intersection chamber of tunnels below. A secure comlink transmitted to the one in her helmet, demanding the duty password. She stopped, gave it, and then moved on. The Ice Daggers knew her by sight anyway, but the caution was warranted. The galaxy contained shapeshifters and worse after all, though Chloe doubted she'd ever meet a shapeshifter would could properly imitate the movement of a Teras Kasi master without going through the training first. Well, maybe a Jedi shapeshifter, but that was on her list of things that hopefully do not exist.
Upon receiving her answer the commando straightened, rising up to become at least slightly visible, though the patterned blue armor of the Twin Moons commandos was always difficult to see against the ice. "Welcome back Specialist," he greeted her.
Specialist, Chloe held back from shaking her head in irritation. It was the only thing they would call her, the Captain was the only one willing to use her actual name. The rest would only use that rank, Unarmed Combat Training Specialist, the position the Twin Moons Navy had given her here, when she worked with them as an instructor. It was not appreciated, Teras Kasi was a deadly martial art to be sure, aggressive and often brutal, but she was no soldier, and not even a Twin moons citizen.
Somehow the martial artist supposed that the commandos called her Specialist to try and forget that she was Epicanthix, that there was a barrier of former enmity between their species. All of the commandos were too young to recall the rebellion, just as she herself was, but the wound was still there amongst these hardy and proud people.
"Captain Trovin is expecting you," the armored commando added on the comlink channel as she passed him and entered the small encampment in this intersection of icy gouges and tunnels.
"Right," she told the commando. She didn't remember his name; they were too difficult to tell apart in that composite armor suit with the full face masking, effectively opaque in the darkness. It was fearsome armor, the Twin Moons had copied the designs from the Impergium's elite soldiers, and those designs had been taken from the Sith armies of old, when they had threatened the Impergium during its founding fifteen hundred years before. It was a solid design, protective and good for use in myriad hostile environments, and intimidating. Chloe still didn't particularly like it, there was something tacky about wearing armor similar to what your enemies had developed, but she thought it better than that Mandalorian stuff the Republic Clones used.
Pale blue light, reflecting in a thousand fragments off the scattered ice, illuminated the Ice Dagger's little camp. Everything was centered around their sole Ice Badger, a ten-wheeled crawler that could haul the whole squad behind its armor, defensive lasers, and two hardened E-web stations. It was the only vehicle of substance they'd managed to pull out of their freighter when they'd crashed attempting to escape. Chloe noted that the pair of speeder bikes, the only other ground machines they had, were absent, so a pair of the Emerald squadron pilots must still be on patrol. That was somewhat worrisome, but the droids didn't stop, so they couldn't stop either.
Captain Zindishi Trovin waited by the side of the Badger, going over the holomap with one of the commandos, not the Lieutenant or the Sergeant, so Chloe didn't recognize the trooper. She couldn't keep these C&Es straight, with their blue hair or white-stripped blue skin and their weird naming convention. Privately she thought of them as 'the Ishis' in her lesser moments. It was shameful; she knew they took pride in that naming convention, a tribute to the common culture the two species had preserved despite millennia of isolation of separate moons, but she couldn't help it.
"Specialist Vell, you've returned safely, I'm glad," Captain Trovin saluted smartly, and he actually used the vocoder on his armor, not the comlink, which was much appreciated. "And the results of your mission?"
"I lured their group off on the trajectory you indicated," it hadn't been easy, getting the better part of one hundred mixed battle droids to follow you while not being shot to ribbons took some work. "I had to fight off some stragglers though, it was a rough loop back, but I believe I shed all pursuit."
"I hope so," the Ice Dagger leader muttered. "I hate to keep asking you to take these risks Vell, but you can do things my men can't. If this latest effort succeeded we should be able to hole up here for about eight hours more, and then blow the thermal charges at quadrant six-six-eight and take the principal icewash tunnel north, bypassing their entire search net in the confusion."
It was all military doublespeak to Chloe's ears. She was trained to fight, and to win. She understood small scale tactics and individual and group battle, but these complex evasion strategies didn't mean much to her. "What good does that do us?"
"Ideally, it means they'll have to reconfigure the entire search, which gives us a chance to either link up to some other hold out units, or to finally develop a plan to get the doc off Temishi IV and to safety, which is the principal mission." His body stiffened as he spoke, a sign of the considerable stress the man was under. "We can't just keep evading the droids forever Vell."
"Yes sir," Chloe understood, though she didn't much like it. The Ice Daggers, all fifteen commandos and the four poor Emerald squadron pilots who'd been unluckily drafted into the crew, were prepared to die to a man in order to get Dr. Compesda, now surely huddling in the warmest place he could find inside the Badger, to a place the Separatists couldn't reach. She wasn't quite up to that level of fatalism herself. Dying to preserve the secrecy of some Twin Moons weapon system, one whose development had obviously been betrayed to the enemy, wasn't really in her plans.
Despite her reluctance, Chloe somehow understood that she needed to be on this mission, that it was essential she be here. The feeling came strongest when she went through the Teras Kasi exercises and disciplines, meaning it came from the Force, since it was those methods that gave her limited control over the unearthly talent. Martial arts master was a poor substitute for Jedi training, if the stories about Jedi were even partly true, Chloe had never seen one or met anyone who had, but it was better than nothing. It provided stability, direction, understanding, and a measure of control. It was enough to keep the dangers of the Force from swallowing her up.
Teras Kasi had originally been developed by Force Users, it was something the Epicanthix practitioners of the art knew well, the origin world of the art, Bunduki, was a tributary of the Impergium. In the absence of guidance from the absent Jedi, children who demonstrated conclusive force talent, young men and women like Chloe, had long been encouraged to pursue the martial art, to train themselves and learn focus and restraint. History indicated that it had worked, more or less. The Impergium produced a lot less Force crazies than other places in the Outer Rim.
Dismissed by the Captain, Chloe went through a few exercises to loosen up, and then settled down to rest, finding a spot of rubble somewhat softer than the surrounding ice. Many of the commandos were doing the same; there was never enough sleep when fighting in a mobile operation like this one. They trusted their captain and the other officers to see them through, while the Epicanthix trusted her training and hard earned skills. Their position was close to hopeless, but somehow no one, not even the doctor and his poor technicians, frightened and completely unequipped for this insanity, had given in to despair.
The continual smashing of battle droids who thought they had them helped, Chloe thought as she dozed off.
Chapter Notes: Teras Kasi is a canonical martial art in Star Wars (there's a video game about it, and it's been mentioned in several sources, such as Death Star). It originates at Bunduki, which is a world that the Epicanthix canonically control.