Gavyn walked briskly down the corridor where Tyro was resting, Ace and two other clones on his heels. He was glad to see his Padawan was already awake, though was clear that Tyro was not feeling well, and Gavyn's heart sunk. He hated to put his apprentice in this position, but at this point the wheels were already in motion. Tyro would just need to perform the best he could for the sake this operation. Kneeling next to the bed, so they were at eye level, Gavyn addressed Tyro. "It's time to start the mission." He didn't bother to ask if Tyro was feeling well while he was shaking in front of him. They just needed to do what needed to be done.

"Give him the thing." Gavyn requested one of the clones. The clone managed to figure out what he meant, and put down a portable holocom on Tyro's lap. It took a lot of persuasion to convince the nurse to move the medical equipment off a nearby rolling cart for use as a makeshift desk. As they were negotiating using the space for the mission with other injured soldiers around, the Captain returned with Tyro's equipment.

"How long do you think it will take to get to the Lander?" Gavyn asked Ace.

"About 3 hours."

Gavyn nodded. "See what you can do in that time." He gave Tyro the order, unsatisfied with how vague he had to be. He didn't know the first thing about computers, and was a complete fool when it came to technology beyond consumer items. Apparently some Jedi could channel the force through technology, and understand the inner mechanisms better than the average person, but it ability eluded Gavyn. He felt the beat of the Living Force through each being and organism he encountered, but nothing from electronics.

Tyro gingerly shifted into a more comfortable position, propping himself up against the wall and some pillows. There was no way Gavyn had not noticed his condition, and he was grateful to him for not pointing it out or arguing with him on the matter. There was no backing out now, and he wasn't sure he could bring himself to lie to Gavyn about this too. He took a deep breath, focusing on his body, how it was working, feeling, and how he needed to feel right now. Almost instantly the shivering subsided, and putting on his usual knowing half-grin he shook out his hair, springing it snappily back into its usual signature mohawk. "Okay, let's do this thing," he exhaled, already pulling up dozens of windows between his datapad and the holocom, adjusting settings, searching any existing knowledge of separatist tech, pulling up old work he could repurpose easily.

"Three hours…" he pondered. "That should be good, can't do everything in that time, but I can more than cover the basics." Really he was glad it wasn't more. He was already going to be pushing the limits on staying awake and functional.

They hadn't seemed to have brought him any of the physical separatist tech, he would have loved to get his hands on...at the very least one of those droids again, but he had done a bit of this in the past so at least he wasn't totally flying blind. Someone seemed to have been keeping pretty good documentation of the stuff however, and after the battle he had some ideas on improvements to some existing scripts and subroutines; really, they were more than covered.

"Ah, aannnndd that'd be their communications," Tyro concluded only a moment later as the crackle of droid voices began to play. "Really, it's like they don't even try. I figure we spy on these...I'll give your guys their channel and encryption, and then when you guys need to strike, we jam them...which I've got just the thing for," he added with a devilish grin. "Only thing is, uh," he said, looking around at the other patients, "Ya got a headset or something?"

"General, Commanders," broke in the clone to Tyro's left before anyone else had a chance to reply. "With all due respect Sirs, that will not be a problem."

"I agree with Tar Sirs, we want to know what's going on." Called another of the soldiers. Tyro looked over with a grin and a nod. He was willing to bet they had a few ideas about how this could work as well.

"I'll feed you guys the rest as I finish it. I already know what I've got to do, it's just doing it now. I'll transfer the stuff over as I finish it." Tyro looked up over the screen to Gavyn who seemed to be staring into something vast and incomprehensible, "Sooooo, who's my contact then?"

Gavyn blinked at Tyro for a moment, before answering simply. "Ace." Gesturing towards his friend. "I'll back him up." He offered with a sideways grin when Ace shot him a wry glance. Gavyn knew that Ace would be better with whatever systems they encountered, and he was better suited for deflecting blaster bolts in case they were spotted.

"If you have everything ready, we'll depart." Gavyn said curtly. He locked eyes with Tyro before turning around. "May the Force be with you." He told his Padawan sincerely.

There was a short flight on a transport before Gavyn returned to the quarry. The camp had changed drastically in 24 hours, with posts built up to fortify the position. With a handful of scouts and lookouts patrolling the perimeter, the rest of the clones were resting, or preparing for the next confrontation. Gavyn and Ace followed a splicer, Circuit, down to the quarry floor, where he had patched up one of the tanks.

"Well, it won't hold together for long, but it'll at least get off the ground. Mostly." Circuit said. Gavyn was dubious about it regardless, but luckily they wouldn't be running into any fights inside this droid death trap. "I also pulled together these two battle droids. Someone was planning on hacking them?" He asked, looking from Ace to Gavyn.

"Yes, that is the plan." Ace nodded, as he pulled out the portable holocom. He flicked on the switch, illuminating an image of Tyro laying in bed. "Tyro, sir. We have two enemy droids here. Do you think you can patch in?" He asked.


"Got it Commander," acknowledged Tyro, trying not to laugh at being called "Sir". He realized it was probably something he would have to get used to. "Okay, here's what I've got-It's pretty good considering I'm mostly running off assumptions, but I've got a data miner packaged in there. Give me a bit and I'll make any modifications we might need. This should get it up and running and on our side though, I just can't say how stable it'll be yet."

A moment later he heard the unmistakable sound of the droid activating. Through the translucent screen he was holding he saw the clone across from him, the one missing the leg, jump. "Sorry about that," apologized Tyro sincerely.

"It's not your fault Sir," The man corrected.

Why was he suddenly Sir instead of kid? "Say, what's your name?"

"Tracks, Sir."

"Good to meet you Tracks, I'm Tyro. "And you are?" he nodded to the man to his right.

"Sparks, Tyro, Sir."

Tyro nodded and looked to the man to his left, "and I believe Sparks said your name was Tar, right?"

"Yes Sir." It looked like they were sticking with this titles thing then.

"Oh, and who have you got over there Commander Ace?"

"This here is Circuit," replied Ace.

"Hey Circuit! It's Tracks!" Called the man.

"Tracks! You made it! How are you holding up?" Circuit's voice replied.

Tracks paused, considering his answer. "You'll have to come see me yourself and let me know." He kept a cheery tone but Tyro could feel the defeat beneath it.

"Will do then."

Tyro watched the lines of code back from the Separatist droids fly past him as he talked. There was a lot here, actually probably everything they had. He was proud of his little program, but this was going to take a while to sort through.

"Any of you guys ever hack this tech before?" He was met with silence. "Like, have you ever taken apart one of these droids, or seen their code, or, I dunno, anything?"

"Uh, no sir," Sparks hesitantly replied.

"We don't ever do stuff like this," Tar agreed, "Blast it and move on." Somehow Tyro suspected that Gavyn had something to do with this terrible waste of precious information. Shame, any extra knowledge would have been nice. It looked like he was on his own in this. It was how he usually worked, so, no problems there really.

"Okay, I've got your basics, I think you're good to get going for now. I'll have an update within the hour, let me know if you run across anything else you need."


The droids activated, and formed up around the tank. Two droids were not much of an escort, but they would have to do. Ace nodded to the small hologram of Tyro, "Will do." he said, before the image flickered off. They would still be in touch via comlinks. Gavyn hoisted himself up to the top hatch of the tank, he let Ace crawl inside first, then Circuit. He slipped inside, sitting at the upper turret. Battle droids were significantly slighter than full grown men in armor, and the cockpit of the tank was cramped. At least they each had their own seat, even if they were built for the skeletal frame of battle droids.

Gavyn hunched his wide shoulders as he closed the hatch. With a few flicks of switches, Ace started the engines. They sputtered for a moment, but engaged. The tank lurched upward as the repulsorlifts activated. One of them seemed offline, however, throwing the tank into tilt to the right. "Eh." Ace hesitated. "I think this will still drive"

"Lets just make this quick." Gavyn responded calmly, although his impatience was clear.

The move from the quarry to the lander was tedious. Ace needed to constantly compensate for the leaning tank. The right side hung low, and easily got caught on uneven ground. The two battle droid escorts didn't speed them up either. Regardless of their state of repair, they were clumsy machines. Usually Gavyn was grateful of the fact, but now the characteristic was frustrating.

They ended up making it to the Lander, but an hour later than they expected. Gavyn hoped that Tyro would be able to make use of the extra time to develop more passwords or whatever for the security system. A robotic voice crackled through the speaker.

"Please transmit your identification codes" It ordered coldly.

Ace quickly turned on the holodeck. "Tryo. We need ID, asap! What do I do?"


After four hours of programming Tyro was entirely lost in an almost meditative state where nothing else seemed to exist. Ace's voice caught him off guard and he jumped, scrambling to reply to the request. "Roger that," he said back, quickly trying to figure out where on earth that information was. For some dumb reason he hadn't even thought of this.

It wasn't hard to find their ID codes, but they needed them transmitted through? Sithspit! He was going to have to find wherever they had buried that below with the rest of their programming.

The seconds were ticking by. He had to do something. Making them say their codes out loud, that was fast, and would hopefully be enough of a distraction for him to work on the real solution. He ran the simpler script.

The droid hadn't even finished getting the words out of its voice box when the unmistakable sound of blaster fire crackled through his speakers. It's feed on his datapad screen went blank. "Kriffing…" Tyro hissed. Clearly any deviation from their usual programming was grounds for execution. A second later, a second shot and he lost the other droid too.

On the surface, Tyro kept his composure, his mind still running through possible solutions, contingency plans, where to go next, but inside-this was one stress to many at the moment. All that work…Usually he never screwed up this bad...

"Sir! The tank!" Sparks shouted "You need to ID the tank!"

"Right!" The tank! Perhaps not everything was lost then. If he could run the code he had come up with for the droids through the tank it would only strengthen his bluff that there were in fact droid pilots. It took barely a moment to copy the code over and transmit the data. He watched, breathing quickly, heart racing. If he screwed up on this…he wasn't even going to think about what would happen if he screwed this up too.

For some unholy reason the nurse chose this exact moment to re-enter the room, looking clearly unhappy. He didn't have time for that right now. He looked back to his screen.

"Carry on," Came the crackle of the security droid. Tyro, Tracks, Tar, and Sparks let out a collective breath.

"Geez," panted Tyro, leaning back and holding his injured arm with a shaking hand. "Thanks Sparks, I...thanks."

He opened his eyes to look back to the screen only to lock his gaze with the nurse instead. She had already been in earlier to scold him for not eating his food, which had been replaced with a now untouched glass of water. She looked like she was about to have a word with him that he would rather not have Ace, Gavyn, and Circuit hear. They looked to be managing fine for the moment; he quickly muted his end of the communications.

Instead of yelling though she gently placed a hand over Tyro's, looking him sternly in the eye. "You are not well. None of you are. This is too much stress."

"I'm fine-"

"No you are not, your readings are all off and you are definitely running a fever for sure this time."

Oh. He suddenly realized that in his desperation, he had dropped the control he was holding over his body. No sense in hiding it this time though, "Better now?" She gaped at him in disbelief over either the fact that he had just suddenly "cured" himself, or that he was daft enough to do so. "Look, I'm sorry I lied about this earlier," she had clearly already pieced this together, "but this is important. It's either me, straining myself a little now, or casualties like you saw last battle. You can do whatever you want with me as soon as I'm done with this, but I need to be here, fully conscious and aware, working with this tech right now."

The nurse held his gaze for a moment, trying to decide. "I'm going to comm your surgeon and let him figure out what's wrong with you. Then I'm going to get someone else to cover my rounds so I can sit here and babysit the four of you. If your end of this is so important then it seems like my civic duty to make sure you boys can carry on." She gave a wry, if not sarcastic smile.

Tyro nodded gratefully as she stepped to the side, unmuting his end of the communications as she left. "You guys alright in there?"


Gavyn's heart jumped to his throat when the first, then the second battle droids were shot down. Clearly they didn't mess around - malfunctioning battle droids were expendable. Something about the idea of being stuck inside a tank while he got shot to pieces shook him to his core. It was a claustrophobic, helpless death.

Fortunately, Tyro managed to transmit something, because somehow they were allowed to pass. Gavyn waited with bated breath as they crossed the threshold into the lander. The living force passed through droids, and he felt blind to how many or where the danger was outside of the tank as they docked. All he knew is that they were in great peril here. Circuit, Ace and him were going to have to have all their wits about them. The lander was probably swarming with enemies.

Ace backed the tank up into line, until a magnet caught the back and locked the tank into place. Parking was jarring, since the tank was so far askew due to the broken repulsorlift. When the tank settled, Gavyn slowly let out the breath he only now realized he was holding.

Ace gestured upward, and Gavyn nodded. Until they were sure the coast was clear, they were going to need to communicate silently. Right on cue, Tyro's image flashed up in the holocom. Ace kept the image muted, however, and pressed a finger to where his lips would be on his mask. The image flickered off.

Gavyn slowly lifted the hatch to the tank, just a crack. He peered out, there were not too many droids in the area, and they all seemed to be busy with repairs on other tanks. They had been directed to maintenance. There was a clear shot to the corridor towards the computer terminal if they hurried. Gingerly, he flipped the hatch open, careful not to make noise. He vaulted over the back, and landed silently on his leather boots behind the cover of the docked tank.. The clones were not going to be as graceful. He made a quick hand motion as Circuit poked his head through the hatch, and he nodded. Quietly, he jumped, and Gavyn caught him before his plastoid armor could crash against the ground. Ace was next, and Gavyn grabbed him out of the air, and set him softly on the floor. Nobody seemed to notice them, even as the maintenance crew moved over to inspect the ride they came in on.

"Where are the pilots?" One droid asked.

"Must be getting repairs in the other bay" The other responded, although Gavyn couldn't help but hear doubt in the droid's voice. Could droids feel doubt?

Silently, the three moved down the hallway, searching the corners of the ceiling for cameras or other security. Gavyn kept his lightsaber in hand, but deactivated, the clones had their blasters at the ready. The disturbance Gavyn had felt in the force suddenly burst. He stopped immediately, Ace and Circuit expertly matching pace. With a gesture, Gavyn pointed out the security cameras and sensors down the corridor. They weren't going to leave a computer terminal without surveillance.

Ace pulled the holodeck from his pocket. He did a quick scan of the room and transmitted the data to Tyro. They watched the muted hologram from a darkened corner until they could get the all clear… and just hope droids didn't find them first.