"There!" Anakin whispered, gesturing towards a nearby stand of trees with his lightsaber.

Obi-Wan prepared himself. This particular voxyn had been hunting them relentlessly, attacking and then retreating before they could take it down, and had been slowly wearing them down. Now they had finally managed to lure it close enough to take it down and halt its relentless stalking.

Ediir and Ahsoka backed away as Anakin and Obi-Wan approached the trees, taking care not to startle the beast. Ediir and Ahsoka were the worst off of the group, Ahsoka with a slashing wound from a voxyn's tail that had partially paralyzed her nervous system, rendering her moves sluggish, and Ediir with a broken arm and several puncture wounds from where a voxyn had tackled him. Obi-Wan and Anakin, though also wounded, had more experience with using the Force to sustain and heal themselves – though Obi-Wan realized that it was these efforts that allowed the voxyn to so easily track them.

Working in perfect harmony, Obi-Wan and Anakin casually walked through the clearing, taking care not to approach directly and thus startle the voxyn. Once they were only a few metres away from the stand of trees and boulders behind which the voxyn crouched, unseen, they slowed.

And then, on some silent signal that none of the others could detect, lunged, Anakin going directly for the voxyn while Obi-Wan leapt to cut off its escape.

In moments, the pair added another voxyn to the number they had already killed.

"What number is that, Master?" Anakin asked.

"Eleven, I think," Obi-Wan answered wearily.

The two rejoined Ediir and Ahsoka, trudging away from the battle as quickly as they could. They were still being stalked by a large force of Yuuzhan Vong, but there were no more voxyn near enough for them to sense. As their enemy was deprived of that tracking advantage, the Jedi sought to outmaneuver them and make a large loop around the Yuuzhan Vong to rejoin the Republic troops.

Obi-Wan was privately skeptical about rejoining the troops in time, though. It had been several hours since they had first been separated from the troops, and from what he recalled the ground troops had been heavily beset by numerically superior Vong forces. If the Yuuzhan Vong forces had managed to achieve air superiority, it would only be a matter of time before the Republic forces had to retreat or be destroyed.

Obi-Wan monitored the troops as best he could through the Force, but the Yuuzhan Vong tracking them were skilled and the Jedi were still being driven away from the Republic forces, unable to rejoin them.

Some time later Anakin interrupted his thoughts. "I can't sense any voxyn or the voids created by the Vong through the Force for well over a kilometer, Master," he whispered, in a low tone to keep his voice from carrying. "I think we could take a quick break and give the others a chance to recover a bit."

Obi-Wan stretched out his senses and confirmed Anakin's assessment of their pursuers distance, and the group wearily sat on a group of low boulders at the base of one of the trees. Using medical supplies from the small packs that each of them now carried whenever they entered a ground battle, each of them treated their assortment of wounds as best they could. Obi-Wan noted, however, that the viruses or pathogens that had coated the paws of the voxyn that had slashed him were highly resistant to the antibiotics, and resigned himself to a meditative trance later to get rid of them. Luckily, though each of the others had suffered minor wounds from the voxyn's claws as well, none of them had picked up any of the viruses.

Obi-Wan again extended himself carefully into the Force, reaching towards the Republic troops…and sighed. Anakin looked towards him questioningly.

"The Vong have driven them into retreat," Obi-Wan answered. "They're all evacuating the planet and fleeing to hyperspace."

The four Jedi were silent. They were on their own.

A few minutes later, Anakin got to his feet. "We'd better get moving," he said. The others agreed, and everyone started walking again.

Obi-Wan carefully monitored the Force for more of the voxyn while Anakin paid attention to their immediate surroundings. Though Anakin's range now surpassed Obi-Wan's, they had quickly learned that the voxyn could detect it when a Jedi sensed them – but Obi-Wan's Force senses had the delicacy that Anakin's did not, and though the voxyn could detect his touch, they couldn't trace it as easily as they could Anakin's. And neither Ediir nor Ahsoka had the skill in the Force to detect the voxyn when they hid their presence in the Force.

To his relief, there were no voxyn for at least ten kilometres and the Yuuzhan Vong seemed to have lost their trail. The strange terrain of Iroon meant that they weren't leaving many signs behind them, and so the Vong had lost the scent. Nonetheless, the Jedi kept moving.

An hour later, Obi-Wan called for another rest. At this point all of them were beginning to struggle due to exhaustion and injury. After checking to make sure that no voxyn were nearby – otherwise they would be drawn to the Jedi by the heavy Force usage – they decided to take turns in a healing trance, with one serving as lookout. To add some safety, they climbed up one of the trees in the grove they were in – each of the trees was several hundred metres high and had a canopy just as wide, and the trees were so close that in some places the branches were woven together into what was almost a floor. Now, hidden as safely as was possible on their platform sixty metres above the ground, out of sight of any enemies below, they dropped into healing trances. Anakin, predictably, volunteered to take the first watch duty, staying alert with senses both physical and Force for any approaching enemies.

They stayed there for several hours, until Anakin picked up a voxyn on the edge of his perceptions and they decided to move on. Noticing how thick the canopy was, however, they decided to travel through the trees instead of on the ground. Anakin and Obi-Wan figured that they could probably travel at least ten kilometres before they had to come down, the trees were so close together.

"So what's the plan?" Anakin asked Obi-Wan quietly as they walked along a branch three metres wide. He allowed his gaze to wander over the branches around them. Each branch was a mixture of varied shades of grey, with no leaves in sight. The branches grew together in what almost seemed to be webs, with pockets of mist hovering randomly throughout the canopy. Anakin had to admit that the trees had a strange, mysterious beauty – almost delicate, despite the thickness and obvious strength and age of the trunks and branches.

"I thought you were the one with the plan," Obi-Wan replied.

"I'm good at the destroy-things-and-save-the-day plans," Anakin retorted easily. "I leave it to you, O Wise Master, to figure this mess out."

"Yes, well," Obi-Wan sighed, "At the moment, I'm a little short of ideas."

He paused in thought. "I suppose, since all the Republic ships have left, we have to find some Vong ships and see if we can find a way to pilot them off Iroon."

"And that would require us to find and break into a Yuuzhan Vong base, facing most likely a large garrison and all sorts of bizarre defences," Anakin reminded him.

Obi-Wan couldn't help but grin. "Yes, and that is where we'll need one of your chaotic and mayhem-causing plans," he responded. Anakin grinned in reply, taking this as a compliment.

Taking another break, they stretched out their senses together, strengthening each other, and found a large empty spot in the Force with plenty of voxyn around it. "That would be the base," Anakin remarked.

Heading in that direction, Anakin and Obi-Wan discussed plans to break into the base. There were at least thirty voxyn near the base, and from the size of the emptiness in the Force likely hundreds of Yuuzhan Vong. The pair acknowledged that they wouldn't be able to fight through that many and still have time to figure out the controls on completely alien ships. Plus, each of them was still wounded and exhausted from the travelling, encounters with warriors and voxyn, and the injuries they had sustained. Plus they could now feel voxyn and warriors searching the forest, no doubt hunting for them.

Which could mean only one thing as far as the Jedi were concerned.

Guerilla warfare.

"So could you explain this plan to us, Masters?" Ahsoka asked.

Anakin beat Obi-Wan to the explanation. "The base contains too many Yuuzhan Vong for us to fight through them and get a ship, so we need to whittle down their numbers. We'll use guerilla attacks to wipe out as many of the Vong – and voxyn – as we can. Then we need to quickly break into the base before their inevitable reinforcements arrive, steal a ship, and fly off this rock." Obi-Wan nodded in agreement with Anakin's assessment.

A pause while each of them turned over the plan in their mind. Then:

"Let's do it," Ediir said with a grin.

Silver paced the small pilot's break room, his mind churning furiously with his thoughts.

He had not been able to believe it when the retreat order had come in. Sure, the Yuuzhan Vong had suddenly pulled out a fleet of starfighters seemingly from nowhere, and had managed to negate the Republic's air advantage. From a tactical point of view, he fully understood and agreed with the orders. Had they not pulled out, they undoubtedly would have been destroyed by the suddenly overwhelming ground and air forces of the Yuuzhan Vong.

And yet, in retreating, they had abandoned their Jedi Generals.

Not just one, but three of them, as well as a Jedi Commander. Silver didn't know Ediir Kam very well, but he had fought alongside Anakin Skywalker numerous times against both Separatists and Vong, had watched General Kenobi turn battles around with clever strategies and prevent battles with his powers of negotiation, and had laughed with Ahsoka Tano at the end of several harrowing skirmishes. He had also born witness to General Skywalker's crazy plans that almost always seemed to work, and been awed by the sheer prowess and skill of the Kenobi-Skywalker team in combat.

He knew that the pair would not just lay down and die, and they wouldn't let Kam or Tano die either. Which meant that they were now stranded on a planet with hundreds of starfighters and other ships, thousands of warriors, and most likely dozens of the strange dragon-like creatures that the escaped ground troops said gave the Jedi huge problems.

Silver knew and respected each of the Jedi, and he couldn't just leave them to die, regardless of orders. And he knew that many of his brothers felt the same.

Making up his mind, he sent a message on his comlink asking all the members of his squad to meet in a small, out-of-the-way storage room.

A few minutes later, he looked at his squadmates: his commander Ace, his closest brother Zed, and the other eight brothers that made up his squad. All of them were top-rated pilots in the Republic fleet, but they had also proven their worth in numerous ground battles. Indeed, ground or air they were one of the finest squads in the Republic, and they were one of the only heavy-combat squads that hadn't lost a single member, an enduring testament to their skill.

Carefully framing his words, he explained his assessment of the situation and his desire to do something to help the Jedi. And was unsurprised when he received a completely unanimous agreement with his idea, even from Scree, a brother that was normally a stickler for the rules.

Working together, they came up with a plan: they would take one of the shuttles that was a prototype for a design that maximized stealth and would allow Republic operatives to infiltrate planets held by the Yuuzhan Vong. Ghost, the computer specialist in their squad, would create false orders to allow them to leave the ship. They would then jump to hyperspace and, upon coming out of it, would do their best to get onto the planet unnoticed – carrying, of course, enough ordinance for a small army.

All of them were aware that what they were doing could be construed as treason and they ran the risk of facing court-martial if they returned. However, each of them had fought alongside the Jedi generals at one point or another, and several owed their lives to General Skywalker's crazy plans or General Kenobi's healing skills. And each of them would no longer leave the generals behind then leave one of their brothers.

In complete agreement, they split up to fulfill their assigned tasks.

Freshly edited! I mainly just made minor edits to things that bugged me, but I think the chapter is a lot better for it.