Sorry for not replying to your comments. Work/RL were insane...

Chapter 10

The Lambda-Class shuttles could carry some twenty passengers, but aside from the pilot, the one that landed on a small clearing outside the city carried only twelve Stormtroopers. More shuttles with groups just as small had been inserted over the course of the night, and this was the last run. Making several small landings instead of one big one was risky, but Lady Paqua had insisted that it be done this way. Each of the groups was commanded by a Lieutenant as was this group, but no one knew that their leader had held the rank of Captain when the Corps had still been the Grand Army of the Republic.

The losses the 501st had taken during the Pacification of Coruscant had made it easier to infiltrate them. Even so, of the twenty men he had started out with only twelve still lived. The others had died in combat. Amazingly, they had managed to hide themselves so far. But the unquestioning obedience that was so vital in convincing Palpatine's henchwoman of their loyalty to the new order had made it necessary to partake in the sort of actions that had made the Stormtroopers feared and hated at the same time.

He checked the right arm guard of his armour. Like the rest of it, it was fashioned in the mottled grey-green colour that blended in with the vegetation of this world and would also make them harder to see in the city. What it was lacking was the blue stripe of the 501st Legion and the insignia of Torrent Company.

"Right, spread out. Standard perimeter."

His troops didn't answer and instead moved to the edge of the clearing.

"Sunray, this is Meteor Six-One. We are in position."

The operations officer aboard Iron Fist replied. "Proceed to target."

He wondered why his squad had been chosen for this particular part of the mission. He realized, even though he was not supposed to, that this whole thing was to set a trap for rebellious elements, but why was his squad had been sent with two others...

But he knew that this was not yet the time to make an open move, so he and his men kept their heads down and did what they were told, however distasteful and plain wrong that was.

Fifteen minutes later, his squad was arrayed in front of the back wall of what once was a droid production facility but that had gone bust before the war and was now mostly empty except for that machinery too heavy to move. It was built like a bunker and from recon holo's he'd seen, he knew that the entrance on the other side where the other half of he assault force was to go in was easily defended.

He cleared his mind of everything but the current mission, an ability that was inherent to all clones and that had served him and his men in good stead in the past. It was good that he had done so, because as he did a last check E-11 rifle he had been issued only a few short weeks ago and that he had already learned to hate because of it's inherent inaccuracy.

The shadow that appeared next to him out of the darkness of the night and Lady Paqua, never one for niceties with the rank and file, opened with expressing her appreciation for how he'd set up the assault.

"Thank you, Mylady."

"You have earned your rank with a good reason, TK-421." she said.

He said nothing in reply. She did not need to know that the real TK-421 had been fed into a rubbish receptacle months ago.

Five minutes later, the front assault team attacked the entrance, which was the signal for his group. Normally they would have set up a blasting charge, but with a Sith Lady by their side they didn't need to, as Paqua simply pulled down a huge chunk of the wall and was through the gap she'd created before he and any of his men had crossed the street.

The fight inside the compound was nasty, brutish and short. The supposed rebels turned out to be little more than an armed gang, and in the long run the Imperials were probably doing the locals a favour, but what Paqua had come for came in an.. 'incident' that he was unlikely to forget any time soon.

One of the few survivors was the leader of the Gang. When 'TK-421' came from inspecting his men on the perimeter back into what had been the factory director's office and that contained the computer systems the locals were using. The leader was hovering in the middle of the room, suspended in mid air by Paqua's Force abilities.

At that point he was already bleeding from several wounds, and 'TK-421' knew that he wouldn't survive the next few minutes, even if he told them everything he knew.

"Was anyone here asking for the Rebels?"

First the man pissed himself for what was the second time, and then he all but squealed what he knew. "Th... they came yesterday, A... a Wookie and a Togruta... they asked about the slaver camp, how to get there and about the guards...that's all I know, I swear! PLEASE don't kill me."

"And of course you told them everything?"

"Yes! YES!"

"When was this?"

"Three hours ago!"

Desperately trying to save his life yet doomed to failure, the human in Paqua's grasp repeated everything that he had told the two people sought by the Sith.

The smile on Darth Paqua's face would have been sweet with anyone else, but here 'TK-421' couldn't help the shiver that ran down his spine. She studied the criminal like a medical scientist would look at a particularly nasty infection.

"How typical. You and yours, you act as if you own the place, but if even a modicum of pressure is applied... It's people like you who do nothing but cause chaos and disorder... and because of that, I have no further use for you."

With an impassive smile she broke his neck with the Force and threw his lifeless body into a corner.

"TK-421, get everything you can out of their computers, then set fire to this place."

"Yes, Mylady."

Getting into the system wasn't hard. The encryption software the criminals had used had been outdated even when this factory had still produced utility droids, and the biggest obstacle was the haphazard and nonsensical chaos in which files were stored. Luckily the operating system was cooperating, so he found the required files within a few minutes. Whoever had run this system had at least thought to label them chronologically, so he picked the files of the current day and fast-forwarded to the proper point.

Nothing remarkable happened. The recording was of poor quality and the sound wasn't that good, but it was still enough to see that nothing special was going on. Everything changed abruptly. The pickup area of the holocam that had made the recording was limited so at first all they saw was the criminals charging off-screen before being... thrown back into the centre of the room and making splinters of the furniture. Then the picture showed two figures, one a tall being unmistakably a Wookie, but the other hidden by a cloak, but with a hand extended forward in a pose he'd seen plenty of times in the past.

Clearly a Force user.

Paqua stepped next to him and stared at the same screen. She was far too busy with what was replaying before her to notice his inspection. He shook his head and returned his attention to the matter at hand. The Jedi removed her cloak. 'TK-421' recognized her instantly and was thankful that they had been briefed on the principal rebel leaders. It was the Commander, and a tiny portion of his mind couldn't help a chuckle when he noticed that she finally seemed to grow in more than increments and was starting to be rather tall.

"Ahsoka Tano... not that I am surprised." You didn't have to be a Force user to detect the hatred rolling off the Lady of the Sith, though 'TK-421' didn't know if it was against the Commander in particular or the Jedi in general.

She turned away.

"Orders, Mylady?"

Paqua sighed and turned on her heels.

"We will return to the shuttles and attack at once."

It seemed that their employment with the Imperial forces would end sooner than expected.

((I have a bad feeling about this.))

Ahsoka couldn't help but agree. The camp was even worse than she had imagined, and it pained her that she couldn't do anything for the poor souls that had been loaded on the shuttle that left even as they approached the compound on foot.

"So do I, but we have no other choice."

They were perched on a cliff overlooking the camp and had spent most of the day overlooking their operations. Ahsoka's bad feeling had amplified during the day and now she was beyond worried. She didn't have to voice that to Chewbacca. The Wookie was not Force sensitive, but she knew that he wasn't happy with the whole situation himself.

Which was why they had decided to wait until it was dark. The improvised shuttlepad on top of one of the buildings had been empty since they saw the last shuttle depart, and speeders with ever more unfortunate victims had driven in past the sentries throughout the day, so they had both judged it unlikely that another shipment would go off before the morning.

For what was the tenth or eleventh time that day, Ahsoka began to study the compound through her binocs.

The same guards walking the same patterns with the same weapons.

As the sun began to disappear behind the horizon, Ahsoka clipped the binocs back to her belt and slipped her her lightsabre from under her forearm where she still kept it when off-world.

"Bad feeling or not, I think it's time."

Chewie grunted an affirmative and followed her as she began to move back down the cliff and then the slope towards the camp.

The slavers had a well-defended compound, but had declined to post a roving sentry as the two unwanted guests both would have. Even though a few riflemen wouldn't have been much of a hindrance to the combined combat skills of a Jedi and a Wookie. But it would have influenced further events of that night.

With things as they were, neither Ahsoka nor Chewie had any difficulty in getting inside. With her lightsabre it took the young Togruta Jedi seconds to cut a hole in the perimeter fence that they would both fit through. They had scanned the most common frequencies throughout the day and were reasonably certain that the two guards they quietly dispatched shortly after would not be missed for a while. The central, biggest building was obviously used as the command centre for this operation, not only because of the shuttles but also because of the communications gear on the roof and around it. Chewie not only wanted to free the slaves but was interested in where the vile shipments were ultimately going, and for that he needed to get into the slaver's computers, most likely to be found in the command/barracks building they were approaching now.

At first Ahsoka had been worried about the roving patrols inside the compound itself, but now that she saw the patrols up close, she was not impressed. Not only were they walking the same predictable pattern, they also seemed to be too occupied with killing time to really do more than walk their rounds. Many of them had their weapons shouldered and as they had found out all of them carried commlinks, but there were no records of regular checkins on the links taken from the guards they'd killed already.

Getting inside the building itself was more unpleasant than hard as going through trash recycling systems could not be anything else.

Once inside, Ahsoka knew instantly that she had made the right call with assisting Chewbacca.

Whatever had been there before, it had been converted into slave pens. Now empty, much to Chewie's chagrin, their bloodied and dirty interior would have shown here what had gone on there even if she hadn't been able to sense the evil and despair and death through the Force.

She was reaching out into the Force to find anyone who might still be in the pens when it happened.

The first inclination that something was wrong was when she was suddenly slammed with a wave of Dark Side energy. She stumbled in mid stride, but by the time she had recollected her faculties, the attack had begun.

Chewie, not realizing that something was wrong until the building started to shake around them, turned towards her. Ahsoka already had her lightsabre in hand.

"The Empire."

That was all the information the Wookie needed.

First resistance was encountered about halfway up the staircase when two slavers fired a few badly aimed shots at them before Chewie's bowcaster cut them down.

The first of three storeys above ground was a poorly maintained barracks level where the slavers slept in dirty bunks. By the time the two attackers reached that, most of them had already left to fight the stormtroopers.

Ahsoka felt a second wave of Dark Side energy. "She is here." was all she said.

((Who?))

"Paqua." she said and looked at the Wookie. "I..."

Ahsoka closed her eyes ans sighed. "I have to distract her if you want to get the data."

Are you sure?

"It's not as if I want to," she said with a laugh, "but the Force has a way of, well, forcing these things. I'd rather run into her on my own terms. The best way to distract her is to draw her away from you."

Chewie saw that she was serious and knew better than to try and dissuade her from her chosen path.

((And your own mission?))

"Let's meet at the speeder in an hour. We'll do it then."

He was uncertain that it was the right thing to do and would never understand why she had decided on it so quickly, but he knew that the ways of the Jedi were often hard to understand for outsiders.

As Ahsoka traced the Dark Side presence to it's source, she wasn't sure why she was doing it. She knew that Anakin had no particular desire to face anyone but Palpatine, and she also figured that a showdown with the most famous Jedi was what Paqua wanted.

What she also knew was that she was playing Paqua's game, running into a confrontation that the Sith had created and that she was running headlong into a blindingly obvious trap. Ahsoka reached into the Force and stopped at the steps that led to the roof from an otherwise empty building. She let out a deep, slow breath, releasing her fear and worries into the Force as she let out the air from her lungs.

Emotion, yet peace.
Ignorance, yet knowledge.
Passion, yet serenity.
Chaos, yet harmony.
Death, yet the Force.

After reciting the mantra, she felt at peace both with herself and with whatever might happen in the next ten minutes. She raced up the stairs.

The six stormtroopers that had guarded the roof access door proofed to be not much of a hindrance, especially since Ahsoka used her Force Wave technique to blow both them and the door itself clear across the roof and down into the compound where their compatriots were rounding up the last of the slavers.

Darth Paqua, observing operations with a few troopers standing at her side, turned even before the first of the troopers had flown off the building. With one smooth movement she Force-jumped towards Ahsoka. Drew and then activated her sabre. When the remaining troopers moved to assist, she ordered them to remain back.

"So, Commander Tano. It will be a pleasure to end your rebellious existence and kill one more of you weakling Jedi."

Ahsoka smiled, standing with her back to the door and with her sabre in a back-handed low-guard position.

"If I were you, I wouldn't be so sure, Paqua. The Order is stronger than you might think."

Paqua, her sabre also on guard, snorted.

"Hardly. You have taken what made the Order so weak and you have reinforced it. You allow yourselves to be distracted by your... attachments, by your so-called love for those around you instead of embracing the untold power of the Dark Side."

The venom with which Paqua had spoken of the attachments contained just a trace of envy. Ahsoka didn't know what to make of it, but she filed it away for future use.

"I think we have to agree to disagree there, Paqu." she replied with a sweet smile, knowing that the 'nickname' would further enrage the Sith. She had considered drawing out this conversation to give Chewbacca more time, but for some reason she sensed in the Force that she would not have to do it. She had never been as good at foreseeing the future as Anakin, but still..

"You are as impertinent as your old Master, Tano. I wish I could kill him to day instead of you, but it will have to do."

Paqua charged, but Ahsoka was able to deflect her first blow. Paqua tried again, but Ahsoka, knowing that she wasn't strong enough to really defeat the Sith Lady was staying on the defensive, taking care to not have her opponent between herself and the stairs that led back down. However, what Paqua didn't realize was that even though she was stronger than Ahsoka, the Togruta wasn't actually trying to win, knowing that all she had to do was not loose.

They traded ineffectual blows for a while until Ahsoka stumbled over a piece of armour from one of the stormtroopers that had guarded the door. She managed to hold onto her sabre, but in falling to the ground, she gave Paqua the advantage. The Sith realized this instantly and she rained blow after blow down on the prostrate Jedi at her feet. As she tried to crawl towards the stairs, Ahsoka barely managed to keep from being sliced to pieces, with her sabre arresting the last blow only inches from her throat.

"Submit!" Paqua growled.

"NEVER!" Ahsoka returned with the same growl. Summoning every ounce of strength in herself, she pulled at a sensor dish that had become dislodged during the fight and sent it flying towards the Sith. Paqua sensed the projectile coming and successfully dodged it, but this gave Ahsoka the breathing space she needed. She jumped to her feet and somersaulted herself to the top of the small shack that covered the staircase. Paqua followed, only for Ahsoka to jump away again, this time towards where the onlooking stormtroopers still stood and then back towards the door. All this was to keep Paqua busy and distracted from what Ahsoka was really doing. Since she was not the sort of Jedi Paqua still seemed to remember, she carried at least one thermal detonator on her person whenever she was likely to go into combat. This she had pulled from her pockets when Paqua had been distracted by the dish. She jumped towards the shuttle again, flipped the detonator to minimum delay and chucked it towards the shuttle.

The stormtroopers saw it flying and scattered to the side even though they all would be within it's detonation radius. But Ahsoka hadn't aimed for them but rather for the shuttle, and the thundering detonation ruptured it's fuel tanks, sending a shockwave and debris all around. Most of the troopers were either killed by the explosion itself or hurled over the side by the shockwave. Those that weren't could be discounted.

Paqua had allowed herself to be surprised by the explosion. Even though she managed to stay on the roof and avoid the worst of the debris, she was thrown down and smaller pieces fractured her swordarm in three places and forced her to drop her sabre. This was not the only wound she suffered, but it was the one of the most consequence. She walked over to the Sith, fully intending to end it then and there, but as if it was fated, a second shuttle screamed in, firing as it came. It missed Ahsoka, but it forced her to instead retreat towards the staircase. Deciding not to risk it again, she ran without sparing the Sith a further glance.

Since the door was in several pieces now, Ahsoka used her sabre to cut the durasteel supports of the spiral staircase behind her as she went. Upon reaching the third storey, the staircase was only supported by the central support beam on the floor, Ahsoka having cut the upper one before. A few quick thrusts with her sabre fixed that. She had to jump to avoid the collapsing durasteel structure, but it gained her a precious minute or two, especially since Paqua was wounded.

She knew that Chewbacca was in the control room so she headed there.

Her blood froze when she saw him surrounded by about a dozen stormtroopers.

She was about to charge and attack when one of the troopers, wearing Lieutenant's insignia, saw how Chewbacca reacted to her approach and turned. He held up both hands.

"Commander Tano!"

The familiar way in which he had said that arrested Ahsoka's charge, giving him time to remove his helmet. His face looked like any other clone, but Ahsoka still knew the tiny differences they developed over time, and the way he looked at her, quite aside from the haircut.

"Rex?"

He smiled. "Yes, Commander."

Ahsoka couldn't help a grin as she extinguished her blade. "It is good to see you, Captain. Your men?"

Rex grinned. "We can trust them, Ma'am. We all removed our chips."

She sighed in relief. "Good, because we have to move, and I still have a mission to complete."

tbc

Yes, I did it. I gave them sensible armour variants. Or rather, I kept them using the variants/camouflage schemes we see during the Clone Wars era.

Including Rex was originally not something I planned, to be perfectly honest. Back when I started this, I really disliked the clones and didn't buy into the GAR fanboyism that seemed to be going around at the time. I disliked them for what I knew they were going to do in ROTS, and it stayed that way until... Rebels. The moment I read online that Rex and some of his men were in there, I was intrigued, and when I heard that they hadn't obeyed Order 66, I decided I had to bring them in. So here they are. That they fit in perfectly with my plans for Episode VI really is an honest to god coincidence.

On a more serious note, you can see I am going to make Paqua more Vader-ish. I'm not going to go all the way because of their different personalities. I also think that in a few places, Vader was too moustache-twirling evil. Case in point, Needa's fate after Hoth. He'd be on Paqua's shitlist for a long time and would have to work very hard to redeem himself, but he wouldn't have been executed by her for falling for a tactic he couldn't have foreseen. I mean come on, which professional Naval Officer could have anticipated Han trying something that stupid?