96,000 ft above Nevada, NAU, Edge of Imperial Occupied Space
The cockpit of the spyplane held enough controls to pilot one of the Orion space shuttles, leaving the two officers onboard little room to move. The crewmen had trained in secrecy for this one reconnaissance mission for almost the entirety of their careers in the Air Force. That intense training regimen allowed them to effortlessly monitor the hundreds of state-of-the-art and next generation instruments that controlled their aircraft.
At the moment they were at a cruising speed of Mach 4.3 heading for the spot where they would line up their run on their target. Northern Nevada and then Northern Upper California flashed by far below. At their altitude the curvature of the Earth cut a distinct line against the darkness of space. Both pilots tried to push aside thoughts that this might be the last time they ever saw it and concentrated on the mission ahead.
Their supersonic spyplane was the descendent of the old SR-71 Blackbirds and the ancient Lockheed U-2s that had been the backbone of the old United States Air Force's aerial recon squadrons. Combined with the technology of the black projects of the Aurora, BlackStar, and TR-3A Black Manta programs their aircraft was the most advanced piece of technology the Earth had ever put up into the air.
Pushed by twin engines that burned through gallons of liquid methane every few seconds the plane started its long banking curve to the south. That simple maneuver took another two hundred miles out of their flight plan.
The spycraft had been sent on its mission out of desperation from higher command. The aliens invading their world had destroyed every last one of Earth's satellites before launching their attack. The Air Forces of the NAU had been spread thin in an effort to defend the most vital regions of the continent. No one knew where an orbital enemy would come to ground, and the enemy fleet had made sure that the NAU would remain in the dark about the invasion with their superior jamming and electronic signal warfare.
When reports came in that it appeared the aliens were going to land in Los Angeles fighter squadrons in the area reported almost total loss of all their communication abilities. Radar and weapon guidance systems had been jammed out of existence. While they had been dealing with that thousands of alien fighters had fallen upon them, quickly clearing the skies around the alien landing zones.
Reports from the soldiers on the ground hadn't been much better. They had been horribly mauled while moving into the city. The army had barely begun to dig in when a devastating barrage of what was rumored to be mini-nukes had been dropped on the frontline formations moving into position in the beach communities of LA. After that, communications with the units involved in the ground battle had been sketchy at best. Predator IIIs and other UAV drones had casually been swatted from the skies by the enemy fighter cap over the city. Rumors of alien soldiers landing during the night and reports of a retreat filtered back to the generals outside of the battlezone. Now those generals needed answers if they were going to defend their planet. The two spyplane crewmen were going to attempt to give them some.
The pilot in his high-pressure space suit slowly turned his upper body to look to the north and activated side scanning radar on a diamond-shaped alien craft over San Francisco. He wondered if his systems, advanced as they were, would cut through the alien jamming.
The co-pilot had been monitoring the intelligence gathering equipment in relative silence, but something had changed"Signal interference is clearing." He said, sounding surprised.
"Odd." The pilot looked to his own monitors as the guidance computer and map-of the-earth systems suddenly burned through the alien signal-warfare. He had feared he would have to guide the slick craft through its target run by his own dead-reckoning. "Are they ignoring us?"
"No way! Ten bogeys on our tail coming up fast." The co-pilot reported. The pilot looked at the radar. Sure enough ten alien craft were lining up on his six and approaching at an unheard of speed. In no time flat they were on his tail. Yet they held their fire.
On their wing a white and red 'X' shaped craft suddenly appeared. The alien fighter had a pair of cannons mounted on the tips of its central wings and matched their speed with ease. The spyplane's pilot counted three alien crew aboard the Imperial fighter, including one that faced backwards like an old World War II tail gunner.
"I think they're looking us over." The pilot said.
"Getting strange readings off of something around their hull. If I didn't know any better I'd swear they had a forcefield around their spaceplane." The co-pilot said. Their own plane didn't mount a single weapon other than its cameras. A space battle with these 'X' fighters would have been short and decidedly non-sweet for the two NAU pilots.
"They're not firing because they know what we are. I think they want us to see what we came up here to see."
"Cocky assholes. If they want to brag let them. Just lets us do our mission all the easier. Start point is in forty seconds." The co-pilot said. On their control panels every indicator icon lit up as their cameras and signal-gathering equipment came to life for the run. The pilots pushed his throttles forward as his craft passed Mach 5 and finally settled into the attack speed of Mach 6.3. The alien on their wing matched them.
The pilot looked over at his opposite number in the alien craft. The Imperial pilot sent him a mocking salute before pulling up the nose of his own craft and leading his flight away from the spyplane. The pilot breathed a sigh of relief as he put more and more distance between the two of them.
They dropped a dozen miles in altitude as they vectored in on their approach down the length of Upper California's coastline. The darkened landscape of Upper California passed beneath them with only small fires or vehicle lights marking the difference between the shore and the Pacific. The two pilots switched between thermal, infra-red and night-vision on their helmets as they made their approach down the coastline at supersonic speeds. Ahead of them a glow marked the location of the Battle of Los Angeles.
Surrounding the doomed metropolis were several giant spacecraft that had been dubbed 'Star Destroyers' by Intelligence. The big UFOs had pounded a circular zone of death around the city with their larger laser cannons. Inside that zone hundreds of the tinier and slower 'H' fighters flew patrol over the burning city. Here and there they dove on unseen targets on the ground. The pilot took those actions to mark the positions of the NAU army's defensive lines.
The moonlit sky itself was filled with bursts of flak fire and the arcs of hundreds of strange blue energy projectiles that were flung from the beach areas and neighborhoods around the LAX international airport. The quick alien shells slammed down around the city on top of what the pilot assumed were his own side's artillery positions.
His flight plan took his plane directly underneath one of the 'Star Destroyers' and through the barrage of laser fire it was putting down. Suddenly that curtain of super-heated death disappeared. The alien mothership held its fire as they passed beneath it. That the aliens seemed to want them to succeed was the only conclusion the pilot could come up with for their amazing luck.
Behind and beneath the pilot on his plane's fuselage several top-secret cameras made by the Kodak and Nikon companies went to work. Their high-speed lenses taking millions of frames of digital images in a dozen different spectrums. Both pilots knew that each of the cameras cost more ameros than each of their houses combined and that high command was more concerned with the survival of the cameras than the two pilots.
Far beneath them the beaches of LA were cratered and pitted from the effects of the alien's landing. Night fighting had already pushed into the rubble of neighborhoods to the east. Small laser fire marked the boundaries of the pitched battle as it moved inland from the coast. Large strange shaped transports were landing at LAX while smaller, barn-sized transports buzzed in and out of the international airport like angry killer bees around a intruder.
The cameras recorded thousands of images of strange white and black infantry pouring from those transports and fighting tooth-and-nail with the American soldiers trying to set up an organized defense in the city.
The pilot noted the presence of strange, gray machines that walked on four legs and advanced ahead of the alien infantry. Out of their 'heads' poured red laser energy that decimated whatever it hit. An American attack helicopter unleashed a volley of hellfire missiles at one of the 'walking' vehicles just as enemy 'H' fighters blasted it from the sky. The American ground forces may have been knocked back on their heels but they were still in the fight. He rooted and prayed for his countrymen below as he streaked across their positions sending sonic booms across the Los Angeles Basin.
The pilot knew his cameras now contained information that needed to be in the hands of the generals commanding the forces coming to LA's rescue. With his afterburners still maxed out he raced out of the city to the south. The plane had only been over Los Angeles for a little less than a minute.
The spyplane overflew Orange County, which was clogged with refugees from the battle and the orbital bombardment that had razed San Diego to the ground south of them. Blue energy impacts exploded across the devastation as more and more army and national guard units tried to make sense out of the chaos below.
The cameras recorded everything.
They made another wide banking turn east as they passed over the wreckage of Coronado Harbor in San Diego. The city and its port, that had been the home of the NAU's Pacific Fleet headquarters was now slagged from the effects of an earlier, massive, orbital bombardment.
The cameras took more photos.
Twenty minutes later the spycraft came to a landing on the super-extended runway at Groom Lake inside Area 51. Technicians and ground crewmen swarmed the craft, desperate to get it undercover and inside a armored bunker located half a kilometer underneath the base. Even as the craft was still taxiing to its hanger the cameras were removed and the digital images whisked away by agents from the National Security Agency.
The plane moved into the specialized skunkwork's hanger and then was placed on a specialized lift system that lowered it into the bowels of the top-secret airbase. Five minutes later the two pilots were being debriefed when the underground bunker system began to rumble and shake as if from an earthquake.
In orbit high above, the heavy turbolasers of a Star Destroyer reduced the above-ground hangers and runway of Area 51 to molten glass.
Kuati Research Sector, Block Besh Six, Culter City, Imperial Mars
Ashla Ti, fugitive Togrutan Jedi Knight, was looking for her friends.
She stood on the roof of a massive, unpowered molecular furnace across the street from the Industrial Automaton droid manufacturing plant that shared a wall with her goal this evening. Aerial blimps with giant HoloImaging skins cruised slowly overhead showing propoganda images of victories from the new war on nearby Earth while multicolored searchlights mounted beneath their hulls bathed the towering factory buildings around her.
Twenty-three floors below her at street-level the metropolis of Culter City was alive in celebration. The survivors of Tarkin's Fist were celebrating the return of the Fleet Admiral's brat according to the Martian HoloNews. Ashla sneered; she knew what they were really celebrating was war. War that had come to Mars by the will of their Empire. War that would put those ex-slaves down below back on top of somebody else again.
Twelve years ago another tragic war had willed that she, as a Jedi, would never be on top again.
She put thoughts of politics aside and concentrated on the obstacle ahead. Through flashes of fireworks and laser light she studied the fifty-meter gap between the Industrial Automaton building and her perch on the giant molecular furnace. In her minds eye she knew exactly where she would leap from and had already chosen her point of landing. Her montrals echolocated the distance once more in silent confirmation.
Fifty meters.
Her missing friends were rumored to be somewhere ahead. That rumor had cost quite a bit when she had bought it from a Bothian information-broker at the Long Jump Casino. This is why Jedi don't form attachments, she reminded herself. That way they don't end up falling to their deaths in the middle of the night.
Several fireworks boomed loudly overhead, scrambling her species' unique sixth sense and ruining her night-vision for half a second. Reflexively, she reached out with the Force. Reflectively she bore her fangs and silently hissed. Someone was out there. Someone was watching her.
She ducked behind a large release valve on the furnace's roof. Her red skin and black pants and cropped-cut top, though more befitting of a Sith, hid her instantly in the shadows. She controlled her breathing, narrowed her eyes, and reached out with the Force again, probing the factory across the street. Its security guards were several floors below watching the street festival, yet she could sense that someone else was close. She looked over the ledge at the crowds below and, sensing nothing, braced herself for her inhumanly, long leap.
She backed up as far as she could, to give herself enough space to build up the speed needed for her jump. She kicked off her boots, a Togrutan habit, and pulled out her inactive lightsaber. If someone was out there she was ready. Putting all of her trust in the Force she propelled herself forward across the roof of the furnace. At the lip of the furnace's edge she jumped.
She focused on the ledge across the street. The thousands of celebrating beings below never noticed the darkened figure that streaked through the night sky. She started to feel her trajectory dip and applied the technique of Force-Leap, instantly shooting her ten meters higher at a much faster rate of speed. Within a heartbeat she cleared the far edge, impacting the droid factory's roof with a thud and a roll. Her training kicked in, and following through with an Ataru-style roll, she bounded quickly to her feet. Already her blue lightsaber was activated and she was in the High-Guard position of her beloved Djem So style of lightsaber combat handed down to her by her former Master, Agen Kolar.
She focused on slowing down her rapid breathing as she echolocated again for any hidden threats around the darkened rooftop. No new sounds of approach rose from her invasion of the factory's perimeter. The only noise was that of the celebration below. She deactivated her lightsaber and stood erect, lowering her guard for the smallest fraction of a second.
That was all it took for the wall next to her to explode into life. A silent, black, armor-clad figure hit her mid-section and hurled both of them through a large skylight. Clari-crystalline glass shattered around them as they crashed through the opening.
Ashla struck back, ramming her elbow into the figure's back and shoulder as they hurled towards the factory's manufacturing floor. The mysterious stranger bounced off of her and landed somewhere else in the darkened factory. A beam of moonlight from the smashed skylight illuminated the center of the room.
Ashla recovered quickly from the impact with the floor, activated her blade, and returned to the High-Guard position. Her montrals and Force-abilities scanned the darkness for her attacker. "Show yourself." She hissed as she bore her fangs at the pitch-blackness surrounding her.
"Well, well, what have we got here? A Jetii di'kut? All by yourself, Girlie?" A voice mocked from the shadows. Her blade's light illuminated hundreds of inactive blue R2 astromech droids lined up in rows arround her. The electically-modified voice echoed off of their metal skins. Was he using Mando'a slang? Poodoo, she had to think. Was she facing a clonetrooper? A Mandalorian Supercommando? A Dark-Jedi?
"You know, Order 66 is still in effect as far as I know. Old Palps still wants you dead." A clone then, she decided. The rumor of the Jedi-murdering Order 66 had reached her during her years on the run from the Empire's hounds. Now one of them had found her trillions of parsecs from the Empire that had issued the order. "Probably be a big reward for turning you in."
"You are welcome to try. But I warn you I will not be easy prey like the Jedi you probably shot in the back." Silence greeted her words. She felt a sharp pang of regret and pain in the Force. She braced for the attack, scanning row after row of R2s for her hidden attacker.
Then he was there, standing in front of her in Katarn-class Night-Op armor, his DC-17m aimed at her face. Why show himself, she wondered? They shared a nod before he blasted off a poorly-aimed plasma bolt. She weaved her lightsaber into action and with a humming buzz the red blaster bolt deflected into a nearby R2 unit. The clone charged right into her attack but ducked just as her blade whirred at his helmet. His weight crashed into her legs. Her Jedi skills proved the superior and she flipped upwards, landing on top of the sliding clone.
Her knee knocked the blaster out of his hands and she brought the tip of her blade to his throat. "Why didn't you kill me when you had the chance?" She asked the pinned trooper.
Suddenly a green lightsaber was activated and held to her own neck. "Because I've killed enough Jedi." She detected a well of sorrow in the clone's words. "Truce?" He asked.
"Truce." Both lightsabers deactivated at the same time. They both regained their footing. "Should I ask you where you got that?"
"Saleucami, last day of the War." the clone pulled out a grappling hook and attached it to the barrel of his blaster. Ashla knew only one thing happened on the last day of the War that mattered. She felt the Dark Side shutter quickly by and fought to keep the sickly presence of rage at bay. A Jedi shall know neither love nor hatred. Nor, she reminded herself, anger.
In the end she swallowed it.
He fired the grappling hook upwards, snagging it on a support up on the roof and reached out his hand to her. She hesitated for a moment before taking it. She didn't feel any hatred coming from this clone. She knew he still had standing orders to kill her but something told her she would be safe going with him. She stepped forward and took his hand. He wrapped his arm around her torso and held her tight as the blaster recoiled the grappling line, pulling them skyward. The rows of silent, deactivated R2s remained as the only witnesses to what had happened there.
She helped him to the roof, where fireworks continued to light the night sky. "What business do the Jedi have sneaking around Industrial Automaton?" He asked as he stowed away his looted lightsaber inside his armor.
"I don't. I'm not with the Jedi anymore." She explained.
"Probably for the best. Not many of them around anymore, are there?" He didn't seem to mean any harm with his statement but that didn't stop it from hurting any less.
"No thanks to your Emperor Palpatine. Who are you anyways?"
"Well, for starters I really don't think he's our Emperor anymore, just as much as I don't believe Order 66 has any effect here on Mars. As for who I am, I'm just Neyo. Well, some call me CC-8826 Clone Commander Marshal Neyo, 91st Reconnaissance Corps. But like I said, you can call me Neyo."
"Well, Neyo, it's good that Order 66 is no longer a concern. . . with you at least. I'm Ashla Ti, Jedi Knight, but you can call me Ashla. As for what business I have up here, I have none. My concern is them." She pointed at the smaller industrial complex next to Industrial Automaton's.
His head swiveled. "Kandosii! Arkanian Microtechnologies? That's where I was heading, too."
"Seriously?" She asked. He just nodded in response. As a clone she figured he probably had his own reasons for breaking into a cloning facility. "I hope we're not after the same thing."
"Depends. I'm here for answers. Looking to do some snooping around their computer mainframe." He explained.
She was relieved but only because Arkanian's cloning technology held no particular interest for her. "Good. I'm here for some misplaced friends of mine."
"Let me guess, Gran?"
"Yes, and an Ishi Tib. How did you know?"
"About a month ago this place was crawling with them. Then I got a tip that they all got moved out to that huge prisoner of war camp being set up way out on the other side of Mars. They've probably been there for a couple of weeks at the least. I'm sorry that I don't know more of their fate." Ashla's heart sank as the possibility that Frip and Brakatak had been moved once again. Already she had freed the female members of Brakatak's Gran herd and she had hoped to reunite the entire herd tonight. "Well then, we should go find out what we can."
"Agreed. I have no love for cloners. I'll watch your shebs if you watch mine?"
"Sounds good. Shall we?" She gestured to the railed wall separating the two compounds. He moved first, rappelling down his grappling line in a matter of seconds before taking a covering position for her descent. When she landed next to him he silently pointed out a TT-8L/Y7 gatewatcher droid next to the rooftop entrance.
She motioned for him to stay put. Utilizing the Force she propelled a loose piece of debris across the rooftop. The droid gatewatcher followed it on its ponderous path. When the piece of trash was as far from them as it could get on the rooftop, she stood and flung her activated lightsaber. It whirled like a spinning disk before dissecting the security device in two halves. It continued its circling journey before returning to her palm. Neyo just shrugged; evidently he had seen that Jedi trick before.
Neyo rushed to the door and crouched beside it, listening. "Anything?" he asked. She reached out with the Force to sense the presence of anyone on the other side. Sensing nothing, she shook her head. His leg kicked out like a battering ram, shattering the door's lock and flinging it inward. The noise sounded like a Hutt falling off a cliff. Ashla hoped the noise from the celebrations at street level would drown out the racket they were making.
They both crept inside, covering each other as they made their way down the stairwell. They silently swept through each floor of offices and maintenance levels until they reached the production level. A security pass and retinal scan was required to access the floor, but Neyo proved to have more than one trick up his sleeve in order to slice the security systems. He placed what appeared to be a homemade and highly modified slicer chip on the door's electronic security alarm. From a pouch on his leg he withdrew a meter long piece of slicewire with dual carbonite handles. The molecule thick wire could cut through almost any material from durasteel to plasteel when used by the hands of an expert. Neyo expertly went to work on the hinges. He had the heavy durasteel security door open in under half a minute.
The vault-like door swung inwards, revealing a low-light room of industrial-sized vats and boilers. Along one wall stood six cloning chambers amongst several Bacta tanks. Dozens of monitoring devices were scattered around the room, their tiny indicator lights blinking like soulless eyes watching them from everywhere.
In the center of the room stood several computer mainframe workstations. Neyo started to advance when Ashla suddenly grabbed his shoulder and held him back. "I've got a bad feeling about this."
No sooner had the words escaped her mouth than out of the darkness a pair of violet electrostaffs ignited. Their dual electromagnetic, pulse-generating tips whirred in matching circles like two horrific, evil eyes. From out of the shadows stepped a pair of cloaked IG-100 MagnaGuards.
They stood just under two meters tall but from the horror stories Ashla had heard in the Temple, that the MagnaGuards were Jedi-killers, she knew better than to underestimate them. Keeping her gaze trained on their fierce, red photo-receptor eyes, she activated her blue blade and prepared herself for a life or death fight. Neyo took careful aim with his blaster and waited for her next move.
She charged at the droid nearest to her, while at the same instant Neyo unloaded an entire clip of tibanna into its partner. The MagnaGuard facing the clone commander swung its electrostaff wildly as it deflected the incoming volley. Bolts of red plasma ricocheted haphazardly around the factory floor before several of them impacted with Neyo's adversary, knocking him to the ground. The deadly assassin droid was back on its feet a second later.
Ashla sprinted at her opponent, who planted one end of its weapon on the floor, using it as a pivot to swing its body feet first at the Jedi. Ashla moved her lightsaber through an elegant upswing that amputated one of the droid's legs. But the other leg caught her in the chest and the remaining weight of the MagnaGuard slammed on top of her.
Ashla pushed upwards with the Force on her adversary and combined with the droid's momentum it continued to roll right past her. The MagnaGuard grasped at her as it went by, trying in vain to keep the superior position on the Jedi.
Ashla thought that several of her ribs might have been bruised or broken as she regained her knees. Pain radiated from her right side as she tried to regain the breath that had been forced from her lungs by the droid's assault. She started to stand but the crippled MagnaGuard was on her and swinging its electrostaff. Ashla concentrated on her defense as her blade bounced off the phrik-covered weapon. Just before the vicious droid could get inside of her defenses she focused her mind and became acutely aware of her surroundings. With an upward force-leap she back flipped from her prone position and landed on top of a nearby bacta tank.
The MagnaGuard glared at her from the ground, where it struggled to regain its footing with only one leg. Ashla sliced thought the feed and power cables of the tank and braced her shoulders against the wall. Her bruised ribs felt as if they were threatening to burst from her skin. With her feet firmly planted on the tank she pushed with all her might. She bit her lip hard as pain shot from her right side. The tank started to tip.
The MagnaGuard realized too late what was happening. It raised its electostaff in defense at the last minute as the weight of the tank crashed upon it, flattening it and shattering the tank. Bacta burst in every direction. Ashla jumped through the sloshing blue liquid with her lightsaber drawn downward. She landed on the incapacitated droid. Her blue blade sliced through its torso and she crouched at the ready until the red light faded from its photoreceptors.
Neyo moved slowly in a semi-circle, firing off carefully aimed shots every other second. The second MagnaGuard stood its ground, easily deflecting the clone's shots and waiting for a hole to emerge in Neyo's attack. It never detected the lightsaber that flew out of the shadows and decapitated it.
Ashla looked across the room where her weapon had fallen as the now headless droid turned to face its new attacker. It spun its electrostaff, effectively preventing Ashla from retrieving her lightsaber. Neyo chose that moment to charge. Silently moving to the droid's side, he kicked out with his heavy boot. The MagnaGuard struggled to regain its balance but before it could do so Neyo unloaded a fresh clip into the monster's body.
The room was quiet except for Ashla's labored breathing. With a flick of her hand she retrieved her lightsaber and deactivated it.
"Hold it right there." A voice commanded from above.
Neyo and Ashla looked up and saw three Khommite scientists on a gantry above, nervously holding them under the sights of several DL-44 blasters. Each of the beings looked as if they had never held a blaster before. Neyo actually looked relaxed and unconcerned in all of his armor. He nodded at her.
Ashla shrugged and with a slight focus she Force-pulled the gantry away from its supports. The whole structure, along with their three would-be captors, crashed to the floor of the cloning facility. Ashla smirked at the three clumsy scientists as they tried to regain their footing on the bacta-slick floor. With his Katarn combat boots Neyo easily disarmed each of them. He moved away from the cowering cloners and went to examine the room's computer mainframe and cloning chambers.
Ashla approached the three Khommites. She tried to ignore the way they kept eying the deactivated lightsaber in her hand. "Where's Barakatak and Frip?"
"Who?" One of the cloners tried to put up a brave front.
"I don't have time to play games. The big Gran and the little Ishi Tib." " The blue blade came to life in her palm with an audible hum.
"We took. . . took them. . ." one of the scientists stammered.
"They're alive." Another cloner sputtered.
"So where are they?" She calmed the anger rising in her voice.
"We sent them to a concentration camp for prisoners, um...Camp 1138."
"But they're not criminals," Ashla raised the blade threateningly at one of them. "How you'd get them inside."
"We framed them. We sliced new identies into Culter City Guard's criminal records, made them into Vigos for the Black Sun. The guards were so stressed for labor out there, that they didn't ask a lot of questions." Said one of the Khommites who was practically in tears.
"Where is it?" She growled.
"Its out on the Chryse Planitia, northwest of here," Neyo answered from the computer. "That's where the Fleet has set up a huge camp for arrivals from Earth."
"Then that's where I'm heading." She closed her lightsaber and faced the clone. "What should we do with these guys? The law would just set them free."
"Don't worry about them. I've got a little job for them and their cloning gear." He walked over and placed a set of stun collars on each of the cloners. Then he yanked each of them to his feet and directed them to start loading their equipment into a nearby hovertruck parked at the plant's loading ramp. "I wish I could help you more with your friends, but I have my own mission."
He reached into his armor and pulled out the green lightsaber handle from earlier. He handed it to her. "It was on Saleucami. Her name was Stass Allie, and she was the best General I ever followed. You were right. We blasted her in the back, like cowards."
Ashla didn't know what to say. She reached out and hesitantly took the offered lightsaber.
"It never did feel right, what we did to the Jedi. They were our Generals and our friends. I'm sorry." Neyo offered with genuine sorrow in his voice. Ashla could feel herself fighting back her own tears.
"I know. I feel the good inside of you."
"Between the Jetii and us clones thousands have perished. Let us have peace."
"Agreed." She turned away and left the cloning center as tears streamed down her face.