Where Distance Means Nothing

Cody stood at the circular holo-table, inputting his troops reports as General Obi-Wan Kenobi looked on, rubbing his beard. When the commander was done, a hologram of the terrain lit up above the table, and Cody gave his report.

"The Seppies have the high ground, sir. They're well entrenched here and here, and even with the native foliage for cover they'll see every move we make - especially when we hit this clearing here."

The general nodded. "What are the numbers?"

"Almost triple ours, sir."

General Kenobi heaved a deep sigh. "We knew at the beginning of the war it would be a question of numbers, but it would seem Archduke Poggle is determined to press the point. But let's not beat a dead krayt dragon." The general studied the map and Cody waited for his orders. "What's this here?" he asked, pointing to one part of the map.

"Sir, scouting droids say it's a ravine, about forty meters deep."

"Interesting..." General Kenobi said. "It runs almost behind the Separatist lines. Could the tactical enforcers fit?"

"No, sir. AT-TE specs are over five and a quarter meters wide. The ravine at its thinnest is just under five meters. We could make it wide enough, but the clankers would hear it."

"I see. What about the AT-AT? They're just over four meters wide." Obi-Wan leaned forward to the holo-table, his eyes darting back and forth across the map. "They carry the same number of troopers, and their added height will make them avoid the noise of snapping saplings. With the right placement, say here and here, two or three squads with heavy artillery can inflict massive damage on Separatists."

Cody considered: the plan was different than any he had been trained for, but then he was quickly discovering that being assigned to a Jedi meant that very little went by the book. He had always been considered an independent thinker, but there were moments when he knew he couldn't hold a candle to the creativity of people like General Kenobi and Commander Skywalker. It was why he was glad when he learned that he would be assigned to General Kenobi. It was all to his advantage, ultimately, as it widened his repertoire and made him more efficient and creative on the battlefield. He made a mental note to talk to Captain Rex when Commander Skywalker came back from his mission. They often shared stories of what they saw Jedi do on the battlefield. All the clones did, really. It made them better soldiers.

"Sir, there would still be a fair amount of noise, they'll be able to tell they're being flanked."

"Ah, but not if they're distracted."

"Sir?"

"If we give them a distraction worthy of their attention, all their focus would be conveniently diverted and give the squads time to set up. Then, at a predetermined signal, they open fire. What heavy artillery do we have for these squads?"

"Sir: thermal detonators carry a wide range, and we have a few Merr-Sonn missile launchers that are still functional after the last battle. If we have enough time, we could set up some antipersonnel mines and a blaster cannon."

The general offered a grin. "How much time do you need, Commander?"

"Once they're there, an hour to assemble the cannon. They can lay mines while doing it and any leftovers can just be thrown at the clankers."

"Excellent. Pick your best heavy troopers and assemble the squads necessary. Tell them to pack all the artillery they can carry onto the AT-AT. Once in position in the ravine, they can use line launchers not only to climb up but also send up artillery as they need it. That way they don't risk blowing themselves up if they're overrun."

"Sir," Cody asked, "You still haven't said what the decoy will be."

The general smiled. "That would be me, Cody. Assemble the men."

"Sir, yes sir!"

"Oh, and Cody?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Contact Commander Skywalker and ask him how his battle is faring."

Cody paused in putting on his helmet. "Sir, I wasn't aware Commander Skywalker sent word that he'd engaged the enemy."

General Kenobi grinned slightly. "I suspect it was a surprise attack, if his level of irritation is any indication."

"Yes, sir." Cody put his helmet on and started carrying out orders. Since his return from sick leave, the general showed an uncanny ability to know what Commander Skywalker was up to when he was off planet. If push came to shove, Cody supposed it had something to do with the Force, the magic mumbo-jumbo that made the Jedi capable of their super-being feats. Personally Cody didn't much care one way or the other, he just had to keep abreast of what a Jedi could do physically: maximum jump height, distance they can push, etc so he could do his best to assist. He knew Rex was keeping a journal on such things; it paid to be prepared in case they ever got face-to-face with Count Dooku himself. The general had never shown this level of perception before the sick leave, though, so for all Cody knew it was something else.

Two hours later the squads were climbing down the forty-meter ravine in their twenty-meter AT-ATs, and General Kenobi was getting ready to head out.

Cody came up and saluted. "Sir! Two hundred-and-twelfth at your disposal!"

The general blinked. "Cody, I said I would be the distraction. The droids are programmed to shoot Jedi on sight-"

"Sir, with all due respect," Cody interjected, "the droids are going to need juicer bait than just you, and it will be more convincing if an entire battalion is bearing down on them."

"Cody, I can't expect you to put your men at risk-"

"You can't expect to stop us, either. Sir," Cody said. "We were born to do this, and besides; it's our job - my job - to keep you alive since Commander Skywalker keeps putting you at risk."

The general blinked at first, and for a moment Cody thought he might object. If the general gave a direct order Cody couldn't outright refuse it, but Cody had learned from Alpha 17 that polite objections and blunt reasoning often went very far. And it was true: it was every clone's job to keep the Jedi alive. For all of Cody's training in independent thought he knew he paled in comparison to the Jedi and their creativity. Besides which they could perform outstanding physical feats that made battle easier and the chance of victory higher.

General Kenobi finally grinned, and his stance relaxed some. "Commander Skywalker isn't here, but I deeply thank you for the sentiment. You make a good friend Cody."

The general turned. "Let's get moving."

To any outside observer it was a suicide march. The upper half of the hill was bare of all foliage - and cover - and at a respectable climb - perhaps forty degrees, and rugged earth. Anyone less trained than a Jedi or a clone would stumble on the way up, and that was assuming the clankers up top weren't shooting at them. Any sane commander would move to a different location, but there was one problem: this set up was on every hilltop in this hemisphere, and the clankers weren't the main force, they were the guards for the anti-aircraft cannon that commanded the skies, making air support impossible. For the last two days they had taken over only six hilltops. They needed another three-dozen in order to create a proper landing zone for a proper strike. If the ravines turned out useful, then perhaps some of the other strikes would go quickly.

But then, that brought them back to the suicide march.

Cody was a smart man, and he knew that if he wanted to stay alive he would have to stick near the general.

After the first dozen meters of walking, the droids saw the approach and opened fire. Cody heard any number of brothers screaming in death throws, but it didn't bother him; they were born for this, they were only doing their duty. He raised his sniper-class blaster to his sites and fired a few shots, but realized it took too long to do it, and so he lowered his weapon and kept marching.

Watching a Jedi - any Jedi - was a sight. Watching General Kenobi, though, now that was an experience, and this was a prime example of it. The top of the hill had thrice the number of droids than they clones, and each one was equipped with some class of blaster; the rain of fire from above was so thickly concentrated that one might have thought it was a single blast of red light. It was suicide to even consider assault. And yet, calmly walking through the storm of blasts, explosions, flying earth, through the cacophony of sounds and screams, was the general. His lightsaber swung around his body in tight circles so quickly one might think it the blue shield of a droideka. No blast - not one - got anywhere near him; it was almost like he was walking through a Naboo garden, a leisurely stroll except there was nothing leisurely about the pace he was setting. He wasn't running, per se, but there was a quickness in his steps, a weightlessness in his ongoing march that left Cody and the clones hard pressed to keep up.

It was when they cleared the last of the foliage that things really got rough. Without the alien trees and brambles to block their aim, Cody knew that casualties were about to get much worse. He wondered what was taking the ravine squad so long to set up; but then time in battle was often skewed. For all he knew they had only been fighting for a few minutes.

"Cody!" the general shouted over the hailstorm of noise. "Get ready!"

The clone commander raised his blaster, aiming along the barrel. Suddenly the general was nowhere in sight, and Cody took the opportunity to fire. He was itching for a chance to engage the droid one-on-one; he preferred the brutal intensity of melee combat, but for now he'd have to settle for the satisfaction of the scope. He was out in the open, a perfect target as were the rest of his brothers, but Cody knew better than perhaps anyone that when General Kenobi lead an assault, it meant that you were protected. There was a sudden explosion that rocked the entire hilltop, shaking Cody from helmet to boots, and he saw a plume of high velocity smoke rise from the anti-air cannon. That was the ravine squad; the general must have known they were ready. The fireball heartened the troopers, and they all instinctively double-timed their pace. Cody got back on his feet and started firing as he walked. He could see the goldies were running around in confusion; it would be several minutes before the idiots figured out what to do. Cody took advantage of that and picked off as many as he could.

The general was at his side again, his blue lightsaber swirling around the both of them; the clone commander could smell the ozone at one point the weapon passed so close to his armor. It would never harm him, though; the general knew how to wield that thing to great effect.

An explosion appeared under their feet, and Cody was swirling about in the air trying to figure out which way was up or down; a transmitter in his helmet broke and that static backlash deafened him even more than the explosion, there was a giant thudding sound that rocked him to his bones, and then he was looking up at the pink sky and wondering what had happened. His ears were ringing.

"Commander?" one of the troopers - Boil - asked, helmet off. He could barely hear it.

"A little deaf," Cody replied, blinking quickly and assessing himself. He pulled himself up to a sitting position slowly. Clones didn't have half the pain receptors normal humans did, but they did know if something was broken or less than fully functional. He flexed his fingers and looked to his feet. "All present and accounted for," he was able to say in a steadier voice. "Where's the general?"

"Don't know yet, sir."

"The assault?"

"Victory, sir. After the cannons were taken out, the ravine squad managed to fire a well-aimed shot at the portable think tank. Every droid in ten clicks of here deactivated on the spot. Rookies are going through them all and making sure they never activate again. Waxer and Wooley are guarding the think tank; we figure if anything's salvageable the higher ups will want it."

"Casualties?"

"Still assessing, sir."

"Understood. We need to find the general, make sure he's alright." Skywalker would kill them if they didn't.

When he first got up, Cody registered faint surprise that he'd flown as far as he did. He was easily a hundred meters down the slope of the hill, back in the foliage, the crater of the impact still smoking slightly. Turning around, the clone commander saw the litter of bodies around him, white and yellow armor now smoking and bloody. The acrid smell of blood and feces and smoke filled the air. His ears were still ringing, but he could dimly make out the sounds of orders and commentary from the battalion through the high-pitched whine.

"Do you think he survived?" Boil asked, his voice was low but Cody could just read his lips.

"If I did, then the general definitely did," he answered. Jedi could handle much more than a clone. There were three shinies near him, good. "You three," he called out, perhaps louder than he should've, but his hearing was all out of whack. "You, Boil, and I are going to pick through the bodies and look for the general. He was caught up in the same explosion as I was so he can't be far."

"Sir, yes, sir!"

Rookies.

Cody rolled his shoulders; the antennae attached to his left shoulder-guard poked his neck, bent all out of shape. One could barely see the white under all the dirt and earth that had propelled up at him at high velocity during the explosion. Cody rubbed at it slightly, bits of white peaking through his chest plate. He clinically noted there were a lot of bodies immediately around him; the battalion had taken a hard hit for this. Rubbing his eyes with a smeared glove, he started rolling over the fresh meat to see what was underneath them. Still a little unsteady on his feet, he started pulling the bodies once he'd confirmed they were dead and making a pile, easier to see the ground with. Boil quickly ordered the shinies to do the same.

"Sir? Are you going to answer the comm?" one of the rookies asked.

Cody looked down to his wrist communicator and saw that it was blinking. Frowning, he held it up to his ear and just barely heard its incessant beeping. He'd need a medic to check his hearing.

"Commander Cody," he said into his wrist, straining to listen.

"Cody? What's going on over there?"

"Commander Skywalker." Of course the commander would pick a time to check in when they were missing the general. He just had a knack for it. "Things are going slowly without the air support." Brief, concise, literal answer to the question. Cody held his breath, hoping that would be enough. He knew it wouldn't, but he had to try.

"And General Kenobi?" he asked, his voice sounding suddenly very annoyed.

"We, uh," Cody started slowly, knowing that the ringing in his ears was about to get a lot worse. "We got separated in the last assault, we're looking for him now."

"You mean you LOST him?"

"The two of us were caught up in an explosion, sir. Shortly after the droids were deactivated and wiped out. It's just a matter of seeing where he, uh, landed." Cody winced, waiting for the tirade that was bound to follow - or worse - the imminent knowledge that Commander Skywalker was on his way back just to chew everyone out until the general was found. He was utterly horrible on Jabiim when they were first searching for the general before concluding that he was dead.

But, instead of an irritated growl, there was a long silence. Cody almost thought the line had gone dead when the commander finally responded.

"He should be waking up now." Commander Skywalker's voice sounded oddly distant to Cody's poor ears, and the clone commander wasn't sure he'd heard Skywalker right. The man was at least a dozen parsecs away; there was no way...

"Sir, did you hear that?" Boil asked.

"My ears are still ringing," he answered, pointing to his ears.

"I thought I heard a mo - there it is again," he said, putting on his helmet for its enhanced audio receptors. "This way," he said, motioning with his hand. Cody and the three rookies followed; he still couldn't hear a thing, but the others soon did and the five troopers paused, looking about. There weren't any bodies, but everyone consented that the moaning was coming from here.

It was Cody that thought to look up to the trees and was only mildly shocked to see the general caught in a thick throng of branches, suspended perhaps half a dozen meters in the air.

"General!" he called up. "Are you alright?"

He couldn't hear the response. He growled slightly. "Come on, let's get him down from there," he ordered. Boil climbed the tree with one of the shinies and started cutting limbs. Cody did manage to hear a startled curse and watched as the general started to fall the dozen meters. A hand shot out, however, and grabbed a tree branch. Legs swinging, Cody saw that General Kenobi's free hand was at his temples, rubbing them. His eyes appeared to be closed. Had he done that without even looking?

Boil and the shiny were able to get him down, and he sat down a little heavily. Cody knelt down by him. "Sir, are you alright?" he asked.

"Yes, Anakin, I'm fine, now do shut up. I have a headache as it is..."

Cody looked up to Boil. "Looks like a concussion, call for a medic."

"No, no, Cody, I'm fine," the general said slowly, looking up. He had a cut on his face and dirt smeared over him worse that Cody himself. "I have a headache, certainly, but no concussion and," he paused, closing his eyes, "no serious injuries."

"Yes, sir. But just now you said-"

"I know what I said, Cody," the general said, a smiling bleeding through his beard. "Anakin was kind enough to wake me up in the most blunt manner possible, and I was politely telling him to be quiet."

"... Sir. He's twelve parsecs away-"

"And very annoyed by the distance, I assure you," he replied. He stood up slowly, a little shaky on his feet. He put a hand on a tree trunk to steady himself before he took a deep breath. "How long was I out?"

Cody looked to Boil. "About an hour." The two gave him a report of events up to this point, and he absorbed it with a calm face.

"Alright," he said finally. "Let's check in with our people at the ravine. We'll want to finish assessing our losses before we take the next hill - hopefully before Commander Skywalker decides it's safe enough to leave and comes back to yell at me about self-preservation."

"Yes sir!"


Authors Notes: A parsec is 30,856,775,813,057.3 kilometers. Anakin's a dozen of those away. I figured that'd be far enough away that people with Force bonds might find that a little far to, uh, "reach out and touch someone." Not these two, though. :P

Since Jabiim has happened, now we need to show what some of our tweaks are doing; and it often helps to have these kind of observations from someone outside Ani and Obi. Cody seemed like the best choice, and the deeper into the fic we get the more we like exploring other characters.

Also, note that Anakin didn't have a meltdown, and in point of fact didn't even break stride, er, much. He's learning.

We're pleased to note that none of you guessed who the POV would be from in this chapter. ^_^ We like being able to surprise you.

Next week: An encounter with Ventress. We all know how this is going to go.