Strike Out

"All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret."

- Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Eyat city, Gaftikar, Outer Rim, 21 BBY (26 days after the first bombing & 17 months after the Battle of Geonosis)

Under the stoic direction of Kase, the fifteen troopers managed to hold off the advancing crowd. Their circle defense and wrap-around vision allowed the clones to oversee the entire intersection and the comm channels buzzed with shouted orders, warnings of an enemy contact at someone's three o'clock and the occasional muted cursing. The speeder blocking most of the road was both a hindrance and an asset. It was a bit of coverage that the troopers could employ once they'd stunned the rest of Wilky's group into unresisting unconsciousness. It was also enough of an obstacle that most of the charging civvies chose a frontal assault, rather than climb over the speeder. But the vehicle also blocked the clones' sight from that direction and it was a very real possibility for an enemy to mount an attack on the circle of troopers from behind the cover of the speeder. It was one more detail that Kase kept a practiced eye on during the chaos.

Captain Kase stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Zaps, firing his blaster calmly into the crowd, directing his men with an efficiency that had been drilled into him on Kamino.

It wasn't difficult to discern what was going on here. Through the screaming, distorted faces, the flailing limbs and the occasional barrage of refuse, Kase could see a number of people forming up at the rear of the incensed crowd of youths. This group was comprised of mostly older Humans, in their late thirties or mid-forties. Kase recognized the man who'd whipped the crowd into such a frenzy amongst them. He coolly shot another two teenagers with stun bolts, then sent a quick burst freq at Zaps. Without faltering the two men smoothly switched places in the defensive circle, managing the maneuver with such speed that the gaps in the formation were closed before anyone could take advantage of them. Both troopers kept firing their blasters throughout.

Now in a better position, Kase ordered his HUD to zoom in on the faces of the adults. The HUD did so and the faces of fifteen men and women were highlighted in blue, then red as the HUD's downloaded security file flagged them as known offenders. These men and women were members of the Gaftikar for Humans movement and they were using the younger people as cannon fodder.

For what purpose? Kase wondered, going through the most logical strategies in his mind, even as he parried a knife thrust at him. Kase got his Deece between the young man's arms, twisted the blaster, forcing the youth's arms to twist in the same direction. He screamed and Kase slammed his Deece into his face. The young man went down. Someone from the mob still had enough sense to grab the teenager and pull him back, but Kase could see that not everyone had been so lucky. Quite a number of the teenagers his men were stunning were ending up as bloodied messes on the ground, trampled by the others eager to get at the clones.

Sloppy, Kase thought. An utter waste of resources. Stunned, on average those youths wouldn't have needed more than fifteen to thirty minutes to regain consciousness and rejoin the fight. This way, the GFH was thinning its own ranks.

"Captain," Zaps called him over the officers' private channel. "I think we need an exit strategy." Zaps ducked just in time to avoid a brick aimed at his head. He shot from his crouch, firing off a rapid burst of stun bolts into the forest of legs surrounding the troopers.

"We can hold the line," Kase replied calmly. "Republic soldiers do not give ground before terrorists."

There was a click over the channel, as if Zaps had forcefully clamped his mouth shut on whatever he'd been about to say.

A cry of pain and a curse drew Kase's attention to the line of his troopers. Three Humans had managed to get through the steady barrage of stun bolts and had blitzed one of Kase's corporals. The man, Cheks, was trying to fight them off, while the three youths attempted to drag him back into the seething crowd, where he'd most likely be trampled. Another trooper was trying to help Cheks, but his efforts were opening gaps in the defensive circle.

This would have been the perfect opportunity for one of the police officers to step; their stun batons were of far greater use in close-range combat than the troopers' Deeces. But the three officers were cowering in the middle of the defensive circle, a spot normally reserved for wounded clones and VIPs. The three men were practically green in the face with fear and none of them had made so much as a single attempt to provide the aid they were supposed to. The captain couldn't rely on them to intervene.

Kase would have to order the trooper back into position, leaving Cheks to fight for himself. It would likely cost the corporal his life.

Kase analyzed his options in the time it took to pull a Deece's trigger. Lose one or lose the entire two squads. There could only be one answer.

Something inside of Kase, a small, insecure voice, protested this casual sacrifice of a fellow trooper and brother. But Kase had learned years ago, as a cadet, not to heed the voice of his own doubts.

Outwardly, his cool and stoic demeanor never even cracked. "Back in..." he began, just as his HUD caught movement at the very back of the crowd.

Five of the adults who'd remained close to the houses were raising long-barreled, self-made blasters. Kase's head jerked up and for a moment, even he was stunned. They couldn't possibly...

They did.

With a faint pop!pop!pop!pop!pop! that he could only hear thanks to the sensors in his bucket, the four adults fired their self-made slugthrowers at the ring of troopers...and only managed to hit the shouting, angry mob of youths.

Kase saw blood spray up as a young woman was hit in the shoulder. She collapsed, without even the time to scream in pain, and was instantly lost beneath the seething crowd. Another Human, a young man, suffered a graze to his head. The scalp wound began to bleed profusely and Kase had time to see the young man raise his fingers to the wound and then stare incredulously at the blood. He started screaming then; not in rage, but in profound fear. His nearest neighbors were alerted to his distress and turned towards him, staring openmouthed.

"Those vaping chakaare," Zaps cursed.

"They can't calculated a slug's trajectory," Kase observed drily.

The roar of the mob lessened for just a second, as pockets of youngsters saw the blood of their downed comrades and realized that the sound of shots had come from behind them.

Then someone yelled, "Sniper!" over the squads' shared comm freq. Kase's head jerked up just in time to see a bright muzzle flash reflect off of a window. One of the troopers went down, his chest plate cracked. Kase couldn't see if the shot had penetrated the plastoid, but it didn't matter.

The crowd of youngsters had gone deathly silent at the sound of this newest shot. Then like the change of the tide, screams of fear replaced the cries of rage and the crowd of teenagers tried to run away from the troopers, rather than at them.

It was the messiest retreat Kase had ever seen.

Like a herd of panicked bantha, the youths stampeded away from where they thought the shot had originated from. In their haste to flee, people were tripping over one another, falling to the street only to be trampled by those behind them. Kase's buffers kicked in, protecting his ears against the piercing cries of pain and shrieks of fear. Someone slammed into him and Kase had to grit his teeth and lock his legs so as not to be spun to the side.

"Tighten formation," he called to the rest of his men.

The troopers backpedaled, closing up the circle as tightly as they could. The wounded troopers were taken into the center of the circle, where the three police officers huddled in fear and confusion. Without needing further instructions from Kase, the troopers holstered their blasters and linked their arms with those of their neighbors, each acting as an anchor to the other as they were buffeted and run into by the panicked people.

Heedless of the chaos he'd caused, the sniper kept firing.

He was inadequately, if not downright poorly, trained, Kase noted. Whoever was hiding along those rooftops was hitting civilians more than he was shooting troopers, for although the clones were a relatively stationary target in the mass of bodies, the youths were numerically superior and pressed themselves along the immobile circle of clones, getting into the sniper's line of sight. A clone would have been able to compensate for the mass and find his proper target.

A young woman went down right before Kase, taking the slug that had been meant for him.

Kase figured they had another four, maybe five seconds, before the crowd dispersed and gave the sniper a clear shot at the two squads. They had to evac the area and get under cover.

"Calling all units!" Another voice called urgently over the comms. "Calling all units! This is Gamma Squad. We are under attack! Repeat, we are under attack! Request immediate assistance!"

"This is Green Squad! We're caught in an ambush. Three men down! Send backup!"

And the distress calls kept coming in, as if a floodgate had been opened. In a matter of two seconds Kase had five different squads requesting immediate backup.

"This was a setup," Zaps growled. "And we walked right into it."

"Clearly," Kase replied. Despite the sweat beading his forehead, his voice remained calm. But beneath his bucket, his eyes were racing over the HUD's many icons and windows as they tried to take in all of the dozen different streams of data. For a moment, he was in a bad place, a state of mind he hadn't experienced since he was a cadet in his third year and had just started training with the fully functional heads-up display. Back then, he'd been confused by the mass of data scrolling down before his eyes, frightened by all of the vital Intel he was simply incapable of absorbing. He'd lost his head then, shouting confused orders and he likely would have gotten his squad killed in the live-fire exercise if Gaff hadn't taken over.

But his commander wasn't here now and Kase was no longer that cadet. Never breaking his concentration, never stopping to allow panic to even begin to set in, Kase fell back on what he knew best: the regs. And the regs told him exactly what to do.

With a blink he took over the entire comm system, overriding the chatter by activating the emergency channel. All non-esential frequencies were instantly shut down and Kase's voice reached every trooper squad left in Gaftikar.

"All units. Fall back," he ordered. "Evac the city proper ASAP."

"The tunnels," Zaps added hastily; as lieutenant, he was authorized to use the emergency command channel as well. "Go down the tunnels."

It was a good idea, Kase reflected and echoed the order. Unorthodox, but certainly not against regulations. The tunnels would lead the troopers safely out of Eyat and flooded with teargas as they were, the troopers would have the advantage thanks to their helmets and their armors' environmental controls. "Follow the tunnels. New RV coordinates are being sent now." Kase quickly sent a data burst down the helmets' shared freq, identifying the RV point as a small creek in the forest, no more than a klick away from the base and to the northeast. They could launch an assault on the base from there.

The sniper fired again and the crowd about the troopers had thinned enough so that the shot found its target. The hapless Cheks was hit in the back of the head. The plastoid cracked, a shard of the helmet flying up into the air. Cheks' knees buckled and his head lulled on his neck. Only the troopers on either side of him, arms still linked with those of Cheks, kept the clone on his feet.

"Sir," Zaps said urgently, "we should follow our own orders."

True, but the two squads were far away from any of the tunnel entrances marked on their maps and they couldn't retreat to their original position. All of the entrances at the government block had been systematically sealed.

"The sewers," one of the police officers gasped.

Kase risked looking back at the man, who was pointing to a manhole just two meters away from the speeder they were pressed up against. Kase zoomed his HUD in on the manhole, determined that a fully armored trooper could get through the opening, then had the HUD calculate the sniper's trajectory. The calculations didn't take more than a breath and flashed up before his eyes. As he'd thought, they'd be exposed all the way to the manhole and while they waited for each man to slip down into the sewers.

"We don't have much of a choice," Zaps told the captain. There was something fatalistically cheerful about the lieutenant. "It's either play a round of nervous nuna with a sniper or risk running into another ambush. Either way, we have to evac this place now."

"Duck and tuck," Kase called out to his men. "Target in two meters, fifteen centimeters. Then dive."

The troopers moved. The circle was dissolved and ten troopers raced towards the manhole in a crouching variation of a forward overlap maneuver, while the other five, including Kase and Zaps, lay down covering fire. There was no real chance of hitting the sniper; he'd managed to find cover behind a series of chimneys and ventilation shafts. But they could and did, occupy his attention, keeping him pinned down. The other adults with slugthrowers had left with the stampeding youths and aside from the whine of the troopers' Deeces and the occasional pop! from the sniper, the intersection was now eerily quiet.

It was like being back in one of those kill-houses on Kamino, during a house clearing exercise, when it was just you, your squad and the instructors hidden away and waiting to slot you.

It took two troopers to pry the manhole open, time which Kase, Zaps and the other three needed to catch up to the rest of the group. They kept firing, walking backwards as they did so, trying also to keep an eye on the surrounding buildings in case more snipers were lying in wait. Zaps had to step over a badly crushed figure and Kase barely recognized the girl who'd thought the boy, Wilky, had been killed by the police officer, when in truth he'd only been stunned. There wasn't much left of her and Kase briefly wondered where the rest of that group was now. Dead or running for their lives? But the question faded quickly from his mind. It didn't pertain to his current situation.

A slug impacted into the duracrete just in front of Kase's right boot. But the slug's trajectory was different than that of the sniper they were occupying.

Second target, Kase realized and swung his Deece to where his HUD had triangulate the shot must have come from and released a quick burst. The stun bolts smashed through the window of a three-story house. Someone inside screamed and continued to scream, but no one exited the building and there were no more shots from that position.

One sniper was bad enough.

One by one the fifteen troopers slipped down the manhole, until only Kase and Zaps were left.

"You first, Captain," Zaps told him.

Kase ducked behind Zaps and slung his Deece over his shoulder. There was no point in arguing with Zaps; as the highest-ranking officer, Kase needed to lead his men.

He swung down into the manhole, then simply slid down the ladder. His boots landed in a puddle of water and his nostrils were assaulted by the smell of rotted leaves, slime and water so thick it was sludge. Kase quickly activated his helmet's air scrubbers.

Someone coughed, but none of the troopers waiting for him dared to complain about the new conditions.

"Lieutenant, I'm clear," Kase called through the channel.

"Copy that," Zaps answered. The light coming through the manhole was briefly blocked out as Zaps moved into position. Then there was another series of pops!, then a thump and Zaps' surprised grunt of pain.

"Lieutenant?" Kase called.

Plastoid clattered against duracrete and a single armored hand fell through the manhole, the fingers dangling into the darkness of the sewer forlornly. In Kase's HUD, Zaps POV icon went black. The lieutenant was dead.

Kase stood a moment beneath the opening of the manhole, looking up at that hand and the barely discernible shadow that must be Zaps' body. Behind him, the rest of the two squads remained frozen, too shocked to do anything but stare at their captain. Even the three police officers had gone silent, ceasing their moans and muttered complaints.

Kase turned towards his men and pointed two fingers down the sewers. "Switch to night-vision visor and infrared," he ordered them. "There is a possibility of enemy contact even while underground and we will not chance giving them an early warning of our presence. You three," and he pointed at three of his men. "Take charge of the officers. We need to reach the RV point and reconnect with the rest of F Company."

He trotted forward to the head of the column, splashing through ankle-deep filthy water as he did so. "Troopers, march!" he barked out and the column of troopers set off, single file, into the sewer, their white armored figures swallowed up by the darkness.

The Military Tactical Command Center, Eyat Command Base, five klicks outside of Eyat city, Gaftikar, Outer Rim, 21 BBY (26 days after the first bombing & 17 months after the Battle of Geonosis)

"Shab," Crypt cursed and thumped the console with a fist.

Sighter, on his back and hip deep in the guts of the console, flinched as mites of dust floated down to coat his face. "Watch it," he groused at Crypt. "The last thing we need is one of the crystals cracking."

"Might as well," Cyph muttered from where he was staring fixedly at one of the blank diagnostic screens. The fact that the dratted thing refused to respond no matter what they did was a personal insult to the tech. "Not like they're doing us any good right now."

Sighter sucked on the inside of his cheek in thought, then nudged Crypt's leg with one of his boots. "Give me the miscrospanner," he told Crypt. "Might be I missed a circuit connection here."

Crypt groaned. "Sighter, give it up. We've checked those connections three times already. Not to mention we went over ever single datacrystal, memory rod and chip. It's this shabla cheap equipment." He was about to thunk the console again, then reigned in his frustrations as he remembered Sighter's admonition. With a sigh he handed the other tech the microspanner.

Sighter muttered something that might have been a thank you, then adjusted the magnifying visor with the attached headlamp. At least that worked.

After the loss of the main power generators, Sighter, Cyph and Crypt had realized, much to their dismay, that the emergency backup systems hadn't kicked in as they were supposed to. Under normal circumstances, once the main generators failed, emergency power was supposed to be routed to the MTCC as one of the two priority stations of the base; the other being the medbay.

The three techs had waited with bated breaths for almost two minutes before realizing that they had...nothing. Nothing was working as it should. There was no power, the computers weren't working and they were locked in a room with no escape routes because the one system that had worked was the emergency lockdown protocol. Which was darned inconvenient because the one thing the techs really needed to do was get the generators back online. Which were outside.

Whoever did the beta test on this prefab base didn't know his ACL from his AGP, Sighter thought sourly.

Very gently he blew some air over a board of crystals, making sure that there was no dust to hamper the connectors. Those were so small that even with the magnifying visor, Sighter could barely see them and if they were blocked...well, then they were caged nuna. He gently reinserted the board, going over the wiring twice before telling Crypt, "Okay, try again."

Crypt's fingers flew over the control board, the keys clacking. He was muttering the necessary reboot codes under his breath, making sure that he was typing them in correctly.

Sighter pulled himself out from beneath the console. For a moment, his environment was a blurred landscape of shadows and pitted surfaces as the magnifying visor enlarged everything a hundredfold. Sighter quickly took the visor off, blinking his eyes furiously to get them refocused. It was always a bit disorienting to come back from the microcosm that was a computer's circuits.

He took up position slightly to the left of Crypt, just close enough to be able to see what the other tech was doing, but far enough away not to give Crypt the feeling he was breathing down his neck. Every tech and engineer knew that sensation and Sighter had yet to meet even a single one who actually enjoyed it.

"Alright." Crypt's finger hovered over the last key. "Cross your fingers and pray 'em if you got 'em." He pressed down on the key, finishing the reboot sequence. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the screen in front of them flickered to life and lines of glorious code began to scroll down before their very eyes.

"Yes!" Crypt whooped in triumph. "We did it! We bloody well...Ah, hell." With a last burst of code, as if offering a tacit apology, the screen went dark again.

Crypt's shoulders slumped in defeat. "I give up," he told them and pulled off his headlamp. Since the techs pulled their shifts in their uniform greys, none of the three had had their kit with them when the base got invaded. That meant no buckets, no HUDs and, most worryingly of all, no weapons.

They had toolboxes stored all around the MTCC and during the boring weeks of their stay on Gaftikar, before the bombings had started, the three techs hadn't had anything better to do than overstock on tools and emergency supplies. But none of them had thought to stash away a few Deeces.

Because we thought the base was untouchable, Sighter reflected ruefully. Kripes, hadn't they been proven wrong. Chaos theory in all its glory.

"We can't just give up," Cyph argued. Of them all, he was the quietest and when he did speak, he spoke softly, shyly, sometimes even in the company of his fellow techs. But now his voice was filled with surprising vehemence and both Sighter and Crypt turned to regard him in surprise.

"Our brothers are out there," Cyph said, blushing a little at their regard but going on full-force nonetheless. "The MTCC is supposed to act as their eyes and ears in case of an attack. Now the attack has come and we're blind and deaf. That can't happen. We have to do...something." He gesticulated at the rows of state-of-the art electronics, all of them useless and dormant now.

"Cyph," Sighter said in a reasonable tone of voice, "there's nothing we can do without getting the power back and we can't do that from here."

"Alright, then we check the relays again." Cyph wasn't going to give up on this. "It's possible one of the circuit breakers flipped when the generator went. Depending on how the GFH did that, there could have been a power surge in the grid."

"We went over the circuit breakers," Crypt put in impatiently. The encryption specialist was beginning to feel the pressure. "And the relays and the crystals and the circuits themselves. There's nothing. Shabla nothing. All of this equipment is nothing more than a pile of osik." He kicked the console to show his contempt.

Sighter sighed, shaking his head. "You've been listening to the encrypted chatter from Concord Dawn again, haven't you?"

Crypt whirled on him. "Can we not discuss my hobbies right now and focus on the problem at hand? Like the fact that we're stuck in a room without working gear, no weapons, in a base overrun by the enemy. For all we know everyone could be dead." He waved his arms about, his noise level rising with every word.

Cyph's face fell and Sighter slapped a hand to his forehead. "You know, this is why the others always make fun of us techs," he told Crypt. "Calm down already. By the same logic, the commander could be back by now and the GFH got slotted and we'll be out before nightfall."

"You don't really believe that?" There was scorn in Crypt's voice, but also a hint of hope. He wanted to believe Sighter, but even Sighter had to admit that the statistics looked bad.

"We don't have enough Intel to draw a proper conclusion," Sighter stalled. That short glimpse of the attack on Fister on the security monitor was all they had to go on. There simply wasn't enough data and Sighter sorely missed the near-omnisciency that his computers normally gave him. When they were working according to specifications. What exactly had gone wrong? Sighter didn't know that anymore than he knew just how many enemy infiltrators they were dealing with. It had to be at least two dozen to be able to overcome the perimeter guard and take out the generator at the same time. And they'd heard an awful lot of shooting in the past few minutes. So, more?

"Look on the bright side," he said, trying to lift his brothers' mood.

"What bright side?" Crypt wanted to know sullenly. He'd dropped back into one of their chairs, one hand coming up automatically to the side of his face to adjust a headset that wasn't there.

Sighter pointed at the door that was keeping them locked in. "That door is pure, twice-reinforced durasteel," he told them, putting as much enthusiasm into his voice as he could. "They'll need about a mile's worth of thermal det tape to blast us out of here. Logically, we're about as safe as can be."

Crypt groaned and even Cyph looked crestfallen.

"Sighter, do me a favor," Crypt said. "Don't try to ever cheer me up again."

Then somebody knocked on the door.

All three of the techs jumped, spooked by the hollow thunkthunkthunk echoing through the large room.

"Kripes, they're here," Crypt exclaimed. Cyph's face had drained of all color.

Sighter cocked his head, more curious than afraid. He knew the schematics of that door and was confident in its ability to hold up against practically anything, short of an AT-TE. And there was something about those sounds.

Sighter closed his eyes, listening intently. He had gotten his nickname because of his ability to sight order - either lines of codes or data patterns - no matter what the chaos surrounding it. Now he put that ability to use and found...

"It's dadita," Cyph exclaimed with some surprise.

Sighter nodded. Yes, it was dadita, that old Mando code. Not surprising that Cyph, who specialized in ciphers of various cultures, would recognize it first.

"What's it saying, Crypt?" Sighter asked.

Crypt glared at them both. "If you two quadducks could cut the chatter for half a sec, then I'd tell you." He sat rigidly in his chair, his face a mask of concentration as he listened to the continued thunks coming from the other side of the door. "It says...open up...friendly...Ezec." At the dour trooper's name, Crypt's eyebrows rose almost to his hairline.

The three techs swarmed to the door and Crypt pressed his ear against the durasteel, so as to better hear the soft sounds of dadita. Despite it being a Mandalorian code, Sighter noticed Ezec was spelling out his message in Aurebesh and grinned. Most of F Company had learned enough Mando'a to be able to curse with the best of them, but not much else.

"Alright, Ezec wants us to open the door."

"Tell him we can't," Sighter said promptly.

Crypt threw him an exasperated look, but did as he was told. Officially, the three of them all had the same rank, but Sighter tended to take charge of a situation; a habit that sometimes annoyed Crypt, especially if it concerned his field of expertise.

He rapped out a quick series of long and short tones, then waited. The answer seemed to be a long time in coming. Worried, Sighter and Cyph exchanged a look.

"You think maybe he..." Cyph started, then was interrupted by Ezec's answering thunks.

"The commander wants us to activate the fire-safety protocols," Crypt told them. "There are about fifty infiltrators in the base, give or take about the dozen Ezec, Saw and Carry managed to take out."

"Give or take?" Sighter asked with raised brows. Maybe Crypt had translated wrong.

Crypt snorted as he listened to the next series of raps. "He's a blaster-master," he said scornfully. "Can't expect him to know dadi...wait! Oh, that makes sense."

Sighter, who'd been listening intently to the conversation, pursed his lips. "No lethal force? They're stunning them into submission?" No wonder Ezec had spelled out 'give or take'. Stunning someone was pretty inaccurate shooting. The stun bolts overloaded a person's nervous system, causing either unconsciousness or paralysis. Problem was, depending on the physiology and constitution of your target, you couldn't properly predict how long the effect would last, or even what effect a stun bolt might have. Some of Ezec's targets might already be in the process of shaking off the stun effect and technically, some of them might be ready to rejoin the battle in a matter of minutes. Nausea, dizziness and body aches were common side effects of stunning, but not necessarily crippling enough to keep a determined sentient down for long.

Well, Sighter supposed the commander knew what he was doing and really, he didn't actually want to have to kill anyone. Well, not unless they tried to kill him first. Which, considering the look of disgust and triumph on the face of the woman who'd attacked Fister, was likely the case here.

Crypt was already back to pressing his ear against the door, concentrating as Ezec drummed out questions and he answered them. After a while, Crypt nodded.

"They've split up," he told his fellow techs. "Wess, Carry and Saw went for the detention block, Fince and Notch are taking care of the weapons depot and Ezec was sent to help us."

"What about Teller, Fister and the rest of the perimeter guard?" Cyph wanted to know. The animation had come back to his face with this stream of Intel available to them. Nothing like data to brighten a day.

Crypt shook his head. "He doesn't know. Lieutenant Wess said Teller was injured, just like Fister and Jakk. Knock and Blastout register as alive, but Ezec doesn't know where they are. They can't try the comms. With Teller down, we have to assume that the communications center has been breached and with the computers down, the HUDs can't patch into the Overseer program."

Cyph, Sighter and Crypt looked at each other in concern. Teller was one of them, a tech, a lover of Intel and machines and codes rather than a blaster-totting maniac like Fister and his gang.

"We need to get the fire-safety protocols up and running," Sighter said decisively.

"How?" Crypt wanted to know. "Shab Sighter, haven't you been paying attention? We don't. Have. Power."

"Actually, we do," Cyph said, so surprised by the revelation that he was staring at the other two slack-jawed.

Crypt looked pointedly at Sighter. "That's it. His brain is as fried as all this prefab gear."

"No," Cyph protested, shaking his head vehemently. "Listen."

"I don't hear anything," Crypt replied testily.

Sighter was looking from him to Cyph, not at all sure if maybe Crypt wasn't right. But then, Cyph wasn't the type to lose his nerve in a hard situation.

Then he heard it too; the slight whirring of the ventilation shafts.

All three of them looked up at the grilled ventilator shaft purring happily along right overhead.

"The ventilation system is still working," Sighter said, awe in his voice, not just for that minor miracle, but also for his brother's cleverness.

"We can tap into the ventilation's power supplies," Crypt added, all of his anxiety and truculence giving way to excitement. "It's on a totally different grid than the computers, so they can't be tampered with."

"Yeah," Cyph said slowly, some of his exuberance giving way to hard reality. "But if we reroute the power from the ventilation system to the computers, then that means no more fresh air. If we can't get the doors open after that, then we suffocate."

Sighter looked from Cyph to Crypt. "Let's do it."

Shenio Mining HQ, thirty-two klicks outside of Eyat city, Gaftikar, Outer Rim, 21 BBY (26 days after the first bombing & 17 months after the Battle of Geonosis)

Tinkering music was piped through the turbolift's speakers.

The three of them - Wren, Officer Pa'Rillo and Ro - stood in relative silence, watching the numbers flash by on the display screen. Ro was happily humming along with the turbolift music, waggling her head from side to side in time with the beat, which made the blue zigzags in her pale blond hair flash in the light. She looked utterly content and happy, as if there hadn't been anything else she'd wanted to do more that day than ride in a turbolift.

Pa'Rillo was still blinking furiously, shaking herself like a wet tooka cat every now and then in an effort to rid herself of the last remnants of the Zelly's pheromones. She rather looked like a thunderstruck nuna in Wren's opinion.

Wren, who was standing behind the two women, was mostly bored.

The adrenaline from the fight with the Zeds had worn off and the Zeltron's pheromone shower had done little more than give him a pleasant buzz. She hadn't been the first Zeltron he'd encountered, so he'd been more or less prepared for her attempts at influencing him. The trick was to keep an image or memory in your head that made you feel anything but amorous. And that was easy for Wren; the rage and the painful memories from his 'childhood' on Kamino were so deeply ingrained that they were always there, at the back of his mind.

And besides, he didn't particularly like a Zelly or a scale-skinner like a Falleen mess with his feelings. That smacked too much of control, even if those pheromones could do wonders in the sack...

Ro abruptly tilted her head back as far as it would go. "You're thinking naughty thinks."

Wren, startled by her comment, was immediately grateful for his bucket. At least the damned thing made sure that the little nuisance couldn't see how much her - very accurate - observation had unnerved him.

"Fekking mind-reader, are we?" he asked, aware of the defensiveness in his voice. His scowl deepened. Kriff, and he'd been in such a good mood just now. What was it with this annoying little Jedi and getting under his skin at every opportunity?

To add salt to the injury, she just grinned at him and turned about completely. The maneuver brought her closer to him, but at least she wasn't standing on his toes, like she'd done in the closet back at the Eyat Police station. The turbolift, much to Wren's bemusement, was at least three times the size of that closet. And covered in gold-veined white marble and wood that vaguely reminded Wren of caf with a good shot of milk in it. The entire contraption screamed 'expensive'. To Wren, it was just another one of those strange civvie habits. Really, only mongrels could come up with the idea of making a turbolift look like a senator's office. And whoever had chosen that incipient music belonged slotted.

But whether dingy closets or the palace of all turbolifts, nothing could apparently dissuade Ro from acting her usual silly, barvy self.

Case in point, she was even now reaching out to him, actually walking two fingers up his chest plate, watching him from beneath lowered lashes and smiling like she was about to do something very inappropriate. Knowing her as he did now, he didn't even try to guess what that might be.

"Now, Cookie," Ro purred in a voice that had gone as throaty as that of the Zeltron receptionist. "Who needs to read minds when the case is that obvious. Attractive masc, very attractive fem, a room full of pheromones and all those," she fluttered her long eyelashes at him, "surfaces. Who wouldn't get to thinking along the gutter-line?"

Her fingers had by now reached the lip of his chest plate and Wren was fighting down a smile. He didn't take her seriously, even for a parsec. For one, she wasn't his type - too short and poorly equipped - and for another, there was no mistaking that gleam of mischievousness in her teal eyes, no matter how hard she was trying to hide it beneath long lashes and seductively lowered lids. But if he were that kind of a man...

"Better watch your tongue, cheeka," he told her in a growl that was only a step away from a chuckle. "Never know who might take you up on your offer and bite it off."

Pa'Rillo shifted uncomfortably, her face flushed a deep crimson. If she wasn't careful, her head might catch on fire.

Ro meanwhile was fighting down a laugh and doing a poor job of it. He could see the corners of her mouth twitching.

Odd how this little nuisance could both drive him to rages and good humor. And despite himself, he was letting her get away with a lot of behavior he'd normally never would have tolerated. Like touching. Wren didn't like to be touched outside of a bedroom or a battlefield and Ro was...touchy. But he'd yet to break her fingers like he'd done with that one flame trooper back in the 43rd, who'd just couldn't understand the concept of, take your hand away or I break it. Wren didn't think Ro would either, but he got the distinct feeling at times that despite her silliness, she knew when playtime was over. She'd certainly thrown down the gauntlet with those Zeds.

There was a light, musical bing, as the turbolift reached the tenth floor.

"Touchdown," Ro cried joyously and in a change of mood so quick it could have induced whiplash, the flirty seductress was gone, replaced by the silly, happy child. She whirled around as the turbolift doors opened, clapping her hands together and bouncing in place. Her cheery anticipation left Pa'Rillo staring at Ro as if she were wondering if the little Jedi suffered from an extreme psychosis. There was a definite sheen of sweat on the woman's forehead.

Too kriffing late, Officer, Wren thought sardonically. You're on this stanging cruise whether you want it or not and the pilot is about as mentally unstable as the lowlands of fekking Lan Barell.

"I-I'm not so sure about this," Pa'Rillo began as the turbolift doors started to open. "It's not too late to go back."

Inside his bucket, Wren rolled his eyes. "Gaftikar's best at work," he muttered sarcastically and shoved Pa'Rillo out of the turbolift. Ro, who'd already darted out of the 'lift as soon as the doors had opened enough to let her slight figure through, gave him a dirty look for his rudeness and caught Pa'Rillo by the elbow before the officer could fall down.

Wren had the chance to do a quick survey of the space - an outer office twice the size of his barracks back at the base, gold-red carpet, more of the black and white marble covering the walls and ceiling and a big wooden desk identical to the Zelly's but manned by a protocol droid in the same eye-smarting yellow as the Zeds - before his bucket's internal comm signaled for his attention.

"Greetings," the clanker said, rising from the desk with a whirring of servomotors. "I am CZ-5. How may I be of service?"

Ro stepped forward to confront the droid and Wren took a discreet step back, out of the way, but able to see every nook of the outer officer. He blinked at the comm icon, opening the channel.

"What?" he growled, annoyed at the interruption. He was finally back in the game and in a fight that was already proving more interesting than anything he'd gotten his teeth into since being stranded on this kriff-forsaken mudball of a Rimmer planet. So unless this was Palps himself calling to breathe his last into Wren's ears, heads were going to roll...

"Sergeant." The voice was unmistakably Gaff's. Yep, this was the final kriffing straw. He was going to arrange a little accident for the noob commander, something messy and uncomfortable that would teach him not to mess with real troopers doing real work...

"I need your help."

The curses died on Wren's lips and he was aware that he was gaping like a shiny at the first sight of a real, non-simulated naked female.

"You're what?" was all Wren could think of.

Over the comm, he thought he heard Gaff grind his teeth. "I am asking you, Sergeant, for your advice in a delicate mission-related matter."

Raised voices echoed through the outer office. Apparently the clanker wasn't letting Ro and Pa'Rillo through and, like the Zeds, the thing wasn't impressed by Ro's credentials. Now the little Jedi was arguing with the thing, chattering on about legalities and paragraphs Wren had never heard of. It seemed Ro was trying to do this 'the proper way', before she cut the tinnie to pieces and barged into Lucara's office. Wren hoped the change in tactics wouldn't take too long. As much as he'd enjoyed her take on 'subtle', Wren found Ro's definition of 'direct' doubly entertaining.

"Ask Kase," Wren told Gaff, uncongenial as ever. "He's got so many kriffing regs up his ass he'll sing them to you in the 'fresher."

"Kase has his hands full at the base," Gaff replied, a slight tremor of stress in his voice. "I need him there."

The clanker had moved between Ro and the door and was blocking her way. Ro was tapping her fingers warningly against her lightsaber hilts, while Pa'Rillo - apparently finally remembering she was an officer of the law and not a heap of quivering spice-jelly - was waving her own badge into the droid's face, talking about how due process did not apply in suspected acts of terrorism.

Above the voices of the women, CZ-5 kept squawking on and on. "I am sorry. There will be no admittance. Madame Lucara is indisposed."

Without missing a beat, Wren raised his blaster and fired off a single shot at the protocol droid. Pa'Rillo screamed as the shot flew past her with just about an inch to spare and the droid jerked violently as the blue plasma bolt hit it squarely between its two photoreceptors. The headcasing split and with its brains literally blown out, the droid fell forward like a felled wroshyr tree. Ro and Pa'Rillo barely managed to jump out of the way in time and the clanker ended up as a noisy pile on the ground, lube oil spilling out over the expensive red-gold carpet.

"Cookie!" Ro exclaimed in indignation. "Were you raised on a shooting range? How about a little impulse control?"

Switching on his external speakers he snarled, "Shove it," at her and turned his attention back to Gaff, who was by now also shouting indignantly at him.

"That was blaster fire! What's happening?"

"I shot a tinnie. That's what I was fekking made to do. What the kriff happened to the base?"

Ro's expression turned worried. "The base?" she asked and came to stand next to him, Shenio totally forgotten for the moment. "What's going on at the base?"

He pulled the arm she was tugging at away.

"The GFH overwhelmed the security system somehow," Gaff explained. To get Ro off his back, Wren made sure the women would hear both sides of the conversation with a few rapid blinks at his HUD. "We've got three men injured, the other twelve have their orders. Kase will be reinforcing them. The base isn't the issue. We need a secure location for the planetary council. Any ideas?" The question was asked so acerbically that Wren felt his spine straighten in automatic response; an instinctive reaction he immediately resented.

"You're the fekking commander. You vaping well think of something," he snapped.

Ro slapped him upside the head. "In case you haven't noticed, Cookie," she hissed at him, "he's asking you for help. So why don't you get off of your throne of prickles and tryto act like a man instead of one of the locals?" She brandished one of her unlit lightsaber hilts at him, raising a brow challengingly at the rage she could no doubt feel building inside of him. "Or do I have to slice and dice some cooperation out of you?"

He looked down at the lightsaber. He'd thrust a grenade down his shorts before he'd admit it to her, but her display of lightsaber skills with the Zeds had...not completely dissatisfied him. She obviously knew what she was doing with those glowsticks of hers and that was more than he could say about some of the Jedi he'd served under. And he knew she could move, so Wren found himself in the curios position of...being wary of Ro's ire. He still wanted to take her by the skinny shoulders and shake her till her blue-blond head fell off, but he wanted to do it when the time was right. And, much to his chagrin, her comparison stung a lot more than he would have thought possible. Certainly he'd been called far worse than a local.

Just get it the kriff over with, he thought. The sooner you get Gaff off your fekking back, the sooner the little nuisance will climb down as well.

"Just kriffing well dump them on Gor'Don's fraggin' doorstep," Wren snapped at Gaff, sending a burst of static through the comm channel just because he could. Let the rookie's ears bleed a little.

"MRU," Gaff snapped back and Wren quirked a brow at the unexpectedly sarcastic rejoinder from the commander. MRU - Much Regret Unable - had become a joke among clones; a roundabout way of telling someone to shove their orders and themselves where Tatooine's suns didn't shine. "There are GFH infiltrators in the government. Gor'Dan has to be assumed as an unfriendly."

Wren snorted in wry amusement. "Brilliant deduction," he drawled. "Did you happen to fekking notice how the sky is kriffing blue while you're at it?"

"Some constructive advice would be useful at this point, Sergeant. If you have any." And Gaff's tone made it clear that he highly doubted Wren was capable of such a thing. Judging by the growing skepticism on Ro's face, she was of one mind with Gaff on that point. Even Pa'Rillo was looking at him doubtfully.

And that irked Wren just enough to blurt out, "I know a place."

There was an expectant silence on the comm channel. Ro raised an eyebrow and made shooing motions with her hands, clearly telling him to get on with it.

Wren snarled in frustration, but realized he was backed up into a corner. He couldn't retreat from this, which meant...He'd have to tell the rookie about his secret spot.

"Take the damned council out into the kriffing forest, to the coordinates of the Marit's main rebel camp."

"The old rebel camp?" Gaff repeated in stunned surprise. Clearly whatever the commander had been expecting it wasn't that. "But the former rebel camps were decommissioned and..."

"And when the fek was that supposed to happen?" Wren asked derisively. Fierfek, there were times when the naiveté of shinies staggered him. They really did believe everything they were told. "The kriffing Marits moved their scaled asses right quick into the cities and we've been scouring the vaping cities for weapons. The camp is still there," he added in a more subdued tone of voice. "It'll be safe enough for the effing council. Just keep an eye out for any traps."

There was a long, long silence from Gaff's end of the channel. Ro was back to tugging on Wren's arm, whispering questions at him in a steady stream of words. He pulled his arm out of her grasp and pushed her away. Not hard enough to bruise anything, but enough so that she'd get the message and leave him the kriff alone. He hoped. Ro had that Jedi denseness about her when it came to things she didn't want to understand. But much to his surprise, she actually gave him his space, contenting herself with watching him with that too-shrewd gaze of hers.

"Traps," Gaff finally said, enunciating the word carefully as if suspecting it was the very thing it meant. "At the abandoned rebel camp."

Wren didn't miss the implied question behind the emphasis Gaff put on 'abandoned'. He clenched his jaw tightly, feeling the tendons tense painfully. "I've been there...several times," he ground out. There, he'd said it. His secret was out. Now the rookie knew about the place Wren went to in the middle of the night, when the past and the rage and the sheer frustrations with his current assignment got too bad and he needed to let off some steam, so he would remember that he was an ARC and not kill one of the damned rookies pestering him. He'd chosen the old rebel camp in the first week of his assignment to F Company and it had become...a good place, more or less. A place, at least, where he could use his hands until they were bloody and raw and be sure that the blood running between his knuckles was his and only his. And now Gaff and his shinies and a bunch of vaping mongrels were going to tramp around it, seeing...He wasn't sure what they might see, because he couldn't quite recall what evidence he'd left behind at the camp after his last visit there. He'd been in a pretty dark mood at that point and sometimes, it was hard to remember what he'd done when his blood was up and the rage was buzzing in his head to the exclusion of all other sounds.

"Just fekking get the mongrels there," Wren snarled at Gaff and cut the connection before the commander could say anything else.

"Wren?" The tone with which Ro said his name was low and questioning. He looked at her, one thumb rubbing along his knuckles in an unconscious gesture. That uncomfortable shrewd look had left her face and now she looked concerned. Concerned for him.

When was the last time anyone gave a kriff about you? A snide voice from the back of his mind asked him. Wren swallowed hard and conquered the impulse to lash out at Ro as he'd done before. His sense of fair - limited as it might be - wouldn't let him take this particular fit of temper out on her and besides, there was still a mission to complete. Eod Metesk's face, with its smug I-know-something-you-don't-smile, came to him and he pushed past the Jedi and the police officer to stalk towards the laroon wood door leading to Lucara's office.

"Let's just get this kriffing bitch already," he said and kicked the pile of scrap that had been a protocol droid out of his way. In his HUD's wrap-around vision, he saw Pa'Rillo opening her mouth to protest, but Ro held her back. She was letting him take the lead. A small, atrophied part of him flickered to brief life in gratitude.

Then he slammed his armored boot into the door. The wood splintered beneath the force of his kick. He could hear a woman scream on the other side. Beneath his helmet, Wren grinned like a Felucian ripper about to tear into its prey and broke down Branch Director Luddmilla Lucara's office door.

It was time. Finally, finally, The Rational was letting him escape this awful cloud of pain and misery.

He didn't like it in the cloud. The pain in his eyes and throat reminded him too much of another time. A time when he'd not been a predator, but a sheep unaware of its true identity. A time when there'd been a lot of pain, a lot of fear and predators bigger and stronger than he'd been...Until the fire had cleansed the fear and all the predators away.

Climb,The Rational ordered him.

Confused, he stopped and tried to peer through the dense cloud of teargas. It was difficult, even for his well-trained eyes. The darkness inside of the tunnels had thickened to something strange and alien with the white swirls of the teargas. And his eyes had by now swollen almost completely shut.

Feel for it, The Rational advised him calmly. It, at least, was free and far removed from the panic inducing pain he was in.

Carefully he felt along the walls of the section of tunnel he was in. There was only smooth rock, tiny alcoves and then...Durasteel rungs! A ladder to the outside!

He grasped the first rung with a wheezing cry of joy and began to haul himself up. Soon, soon, he would be out of this terrible cloud and he could go back to his kill nest to heal and watch the city of sheep go down in flames. He wouldn't have to wait long. His presents were already tick-tick-ticking away to their moment of revelation and glory.

He was halfway up the ladder when he heard it. Footsteps. Muffled and distorted by the tunnels' echoes and the thick teargas, but undeniably footsteps. Several footsteps, he realized with some real alarm.

The Rational cautioned him to remain still. There were many tunnels down here. It could be that the owners of those footsteps would go down one of the intersecting tunnels.

But then, through his swollen and streaming eyes, he saw ghostly shapes moving inside of the darkness and the dense mass of teargas. He pressed himself against the ladder, deeper into the shadows, all of his survivor's instincts alert. Even The Rational had tensed.

The ghostly shadows came closer, but it was difficult to make out any detail. If they were some errant sheep who'd wandered down into his darkness, then they were dressed all in white. And wore very heavy boots.

Soldiers, The Rational identified for him just as a voice cried from out of the swirling cloud of teargas, "Stop! Republic clone troopers! Surrender!"