Author's Note: A big thanks to Zipitnow and friends, for giving me a great semi-quote, which turned into the inspiration for the opening scene of this chapter. Here's to the readers. Cheers!
Force
"Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical."
- Blaise Pascal
The mine, Shenio Mining HQ, at the Senet River, thirty-two klicks outside of Eyat city, Gaftikar, Outer Rim, 21 BBY (27 days after the first bombing & 17 months after the Battle of Geonosis)
Things were going to all Nine Hells kriffing fast.
Naturally, Shenio had not followed standard safety regulations after acquiring and expanding Gaftikar's main mining operation. When they'd finally reached the area Wren's admitabbly sketchy mental map of the mine indicated should feature an emergency exit for the mining crews, the emergency lift simply hadn't been there.
The second emergency lift - which had been built a good two-hundred meters further down the shaft than the law allowed - had had a large Out of Order sign secured to its front. After staring at the sign for a good minute in dull-eyed disbelief, Wren had pried open the lift's operating hatch, trying to see if he could fix the problem. He wasn't the most mechanically adept, but his early ARC training had covered enough of what was called 'fix and slash' to have left him semi-confident in his ability to suss out the problem and repair it. Except that the problem had turned out to be a missing repulsor and no matter how inventive, neither he nor Ro could cobble one together from the meagre supplies they were left with.
Which left them with only one option: Keep moving. Which, ironically, also meant that they needed to move further into the mine, away from their point of origin and, judging by the steady but subtle decline of the shaft, ever deeper underground.
And that didn't even begin to sum up their problems.
Ro had been right. They were playing against stacked odds and - surprise, surprise - they were losing the gamble.
And now this. Fan-kriffing-tastic.
"This is going to sting," Ro warned, "and not in a funtastic way. We should really be doing this with bacta." She'd been saying the same thing - or a variation there of - for the past two minutes and it was getting old.
"Just get the fek on with it," Wren muttered, bracing himself for what was going to come next.
During their painful trek through the shaft, Ro and Wren had come across a pair of mining droids that had toppled over, either in the wake of the initial explosion in Metesk's hideout or during the collapse of the ceiling. The droids, easily two meters tall and as broad as two Gamorreans, effectively blocked their way and had forced Wren and Ro to clamber over their bulky, inert forms as best as their condition would allow.
Wren, unable to use Ro as a crutch during the short climb, had lost his balance and had slid down the clanker's side, catching on the tip of the drill attached to the mining droid's left arm and slicing himself open from hip to lower back. Had he been in full armor, the fall wouldn't even have left a bruise. But since the plastoid plates covering his upper torso had been more or less shattered during the explosion and their resultant fall, he'd discarded the plates as useless and gone on with nothing but his bodylgove to protect his torso. The bodylgove for the Phase II was an improvement over the older model and gave some protection for fighting in hard vacuum, but the drill had been designed to cut through stone and ore deposits. The bodyglove - and his flesh beneath it - had been cut open like a ripe muja fruit.
Ro sighed. "I really think this would go better with some bacta."
"You're karking allergic and I have a fekking scratch. How the frag is bacta going to be helpful?"
"It's not a scratch when it needs to be treated with bacta. And stitched."
Wren closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "We've gone over this."
They had. Several times. And loudly.
"'Kay." She blew out her breath and though he couldn't see her from where he was seated on the edge of the effing clanker that had caused this latest mess, he could still imagine her bangs flying out of her face as she rolled her eyes. "You want a rock to bite down on to go with that attitude, Cookie?"
"Only if I can throw it at your head afterwards, cheeka."
She giggled, which he thought was an entirely inappropriate response to a half-serious threat.
He felt her hand on his shoulder, her skin feeling as fevered as his. "I understand, Cookie, I really do," she assured him in a cooing voice. "You big macho soldier-man. You not concerned about pointy thing poking through your skin."
Wren was so distracted by her babbling that he almost missed the moment when she doused the open wound with about half the contents of the bottle of disinfectant spray from her pack. He hissed as the torn flesh first burned, then went thankfully numb; the sensation almost blessedly cool against his hot skin.
Whether by design or dumb luck, Ro timed the insertion of the needle so that her first couple of stitches went almost unnoticed by Wren, numb as he currently was in that area. Then his nerves screamed bloody murder as the needle - also drenched in disinfectant - continued its steady path along the wound, forcing the edges of the torn flesh back together.
Wren closed his eyes and concentrated on keeping his breathing slow and steady.
This was not the first time he'd been on the receiving end of such crude first aid and judging by the way this war was going, it wouldn't be the last. But fek it hurt and no manner of training or experience could make him immune to that. His body, at least, was too disciplined and conditioned to flinch and interrupt a medic at work and to relieve his mind, he forced his thoughts away from the needle poking through his skin and onto more immediate matters.
Like how the kriff they were going to get out of this effing mine.
Judging by Wren's internal chrono, it was already past dawn topside and he and Ro had entered the mine the day before, when the sun had just begun to set. As Gaftikar's rotary cycle was a bit longer than that of Coruscant, Wren estimated that they'd been down here for fourteen or fifteen hours. They'd been out of comm contact for that entire time and as far as Wren could tell, no one had come looking for them.
The discovery that their comm signals couldn't penetrate the layers of rock hadn't been a pleasant one. But if they couldn't get a signal out, then that meant F Company couldn't contact them either. And while Gaff might ignore Wren going Jango, the noob commander had been far too taken with the Padawan to not react to her absence.
And the kriff knew they'd left enough mealbread crumbs for even Gaff to follow, so the fact that they were still down here without a rescue in sight meant something had gone effingly wrong on the surface.
The question was, what?
Had Metesk left some trap in Eyat, or had the fraggin' civvies launched some kind of revolt? The signs certainly had been there for a while now.
Or maybe the shiny finally tripped over his own red-tape and cracked open his effing noob head.
Either way, if help hadn't come by now, then it meant it wasn't likely to come strolling around the corner any time soon. The slogan "Galactic Marines to the Rescue" was not one Wren believed in.
"Wren?"
He opened his eyes and craned his neck back to see Ro looking at him, slightly puzzled and worried.
"You alright, Cookie? You sorta went all Jedi-trancy on me."
Wren shook his head and tried to roll his shoulders, feeling the skin pull along his hip and back uncomfortably. "I was just thinking."
"Deep thinker, are we? You never cease to surprise me, Cookie."
He grunted a non-answer and tried to reach back to pull up the sections of his bodyglove, only to find Ro's hand once more intercepting his.
"Don't you want to inspect my work?" she asked, a playful note to her tired voice. "It's pretty stellar considering my one-handed incapacitationism."
"That's not a word," he pointed out. "And no."
"Why not?" Even with his back turned to her he could hear the pout in her voice.
"Because if I can't see it, then I'm not really effing hurt."
"Do you want to take a swallow of liquid?"
"Don't kriffing mention water."
"Why not?"
"Because if you don't say it, then you're not really karking thirsty."
Ro heaved a heavy sigh, her tongue darting out to run along dry and cracked lips. "You operate on a sick logic, Cookie."
"This from the cheeka who ran unprotected into an effing burning building."
"This from a masc who shot at two bombs. And hit," she volleyed back at him, while beginning to tug his bodyglove back into place, smoothing the folds until the micro-hooks in the fabric had reattached themselves.
"You would have preferred for them to go off in your kriffing face?" he snapped back, getting unsteadily to his feet, - the clanker's metal skin was uncomfortably hot - while trying to roll his shoulders again. The skin along his hip and lower back felt tight now, like a freshly requisitioned piece of armor that needed adjustment. Ro slid to his side and pulled his arm over her shoulders, steadying him on his bad left side. He almost pulled away again. In the close air of the shaft, she was just another uncomfortable source of heat next to his already overheated body.
"No," she admitted. "Can't say though that I wouldn't have preferred them not going off at all. I mean, does this rat even know how to spell 'dud'?"
Wren snorted, amused despite himself. "That's like asking you how to spell 'sanity'."
In the unflattering light cast by his helmet's spot lamp - the only broken thing he hadn't discarded along the way - Ro grinned back at him; the white flash of her teeth and the impish spark in her teal eyes a stark contrast to the grime and blood she was covered in from head to toe and the sheer exhaustion etched onto her face. "Seem to remember it starting with an 'I' than an 'N' I think."
"You're barvy," he muttered as he adjusted the grip on his Deece and they started walking again.
"And you're grumpy," she quipped back. "Now all we need is five other guys and we can stage a reenactment of the Seven Little Ugnaughts." She beamed up at him in sudden inspiration. "We should bombad way make it a musical. It'll be mono stellar."
Wren rolled his eyes ceiling-ward. "Someone kriffing shoot me already."
But even while he said the words he had to fight down a twitch of his lips. Something...something he had no name for had seemingly settled and relaxed between them since Ro's rather spectacular outburst and whatever it was it felt...good.
Underground, Eyat city, Gaftikar, Outer Rim, 21 BBY (27 days after the first bombing & 17 months after the Battle of Geonosis)
With a sigh of relief that was audible only to the rest of the squad, Ton snipped the last of the wires and handed over the deactivated dets to Caul, who in turn stashed them in his backpack along with the other detonators they'd collected during this long night.
Immediately, one of the civvies assigned to their squad slipped in next to Ton, hydrocutter in hand, and started on cutting through the chains that kept the bomb attached to the load-bearing strut of the office building above them.
Ton let out a stifled curse and grabbed the woman's wrist. "Be careful," he snapped.
"You removed the milking detonators," the woman snapped right back, her voice muffled thanks to the breather mask covering her face.
"That doesn't make those cylinders a gift for Republic Day," Ton retorted, the strain of the last few hours making him more waspish than usual. F Company didn't have many men who specialized in munitions disposal and one of them had been Fok, who'd died with the rest of his squad during the attack on Drezd'any Street. It meant that Ton and the others were constantly dashing from one point to the next, deactivating one bomb, only to run to the next urgent call to repeat the harrowing process. Even clones, bred as they were to withstand high-pressure situations, were not immune to the effects of stress and they'd been at it for hours now. Ton's own intemperateness was just one of the many subtle signs that told Kase he needed to give the trooper a break, or else risk a fatal mistake. All it took, according to Ton, was a single slip of the hand and the entire contraption would go off, remote detonator or no.
"Break through the casing," Ton continued, "and the incendiary substance is going to mix with the detonite and we'll be nothing but ash on the floor. Or maybe you want us all to get killed."
Behind her plasticlear mask, the woman sneered. She, like all the civvies that had been sent down to help the troopers in locating and neutralizing the bombs, was one of Kezner's people and high up on the GFH's hierarchy. "Don't flatter yourself, clone. The last thing I or my people want is to share the same air with you lackspittle Republic lackeys, let alone a grave. I know what I'm doing."
"Then keep within the safety margins," Ton bit back.
Kase lightly tapped Ton on the top of his bucket. "Private, take one."
Ton turned towards his captain, the T-shaped visor reflecting the roiling white clouds of teargas that still hung in the air in an eerie fashion that was more or less wasted on Kase. "Sir," Ton began, "I should supervise..."
"Caul," Kase called over the squad's closed channel. "Take over for Ton. Ensure Miss Gam'Een remains within the acceptable safety margins during her work."
"Yes, sir." Caul was at his side almost before Kase had finished speaking, snapping off a quick salute before stepping next to the woman and effectively pushing Ton out of the way.
"Sir," Ton tried again, "I'm the expert..." And again, the trooper was interrupted, this time by a commo over the public channel Commander Gaff had authorized, to help Kase coordinate his mixed crew of clone troopers and civilian volunteers.
"Captain Kase, this is Red Squad reporting in. We've found another one."
"Copy that," Kase acknowledged, blinking at his HUD to call up a map of the tunnel system and get a lock on Red Squad's current position. "Red Squad, I have your pos. Sending Ton over now."
"Copy, sir. Red Squad out."
Kase glanced at Ton, but the trooper was already shouldering his backpack, giving the straps a final adjustment before heading out again.
"So much for taking one, sir," Ton said, sounding both elated and bone-tired.
Kase, never one for small talk, sent Ton's HUD the coordinates and said, "Double-time it, trooper."
"Yes, sir." Ton nodded respectfully before dashing off into the tunnels, his white-armored figure blending in seamlessly with the white clouds of teargas.
"It's always double-time in hell," someone muttered over the open channel.
Kase could have located the origin of the short-burst transmission and reprimanded the trooper, but he had more important matters to attend to. He turned towards Sitral and their second volunteer, a young man in his mid-twenties who had been, of all things, a participant in the attack on the base. Kezner had insisted that this Jess Kaber knew the tunnels better than anyone, but that did not detract from the fact that the man was a security threat and needed watching. Kase had, already, ordered his men to drop Kaber with a stun bolt should the GFH member get within five paces of either a weapon or one of the bombs.
Nonetheless, in the four hours since Kaber had joined their group, they'd made more progress than Kase had calculated to be possible even in his most optimistic estimations. So as long as Kaber cooperated, Kase was willing to use him, albeit with appropriate caution.
"Gentlemen," Kase said as he joined Kaber and Sitral in their close huddle over a tiny holomap of the tunnel system. "Do you have a new vector for me?"
Kaber glowered at Kase, but Sitral nodded, pointing at an intersection of four different tunnels. In the past hours, Sitral at least had warmed up somewhat to the clones, to the point where he'd volunteered to stay with the squad instead of returning topside with his two colleagues. "Jess says there's a critical fault line here. Bomb or two goes off here and it'll bring down the floor of several buildings."
Kase looked over the holomap. The intersection was in his squad's grid. "What buildings are located above that fault line?"
"What does it matter?" Kaber wanted to know, his tone challenging. "Oh, I forgot. On the Republic's priority list, the rich and powerful occupy spot one to twenty and everyone else is third tier."
Kase considered the young man for a few beats, several possibilities for handling his surly attitude running through his mind. A trooper he might have called to his office or onto the mats, to remind the man of his duty to the Republic and the respect that august body demanded. He could, as well, quote several cases in which the Republic decided in favor of the civilian population over the interests of the influential. Neither of which Kase's observations so far led him to believe would work with Kaber. So he simply ignored the man and focused on Sitral.
Beneath the breather mask, Sitral's eyes flicked towards Kaber before settling back on Kase. "Business, mostly. The area is on the edge of the shipping district."
Kase nodded. "So no immediate civilian inhabitants. The target is therefore of second priority only." Pointedly, Kase turned towards Kaber. "Does that comply with your assessment as well, Mr. Kaber?"
Kaber growled something and stabbed a gloved finger into the tiny holomap. "There," he said. "Public district. Lots of housing, lots of other underground works. Something big blows up undergrounds there, half the district disappears in the dirt."
"Dominoeffect," Sitral added, nodding thoughtfully.
"Understood." Kase sent the coordinates to the rest of his squad, advising them that they'd be moving out again as soon as the canisters containing the explosive material were secured. "We'll be heading there next." He paused for a moment, then fixed his gaze on Kaber. "Are there any other such vulnerable areas, Mr. Kaber? If so, I would prefer to secure them immediately, rather than waste my manpower on targets that are compiled of storage units and offices. Because in the GAR, it is the number of possible casualties that determine priority, not the contents of said casualties bank account."
Sitral looked up at him, surprised, his lips quirking beneath the plasticlear mask. When he turned to speak to Kaber, his tone was professionally neutral. "I believe the captain just read you the riot act, Jess. Diplomatically."
Kaber scowled and lowered his eyes.
The mine, Shenio Mining HQ, at the Senet River, thirty-two klicks outside of Eyat city, Gaftikar, Outer Rim, 21 BBY (27 days after the first bombing & 17 months after the Battle of Geonosis)
The senses registered more than the mind could actually process, which was why certain details were filtered out and discarded. But that did not mean those snippets of information passed by unnoticed. That was where instinct and intuition came into play and Wren's instincts had been trying to tell him that something was amiss the moment he'd come more or less to his senses after his outburst of temper. And it hadn't just been Metesk, lurking and watching them from somewhere in the impenetrable darkness of the mine. No, it had been something else that had caught at his subconsciousness, but he'd been too distracted to identify the source of his disquiet.
It hadn't been until two hours into their agonizing trek that he'd finally worked through what his subconscious had already known: The constant chugging of the coolant pumps that had followed them down into the mine had ceased. Of course, by then the ambient temperature of the shaft they were in had risen by five degrees and just kept climbing from there.
Now, more than eighteen hours after entering the mine, the temperature had risen from a standard twenty degrees to a hellish fifty-five.
With a strangled cry Ro collapsed.
Wren, mind numbed by heat, exhaustion and pain, actually kept limping along another two steps before realizing that the little Jedi was no longer at his side, supporting him. Wiping the sweat from his eyes, he went through the process of turning himself around to face where she knelt on the rocky floor.
"You giving up on me, cheeka?" His voice wasn't much more than a rasp and he could feel his lips peeling, breaking open and bleeding.
Ro bent over double in pain, clutching her right leg. "M-my leg," she gasped. "It's cramping."
Wren hobbled over to her, wincing as he half-fell, half-knelt next to her. "It's the effing heat," he explained.
Ro nodded wordlessly, her fingers - three of which were broken and only crudely splinted - massaging the affected muscle. Her face was drawn with pain, but her eyes were totally dry. That she didn't even have enough moisture left in her to shed tears of pain was a bad sign.
They'd been fighting a losing battle against dehydration for the past five hours and though they were both showing the effects of heat illness, Ro was affected far more strongly than he was. She had not, after all, gone through his training and Wren still had the scar that ran along his palm to testify to his hours spent in murderous heat in Tipoca City's training rooms.
Wren watched Ro struggle for a few moments as she tried to get her leg muscles working again, then reached around his belt and unclipped his canteen. He shook it, hearing the water slosh around invitingly. His canteen was no more than a third full, probably less. He held it out to Ro. "Drink," he told her gruffly.
Ro looked at the canteen dull-eyed, as if not recognizing the object. Then she shook her head emphatically. "No. We-we need to save our supplies. We only got the one canteen." But her eyes remained fixed on the canteen and he could read the sheer thirst in her gaze.
He had no doubt that a similar desire was reflected in his eyes. The heated air was so thick that it felt like a giant's hand pressing down on his head and shoulders, trying to grind him into the stone. His thoughts felt as sluggish as the blood in his veins and he had to keep blinking sweat out of his eyes. At least he and Ro were still sweating. Sweat was the body's natural coolant and once that ceased to function, they were in deep poodoo. It meant that the body was shutting down, concentrating on vital functions and after that, it was only a matter of hours until they died of heat stroke. Not that Wren thought they had all that much time left, either way.
So he unscrewed the canteen's top and held it to Ro's bleeding lips. "Drink," he repeated. "It doesn't kriffing matter anymore anyways."
Ro's eyes closed in relief as she felt the first drops of cool liquid against her dried out lips and despite her protests, she drank like her life depended on it - which it did. But Wren took the canteen away from her after a few swallows; he didn't want her to throw up later on. He took a single swallow for himself - and it was the best drink of his short life. The water flowed into his mouth and down his throat, soothing dried and blistered skin, reanimating that shrivelled thing his tongue had become. It was only by calling upon all of his iron discipline that he could restrain himself to one sip.
Lifting the canteen from his lips was like losing a lifeline, but he did it and even managed to listen to the water swish around inside as he tested how much they had left. Just another mouthful or two, he guessed. It was official. Even if their injuries or Metesk didn't kill them, the heat would finish them off sooner rather than later. They had to get out of here.
"What did you mean?" Ro croaked. She looked a little more alert now and started shifting on the ground; without the coolant pumps, the surrounding rock had started to heat up until it was almost burning hot to the touch. Wren had a brief flash of memory, of himself as a cadet back on Kamino, sitting on an unbearably hot metal bench in a room heated to lethal temperatures, trying to assemble blasters that had definitely become too hot to touch while Jango Fett loomed over him.
"We're here," he said, shaking off the memory with difficulty. He'd started to feel lightheaded and slightly dizzy. He jerked his chin over his shoulder and watched Ro's eyes widened in surprise as she registered - probably for the first time - their current surroundings.
This far away from the source of the explosion, a few of the illuminators were still functioning, allowing Wren and Ro to get at least a perfunctory sense of where they were. They'd reached a large chamber, easily the size of a Star Destroyer's main hangar bay, filled with deactivated mining droids of various sizes and functions. From the few areas that were cast in the harsh white light of the illuminators, Wren guessed that this was some kind of pre-processing staging area, where large chunks of mined ore were crushed and compressed into more manageable sized loads, before being conveyed to the main processing area above-ground. At least, that was the impression he got from the huge conveyer belts that crisscrossed the space like the strands of some mechanical spider's web. Three pairs of conveyers even reached up to the ceiling to disappear somewhere into the darkness, bearing huge, man-sized buckets, some of which were still loaded with raw ore. There was more equipment strewn about as well which Wren couldn't make heads or tails of, a catwalk that loomed high above their heads and even some evidence of the presence of organic workers, if the size and configuration of the control stations were anything to go by.
The chamber was also the terminus of the shaft they'd been following. From here on out, there were only two options: Either go back the way they'd come or go up. And if they wanted to survive this entire effing mess, they'd better figure out a way to get up, or they'd stay down until permanent endex.
"Oh." Ro breathed the single syllable out and her shoulders slumped, though Wren could not tell whether in relief or defeat.
"Enough rest," Wren told her and - partially leaning against the shaft's wall, grimacing as the hot rock burned against his palm - he got back up on his feet. "Get the kark up, Ro. We need to keep moving."
Ro moaned and rested her head in her hand. "There's no place to go," she mumbled.
Wren fought down the urge to take her by her slim shoulders and shake some sense into her. He didn't want to hurt her, he reminded himself. She'd been doing well so far, like a...Well, like a trooper. There was nothing to be gained by physically forcing her back on her feet. That had been done to him plenty of times and he still remembered how such treatment had burned him to the core. So instead, he tried to keep his voice even. "There's always somewhere to go," he said, mentally wincing at how insipid he sounded. "Doesn't matter if forward, backward or to death. The point is to keep your effing boots moving, one step at a time and in this case, we have a goal." He pointed with his index finger upwards. "We kriffing need to go up and you need to get up or I will fraggin' drag you to your feet by your fekking ridiculous hair."
Ro tilted her head back to meet his eyes, a frown on her face. "That's the worst pep talk I've ever heard."
"They spliced the pep gene out of me on Kamino," he retorted drily.
Ro's frown deepened. "And what's wrong with my hair?"
His lips quirked up into a half-smile at hearing the snappish edge to her voice. Kriff, but she was a feisty little thing. One little comment to get under her skin and the spark was back in her eyes and she was ready to give him hell again.
"Have you looked into an effing mirror lately?" he asked her drolly.
She heaved herself back onto her feet, glaring at him fit to drop a gundark. "Like you're an expert on scalp growth. What did you do with your hair? Let a bantha graze on it?"
"I'm economical," he replied as she came to his side and slipped back to her by now accostumed place to his left. "You on the other hand could be on Nar Shaddaa, acting as an effing neon sign to a Hutt's casino, cheeka."
"Just you wait till I've had a bath," she muttered threateningly. "Then I'll use your stubble to scrub my astromech."
He snorted laughter at that mental image and they staggered on, deeper into the chamber, searching - and hoping - for an exit.
Eyat city, Gaftikar, Outer Rim, 21 BBY (27 days after the first bombing & 17 months after the Battle of Geonosis)
Gaff kept his eye on the larty overhead, estimating its current projector rate and speed of approach. "Last chance, Kezner," he warned. "Either get your people under control or I will."
Kezner looked up from the amplifier, face haggard. "I'm trying."
"Then I suggest you try harder."
They were standing on the sheltered balcony of a residential building overlooking the city park. Or what was left of the park. This was one of the areas most heavily damaged during the Battle of Gaftikar and the Marits' clean-up effort had not been able to touch much of the original destruction. And now the mass of fighting civilians was destroying the little that had been left standing.
The GFH had launched a coordinated - for them - attack on an area that had the heaviest Marit population and the Marits had decided not to take it lying down. With typical cool efficiency the Marits were defending their territory and casualties were mounting on either side.
Fince and a squad of troopers - done with their grid sweep through the tunnels - had smuggled Cebz into the Marit-held territory and she was trying to persuade her people to lay down their arms. It was working, up to a point.
From his position on the high ground, Gaff could see that the Marit forces were withdrawing to their houses, but Gaff had spent enough time around them to know that they would never surrender what they already held. The only way to completely convince the Marits to stop fighting was to get the GFH to lay down their arms in turn. And Kezner was having no luck whatsoever in getting a hold on his people. He couldn't even get their attention.
Again, Kezner raised the vocal amplifier to his lips, his entreaties to the members of his group booming out over the park.
Gaff listened to the man with one ear, while dividing his attention between what was happening in the park and in the sky above them.
The Marits had formed a defensive ring around their houses and were holding the line with bloody determination. Bodies - of either species - littered the perimeter and some were no longer moving.
This has to stop.
The larty was in place.
"Your time is up, Kezner," Gaff said.
"No!" Kezner turned on Gaff, sheer desperation in his eyes. "I can get through to them. They will listen to me!"
"You've lost control over your troops," Gaff answered sharply. "They're nothing but a mob now and I will not waste anymore time - or lives - while you try and talk them down." Gaff grit his teeth. He did not want to do this. Even if his men were using non-lethal force, the panic that was likely going to ensue might cause more civilian casualties. But both sides were forcing his hand.
He looked back up at the larty, hovering several meters above the impromptu battlefield. As far as urban warfare went, this was a particularly chaotic scene. No matter how careful Carry and Scope were, innocent civilians who had nothing to do with the fighting were likely going to be caught in the crossfire.
They're already caught in the crossfire, he reminded himself, sweeping the park one last time. His HUD showed him at least twelve bodies that were most definitely no longer alive; two of them were clad in the distinctive red uniform of the police.
"Hatch," he called over the company's comm channel. "Bring the larty around. I want three strafing runs over the area. Carry, Scope," he hesitated for just a split second, then gave the inevitable order, "lay down some blanket fire. Scatter them."
"Yes, sir," came the synchronised reply from all three troopers.
Up above their heads, the larty suddenly banked hard to the right and dipped down another three meters, bringing the gunship's bubble turrets into optimal range.
It was early dawn now, the sky just beginning to really lighten when the blue rings of the stun bolts began to rain down on the seething crowd of combatants, creating a sharp contrast in light.
The ambient noise levels rose to a frantic pitch as the people realized the danger coming from above. Some scattered during the larty's first run, but many more actually tried to shoot the gunship out of the sky, their slugs falling short of their actual target. Using the zoom function of his HUD, Gaff focused on the single figure hanging precariously out of the crew bay by his webbing, blaster rifle in his hand.
While Carry lay down a steady stream of blanketing fire, forcing the main group to scatter and disperse, Scope was taking down individual targets with precise shots, focusing on the few higher-ranking GFH members they'd been able to identify as leading this particular attack.
Kezner moaned and closed his eyes as his people were felled by the stun bolts and utter chaos erupted in the park. The Marits withdrew completely into their dwellings, letting the full scope of the attack come down on the Humans.
Gaff watched silently as his small group of men broke up and contained the situation, the light of blue stun bolts and a crimson dawn reflecting in the T-shaped visor of his helmet.
Before Shenio had taken over this mine, it had belonged - albeit for a very short time - to the Marits and before that, to the Human settlers. Each party had added its own improvements, corridors and hidden passages, depending on necessity and mind-set. And The Rational knew them all.
Steering Metesk's body through the cramped air vent was an inconvenience, but The Rational, at least, was immune to the burn of hot metal against exposed skin and the salt of sweat in open cuts. Nor did The Rational know of thirst or exhaustion. While Metesk - utterly Human - would have crumbled in the vast heat that was permeating the mine now, The Rational could push the body further than its counterpart personality, achieving their common goal before relinquishing control once more.
And it was almost done.
While this particular air vent had been constructed by the Marits for obvious purposes, Shenio had seen an alternative usage for the space. Aside from recycling and distributing fresh air, the vents were a convenient storage space for certain security measures that were...less than standard.
Reaching its goal at last, The Rational found the hidden security panel and inserted the activation code provided to Metesk by Lucara - just in case.
In the darkness of the vent, four pairs of red photoreceptors sprang to life. Long, metallic legs unfurled and the glowing electronic eyes turned towards The Rational, awaiting orders.
A tongue darted out to lick across dry and blistered lips. It was a good thing that the Commerce Guild sold to the highest bidder, no matter their allegiance.
The mine, Shenio Mining HQ, at the Senet River, thirty-two klicks outside of Eyat city, Gaftikar, Outer Rim, 21 BBY (27 days after the first bombing & 17 months after the Battle of Geonosis)
She was trying to hide it, but Wren could tell by the way her chin wobbled that Ro was about to cry - so long as her body actually still had enough water in it to achieve such a feat.
"Oh sweet Force, thank you," she breathed out.
The lift - the same kind as the one that had brought them down here - was no more than a few meters away, at the far end of the processing chamber. It was about as sweet a sight as the sound of a larty's engines at the end of a bloody battle.
Wren exhaled slowly, rallying his strength for the last leg of the journey. They'd almost made it. But that didn't mean they were safe.
Letting his chin drop to his chest in not-so-feigned exhaustion, Wren brought his lips close to Ro's ear and murmured quietly, "Do you sense Metesk?"
The unexpected question made Ro stumble a little and Wren flinched as his entire body protested the jolting. He was still going, but fek if he wouldn't need at least three days in bacta after this.
Giving her head a miniscule shake, Ro murmured back, "No. But if I'm right with my two personality theory, I wouldn't, depending on who's running the show." She met his eyes and even beneath the blood and dirt, Wren could see that her eyes were sunken, red-rimmed and lined with deep shadows. Her skin had gone from an exhausted pale to an unhealthy ruddy glow and he guessed that like his, her body temperature was reaching critical.
Wren licked his dry lips, but the action brought no relief and the salt that had dried on his skin only served to make him even thirstier. The lift - and their salvation - was almost within reach now, but he couldn't shake the feeling that they weren't in the clear yet. That they were, in fact, walking straight into an ambush.
But that wasn't kriffing possible, was it? The shaft had been good-sized and dark, but not broad enough for Metesk to sneak past them. If he hadn't given up his pursuit of them, then that meant he had to be somewhere behind them, but that wasn't what Wren's instincts were telling him.
Then again, his mind felt so sluggish and it was beginning to take real effort to form coherent thoughts, so his instincts were questionable at this point. He had, after all, dangerously underestimated Metesk in their first face-to-face confrontation.
Ro halted abruptly next to a short line of deactivated gonk-droids.
"What?" he demanded, seeing her blank look as she stared off into the distance.
She shook her head like an anooba trying to dislodge a sandflea from its ear, her sweaty, tangled hair flying about her face. "Not sure," she mumbled, looking about the chamber again. The expression on her face was one of dull dazedness, but beneath that, Wren thought he could see the flicker of that shrewd expression she wore when she was fitting together pieces of the puzzle. "I think..." she trailed off, gazing at the lift fixedly.
Wren nudged her gently, mindful of both of their abused bodies. "Shorted out a fuse, cheeka?"
Her eyes suddenly went very wide, showing all the whites and with a strength he could have sworn she no longer possessed, Ro pushed him to the side, yelling: "Down!"
He hit the floor - only barelymanaging to brace his fall with his hands - just as a flurry of red plasma bolts flew over his head...And straight into the lift's control panel. The panel exploded in a shower of sparks.
"No!" Ro's cry was equal parts defiance, despair and anger.
Wren, feeling no less cheated of their just reward, scrambled to his feet, reaching for his Deece, just as there was a snap-hiss and the erratic light of his swinging helmet's spot lamp and the meagre illumination of the chamber was joined by the dark blue and purple glow of Ro's lightsaber.
He cast a quick, fleeting glance at her, standing, defiant of her exhaustion, next to the gonk-droids, lightsaber raised in an attack position, her eyes flashing.
Then he head the familiar ka-chunk-ka-chunk of droid feet.
You've got to be fekking kidding me. Out here?
"Wren! Above!" Ro warned.
Wren looked up, raising the muzzle of his blaster as he did so and while his mind was still catching up to events, his finger was already pressing the trigger, shooting at the glaring red eyes staring down at him from the high ceiling.
The four DSD1 dwarf spider droids didn't waste any time.
His first shots grazed one of them, taking out one baleful red photoreceptor. The clanker gave an angry mechanical screech and all four droids dropped from the ceiling, landing bare meters away from their intended victims.
Wren never stopped shooting, but even he had to admit that his aim was off. His shots were doing little more than adding char marks to their outer casings. His hands shook too much from exhaustion to aim properly for the vulnerable photoreceptors that dominated the hemispherical body or the power cells located beneath the clankers' dome.
With powerful leaps of their four splayed legs, the dwarf spider droids split up, two coming at him and the other two focusing on Ro.
Wren threw himself to the side, taking shelter behind a massive load-bearing trundle cart, just as the two spider droids fired their central blaster cannons at him.
The force of the shots rocked the trundle cart, ripping it in half and gouging two short trenches into the chamber's floor next to where Wren crouched, while the combined report echoed through the chamber deafeningly.
Wren grit his teeth as he rummaged through his medkit and pulled out the second-to-last stim. He slapped the patch against his neck, right onto the jugular, cursing the ringing in his ears and kriff-forsaken companies who actually bought Sep tech.
Using the ruined trundle cart as cover, he returned fire, the stim sharpening his gaze and steadying his hands.
To the side, Ro was facing off against her two opponents, fending off their attacks with her remaining lightsaber. But Wren could see that the spider droids were forcing her into a steady retreat and her movements lacked any of her previous grace and agility. There was another flash from the powerful blaster cannon and Ro leaped to the side, her velocity and the force of the explosion hurling her straight into the line of gonk-droids.
Ro was down and she wasn't getting back up.
"Fek!"
Wren broke from cover, firing as he went, holding the spiders off as he slid to Ro's side. He went to one knee, still firing.
"Cheeka!" he called. "Get up! The fek up right now!"
Ro moaned and Wren flung himself down, covering her body with his, as three of the spider droids shot their blaster cannons at them simultaneously. Wren felt the heat of the plasma blister the back of his neck and several mining droids exploded in a miniature fireball behind them, as they took the shots meant for Ro and Wren.
Shouting curses in all the languages that he knew, Wren kept firing one-handed, while shaking Ro, gripping her wrenched shoulder in the hopes that the pain would bring her back to consciousness.
In the erratic light he could just make out the faintest gleam of teal as her eyelids fluttered open, then a hand gripped the front of his bodyglove and Wren was pulled down again, nose-to-nose with Ro as more shots seared along his back.
With a cry that could have been pain - though it was impossible to tell in the cacophony created by the riccoching shots and echoes in the chamber - Ro disentangled the hand that gripped her lightsaber from the pile of their combined limbs. The blade flashed to life an inch in front of Wren's face, angled up and to the side - and wasn't it lucky that the thing had automatically deactivated when Ro's thumb had slid from the activation panel.
A flurry of shots bounced off the rapidly moving lightsaber. Wren had to squint his eyes against the dazzle of multi-colored lights so close to his face, cursing his lack of a helmet.
There was another electronic squeal and a shower of sparks erupted from the domed head of one of the spider droids, its power-cells destroyed by a shot deflected from Ro's lightsaber. The clanker's legs collapsed under it and the photoreceptors went dark.
"Roll!" Ro shouted into his ears and Wren - ignoring his screaming ribs and burning muscles - rolled off of Ro and to the side, finding new cover behind a small mountain of as yet to be processed ore. Ro was only a breath behind him. She was gasping for air, her wrenched shoulder out of its sling and clearly impeding her process. Wren grabbed her by the back of her shirt and pulled her the last few centimeters behind cover.
"Thanks, Cookie," she gasped out.
"Don't thank me yet," he told her as he checked the charge on his Deece and their cover shook as the remaining three spider droids decided to take the direct approach and simply blast the mount of ore to rubble. Smaller pieces of rock rained down on them, but at this point they were both too far gone to notice. "They can still blast us to effing atoms."
"Right," Ro said, nodding to herself as if in agreement. "We need a plan." She looked towards Wren. "Any thinks?"
Wren looked her squarely in the eye. "Don't fraggin' die."
The grin she gave him was full of mischief and utterly out of place given their situation. "Sounds stellar." She closed her eyes, her brow furrowing in concentration. "They're closing in," she told him. "Two coming right at us, one trying to flank us to our right."
Wren leaned towards that side, catching the approaching spider droid off guard and in mid-run. He took the split second he needed to steady his breathing and timed his shot on his exhale. A single blue plasma bolt pierced the semi-darkness, flying right into the muzzle of the spider's blaster cannon. The cannon went off with a roar, ripping through the spider droid and sending shrapnel flying in every direction. More consoles and mining machinery were shredded, some adding their own explosions to the chaos. Wren ducked back behind cover, but wasn't quite fast enough to avoid all of the shrapnel. Something sharp and hot cut through the skin close to his hairline and he grunted as he felt a piece of the clanker's armor wedge itself into his bicep.
The chamber was now illuminated by various small fires, adding more heat to the already unbearably hot chamber and choking the dense air with smoke and the smell of burned wiring. Wren glanced down at his injured arm and pulled the piece of durasteel out of his flesh
"Are you barvy?" Ro asked, horrified as she leaned towards him, clutching at his arm in an effort to stop the bleeding. "You could have pierced an artery!"
"I didn't," he replied curtly. Truth be told, he wasn't feeling much of anything. Exhaustion combined with adrenaline had pretty much numbed his body to most sensations, even the oppressive heat. It wouldn't last long, but for now, it would keep him fighting. He looked back at Ro. "Two to go. And I thought Jedi couldn't kriffing well sense droids."
"It's a trick I learned from Master Altis," she explained. She seemed to debate for a moment, then hastily removed what remained of her sling and wrapped the shredded pieces of bandage around his injured arm. She was still working one-handed, her lightsaber wedged between her knees. Without interrupting her work, she said, "The other two are retreating."
"Regrouping," he corrected her. "Spiders are smarter than most tinnies. They'll try to flush us out next, without getting too close."
"You've seen them before then?"
"On Geonosis," he confirmed.
"And you survived." She looked up at him hopefully. "So you know how to beat these tinnies."
Wren licked his lip, trying to think past the exhaustion and lightheadedness that was clouding his mind. "I do, but I've never done it with myself and my backup in so effing sorry a condition." He looked at her. "Force-push them against the wall. That's what the Jedi did on Geonosis."
Ro's face fell. "I'm sorry," she whispered, the words so low he almost couldn't hear them over the crackling of the fires and the ka-chunk-ka-chunk of the spider droids' legs. "I can't. I don't have that kind of connection to the Force."
Then they were kriffed. Relying on a Jedi's Force-powers was the last resort of every trooper.
She must have read some of what he thought on his face, because her expression became even more dispirited. Then, in a change of emotions so quick it could have given him whiplash, Ro thrust out her chin in defiant stubbornness, while her eyes hardened with determination. "The saturated Askajian fem hasn't sung her last yet," she declared.
Before he could ask her what the fek she was talking about, Ro had dashed away from cover, running as fast as her state allowed her towards the ruined lift, drawing the droids' attention in an instant.
"Fek that cheeka," he growled as he jumped to his feet, firing from the cover of the mount of ore. One spider droid turned its attention towards him, while the second continued to scurry after Ro.
Wren clenched his jaw until his teeth ached. He couldn't follow her. The spider had started blasting away at his cover again, trying to take his head off in the process. He kept it occupied, but its outer casing was heavily armored and it was effing fast on its four spindly legs.
From the corner of his eye he saw Ro stumble towards the lift, her lightsaber ignited and held in a reverse grip as she blocked the clanker's shots aimed at her back. She managed a leap onto an overturned gonk-droid, then vaulted from there onto the loading bed of a hover truck - doing so with all the grace of a drunk Weequay.
The spider droid followed her movements faithfully, but since the blaster cannon was fixed to the front of its body, the thing couldn't maneuver its primary weapon very well. With Ro seeking ever higher ground, the spider droid had to bend its two hind legs to aim the cannon properly.
Wren changed his own tactics. Instead of going for the photoreceptors or eyes, he angled his blaster downwards, trying to shoot out the clanker's joints. The spider droid let out a series of frustrated beeps as it was forced into a complex little dance, in an effort to protect the joints of its legs from his well-placed shots.
Wren's lips peeled back from his teeth in a savage parody of a smile. "That's it, fekker," he growled. "Effing dance." One of his shots connected. The spider droid's right foreleg collapsed as the joint was shot to hell. It screeched and tried to swivel its cannon towards him, but was impeded by the wreckage of a collapsed mining droid right next to it.
Wren left his cover, approaching the clanker on its vulnerable side, intent on finishing the thing off.
The sound of a blaster cannon going off distracted him. He looked to his left and saw Ro fling herself backwards, her lightsaber up and deflecting the cannon shot just enough so that it careened straight up into the ceiling. She slipped off of the hover truck she'd been standing on, hitting the ground hard.
The spider droid turned towards her, its blaster cannon fixed on her battered form.
Above them, something broke with an agonized metallic shriek. Ro scrambled frantically to her feet, clutching her injured shoulder, as entire sections of piping, conveyor belts and catwalk came crashing down from above.
The spider droid she'd been fighting tried to target the pieces of debris and was buried beneath hunks of durasteel for its trouble.
"Wren!" Ro called frantically as she tried to outrun the deadly rain.
There was the sound of more tearing metal and then, unexpectedly, the sound of rushing water. Wren looked up to see a torrent of discolored water come rushing down, no doubt from some burst water pipe. But there was something off about the liquid. In the light cast by the fires, the illuminators and his own spot lamp, Wren thought he could see unnatural colors shimmering in the water. Then the torrent crashed down on the buried spider droid and the clanker's outer casing began smoking.
It was fracking water that was pouring down onto them and it was effing melting the metal.
And Ro was right in the path of its flow.
Wren sprinted towards her, the adrenaline pumping through his body protecting him from the pain he was in. They met halfway, Ro slamming into him with bruising force, the deadly water only a meter behind her and coming in fast, already more than thigh deep.
Without thinking, Wren wrapped his bad left arm around Ro's waist and pointed his blaster straight up towards an intact section of catwalk, firing off his grappling line. The recoil of the blaster rolled through his body and it was the final straw that broke the ronto's back - or in this case, his ribs. He felt his barely healed ribs give with sickening ease just as the grappling hook found purchase and the line grew taut, the automated cinch lifting them both up into the air.
For a moment, Wren's vision went grey and there was a roaring in his ears, as Ro's weight pulled down on his bad arm and he felt the bones give as well. He barely heard Ro scream as his arm went slack around her waist and she had to fling her arms around his neck. Not being able to breathe due to the desperate grip of a Jedi was as good as a slap to the face. Consciousness returned and he tightened his arm again despite the pain, keeping her steady against his chest. The fracking water rushed beneath them, foaming and lapping at their feet in agitation, as if angered over being denied its prey.
Wren looked down, past Ro's head, and saw that the spider droid he'd crippled earlier hadn't been so lucky. It had dragged itself to the side and the torrent of fracking water caught it while attempting to climb the chamber's wall. The spider droid swivelled its head towards the approaching wave, the water foaming around bits of machinery it had picked up during its mad rush across the chamber. The clanker gave a single frantic beep before the water caught it up and dashed it against the wall it had been trying to climb, the durasteel of its skin beginning to smoke and then melt away as the chemicals mixed into the water devoured it.
Wren turned his attention upwards, measuring the distance between them and the safety of the catwalk. The arm holding his Deece was trembling madly, the muscles cramping from the strain of holding their combined weight.
"You can do this, Cookie," Ro murmured into his ear. She was still clinging to his neck. "You won't let us fall. I know you won't."
Wren closed his eyes and concentrated on keeping his grip on his Deece, trying to shut out the pain and the fatigue. The air was beginning to stink, burning his nostrils. It was the same smell they'd detected outside of the Shenio compound, the one officer Pa'Rillo had identified as being a side-effect of the fracking chemicals. The poisonous fracking chemicals.
"Now, Wren," Ro told him. "Now!"
Wren opened his eyes and saw the railing of the catwalk was within reach. Ro stretched out her arm, grasped the lowest bar of the safety railing and pulled herself onto the catwalk. Relieved of her weight, Wren managed to follow her example, rolling his body over the railing and falling heavily onto his back.
Ro was at his side in an instant. "Wren?" Her right hand gently brushed across his chest, while she cradled her left close to her own chest. "Wren, your ribs."
"They're broken," he confirmed. Kriff, the pain. "And my arm, too, I think."
Ro glanced down at the arm, brushing her fingers against the material of his bodyglove. She glanced back down, where the fracking water had now covered all of the chamber's floor and continued to rise, flowing into the shaft they'd traversed and no doubt polluting the entire mine.
Then her head jerked upwards and she shivered violently.
"What?" Wren gasped, trying to roll onto his side. The pain that seared through him almost made him blackout, but he fought through it. "More droids?"
"No," she said through numb lips. "I can sense him. It feels cold." She met his eyes and there was a glimmer of fear in their teal depths. "Wren, he's coming."
Gritting his teeth against the pain, Wren tried to rise to his feet and only managed to get onto his knees. He bent over almost double, breathing hard, then checked the charge of his blaster. The plasma display showed red. He was out of power.
Wren closed his eyes and breathed out slowly, then looked back up at Ro. "You need to go," he told her, stony-faced.
"Go?" Ro repeated, as if she'd never heard the word before. "Cookie, we need to go."
"I effing can't," he snapped and pushed her away. It was a feeble effort. "I'm at the end. Half my ribs are broken, so's my arm; I can't kriffing walk properly and I'm out of power. I'll only fraggin' slow you down."
"I am not leaving you!" she protested vehemently.
"I can buy you time!" he shouted back. The words felt surreal coming from him. How often had he mocked other clones for such self-sacrificing kriff? And now that his time had come, he found that he wanted it to end this way; just him and the enemy and one last fight. And perhaps he could ensure Ro's survival as well. His eyes scanned their surroundings. He couldn't see Metesk, but there were enough shadowy corners to give the man cover for a surprise ambush and besides, he actually trusted Ro's instincts on this.
Another kriffing first, he thought with fatalistic humor.
He holstered his useless blaster and pulled the Jabiimi dead-blade out of its arm sheath. He pointed with the blade down the catwalk. "Go," he said again, emphasizing the order with another push to her thin chest, this one with enough force to set her to stumbling backwards. "Get the kriff out of here before the fumes kill you. If I don't get the effing satisfaction of wringing your neck, then no one else gets it either."
Ro looked at him wide-eyed, no doubt seeing the determination on his face. He meant to see this through. Metesk was his.
"Wren." His name was a whisper on her tongue, barely audible over the sound of poisonous rushing water and the hollow clank as pieces of durasteel were bashed together in the torrents below them. And somewhere above all that chaos was Metesk; out to finish them off.
Not so long as I have an effing breath in my fekking body. No way some mongrel rat gets the better of me.
"Ro." Her own name came out hoarse and rough when he said it. He reached out and grabbed a chunk of her hair, bringing her close. "Get the kriff out of here," he said, putting all the force of his will into the words.
She was worried, he could see that. Worried for him, but he could also see the exhaustion and the pain. She was nearly at the end of her rope as well and they both knew it. Her eyes stayed locked with his for a few moments more, then shifted to gaze down the length of the catwalk and the waiting darkness beyond.
Ro closed her eyes and Wren knew that she'd made her choice.
