Chapter 1

'…I repeat, requesting emergency assistance.' The voice crackled across a static filled signal, and even though it sounded calm, there was an undertone of panic beginning to set in. 'We are pinned down, we have run out of ammo and are unable to engage the enemy. I repeat, we need help.'

'Kappa squad, we are inbound to your position,' the clone commando said, replying to the voice that echoed from the speaker mounted inside his helmet, the featureless 'T' visor looking out over the edge of the hover sled as it skimmed across the canopy of the trees, looking for any breaks in the trees. 'ETA forty seconds.'

'Roger that, Theta,' came the reply. 'Thanks…'

'Contact, five o'clock low,' another voice called out from the back of the sled. Turning quickly, he cast his gaze over three other commandos, each wearing identical white and grey armour to his own. The only difference was the numbered markings on the side of their helmets, his own stating his serial number - 1133. The commando at the back of the sled - 1135 - was pointing over the edge of the sled, and turning to follow his finger, 1133 saw blaster fire lance up through the leaves and pepper the air around them. He was about to order them to return fire when one of the bolts scored a direct hit on the sled's repulsor drive. The nose of the sled pitched down violently, the whine of the shattered drives rising in intensity as the commando and his squad found themselves plummeting very quickly towards the forest canopy. More blaster fire seared the air around them, forcing them to duck down below the low edge of the broken vehicle.

The incoming fire stopped as the sled tore through the leaves, but now they could see the ground rushing towards them at an alarming rate. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw another squad pinned down on the edge of a clearing beneath them, their white and yellow armour markings clearly identifying them as Kappa squad.

'There,' he yelled, pointing towards the pinned down soldiers. 'Theta, jump!' Without questioning his orders, the rest of his team leapt from the doomed vehicle, all four of them dropping down through the shadows towards the uneven, root-covered ground beneath. His ankles took the brunt of the impact as he slammed into the floor, his knees buckling beneath him as he dropped into a roll like he had been trained to do. Coming up into a crouch, he spun his head around and watched as the smoking sled spiralled out of control and crashed into the floor of the forest, tearing a crater into the centre of the clearing as a blossoming red and gold explosion lit up the gloomy underworld beneath the umbrella like leaves.

Everything fell silent for a moment, the noisy, war-filled world above the canopy now replaced by the murky, still, green-hued otherworld of the dense forest. All he could hear was his heartbeat in his chest, and his blood rushing inside his ears.

The dust and debris from the deafening explosion slowly began to rain down across the uneven landscape, the pitter-patter of mud and stones impacting his armour as the plume of smoke dissipated into the fog that hung between the trees. The shadowy silhouettes of towering wroshyr trees reached up around the crater in the centre of the forest like claws curling over an open palm. Without orders, Theta squad were already on their feet and rushing towards their fellow soldier's side, securing the wounded and preparing to evacuate them. Triage was done quickly, but something felt off.

Silence rang out across the clearing and into the mist, and as Theta helped Kappa to their feet, the leader of Theta squad turned to face the edge of the clearing, his rifle pressed hard against his shoulder, his eyes locked on the sight as he stared down the barrel with an uneasy feeling prickling the back of his neck.

In a moment of stillness, Republic Commando One One Three Three could feel the sweat trickling down from his brow and across his nose as he forced himself not to blink. His joints ached and his muscles felt as though they were made out of stone, and as the adrenaline coursed through his body, he had to work hard to stop his aim from shaking. RC-1133, or Taler as he had been named, took a deep breath to slow his racing heart.

The silence that had enveloped them was only temporary, a side effect of the adrenalin that still coursed through his body, and as he squinted through the fog and smoke, he could see the next wave of attackers beginning to appear through the trees. In his ears he started to hear the laboured breathing of his squad mates across the unit link, the pained grunts of Kappa squad who were quite badly injured, and down the right hand side he could see the live feed from their helmet cams. His eyes flickered to the top left hand corner of his heads-up display and looked at the weapons readout. He had twelve rounds left.

'They came from behind,' the leader of Kappa grunted, struggling to sit himself up. Taler placed his hand firmly on the commando's shoulder and stopped him from moving.

'We got this,' he said, gesturing to the rest of his unit to sweep the edge of the trees for any targets.

'Didn't want you to get bored, up there on your little hover sled,' the commando said, a forced laugh deteriorating into a fit of coughing.

'Just because you were too lazy to finish your job,' Taler replied, trying to sound jovial but knowing he was failing. 'Don't think I'm letting you out of that bet either. You still owe me.' Both men laughed, though neither sounded very sincere.

A red rectangle appeared on the viewpoint of one of his squad mates, and as Taler looked up at it, he saw that the scanners had picked up approaching enemy units.

'Into the crater,' he ordered, knowing that the lip of the bowl-like formation would give them at least a little bit of cover from their enemies. Grabbing the collar of the leader of Kappa squad, Taler began to drag him across towards the safety of the crater. The others followed suit, and soon all eight men were down in the cover of the still smouldering pit, bits of the sled still burning around them. The four members of Kappa were laid out against the sides of the sloping pit, and the four members of Theta were kneeling beside them, facing outwards with their rifles pressed into their shoulders. The sounds of approaching feet grew louder, and Taler snapped his head back to prep mode. 'Rounds,' he said sharply, his eyes now snapping back to the edge of the crater.

'Ten,' came a reply.

'Seven,' said another.

'Fourteen,' said a third. Each voice would have sounded identical to those outside of his unit, but Taler could tell each of their voices apart. He had spent every waking moment with them since the day they had been decanted from their cloning tanks. He knew their identity codes, the numbers used by the Kanionan cloners to keep track of each individual unit – the word they used for every clone – but he also knew their true names, the names that had been given to them by the people who trained them. His was Taler, and his brothers were Vin, Jay, and Darman. They were his squad mates, his unit, and his brothers. They were the only family he had ever known. He knew every facet of their face, the slight difference in the shade of their eyes, and the tonal shifts in their voices, and because of that he knew which one had the least amount of rounds left. They had limited resources, and so they needed an escape plan. An idea began to form in his mind. Glancing down at the commando beside him, Taler spoke.

'You still got it?' he asked. Weakly and breathlessly, the commando nodded, reaching his arm up and pointing to the pack he wore on his back.

'All in there,' Taler heard him say through what he thought was clenched teeth. As carefully as he could – unsure as to what injuries the commando might have suffered – Taler leaned the commando forwards and unclipped the large cylindrical device from his back. Placing it in the centre of the crater, he turned around and saw the commando looking back at him. 'Thanks for this, T.'

'You'd do the same for us, Oul,' Taler replied. Tapping the shoulder of the figure to his right, Jay, he began to give orders. 'Set it up,' he said quickly, pointing towards the cylindrical object he had just placed in the middle of the crater. He watched Jay drop down to his knees and shuffle into the middle of the circle, placing himself in the centre of the four other commandos, each in a worrying state of motionlessness. Taler moved across to cover his position as well as his own, watching the feed from Vin and Darman behind him doing the same, closing in to seal the gap. The three soldiers who stayed kneeling were now covering the entire edge of the crater with overlapping arcs of fire, but he knew that there was only so long they could hold that line, and the longer they were stuck there, the less chances Kappa would have of survival.

The ringing in his ears had finally faded away, and as the whispering wind that weaved through the trees brushed across the edge of the crater, he heard the slowly approaching sound of metal, clanking feet growing louder.

'Time?' he hissed, pressing the rifle even harder into the crease of his shoulder, the stock almost locking between his chest plate and bicep plate.

'One minute until charged,' Jay said from behind him. Almost as if to check, Taler felt his eyes flicker up to the camera feed from his squad mate and saw him looking down at the display as the numbers counted down in red glowing digits.

'Contact,' Darman's voice called out to his left, and an almost identical cry came from Vin to his right a heartbeat later. Taler snapped his eyes to the edge of the clearing and saw for himself the shadows as they began to emerge from the mists that lingered between the trees, and before he could even acknowledge the cries from the other two men beside him, red blaster bolts began streaking through the air around them, skimming past their helmets, slamming into the dirt around the edge of the crater, and shattering the bark of the nearby trees. Taler could feel the heat of each bolt as it seared past him even through his armour plating.

'Engage,' he said, 'but make each shot count.'

As each silhouette emerged from the mist, the long spindly legs and triangular torso taking corporeal shape, Taler aimed his sights on the nearest target, quickly squeezing the trigger once. A bolt of blue energy erupted from the barrel of his rifle, tearing through the leg of the lead target. The leg vanished in a hail of shrapnel, and the figure tumbled to the floor, their weapon spitting red bolts in an arc that took out another three figures beside it. Taler didn't stop to watch, he was already lining up his sight on the next target to his left. More and more of the enemy began to emerge from the fog, the red blaster fire of their weapons searing the air around them. With three more taps of the trigger, he felled another three targets, and all around him he could see others falling to the blue projectiles his squad were emptying into their oncoming assailants.

'Forty seconds,' Jay cried in the centre of their formation.

'I'm out,' came a cry from beside him, Vin to his right securing the rifle to his back as he fired the last of his energy magazine. 'Switching to pistol.' The heavy sounds of the rifle changed to the higher pitched chirp of the hand blaster as the less powerful but more accurate shots streaked from the stunted barrel. Two more targets fell, but the approaching enemy were almost at the edge of the crater now.

A dull grunt and a muffled cry of pain followed the crackling ricochet of an energy pulse on armour, and as Taler turned towards the sound, he felt his head kicked back by the glancing impact of a blaster bolt to the face. His screen flickered for a moment with static before it then went black as the systems shut down. Ripping it off his head, he threw it onto the floor beside him, the silent hiss of the unit comlink now replaced by the deafening booms and screeching sounds of war.

The cross hairs of the rifle scope hovered between the eyes of the familiar face, every crease of their brow intensified by the harsh light that cut through the smoke that rose around the clearing. Brelen Tak, Mandalorian training sergeant and member of the Cuy'val Dar, felt the momentary rush of pride fill his lungs as he looked upon the face of the young man who he had helped to train, but it was soon followed by the crestfallen sense of disappointment. The two teams had been given their missions – one to take out the relay station on the edge of the forest and the other to maintain control over the clearing until the evac signal was given - and they had both succeeded for so long. It was only after the assets had entered the battlefield – as was always the intention – that things had changed. Nearly all of Kappa squad had been incapacitated by the other asset, and two lucky shots from himself had brought them to the brink of failure. Success and failure lay on either side of a razor's edge, and Theta and Kappa squad were now one shot away from defeat. All it would take was for him to squeeze the trigger of the rifle he had pointed at the squad leader, and that would be it.

He took a second longer than he knew he should, looking at each of the soldiers in turn and trying to reconcile the fact that these soldiers, these men were still only barely ten years old. The accelerated growth process used by the Kaminoans had produced incredible specimens, and their logic and thinking was without comparison.

But emotionally, they were still only boys. They weren't his boys, Theta weren't at least. They had been trained by Kal, and he had trained them since they were big enough to hold a blaster. Each member of the Cuy'val Dar having been assigned a number of units, Brelen's consisting of Kappa, Canon and Rho Squads. Kal had been the one who had trained Theta squad, teaching them how to survive in the only way he knew how. The faces of the four commandos of Kappa squad flashed in front of his eyes. He could barely see them as they lay on their back in the middle of the crater, but he knew that they were there, and he could hear their laboured breathing as they struggled with the pain that was flooding their bodies. It was everything he could do to not drop his own weapon and run to them now.

Shaking off the sentimentality, he forced himself to focus and as he placed his eye back on the scope, the face in front of him changed ever so slightly. He was no longer looking at the unit leader of Theta, a lad he knew almost as well as his own boys, but he now found himself looking at the unit leader of Kappa Squad, Oul. To most outsiders, they would all look the same being clones and all, but he knew his boys, and seeing their faces again made his heart skip, and he felt a surge of anger flood his body. He should not have been here. Kal should have been here now, doing this. He should have been the one with the blaster pointed at the soldier's head.

The moment's hesitation passed, and he knew that he had to do it. Brelen knew that if the unit were going to survive a real battle, then he could not be soft on them, because the real enemy would not give them that chance. He resolved to take the shot. He pulled back on the trigger and felt the igniter move closer to the powerpack.

Taler heard the crackling of the blaster bolt a fraction of a second before he saw it out of the corner of his eye. Years of training and heightened reflexes had taught him to trust his gut, and he threw himself into a forward roll just as the red energy blast seared through the air where his head had been moments before. Coming up into a crouch, he glanced back to where the bolt had come from, high in the upper reaches of the trees. He thought he could see a vague shape leaning against the trunk of the tree, but without his helmet's HUD, and through the smoke that rose from the ever increasing numbers of shattered droids, he could not see clearly.

'Smoke,' he barked, as he reached down for a spherical device strapped to his belt, and he threw it down onto the floor a few feet ahead of him, between himself and the shooter he could not see. A dull thoom echoed around them as it detonated, and a screen of white smoke engulfed them.

Darting back to the cover of the crater, he turned back to his squad mate who had cried out moments before. Beside him, he saw Darman to his left falling to his knee, stumbling as the strength in the right side of his body failed. With only a moment's glance, he could already piece together the events that had transpired. A dangerously accurate shot from the oncoming enemy had slammed into his shoulder, glancing between the chest plate and the shoulder pauldron, piercing the soft body suit. While some of it had penetrated the armour and brought down the soldier, a part of it had then veered off and crackled directly into Taler's face, causing his helmet's systems to shut down.

'Take this,' Taler said, having assessed the situation, and his team mate, and worked out the only viable course of action he could take. Grabbing his own pistol, he threw it to Vin on his right, years of flash training and continuous drilling meaning that he did not need to look where he was throwing it. His aim was true, and he knew that Vin would catch it without a problem, his finger slipping quickly into the trigger grip. 'Close the gap,' Taler continued.

Without even thinking, he reached down and scooped up Darman's rifle as the injured man held it out to him. Even with pain flooding his chest, Darman still knew the drill. Gripping it in his off hand and extending it towards the crater's edge, his arms outstretched with a rifle in each hand, Taler switched his view back and forth between each, squeezing the triggers and spewing bolt after bolt of energy into the enemy lines. Without the environmentally controlled shelter of the helmet, the humid air of the forest clung to his skin, and he could feel the sweat beading across his forehead, and the dusty air invading his nose along with the acrid stench of burnt plasteel plating. He pushed it all away, all that mattered was the next few seconds. He stood back to back with the other remaining soldier, each with their arms stretched out each side, sweeping the barrels of their guns around the edge of the clearing.

'Dose him,' Taler barked. The unit reacted without question, each one falling into their designated roles. Darman, the downed soldier, was tended to by the Jay who knelt down beside him, while the last two remaining standing – Taler and Vin – continued to provide as much cover as they could with what little ammo they had left. He heard the familiar double hiss of two single use hypos being injected into the gap between the arm and the chest plate. One was a jab of adrenalin, and the other was a jab of painkillers that would hopefully stabilise their comrade until they got him a bacta patch. Now all they had to do was survive the next few moments themselves.

'Any time, now,' Vin said hurriedly, the sarcastic tone almost lost as the words were ground out through gritted teeth.

'Time,' Taler yelled.

'Five seconds,' Jay announced. 'Four… Three…'

The enemy lines surrounded the crater, and the nearest units stumbled over the edge of the crater. Taler felt his eyes widen as he turned to look straight ahead and saw the barrel of a rifle pointed directly as the centre of his eyes. Time slowed down and he could feel each heart beat hammering inside his chest. He looked up from the barrel and directly into the 'T' shaped visor of the soldier who was pointing it at him. He saw through the opaque face plate and felt the eyes of the figure behind them staring back at him. They looked at one another, regarding each other for an eternity that passed in the blink of an eye.

'Ready,' came a yell from behind him. Without breaking his gaze, Taler gritted his teeth and exhaled slowly.

'Now,' Taler said, an odd calm washing over him. He clenched his fist tight around the grip of the rifle he still held out to either side of him, tensing his body and looked back towards where the shot had come from high in the trees. Then, he waited for the pain he knew was coming.

The smoke began to clear, and Brelen could see the centre of the clearing once more. He lined up his rifle with the leader of Theta squad, and slid his finger into the trigger guard. The rifle had barely clicked as the spring tightened, when he felt a soft pulse of energy wash over him, like a gentle push against his chest, and as he finished pressing the trigger, he heard the power pack whine softly before going silent. Looking down at the end of his rifle, a flicker of confusion creased his forehead, and as he lifted his gaze once more to the unit in the centre of the clearing, he found the squad leader grinning back at him. Their eyes locked for a moment, and then he watched as the soldier closed his eyes tight and clenched his jaw.

What was he doing?

A sudden low drone filled the air and Brelen felt the hairs on his arms stand on end. A burst of lightning appeared in the centre of the crater, and with a rush of air, it expanded in a crackling wall of static. The four man team standing in the middle of the clearing sheltering the four downed soldiers disappeared in a blinding wall of light, and Brelen had only a second to brace himself before he felt himself picked up off his perching branch and thrown by the leading edge of a rapidly expanding shockwave. As he tumbled through the air, he felt a burning sensation ripple over his skin and even though his years of survival training had taught him to go limp in order to reduce the pain on impact, his whole body tensed up in pain. The sensation spread through his body like fire, and as he came crashing down, his back slammed hard onto the floor, the wind was forced from his lungs and a sickening pop sound came from his left shoulder, the shock of the impact sending his rifle falling from his grasp.

As he rolled to a stop in the debris that was strewn around the edge of the clearing, he reached up and popped the seal on his helmet, ripping it from his head as he gasped for air. Without the filter of the visor to dull the light, he found himself blinded by the harsh glow of the sky and he quickly clamped his eyes shut. The pain was still pulsing through his chest like waves crashing against the stilted legs of the city, making each breath more difficult. He had to tackle the cause of it. Looking towards his left shoulder, he found that it was not where it was supposed to be. Instead of being by his side, where his arm connected to his torso, it was in actual fact almost above his lung, having been popped out of its socket and rotated around into an almost impossible position. Just the sight of it was enough to make the panic begin to well up inside him. Grabbing his left arm in his right hand, and taking three quick sharp breaths, he snapped it back around into the socket, the wet shluck sound that it made turning his stomach. The sick feeling was almost immediately forgotten though as another wave of fresh pain shot through his chest, and his jaws clenched tight, muffling the cries of pain that escaped his burning throat.

The pain was almost too much and Brelen felt the darkness spreading around the edge of his sight, unconsciousness threatening to take him. He fought against it, and pushed through the pain, lifting his head and looking for the rifle that had fallen from his hands. He saw it lying in the dirt a few meters away from him, and rolling himself onto his front, he began to scramble towards it. His hand reached out for the grip, and he felt his fingers close around the handle when an armoured foot suddenly appeared on top of it. Looking up through stinging eyes, Brelen found himself looking up at the same face he had been moments away from shooting.

In the blink of an eye, the figure raised the pistol and pulled the trigger.

Brelen felt his whole body convulse in pain, a blinding white light filled his vision, and then he felt himself fall limp.