Chapter 12: Carida Siege pt. 1: The Sewers
Anakin stood aboard the Executor in its bridge next to Kreia, Mara, and Yoda. Xen stood probably in the same position aboard the Phoenix II staring out the viewports with Yoda waiting to jump to hyperspace. Anakin waited eagerly for General Antillies to accept his call. He was aboard the newest addition to Anakin's fleet, a new super star destroyer called the Guardian, he was not as eager as Anakin to go into battle.
Finally a transparent blue tinged hologram of the rough black haired Wedge Antillies materialized on the bridge holoprojector pad. He bowed with respect to Anakin, though neither were particularly fond of one another.
"Are all of your systems primed General Antillies? I am growing impatient." Anakin said.
"They are Lord Skywalker." Wedge answered, he put a particular emphasis on the word Lord. "And the Guardian is ready to jump to hyperspace at your command."
"Piett!" Anakin barked. The admiral came sprinting up to him from a status console and bowed. "Piett, is the course set?"
"Yes milord."
"Very well, send it to the navicomputers of the fleet and prepare to jump."
Piett saluted, straightened his red uniform and sprinted to the hyperspace officer. Anakin turned his attention back to wedge.
"Prepare to jump General, you will be receiving the coordinates momentarily. You will have no problems." Anakin said. "Because you are not doing this for me, keep Mon Mothma in mind. I trust you will have no problems following my orders?"
"Not a one."
"Excellent, he have nothing further to discuss. Skywalker out." Anakin stepped back from camera view slid a hand across his neck to signal the comm officer to cut the connection. A second later Wedge's image faded into nothingness.
"Be wary of that one." Kreia said. Anakin looked at her.
"I am not your Padawan. I am no one's Padawan. I am not even a Jedi."
"Yet you are the one who needs the most guidance, you do not know exactly where your loyalties lie. The only reason you turned on the Empire was…" Kreia smiled and her voice entered his head. "Because you and your wife shared a night of passion that resulted in the conceiving of Jedi twins."
"How do you know that?" Anakin asked telepathically, chilled to the bone.
"There is little that eludes me. I hear everything, the frustration of Admiral Piett as he goes about his work, the strong willed conscious of Mon Mothma as she holds the New Republic together by spider's thread. And your troubled thoughts, of your children."
Mara looked at them in confusion.
"What exactly is going on?"
"Nothing of importance, so it seems." Kreia said smoothly and the ships lurched into deep hyperspace.
XxX
Carida was an ugly planet. To mixed, one section of it looked to be desert, another lush forests and jungles. The next mountainous terrain, Anakin was beginning to understand why Imperial troops were trained here. It had every environment. He watched as his bone white troop transports descended toward the planet as well as the shell shaped rebel transports. Each had been branded with the Republic's red insignia, which was the alliances old one. Anakin, Kreia, Mara, Padmé, Qui-gon, and Xen had voted a while ago Yoda lead the aid for Admiral Ackbar who had an army perched outside of the military city where Furgan held himself up in. He could not get in because of its shield generator and starship grade turbo lasers. The could dissolve a platoon of men in an instant. Ackbar had a group of twelve Republic AT-AT's outside by his command post hammering away at the shields but it was a vain attempt. These shields could prevent orbital bombardment from starships, let alone the laser cannons on the AT-AT's. No one attacked Ackbar though, thankfully, and he had a plan. One that would need Yoda.
XxX
Yoda rode in the passenger section of a Lambda class shuttle. He held his gimmer stick tightly so that his knuckles turned bone white, tension, he could sense tension all around him. He felt tense too, no matter how much he tried to calm himself. He had not been in battle since the clone wars, nor had he actually fought enemies with brains since his clone troops turned on him in the battle of Kashyyyk. He heard and felt the landing struts extend and the ship touched down with the hiss of hydraulics, he hopped of his seat as did the other commandoes present. The boarding ramp was still ejecting as he made his way down. An odd sight caught his eyes. They were in the middle of a grassland, not hills nor anything. To his immediate left were the camps of troops and a mobile command post which was a modified AT-AA transport (all terrain anti aircraft), and several AT-AT's behind it making the slouched for legged transport look puny. To his right, far off in the distance he could see the glow of a shield over the city but the view was then blocked by a transport touching down.
Yoda hopped off the ramp and turned to his left, headed for the command AT-AA and Admiral Ackbar. Before he reached it however Ackbar himself hopped out and so did two storm troopers and someone dressed in a pilot uniform.
"Master Yoda." Ackbar said bowing. Yoda could not clearly hear the next part due to the marching boots of storm troopers or other soldiers marching off the transports. "We are grateful for any assistance you can offer us."
"To the command AT-AA take me, discuss battle plans we must." Yoda said. Ackbar nodded and led him up the ladder and into the hatch atop the AT-AT.
Inside everything had been cleared out to make room for a projection table and chairs surrounding up. The only original control console they had kept was the on that controlled movement and shields. Ackbar sat down in on of the chair, and the two storm troopers sat next to him. Yoda sat across from the trio, clutched the gimmer stick at the top with both hands and rested his chin on it. He perked his big ears up and waited.
"So," Ackbar began. He tapped a few buttons on the holopad table and a complete three dimensional holographic image of the military city showed up. Real-time status as well, it marked even one storm trooper walking down the alleyways between buildings. "As you can see the shield generating facility is in the middle of the city."
Ackbar pointed to a very tall building with two dishes on the top, projecting a field.
"We need to shut this shield down so we can destroy the turbo lasers and advance on the city. I have a plan however." Acbar said. He pointed to a rectangular building by the shield generating facility, it was quite large. "This is the sewage plant. As you can see…"
Acbar ran his hands down below the buildings, there was one huge tunnel sloping down into a circular central tunnel, more tunnels connected to it and sprang off in different directions. The image zoomed in to one tunnel and followed it to a spot right under their camp.
"… a sewage tunnel leads directly under us, we are drilling now to reach it. We need you to go down the tunnel, take the sewage plant and shut down the shield generator. Hold it at all costs until we get into the city."
"Mm, an excellent plan this is. An entire army, down the pipe they can go?"
"Yes, in fact this pipe is big enough for the entire army to walk in formation."
"A good fortune we have. Lead them I will, but one request do I have."
"That is?"
"Boots, trudge in sewage with bare feet I will not."
XxX
They finally had a hole dug into the sewers, Yoda and his army were already down in it. The pipe was indeed big, when standing in the middle armed with one glow stick you could not see either side. But since Yoda stood in the middle with an entire row of storm troopers behind him, each armed with a glow stick he could see both walls, many more lines were behind that, making a sizeable army. Yoda stood in an inch of muck, he luckily had gotten some boots, they were not exactly comfortable on his three spread out toes but it was better than walking in the green sludge, which didn't smell so bad. Though perhaps that was why Yoda was wearing a small breather, they had multi purposes, swimming under water, not being in a breathable atmosphere, and quite nicely covering up horrible stenches. The trudged forward, down the pipe for who knows how long.
The journey was hot, disgusting, and steadily growing smelly, for Yoda at least. The breather was losing its air and taking in the stale pipe air. Finally when Yoda forced a Jedi breathing technique onto himself they came up to a blast door. It was huge and covered the entire tunnel. Yoda walked up to it ignited his forest green lightsaber and plunged it into the durasteel of the blast door. He cut a huge hole and with the Force ripped the metal away. It went about two feet deep and still had not reached the end.
Yoda grumbled and deactivated his lightsaber. Explosive techs ran up to the hole and began cramming bombs into it until it was entirely filled again. When the last one was placed a tech place a durasteel covering over the hole to make the explosion go inward. He ordered everyone to back away and pressed a button on a tiny remote. Instantly there was a huge bang the echoed down the tunnel and the durasteel covering flew away, The techs looked at their work. All the bombs had really done was make the hole wider so more people could fit in it. Yoda trudged into the hole and plunged his blade into the wall again. This time he cut a one foot by one foot circle out that went two feet in. Techs rushed up again and crammed it with explosives. Again they stepped back and again the bombs blew, but this time they could see the other side.
Yoda stood as the storm troopers charged through the hole, eight at a time. From the other side he heard blaster fire, then silence. He came in himself and was standing in a huge circular sewer room. To his left was a giant pipe with sludge running down it. A ramp led a safe path up to it and two smoking dead storm troopers were sliding down. Two more of his men were lying dead in the green sludge. Yoda sighed, loss of life to a toll on every Jedi, even life as much as two storm troopers in his army.
He stood by the ramp until the entire army was in and then called for attention was banging his gimmer stick on the metal ramp. It made a loud ping that echoed all through the room. The storm troops looked to him.
"Go up this ramp we will, and take the sewage plant, take half of you I will then, and take the shield generator facility." Yoda spoke, his voice echoed through the room. It sounded muffled through the breather which was no longer working. He spit it into the sludge. All the storm troopers saluted.
"Yes sir!"
Yoda led his army up the ramp, they took the sewage plant with ease, hunting down every enemy and killing them, but in the case of surrender capturing. Yoda contacted Ackbar and gave him the news that stage one of the Carida siege was complete, now onto stage two.
Next Chapter: Carida Siege pt. 2: Peril in the Elevators