My Brothers
By Kudzu
"Limitless undying love which shines around me like
A million suns, it calls me on and on
Across the universe"
The Beatles, "Across the Universe"
"This is a suicide mission," Two-Two muttered, shifting uneasily in his grey-and-green Katarn armor. The matte-black HAET-221 dropship shuddered as it hit the ionosphere, skipped, and plunged straight through with an anguished howl of hot metal being strained to its maximum. Quid just checked the charge on his rifle power pack for the umpteenth time and said nothing. He wasn't sure just what to think and what would be appropriate for him to think. While he didn't relish the thought of dying here, regardless of the type of mission that it was, he had been tasked with carrying it out - and that was what he intended upon doing.
The world of Execer was a volatile one. Its mantle was primarily uranium, and weird stalagmite-like protrusions of radioactive metals thrust themselves irregularly up through the planet's crust to tower high above the dead, grey landscape of the planet. Dangerous uranium volcanoes exploded across the world. The radiation from the planet itself could kill an unprotected Human male in low orbit in a very short matter of time. All in all, it was a highly inhospitable world.
And thus it was perfect for the Confederacy to establish a droid-controlled communications station here, where few living beings could survive for more than a few minutes at the most.
Clone commandoes, however, were quite a different story.
Quid and his squad had been specially outfitted for this most dangerous of missions, trained to operate in highly radioactive environments such as this one, and drilled on their mission's intended execution. Their job was to get in, blow the base and array up, and get out. The only part of the mission that they were allowed to fail in doing was getting out. Their mission was placed before their lives, and rightfully so. Clone commandoes and all clones of the Grand Army of the Republic lived only to serve, and death was all part of service.
Even if they died, there could still be victory as long as they carried out their duty to the last. Grievous couldn't be permitted to use Execer to communicate between his fleet and the Lucid Voice decoy ship any longer.
"Cheer up, Two," said Skull, polishing his armored boot idly with a torn-off piece of a septsilk shirt that had been loot from one of their recent missions. "'Suicide' is my third name. 'Defying' is my second."
"Ever the optimist," Two-Two grumbled. "We're charging into a heavily guarded Sep base on a world that is basically just one giant nuclear bomb, and you still think we're going to get out alive?"
Quid spoke up. "Whether we live or die is unimportant to the GAR. What is important -" he glanced between his two brothers "- is that we succeed."
"I prefer the full-on success myself," Two-Two lamented. "That's the kind where we don't all die."
Quid smiled grimly beneath his helmet. "We all do, Two-Two."
"We all do," Skull agreed. "Now," he continued, leaping to his feet, "I believe that we'll be landing soon."
The gunboat hit the ground hard, bouncing the three commandoes up a little ways into the air.
"I love Gunner's soft landings," Two-Two remarked, stepping towards the access hatch. He reached out and hit a button on the control panel next to it; it slid open and he stepped out gingerly into the radioactive wasteland of Execer. "Come on guys, the scenery is beautiful out here."
Quid and Skull looked at each other, then Skull followed Two-Two out. Sighing inwardly, Quid followed.
"Just another day, ner vod," Skull said philosophically. "Just another fight."
"Aye." Quid shifted uncomfortably in his armor. He just wished that this mission was over and done with. Every second spent on this world was a second lost; even with their special lead-polymer armor supplement, they could not survive forever here. He had always hated timed missions in the simulator drills back on Kamino. When allowed to work at his own pace, he was probably the best hacker in the Grand Army of the Republic. But having a time constraint on him just added stress, and he hated that. But versatility was his function, and his duty went above all else.
That was what he knew - perhaps all he knew for certain - and it was of the greatest possible importance, for without duty he might as well have been dead.
Gunner, their squad's leader and expert pilot (well, except when it came to landing), was coming towards them. "Everything secure?" he asked.
Quid checked his charge indicator again, examined his grenadier's bandolier, checked the fuse on each one of his grenades, pressed his fingertips against his pack to check its density, and then straightened back up. "All set, sir," he reported. Skull and Two-Two gave their affirmatives as well, and the squad formed up into a bent diamond formation. Gunner thumbed a button on a palm-sized remote that he was holding in his left hand, and a holoshroud immediately enveloped the ship, disguising it as one of the tall uranium spires unique to Execer.
"We all understand the mission," the squad leader said as they walked through the ashen landscape. It was not a question. "We want to carry it out as quickly as possible, because this place is not very environmentally friendly to carbon-based life-forms."
"Aye," Quid murmured again.
"Now," Gunner added, "Skull, you have demolitions. Two-Two, you have mechanics. Quid, you have slicing. You people know the drill."
"Yes, sir." Two-Two saluted informally and Skull nodded.
"There is a reason that we're being called in for this job instead of just having the fleet Base Delta Zero it," Gunner said. "Quid, it is imperative that you siphon a log of recent communiqués between Grievous and the Lucid Voice if we are to keep the Seps from fooling us again by using the Voice as a decoy for the Invisible Hand. That's losing us a lot of battles over Mid Rim planets. Crucio fell yesterday because the fleet was lured to Gallaghan by reports of the Invisible Hand being there, and it turned out to just be the Lucid Voice. That can't be happening anymore."
"I understand, sir," Quid replied. Separatist di'kuts…
They proceeded in silence for the rest of the long walk towards the communications base. As it loomed up on the horizon, Gunner spoke again.
"You people know the drill," he reminded them once more. "Activate your holoshrouds. Let's get in there."
Battle droids were just stupid enough to allow anyone who remotely resembled a piece of Confederacy equipment used at their place of stationing past them with no questions asked, and the clone commandoes' holoshrouds had been expertly created based off of what kind of metal reading that they would yield.
Only battle droids would be stupid enough to let four identical, independently-moving shipping containers into their high-security base without so much as asking for their identification numbers.
Once the "shipping containers" were through, one of them reached out a most uncontainerly arm, looking remarkably similar to an arm protected by a grey-and-green customized Katarn protective bodysuit, and closed the door behind them. They deactivated their holoshrouds.
"That was easy," Skull commented.
Quid chuckled. "There are maybe four million clone troopers of various types still active in the Grand Army of the Republic. There are probably about four quadrillion battle droids. And yet, with droid intelligences like that, it's no wonder that the Republic and the Confederacy have been so evenly matched for this long." And they certainly had been. General Grievous's campaigns were only as successful as the campaigns that had claimed Raxus Prime, Thule, Muunilist, and Xagobah for the Republic. At Geonosis, 100,000 clone troopers had defeated almost two million battle droids of various types. It was anybody's guess as to who would win the war and how, now, but Quid at least was determined to see the Republic win it, or to die for its victory.
That was what it meant to serve in the Grand Army of the Republic.
"Right then," Gunner said gruffly. "This radiation has the life expectancy on these holoshrouds shot - I don't think we can risk using them again without a HAET-221-grade ship battery to be constantly feeding power to them. And obviously, we don't have one of those on us right now."
Quid looked around for a computer terminal. He didn't see anything in the immediate vicinity. "I think we better keep moving," he advised. "No terminal means no security shutdown yet, and the sooner we find one, the sooner we can start breathing easy."
"We're lucky that there's enough oxygen in Execer's atmosphere to be breathing at all," Two-Two pointed out pessimistically. Quid reached out with one hand and bonked his squadmate on the helmet.
Gunner laughed softly. "Right then. Keep your wits about you, people."
Two B-2 super battle droids were unfortunate enough to encounter the squad a little ways down the corridor before they came to a computer terminal. Five excellently placed blaster bolts later, Quid was standing in front of the device trying to figure out how to shut down the security holocams placed deeper into the facility, and how to deal with the various other defensive measures surrounding the power generator at the building's heart.
"If I disable the holocams along corridor C-eight," he muttered aloud as he pressed buttons on the terminal, "we should be able to get to that dedicated security console in D-sixteen-a without too much trouble. OK, I've got it."
"Got what?" Two-Two asked in a bored voice.
"We'll head to D-sixteen-a by way of C-eight," Quid explained, fervently hoping that his brother had memorized the building layout as well as he had, "and disable the inner defensive measures around the generator from there. I can access a communications terminal in D-sixty and download the logs of communications routed through here to this datapad. Then Skull blows up the generator and we run like hell and hope that this whole quarter of the planet isn't compelled to function as the largest nuclear weapon ever recorded in this galaxy."
"Sounds good to me." Two-Two got to his feet and nudged the crate that he'd been standing on to the side of the corridor. It fell apart.
The commandoes stared down at it. "You have got to be kidding me," Skull said. Two-Two made a Bith-whistle.
"Verps," Quid said numbly.
Verps indeed. At least two dozen of them were spilling out of the collapsed supply crate. With a moan, he stooped down and scooped five of them into his arms, jamming them into spare holsters in various places on his armor. Skull and Gunner followed suit, and then Two-Two grabbed the rest, holstering two and stuffing the rest into his already-bulging pack.
"Well, that just made my day," Two-Two said. Quid silently agreed.
"You seem to have kicked the jackpot, Two," Gunner praised. "Verpine shatter guns will be much more effective than noisy energy weapons on a mission such as this one. Of course, the radiation also lowers our Deeces' effectiveness and efficiency."
Quid noticed that his charge indicator displayed that he had expended ten bolts. In actuality, he had only fired two shots. "I see your point, sir," he nodded.
"OK, people," the commando captain ordered. "Let's move out."
They had not gone ten paces before Quid heard the characteristic voice of a super battle droid behind them.
"Drop your weapons," the droid voice warned without inflection. "I said drop 'em."
Quid whirled, a Verpine gun immediately in each gauntleted hand, and squeezed down on both weapons' triggers. Pieces of droid shrapnel were suddenly flying from the staggering chasses of the two super battle droids that had been advancing on them from behind. A shot from Gunner blew the left droid completely apart for good measure. The droid corpses sparked as they twitched on the cold metal floor.
"Well," Gunner said after a moment. "Let's keep moving."
The next fifteen minutes passed without event. A lone B-1 battle droid managed to get in the commandoes' way and was immediately reduced to tiny pieces by the force of six Verpine shatter gun projectiles all hitting it at the same time. The base as a whole seemed to be still unaware as to their presence, and that was of course good news.
"We're not dead yet," Skull remarked flippantly as they strode down corridor C-8.
Quid laughed. "We're all OK, aren't we, Two-Two?"
"I suppose so," Two-Two grumbled.
As if in defiance of Gamma Squad's jesting, a faint whir suddenly could be heard further back the way that they had came. It grew steadily louder and more recognizable as it came nearer. "Forgot to disable a holocam?" Skull asked ruefully.
Quid swore as he turned to face the three droidekas that were now wheeling into C-8. He got off one double shot with his two guns that blew apart one of them as it began to deploy, but the other two were set up and projecting their energy shields before the squad could deal with them.
"I'm taking suggestions!" Gunner yelled as he threw himself to the side of the corridor to avoid the destroyer droids' strafing bolts.
"Working on it!" Skull panted, exchanging fire with one of the deadly droids. Two B-1 droids rushed into the corridor behind the droidekas, prompting a groan from Two-Two.
"We're dead," the mechanic commando said mournfully. Quid ignored him, blasting apart one of the new arrivals with a single shot. Gunner dealt with the other in short order as Quid hurled himself onto his belly to avoid being riddled by droideka fire. He shot up from his prone position into one of the droidekas, but its shield simply fried the projectile on contact as if it were nothing.
Placing one of the shatter guns on the ground in front of him, he pulled his DC-17 holdout pistol and cracked off two shots into the same droideka's shields. He then rolled to the right as the droideka returned his fire, utterly unfazed.
"Here we go," Skull called, and Quid leapt to his feet as a small object hurtled past him to land directly in front of the droidekas. Three rifle-toting B-2 droids clanked into the corridor at that moment. They raised their rifles and ripped into Skull and Two-Two's armor with a flurry of blaster bolts.
"Run!" Gunner yelled, backpedaling as quickly as he could while firing his blaster pistol at the super battle droids. Quid obeyed. Two blaster bolts caught him in the back, but his armor held and Quid just kept running. Ahead of him, Skull was firing back over his shoulder, and Two-Two was just full-on sprinting towards room D-19a.
Quid hurled himself into the room, followed immediately by Gunner, and hit the button to close and lock the door as soon as his leader was in. A muffled bang informed them that Skull's improvised rig job on the grenade had worked quite well, and a thump on the door made it clear that at least a few pieces of combat droid were now being propelled violently away from the scene of the explosion.
"Good work, people," Gunner panted, getting to his feet. "Nice imp grenade, Skull."
"Thank you, sir." Skull pretended to dust himself off. "Now that the entire base has been alerted to our presence, I don't think that disabling the holocams will be a major concern of ours."
"Oh yes they will," Quid countered, raising a finger. "This security terminal should be programmed to deactivate all of the security recording devices. It was smart of the Seps to leave a few holocams scattered around that couldn't be disabled from the basic terminals around the outer rooms of the facility."
"Oh, so that's what it was?" Two-Two asked sardonically. "It figures that they'd show some intelligence eventually." He sighed melodramatically, and Quid shook his head as he crossed to the security console.
The interface was straightforward enough. It took Quid about thirty seconds to slice the encryption code and shut down the laser traps surrounding the generator, as well as the rest of the security holocams in the building. He noted with displeasure that the holocam that the terminal back nearer to where they had entered hadn't seen was located in corridor C-6b, where they had encountered the solo B-1 battle droid. A few seconds more of slicing revealed that a silent alarm was tied to the droid's destruction. Clever.
"OK," he said after he had shut down the security systems. "I think we're good to go."
"Lock and load," Gunner said crisply. Quid discarded one of his Verps that was running low on ammunition and replaced it with another, holstering the DC-17.
The clone commando opened the door leading out of the room into corridor C-13 and found himself staring down the blaster barrel of another battle droid. In a move that would have made his instructor, Geddon Faäs, very grumpy indeed, he fired from the hip as he leapt backwards: the shatter gun projectile blew the droid to bits, and shrapnel rained down across his Katarn armor.
"Good thing Faäs didn't see that," Skull remarked.
Quid peered further down the corridor without comment. He could make out the bulky form of a super battle droid rushing at him through the smoke and he fired again, taking it down with two direct hits. Gunner stepped across to stand at his shoulder, Verp at the ready. "All clear," he reported. "Move out."
Again assuming the bent diamond formation, Gamma Squad departed room D-19a, moving now with an added urgency that betrayed their anxiety at having the entire base's compliment of battle droids being liable to drop down on them now at any second. Gunner led them around a corner and they immediately again ran into a trio of upgraded B-2s, heavy wrist cannons at the ready.
Quid reacted immediately. He snapped out his gauntlet vibroblade and ran one of the hulking droids through, showering them all with sparks. Gunner whirled his own wrist blade to sever the right droid's arm, and Two-Two shot the other droid point-blank with his shatter gun. A quick slash finished off Quid's droid, and Gunner bodily threw his adversary to the ground and blew three neat holes in it with his blaster pistol.
"Nice job," Gunner told him and Two-Two.
"Thank you, sir," he and Two-Two replied in unison. Although it wasn't much of a challenge, Quid added silently. He had heard that the B-2s upgraded with wrist cannons were terrifyingly hard to destroy, and had thus expected them to be somewhat more competent than to just struggle aimlessly out of vibroblade distance while he stabbed and slashed one's torso open. Clone commandoes, he thought ruefully. We're so good that we find mortal danger infinitely boring.
They continued on. Gunner informed them that the generator should be straight down a left corridor, and they were not disappointed.
"And you're sure all of those laser traps are disabled?" Skull breathed, thermal detonator held loosely in his left hand.
Quid nodded. "I'm sure," he said. You better be, that voice in his head berated him. He still hadn't forgiven himself for not anticipating that remote holocam back in C-6b.
"Then shall we proceed?" Gunner trotted down the corridor, Quid and the others close behind. A blaster shot sizzled past the slicer commando's helmet, and he turned to open fire.
Skull, however, was ready first. Hurling a thermal detonator back over his shoulder with little more than a glance, he shouted, "Go!"
The squad went. Quid threw himself into the generator room, colliding in mid-air with Two-Two, who had also flung himself out in front. They tumbled and rolled into the room, and Gunner hit the controls to seal off the door. As had happened in D-19a, the sound of the explosion could be heard, muffled by the closed door.
"Scratch six battle droids," Skull said into the silence that followed.
"OK," declared Gunner, getting up off the floor for the second time in ten standard minutes. "Let's get to work. Skull, you know what to do. Quid, it looks like you got D-sixty right through that door over there, that adjoining room. Two-Two, go with Quid. I'll stand guard. Let's move, people!"
"Yes, sir!" Quid threw a salute as he jogged towards the door opening into D-60. He tried the controls. It was locked.
Swearing, the commando pulled a strip of thermal tape out of an armored compartment in his thigh armor and stuck it around the doorframe. He tore off another piece and stuck that one, too. Waving the detonator aloft above his head, he muttered, "P for plenty," then blew up the explosive tape with a squeeze of the detonator's trigger. The door fell right in.
"In in in!" he roared, dragging Two-Two inside the smoky room along with him. Droids were firing at them; he grunted as his chest armor absorbed one direct hit. He returned their fire with silent shots from his Verp, switching his HUD vision to infrared. The discharge of a heavy blaster at his shoulder informed him that Two-Two had switched back to his Deece. His brother jammed the anti-armor attachment on as he pocketed the blaster extension and shredded a scuttling crab droid with one shot from it.
Blaster bolts continued to fly at them, catching and obliterating the Verp in Quid's left hand; he pulled out his blaster pistol and employed that, taking down one super battle droid, then another…
"You OK in there?" Gunner radioed.
Quid gasped with exertion as he threw himself to the side to dodge a wrist rocket from another B-2 droid; it exploded a safe distance behind him. "Yeah," he managed. "Just taking care of a mechanical infestation."
"Careful of the terminal," Gunner reminded him. Quid grinned tightly, shooting the hatchet-like head right off of a B-1's shoulders. Two-Two polished off the last two droids, and Quid lowered his weapons.
Rushing to the communications terminal, Quid quickly sliced a new entry code and scrolled through the records of the most recent communications routed to and from the Lucid Voice…
"Just download all of them," Gunner shouted. "We have droids trying to come through!"
Letting loose another string of curse words under his breath, Quid jacked his expanded datapad into the terminal's output and began dumping the data into the small device. He checked the estimated time until completion on the terminal and swore again. "It says two standard minutes!"
"Why do terminals in a droid-run facility have viewscreens anyway?" Two-Two wondered aloud despairingly.
"Standardization," Quid shot back, hurrying over to the doorframe and craning around it with weapons drawn to see Gunner with his Deece raised staring hard at the door that the squad had come through earlier. More and more dents were rapidly appearing in it, as if an army of droids was pounding on it with servo-powered metal fists. Then it blew open.
"I just need about thirty more seconds!" Skull shouted, trading fire with a droid over the power generator even while wiring an explosive device with his left hand's dexterous fingers. Swearing again, Quid gunned down the flood of droids now pouring through the doorway. A Commerce Guild-manufactured dwarf spider droid stood behind the incoming droids; Quid figured that it had been the one to destroy the door, with its powerful laser cannon weapon.
Two-Two shoved him unceremoniously out of the way and loosed an anti-armor round that struck the dwarf spider droid. It exploded violently, as droids of its make usually did, and a wave of heat and force blew down the straggling droids trying to crowd into the generator room. Quid caught sight of Gunner smashing down battle droids, wielding his rifle as a melee weapon.
Then he remembered the datapad. With yet another curse, Quid rushed back to it. The data dump was nearly complete.
Then the door in room D-60 exploded, too.
With a strangled cry, Quid whirled. Not more of them, he thought desperately as two of the upgraded B-2s sprinted through the smoke; he took out one with a point-blank Verpine shot and riddled the other with the rapid-fire setting on his modified DC-17 pistol before switching it back to normal to keep it from overheating. He hurled a thermal detonator blindly through the mayhem. There were too many droids for him to see in his infrared vision beyond…
The terminal beeped, signaling that his data download was down. Seizing the datapad and ripping it free of the terminal, Quid backpedaled rapidly - and tripped over a fallen droid.
Now scrambling backwards, hissing with displeasure, Quid fired off a few more blaster bolts before backing up against the generator. He flipped across it to his feet and stuffed the datapad into his thigh compartment with a snarl, then set his blaster's power pack to overload and hurled it straight into the mass of oncoming droids. It exploded like a miniature bomb, scattering droid pieces everywhere. The commando tugged his DC-17m rifle from the clip fastening it across his back and laid into the remaining droids - and there were plenty of them - with savage gusto. Two-Two was now firing his rifle one-handedly, shooting blindly over his shoulder with his blaster pistol and grunting as he struggled to keep the rifle pointed at the mass of droids in the generator room.
"I have it!" Skull roared triumphantly from somewhere behind Quid. The Republic commando threw another thermal detonator into the boiling wave-front of battle droids and ran around the generator, Two-Two now following behind him.
"I've got the data, now let's go," Quid barked, smashing the barrel of his rifle straight into a droid menacing the embattled Gunner and sweeping the weapon to catch two more, knocking them back.
Skull leapt right atop the generator. "Wait," he snapped, fastening two carefully rigged explosive grenades to the ceiling on the room with thermal tape, and then firing down into the crowd of droids around Quid, Two-Two, and Gunner. He slid down the generator's sloping corner edge, lobbing the last of his thermal detonators into the crowd of droids. Then he hit the detonator in his hand. The improvised explosives tore a hole through the ceiling, and he flipped nimbly back up on top. Quid and Two-Two, keeping Gunner supported, followed, clambering after him out onto the roof of the communications station.
"Good thing you hit the right detonator," Quid gasped, getting up from his belly-down position flat on the corroded metal surface of the building's roof. Gunner was waving Two-Two off as he slowly got up, holding one of his arms stiffly. It was a wonder that his armor had held, but it was clearly burned and cracked in places.
"I'm not sure how much radiation protection I'll have with my armor in the shape that it's in," Gunner said slowly. "We'd better get a move on."
Skull's response was to immediately start running. Quid and Two-Two followed hot on his heels, with the injured Gunner bringing up the rear. Quid winced sympathetically as Gunner's laborious breath crackled across the inter-squad comm. The roof began to taper down; he gasped, "Magnetize," and his running became clomping as his boots clung to the roof to keep him from slipping and tumbling down…
"Let 'magnetize' burn in hell," he muttered, and in response to this second use of the word, his boots demagnetized and he found himself rolling head over heels down the sloping roof of the Confederacy communications station. Then he was falling…
Quid hit the ground hard and immediately leapt straight up to a standing position, his armor having protected him from much of the harm. Gunner landed next to him with an "oof"; Two-Two, having caught on late, was the next to fall down onto the grey, rocky ground.
The slicer commando immediately raised his Deece again as two droidekas rolled across the barren landscape around the building towards them. One of them he destroyed before it could fully deploy; Two-Two killed the other before it managed to put up its shields.
"Run," Gunner breathed; and the squad took off, following the waypoint on their HUD displays that marked the position of the HAET-221 that they had come in on.
Skull stopped suddenly and turned around. "Maximum range," he explained, casually punching down the button on yet another detonator in his palm. This one was keyed to the complex system of rigged explosives on the power generator.
An immense fireball roiled up from the communications station. The array at its rear erupted in flame like one of Execer's radioactive volcanoes. The squad watched the base go through its death throes for a few seconds, before Skull turned back around.
"Just in case, suggesting we hurry." Nobody needed to ask why. They began to run again, stumbling over rocks and ruts in the ashen soil as the pyrotechnics continued behind them.
"Approaching the gunboat!" Gunner barked.
Then Quid hit the ground hard. Rolling to a kneeling position, he turned and saw that he had rather ignobly tripped over a rock in the ground. But above…
A Mechanized Assault Flier was hovering above them. A squad of battle droids was rappelling down from it. Quid's heart dropped into his stomach as he saw that each and every one of them was equipped with a shoulder missile launcher.
"Run!" he yelled. "Get in the gunboat! Get Gunner to a med center, quickly! I'll hold them off!"
"Quid!" one of his brothers was shouting after him, his voice anguished. The commando found that tears were streaming down his face, concealed by his purple-decorated Katarn helmet, as he blew apart a droid with a shot from his Deece. Another MAF - and another - approached from the direction of the bombed communications base. More missile launcher-equipped droids were rappelling down from them now as well.
"Get out of here!" Quid roared, taking down another droid. They were now closing in on him, forgetting the gunboat that had now dropped its holoshroud. Quid found himself backed up against a real uranium spire, holding off the distracted droids with a blaster rifle that was rapidly running out of charges. He heard the dull firing of repulsorlifts and saluted the gunboat as it rose into the air.
But the droids were now raising their missile launchers and aiming them at the gunboat; Quid's rifle clicked down to zero. And then he remembered.
He pulled the blaster pistol from his holster and leveled it straight at the uranium spire - a massive explosion waiting to happen. Whether we live or die is unimportant to the GAR, his own words reminded him. What is important is that we succeed.Silently, he saluted the gunboat again and thought of his brothers.
Skull, whose relentless good humor drove them all to the brink of madness sometimes and saved them from that same brink of madness probably more times than they had ever appreciated.
Two-Two, whose fierce loyalty and companionship had kept him alive in countless live-fire exercises in Tipoca City during the years of their training.
Gunner, now injured and in need of medical attention, his leader and more his father figure than a brother to him - his guiding light and his focusing scope, who had taught him as many tricks as Geddon Faäs had ever gave him and had led them on many successful missions.
To die for them was like breath. He was as calm as he'd ever been, and he understood that this was his end without alarm. This was him making his sacrifice, giving his life so that others might live. How easy it is, Quid thought, steadying the blaster, glancing again at the droids so close to unleashing their missiles and destroying the fast-retreating gunboat, and then finally squeezing down on his own trigger and firing a shot straight into the uranium spire, for me to die for my brothers.