"We're on Ryloth."
It was Captain Orn who noticed it first. He was the leader of the Advanced Recon Commandos, the ARC Troopers, and Bly had known that there were plans to promote the captain. He had been the one to sign off on the damn forms to get Orn his own true command.
That had fallen through when the dreaded order had been given and the galaxy stopped making sense.
Still, Orn was a captain, and one of the men who took pride in their general, even going as far as to research Twi'leks and their home world on the data-net. It was a level of dedication to the Star Corps that few others held, and it felt like a vibroblade to the gut. Their general had been a Twi'lek, and now whatever had brought them here was laughing at them by sending them to Ryloth of all places.
"Anyone have an idea as to why we're here?" Sergeant Nix asked.
Bly looked back over his shoulder for a moment before facing forward again. They were all ARC Troopers, all ten of them, there wasn't a situation they couldn't tackle. That's what Bly had thought of as the truth up until today. Still, his training was too deeply set for him to do something stupid like panic. There were regulations in place for situations like this.
Establish communications with the Republic by any means necessary. Rejoin their unit and continue fighting the war. Chain of command remains the same even if their Jedi General is missing or killed.
The regulations didn't say what to do when their generals turned out to be traitors to the Republic. Bly didn't believe that Aayla Secura was a traitor, not for a second, and he was sure that no one else among this group did either. Aayla Secura would never turn her back on everything they were fighting for, it had to be a mistake.
"I'd say this is some force osik." Lieutenant Galle said. "Maker knows we've dealt with more than our fair share of it in the past."
Bly had to admit that it was a sound explanation to their current predicament. Marching through the open and bare plains of Ryloth after being transported here by some unknown power from Felucia was something that only the force could do. It was confusing and disorientating, and a part of him still wondered if this was some sort of fever dream, but they'd been here for hours at this point, and no dream he ever had felt this real, fever or not.
"Whatever the case is, we should be nearing a population center soon." Orn said.
Some affirmatives were sounded, but most of the men remained silent. They were all still dealing with the fact that they had killed their general, and Bly didn't know how long it would be before everyone returned to peak efficiency. Their training only did so much, and as the war dragged on there were cracks that were beginning to show.
His mind also wondered at just how they had all gone from loyal men who would die for the general, to simple beings without personal wills, men who would be able to just forget years of camaraderie with their general, men who would gun her down without a second thought. Bly had answered the comm and a robed figure had appeared, and with one order, Bly had turned into a thoughtless machine. There had to be an explanation as to why, something that they'd missed. It was a threat to the Republic, if the Grand Army of the Republic could be so thoroughly compromised, and with a single order at that.
That brought on another thought. Was there still a Republic to fight for? They had just killed their general, and some part of his brain inherently knew that the order was given to each and every single clone trooper, every vod across the galaxy had gotten that order. He didn't know how he knew, but… he knew it to be true. If they had all gotten the order, and they all carried it out, then there wouldn't be any jedi left. The only generals that the Grand Army of the Republic had were jedi. There were no clone trooper generals, and all the nat-born officers were in the navy, operating the fleets.
All ground-based combat was done by the vode, the brothers, and their jedi generals. With the jedi gone, they were at risk of a breakdown in the command structure. The top of that structure had just been systematically removed, and without a reliable replacement, the entire thing was liable to collapse in on itself. If that were to happen, the Republic may very well lose the war.
Some part of his mind knew that he was only focusing on this issue as a way to not deal with the glaring pain in his head whenever he thought about what they'd done to their general. He was compartmentalizing the issue, and he knew that it was not healthy to do so, but he had a duty to get his men to safety first, and that meant that personal issues could be dealt with later.
"Bes, get on comms and find out what the situation is. If Order Sixty-Six," Bly felt sick to his stomach just saying it aloud. "if the order was issued, we need to know what's to happen next. The war is not over after all."
"Affirmative commander." Sergeant Bes responded and then turned to his comm unit. Bes had what was essentially a mobile command center strapped to his back, and thus he was the man to maintain communications with the rest of the 327th Star Corps when the general would get herself and the ARC Troopers separated from the main force. It had happened so often that this was more of the new normal than an oddity.
That line of thought made him grimace, but he'd have to deal with it later. They would honor Aayla Secura by finishing this war, as well as finding out just what the hells had happened that led them to this darker path.
It was only after nearly five minutes of continued marching without any word from Bes did Bly call a halt. He turned towards the Communications Officer and tilted his head in a silent question.
"I'm… not getting any responses sir. None of my frequencies are picking up anything, and I'm getting nothing but static from all of them." Bes responded, continuously tapping away at his forearm-mounted-datapad.
"Are we being jammed?" Sergeant Donn asked, the ARC Trooper shouldering his DC-15 blaster rifle. The gold and white markings of his armor covered in the dirt and grime of both Felucia and now Ryloth. All of them were in similar states as well, their plastoid armor, kama, and pauldrons all covered in it.
"Latest intel said that Ryloth was under Republic control. If we're really on Ryloth then we should be able to contact the local command here." Corporal Slot pointed out.
"Howzer's boys?" Sergeant Nix asked.
"I'm not getting anything from them." Bes said and shook his head, looking up from his forearm-mounted-datapad. "I've tried every frequency I've got on record, and none of them are working. Unless something catastrophic has happened to our communications network, or the seppies have come up with a new jamming system. I'd say that we're on our own for now."
"Orn, bring up that map of Ryloth, and overlay it with the most recent Republic strongholds on the planet." Bly said and the captain did as ordered. "If we're on Ryloth, we can follow geographical markings until we center ourselves and then we can head towards the closest Republic force."
That was the plan at any rate.
Something was terribly wrong.
Bly looked around and found nothing but untamed wilderness.
He was expecting a Republic outpost here, the map and the latest intel they had said that there would be one right here. He was literally standing at the very center of where the outpost should be.
Yet, there wasn't anything even resembling an outpost in sight.
"Force osik?" Galle asked.
"Force osik." Bly sighed as he put his helmet back on.
The rest of the men did likewise, and continue on the march they did, ten men of the Star Corps, ARC Troopers all.
The second sign that something was wrong was when they encountered actual Twi'leks.
Not a single one of them even spoke Basic, and only Captain Orn spoke Ryl, and even that was only half fluently.
Mentions of the Grand Army of the Republic were made, and the Twi'leks had just looked at them with confusion. Orn wasn't entirely sure if they were just confused or if they didn't know what he was saying. Bly and the rest of them just had to watch and hope that Orn was translating this correctly, and he cursed to himself that none of them had any translating programs on hand. The loss of communications had also knocked out any connections to the data-net as well, leaving this as their only alternative.
As soon as it looked like they were making some progress, it all veered off track again as the Twi'leks mentions mandalorians. Orn was who these mandalorians they mentioned were, and the male Twi'lek they were talking with simply pointed at the ARC Troopers.
These people didn't even recognize clone troopers when they rightly should have. Ryloth had seen clone troopers for as long as the war had been going on. General Windu wasn't called the Hammer of Ryloth for nothing. He and the 91st Mobile Reconnaissance Corps had fought with distinction on this planet, surely these Twi'leks would know about them.
But it appeared that they did not. Maybe they had been truly isolated from the war, but going off of Bes' map, they should have known about it. They were having this conversation on what had been a battlefield after all. Yet Bly and several of the other ARC Troopers noticed that there were no destroyed droids around. No craters from heavy artillery deforming the ground around them, nor were there any signs of… anything really.
It looked like undisturbed nature, which didn't make sense.
In the end, the ARC Troopers of the 327th Star Corps and the group of Twi'leks went their separate ways, both more having more questions than answers.
The third sign of something was wrong was the one that nearly broke them.
They had stumbled upon a slavers' camp. Hutt controlled by the looks of it, which shouldn't be possible, since the war had driven the Hutts off planet. The crime lords couldn't risk losing profits, so they had gone off towards other planets where the war hadn't touched them.
But it seemed that whatever force osik had brought them here, it had changed things. Bly had made the executive decision to infiltrate the camp and liberate the very obvious slaves that were being herded into what looked like a pit. Ryloth was a Republic world, and slavery was illegal in the Republic, so it was his duty, his men's duty, to free them. They were Twi'leks slaves that needed help, and it was one way to honor their general, even if indirectly.
The pirates had put up surprisingly futile resistance. They were uncoordinated, sloppy in their fighting, and using blasters that were clearly inferior in both design and quality. They had all went down without much effort, and Bly had almost called it an easy victor when they encountered the wampa.
That fight had taken significantly longer to deal with. And by that, he meant that they peppered the animals with enough blaster bolts that their rifles had started to overheat.
In the end however, they had come out victorious, though what they found after that led to even more questions, and hard realizations.
They learned that the year was not right. They were somehow in the past, and it was only confirmed when Bes managed to hijack the Hutt's comm links so that their own comms would be able to access the data-net. It became clear that they were in the past, by some will of the force or suck nonsense. Force osik indeed.
It was only made worse when they met one of the Twi'leks that had been taken as a slave.
The little Rutian Twi'lek was young, and she only spoke in Ryl.
But none of them needed to know the language to understand her name.
"Aaylas'ecura."
That was all they understood, and Bly didn't want to believe what she said was true, that her name couldn't be that. He had to be mistaken, it just wasn't possible. But when he tried to say so, the little girl had taken his hand and looked up at him with those big eyes of hers, hazel looking up at his helmet. His vison was blurry from the tears in his eyes, and a part of him was glad that she couldn't see them from behind his helmet.
Aaylas'ecura…
Aaylas'ecura…
Aayla Secura…
Force osik indeed.
