Chapter 6: Mission 14: Ryloth (Pt. I)

The door to the squad's barracks hissed open, with one irate commando throwing his helmet to the ground as he stormed through, kicking it across the room as he swore, teeth gritted.

"Why the hell didn't you tell me?" he yelled, glaring at Uliia, who had followed him as he stormed through the ship cursing up a storm.

"If we told you where we were going before we left, you would have abandoned us," she replied, arms crossed in annoyance. "I know how hard this is for you-"

"No you don't!" Noctus snapped, towering over his shorter Commander. "You have no idea what it was like for me here! To see all the death and suffering right before my eyes, and I couldn't even do anything to stop it! Those people down there went through hell, and I let it happen!"

Uliia placed her hand on Noctus' shoulder, dropping her stern look for a softer, sympathetic one. "I know exactly what it was like. When I was a slave on Zygerria, I saw countless people beaten and tortured. I had seen dozens of people die right in front of me by the time I was three-"

"Would you ever go back there?" Noctus interrupted, glare unphased by her show of sympathy. Uliia recoiled slightly, and Noctus brushed her hand off his shoulder, moving to retrieve his helmet. "Well, it's not like I have a choice now. I'm heading back to the bridge to review the plan." He paused on the way out the door, staring straight ahead. "This isn't some problem you can just kiss away."

Uliia flushed a deep purple as the clone left, images of the previous night flickering through her mind. Why the hell did I kiss him? Maybe she could blame it on the drinks- no, she wasn't old enough. The droid at 79's had served her a soda, and a rather cheap one at that. Maybe someone had slipped something in it to let her guard down? No, she shook her head, dismissing that notion. Noctus would have caught it- and would likely have put a blaster bolt through the unfortunate person's kneecap as well. He would overreact like that just to protect me, she thought as she slipped out the door, beginning the long walk back to the bridge. He'd take on the whole droid army to keep me safe. Force knows she'd do the same.

Her internal dialogue paused for a moment. I would? No, no, it's his job to protect me. As a clone, of course.

And isn't it only right to repay his love with your own?

This time, she actually stopped walking, blinking in confusion. No. It isn't love, it's… She was silent for a few minutes, then she sighed.

"Ixta eti."

"General, we're receiving a transmission from the Lucrehulk," an officer announced. Jiana stepped over to the holoprojector, arms crossed.

"Put it through."

The projector lit up, revealing a thin Neimoidian with an arrogant expression. "When I allowed our location to be leaked to the Republic, I was unaware that the legendary Inferno Company would be the ones responding. I was hoping for General Skywalker. He and I have a score to settle, after all."

Jiana raised an eyebrow, glaring at the Separatist. "Skywalker has other duties to attend to. Might I know who I am speaking with?"

"I am Captain Mar Tuuk." Jiana heard Noctus' gun cock behind her and held an arm out to stay him as the Neimoidian continued. "I presume you are already aware of who I am, so I shall dispose of the pleasantries." The Captain sat down in his command chair, hands clasped on his waist as he reclined. "The Techno Union has developed a new prototype starfighter, one of my own design: The Virulent-class droid interceptor. It was supposed to undergo combat testing during the invasion of Coruscant yesterday morning, but due to a technical error we were not able to deploy it in time. This is where you come in."

Jiana scoffed. "And why would we do that? What makes you think we won't just open fire on your unguarded ship and destroy you where you sit?"

Mar Tuuk sneered. "Because your cruiser will be disabled, if not destroyed."

R3 suddenly began chirping wildly from the scanners, fiddling with the data socket. A clone officer rushed over to look at the screen. "Something's dropping out of hyperspace behind us!"

A bone-shattering explosion rocked the Vorpent as something detonated directly below it, the lights flickering as the ship automatically switched to its backup generators. "Damage report, now!" Jiana yelled. "What the hell happened?"

"Seismic charge hit our reactor!" an engineer responded. "Shields are offline, weapons are offline, engines are offline… Everything's gone! We're dead in space!"

"Now that you have an incentive," Mar Tuuk interrupted with a smirk, "maybe you will come out to participate in my test. If you somehow manage win and defeat my weapon, I shall surrender myself to you and the Republic."

Jiana gave a nasty glare to the Neimoidian. "And if we lose?"

"You don't have to worry about what happens when you lose," Tuuk dismissed, waving his hand. "There is nothing we can do to a dead person. I expect that would not come as a surprise to someone who puts their life on the line every single day. I shall be waiting for your move, General Razhuli." The hologram flickered, the Neimoidian disappearing with a smug grin.

"R3, try to restore power to the shields," Jiana said as she turned to the door. "Squad, get in your ships and stay close to the Vorpent. We need to defend it until the shields are back up."

"General," Noctus cut in, "my ship was damaged over Anaxes, remember? It hasn't been repaired yet."

"I am aware, Noctus." The commando didn't like the sly grin that spread across his General's face. "You'll be in a Y-wing with Uliia."

"What now?"

"Excuse me?"

The two glanced at each other in confusion while Jiana continued. "We need to take out that Lucrehulk, and our interceptors aren't powerful enough to do that."

"So why put us together?" Uliia asked as they entered the hangar, ignoring the indignant glare Noctus flashed her. "Why not one of the other clones?"

"Because your starfighter is damaged as well and is in no condition to fly."

Uliia raised an eyebrow, glancing at the freshly tuned-up starfighter beside her. "Looks all right to me."

Jiana's eyes narrowed, and her lightsaber ignited as she swirled around, slicing the fighter's left S-foils and wingtip off. She smiled thinly to her stunned padawan, her annoyance radiating through the force. "Does it now?" She climbed into her own fighter, starting up the engines while nodding towards the Y-wing parked behind the two stunned squadmates. "Go on, we're not going to wait for you."

Uliia sighed, turning around to see Noctus climbing into the cockpit. "And where do you think you're going?" she asked flatly.

Noctus paused on the ladder, glancing over his shoulder in annoyance. "I'm flying it. What, you thought I was gonna let you be in control?"

"I'm not the one who got shot down." Noctus stared daggers at the Twi'lek's smug expression but descended the ladder and moved to climb into the turret, eyes never leaving Uliia. Even when she strapped into the pilot's seat and guided the ship out of the hangar, she still felt his gaze burning a hole into the back of her head. "Why don't you take a picture?" she teased. "It'll last longer."

Noctus wasn't amused. "Trust me, there's no getting that sight out of one's head."

Her eyes narrowed as she threw a glare over her shoulder. "I don't know if that's a compliment or a-"

"Heads up!"

Uliia was reacting before the words even left Noctus' lips, her Jedi senses alerting her to the seismic charge being dropped directly in front of their Y-wing. She jerked the controls to the left, rolling under the bomb. "C1, split power between the engines and the rear deflector! Get us to that Lucrehulk!" The astromech warbled a response, and the bomber jolted forward, hurtling closer to the battle station. "Master, watch out!"

There was an abrupt silence as the charge pulled in all the noise from the ships, and then a deafening echo blasted through the void, shockwave splitting through space. Jiana called out a warning to the Vorpent, but it was too late. The shockwave tore through the crippled cruiser, shearing the entire rear half of the ship off, metal buckling as the air inside rapidly escaped the stricken vessel, carrying both droids and crew into the cold vacuum. The reactor ignited, setting off the rhydonium fuel stores and eviscerating all traces of the cruiser. The shockwave continued through the Vorpent, cutting through both Speedy's and Smokey's fighters. The clones were sucked out into space, rapidly fumbling for the controls to pressurize their suits.

"Vorpent, respond!" Jiana yelled. "Is anyone still there? Falcon, Rhino, get in there and try to look for-"

"General," Falcon interjected, "I hate to tell you this but they're all dead! You saw what happened! And I don't intend on being next, so let's kill that droid and then wipe that Separatist battle station!"

Jiana sighed, thumping her head against the headrest. She glanced out the viewport at the two loose clones. "Speedy, Smokey, you boys alright?"

"Never better General," Speedy griped. "We're free floating in space with an invisible droid starfighter hellbent on killing us all. This is the greatest day of my life."

"Just hold on, we'll pick you up. Quint, Trigger, can you make room in the storage compartments behind you for them?"

"General, we'll be fine." Smokey stretched his arm out, grasping for his backpack. "The droid will come back around to finish both of us off. When it does, I'll throw a magnetic charge onto its hull. If I can disable its cloaking device, it'll make your job a lot easier."

"I will not lose my men! I order you to-"

"A hundred of your men just died because of that droid!" Speedy yelled. "A hundred of our brothers just died because of that droid! General, get out there and destroy that battle station before the droid comes back for you and the Commander!"

"This is what we were born for," Smokey added. "It's our job to protect you."

"And it's my job to protect you!" Jiana snapped. "You are not just a bunch of mindless droids! You are living, breathing people with your own minds and personalities and-"

Her vision flashed red as a storm of blaster bolts exploded around her cockpit. She heard a yell over her commlink, and Patches' ship went up in a burst of flames, spraying shrapnel and burning fuel across her cockpit. An arm, body nowhere to be found, bounced off her viewscreen, leaving a red smear that gradually boiled away in the vacuum of space, a dark stain tainting her vision as she heaved, swearing under her breath. "Speedy, Smokey, I'm counting on you two. Squad, on me! We need to make sure Uliia and Noctus get to that battle station!"

As the four remaining fighters sped off after the bomber, Smokey reached into his bag and pulled out a mine. "Speedy, take one of these. The cloak has to go down before it shoots so it doesn't overload the power systems. It flickers in time with the shots."

The scout nodded. "I noticed before that the cloak originates from near the back of the fighter. I'll try to draw it out while you get a charge onto the rear."

Smokey tossed the mine to Speedy and grabbed one for himself. He glanced at his blaster, then tossed it away. He turned his audio receptors all the way up; not that he'd be able to hear anything in space, but he hoped they'd be able to pick up the faint electromagnetic signals from the fighter. A minute passed, then he heard the faint static-laced whine of ion engines. "It's coming! Get ready!"

A torrent of blaster bolts filled the vacuum around the two clones, a menacing shape flashing in their vision as the starfighter closed in on them. Smokey twisted his body to avoid a bolt, and he and Speedy both launched their charges as the fighter screamed between them. There was an explosion, and a dark form materialized against the shine of the planet below, glowing red as its ray shields activated.

Nearly thirty meters in length and ten across, it was shaped like a dagger. Four laser cannons lined its nose, with two torpedo launchers below it. It had two photoreceptors on both the top and bottom sides of it, one on each wing, and four facing behind it, where its mine launcher was mounted. Four ion thrusters gave it immeasurable speed and agility, as did the quad S-foils giving it a cross-like silhouette as it swung around to face them, laser cannons at the tip of each.

"Holy shit, that's a mean-looking droid," Smokey breathed. "And it's ray shielded. We're gonna have to find a way to get around that."

"It's firing eight laser cannons simultaneously," Speedy said as the droid accelerated towards them, heading back in for the kill. "There's no way it has enough power to run both at the same time. Hell, it shouldn't be able to fly that fast while shooting its cannons or powering its shields or cloak." The clones narrowly avoided the next salvo of shots, one grazing Speedy's leg. "It's gotta have at least three power circuits: one running the engines and the hyperdrive, one working the shields, the cloak, and the weapons, and the other running the sensors and processors."

"They killed Count Dooku yesterday, and Grievous is on the run," Smokey said as he glared at the menacing fighter streaking past. "The war is about to end. But if the Separatists manage to put this thing into production, we could lose this war in an instant. We have to do something. It's on the defensive now, so it traded its cloak for that ray shield. And our fighters can't break through ray shields, even with torpedoes."

Speedy was silent for a moment. "I'll draw it out. I'll force it to shoot at me so you can stick a mine to it. From the few glances I took, there was a bulge on the underside, at the base of the bottom wing. The shield projector's going to be there. An ion charge will probably short out that entire electrical system and prevent both the shield and cloak from coming back online."

Speedy unhooked his blaster from his belt as Smokey pulled an EMP from his pack, taping it to a magnetic clamp. "It's been an honor serving with you all," the scout said, before taking aim at the oncoming starfighter. "Come at me you son of a bitch!"

He opened fire, managing to get a single shot in before its shields came up. The red glow of the shields flickered rapidly as a hail of plasma erupted from the droid's many cannons, surrounding the clone. Smokey waited as the droid came nearer, watching for the pattern in the shield's downtime, and reached out with the charge just as the droid passed by him. It clamped onto the starfighter's hull and yanked him along with it, Smokey giving a brief, despondent look back at Speedy's decimated corpse before hitting the detonator.

A blue burst of energy burst from the charge, getting trapped within the droid's shield and ricocheting deeper inside its metal body. The shield abruptly vanished as the droid cut a sharp right, sparks and smoke trailing from its damaged reactor. Smokey's grip slipped for a moment and he was nearly flung off, but he held fast, reaching to the small of his back for his thermal imploder. He slowly slipped towards the back of the droid as it hurtled towards the Republic starfighters, jamming his detonator in the mine tube. He was just about to enter the bomb's combination lock and hit the trigger when he noticed the blood-red photoreceptor staring down at him and a ball-mounted tail cannon aimed directly at his head. He saw the red light begin to glow from within the cannon and sighed, closing his eyes as it fired.

Jiana didn't see the clones' deaths, but she sensed them through the Force. First, a deep, spasming pain that radiated across her whole body before a blistering cold washed over her skin, as if her muscles were turning to ice and shattering, then a brief, splitting headache that rapidly faded into a blurring numbness. She forced her churning stomach to relax as she grimaced, sensing the droid rapidly approaching from behind. "Rhino, on me! Break off and get behind it! The rest of you, full power to rear shields! You're only a few kilometers from the station!"

As Jiana swooped around to trail the droid, she shivered as she saw its aggressive form cutting across the horizon, like a jagged glaive slashing down upon the clones. "Rhino, try to take out its wings! It'll lose its maneuverability!"

The ARC lunged in from above, eyes narrowed as he ducked beneath a salvo from the tail cannon, fiddling with the dials on his control levers. "I can't get a lock on it without R3 running the targeting computer! I'm gonna have to switch over to manual aim controls!" Centering an engine in between his cannons, Rhino fired a volley of tracer bolts, dialing in their spread until they were focused properly. He flipped the safety on the torpedo launcher, thumb hovering over the trigger as he spiraled beneath a mine, the explosion shaving an edge off one of his S-foils. "I got it lined up!"

On board the droid's computer, its rear scanners locked onto Rhino's commlink, analyzing his comments.

[Enemy's targeting systems are offline. Preparing dumb-fire evasion protocol Zeta-9…]

The droid sped up slightly, closing in on the Y-wing's escort fighters with its cannons blazing. An ion torpedo burst forth from Rhino's fighter, rapidly closing in on the droid's ventral engine.

[Preparing…]

[Preparing…]

[Executing]

In an instant, the droid's lower engine reversed thrust, flipping itself around to face the oncoming torpedo. As it did so, it launched a mine from its rear, the momentum flinging it forwards into the midst of the clones' starfighters. The droid targeted its nose cannons onto the torpedo and fired, destroying the incoming missile and spraying its ion charge straight into Rhino and Jiana's fighters. It spiraled away from the group, circling around to attack the rear of the squadron, locking its cannons onto the seismic charge.

"Scatter!" At Noctus' call, the three interceptors broke formation, rapidly accelerating away from the mine. Noctus whirled the turret around, firing ion pulses in an attempt to disable the mine, but it was too late. With a rushing silence, the mine exploded, the shockwave barreling down on the lumbering bomber. "Get us out of here! Hurry!"

Uliia franticly jerked the Y-wing to the left in an attempt to roll under the shockwave, but the leading edge slammed into the right engine, tearing through the radiator housing and violently tossing the bomber aside. "Szu'tak!" Uliia winced as dozens of warnings appeared on her display screens. "Coolant pressure is dropping like crazy, our right fuel line is ruptured, and our power systems are failing! We have no shields, no primary weapons, and our engine isn't going to last long!"

Noctus brought up the ship's diagnostics on his data screen. "If we try to route more power to the starboard engine, it'll overheat and fail at best, or explode and take us with it. Maximum speed is down by 40 percent, and our hyperdrive won't work." He mentally forced the bile rising in his throat back down as he spoke. "We'll have to land on the surface."

"I'm not sure that'll be possible." Quint pulled up beside them, gazing out his viewport at the damaged engine. "That won't survive reentry, and even if it did the atmospheric drag would destroy what's left of it."

"We don't have a choice!" Uliia pulled the nose of the crippled bomber up to face the Lucrehulk, nursing the throttle. "We have to destroy that station, and we have to land on the surface. Our air supply won't last another five minutes, and we're rapidly draining fuel. Master, Noctus and I need you and the rest of the squad to take out that fighter. We'll go alone."

Jiana sighed. She wanted to protest, to protect her Padawan, but she knew there was no alternative. With the droid still a threat to them, there was no way the bomber could get to the station. "Alright… Squad, on me! We're taking out that droid!" As the fighters peeled away from the bomber, she took one final glance at her Padawan. "May the Force be with you, Uliia."

Noctus spun his turret around, the flashes of red and blue lasers gradually fading as the lone bomber bore down on the Separatist command ship. Though he wasn't a Jedi, he could still feel the anxiety radiating from Uliia. "They'll be alright, Commander. It's just one droid."

"One droid that destroyed the Vorpent, left no survivors, and killed Smokey, Patches, and Speedy." Her knuckles began to turn white as she squeezed down hard on the controls. "Thanks to Speedy and Smokey we can actually see the damn thing now, but what difference does it make? It's faster than any of our ships, its more agile, its got more weapons than we have ships left-"

"-But at the end of the day, it's still just a droid," Noctus interrupted. "It can't compare to a Jedi. Plus, that Neimoidian said this was its first combat test. That means there are still bugs in its programming that they can exploit. But for now, that's not our objective."

"Right, right." Uliia sighed, her grip relaxing. "We're going for the command ship. Don't worry about the droid," she muttered to herself. "Master can handle it."

The bomber flew closer to the Lucrehulk, the station's turbolaser batteries swiveling to track the lone ship. They held their fire, letting the bomber pass between the two arms of the station and soar up the side of the central control sphere, rocketing past the control deck. A battle droid turned at his station to look at his Captain. "Uh, sir? Should we open fire?"

Mar Tuuk clasped his hands together, eyes narrowed behind his goggles. "Let them pass for now. Wait for them to make the first shot. Their bombs cannot penetrate our shields." A smirk crossed his face. "Deploy the first transport. Prepare the engines for a jump to light speed, but do not fire them. Give the bomber a choice: us, or the innocent citizens of Ryloth."

An alert popped up on a screen in the Y-wing's turret. "Commander, a landing craft just launched from the station! It's heading to the surface!"

The bomber swooped around behind the Lucrehulk, Uliia catching sight of the engines' bright glow. "And they're preparing to jump to hyperspace!"

"What do we do, Commander?" Noctus asked, slumping back in his seat slightly. "If we go after the transport, then the station and the droid will escape. If we take out the station, then the droids will invade Ryloth again."

"Ixta eti," Uliia groaned. She glanced between the station preparing to escape and the three transports approaching the atmosphere. "Ixta eti, ixta eti, ixta eti!" She swung the bomber to the left, accelerating back towards the station. "Noctus, prepare an ion pulse. Take out the shields guarding the core's reactor, and I'll launch every missile we have at it."

The battle droid turned around once again. "Sir, the bomber is making an attack run on the station."

"It cannot penetrate our shields," Tuuk repeated. "No craft that small can. Destroy the bomber and move to reinforce the Virulent."

Uliia swooped under a powerful salvo from the station's cannons, typing at the control pad to her left. "Noctus, is that ion pulse ready?"

"Not yet! The damage to the reactor is making this take longer than normal!"

"Fine then, I'll buy you some time!" The bomber swooped in low, skimming across the arms of the station. As she circled around to the rear of the Lucrehulk, the bomb ports opened up, proton bombs being shuttled into place. She rolled under another laser burst, lined up her aim, and hit the release. Three proton bombs launched from the craft, each one slamming into one of the station's left turbolasers with a brilliant white explosion. Flying over the central spar, she dropped three more, striking the right-side batteries as well, destroying two and disabling the third. "Alright Noctus, I'm out of bombs! That pulse better be ready!" she called as she swooped down to fly alongside the command sphere.

"It won't charge!" The commando slammed his fist on the control screen, teeth gritted. "The reactor can't get it above sixty percent! It won't overload the shield!"

"Szu'tak," Uliia muttered. As the bomber flew closer to the shield, she caught sight of the internal point defense cannon tracking them. "Shoot that cannon! Get its attention!"

"It won't shoot as long as we're next to the core!"

"It will if you attack it!"

Noctus spun the turret around, raising the cannons and centering the turbolaser in his rangefinder. He fired two shots, neither of which did much damage, but a red glow began to form within the cannons' barrels. "It's firing! I don't know what you're planning, but it better happen now!"

Mar Tuuk glared out the viewport of the control center. "Hold your fire! That's what they-"

The turbolaser fired, just as the bomber came up on the shield. Uliia slammed the throttle down as low as it would go and yanked the bomber's nose up, firing the engines just as the laser blast cut through the edge of the shield. There was an explosion as the shield generator failed and hundreds of panicked droids were sucked out into space. The bomber arced up and away from the explosion, swooping back around to face the now-exposed reactor core. Uliia pulled the trigger and spun the ship around towards the surface as the torpedoes flew into the reactor housing.

Noctus swiveled the turret around to watch as the torpedoes struck home. There was an initial blast as the torpedoes hit the reactor core, then a second, larger explosion as the core collapsed, igniting the fuel recyclers surrounding the reactor housing. The explosion traveled through the neck of the station towards the engines and the main fuel tanks, occasionally breaking through in a brilliant orange-blue fireball.

Wait, blue? Noctus frowned. There's not supposed to be blue in there… Maybe it's the fuel for that droid? What does it run on? Judging by the power of its engines, it's likely rhydonium, and judging how fast it must burn fuel-

"How much damn rhydonium do they have on there?" he muttered.

His question was answered moments later as a cataclysmic explosion vaporized the Lucrehulk, the shockwave barreling down on the Y-wing. "I am really sick of all these explosions!" Uliia yelled as she dipped the nose down for a steeper atmospheric entry. "This'll get a little rough!" she called to Noctus as bright orange flames began to flicker in front of the viewport, the bomber streaking down into Ryloth's atmosphere. Debris from the Lucrehulk was falling all around them, dark smoke trails crisscrossing across the horizon as dozens of explosions dotted the planet's surface.

As the atmospheric drag grew more and more, pieces of the damaged engine nacelle began peeling off and disintegrating. Uliia struggled to hold the craft steady as it began to list to the right, narrowly missing a large piece of the Lucrehulk's engine assembly. The front cannons glowed bright red in the heat, then snapped off, one punching through the gunner's turret. It glanced off of Noctus' helmet as it smashed through the transparasteel bubble, then the dome shattered, and Uliia heard a yell as Noctus was engulfed by the flames. In a panic, she slammed the throttle as far as it would go, wincing at the creaking from the right engine housing as the damaged turbines strained under the increased fuel flow.

The stricken bomber finally broke through the cloud layers, nearly perpendicular to the ground. With as much strength as she could muster, Uliia pulled back on the controls in an attempt to level off, hearing the groaning and cracking as she struggled to keep the bomber from rolling to the right. "C1, do something about that engine!" The droid warbled something in response, and a message popped up on her display. "No, don't eject me! We have to get to where those Separatist ships landed! And I won't eject and leave Noctus be-"

Uliia was jolted to the left as the right engine finally gave out, exploding in a massive fireball. The bomber began to tumble through the air, trailing smoke and flames behind it. Uliia groaned, then ignited one of her lightsabers, slicing the canopy off of the cockpit. She turned in her seat, crawling across the bomber to the gunner turret. Noctus was limp in the seat, smoke trailing from his burnt armor. She grabbed him under the arms, grunting as she struggled to lift him. His helmet fell against her cheek, and she screamed as the scorching hot beskar seared her skin. Yanking him free of his restraints, she rolled backwards, pulling the unconscious commando out of the bomber and into a free fall with her.

Shaking off the pain in her face, Uliia glanced up where the ground was rapidly approaching. Pushing off of Noctus, she flew down in a dive, then rolled forwards and extended her hands, sending a powerful blast through the Force. It wasn't enough to completely break her fall, and she hit the tough ground hard, landing awkwardly on her left ankle. She felt a sharp, splitting pain radiate up through her leg to her knee, but forced it to the back of her mind, rolling to her side and holding her hands up, catching Noctus' body with the Force. He too bounced off the ground, his chestplate and helmet cracking under the impact.

Out of the corner of her eye, Uliia saw the bomber spiral over the horizon, eventually slamming to the ground in the midst of a village. She slumped back, breathing heavily as the adrenaline of the crash wore off, the pain in her cheek and ankle surging to the top of her mind. She glanced down at her ankle, shuddering. It was swollen and bruised, and definitely bent wrong; broken, or at least dislocated. She allowed a few tears to drip down her face, teeth gritted as she pounded her fist into the hard dirt below her, holding back her cries of agony, lest she attract one of the many predators lurking in Ryloth's wilderness.

A strained groan brought Uliia to her senses. She dragged herself to Noctus, unhooking his equipment pack and rolling him onto his back. She shuddered as she looked over the clone's scorched and carbonized armor, pieces of charred flesh visible through his torn bodysuit. She reached up to pull his helmet off, but as she tugged on it, blood splashed onto her face, and Noctus stiffened momentarily before falling still once again.

Uliia felt the onset of another panic attack, raising a trembling hand to wipe the blood from her eye. "No, no, no! I don't have time to panic!" She clenched her eyes shut, forcing her mind to relax. The stench of burnt plastoid and blood still filled the air, but she forced her stomach to cease its churning, looking back down at her ankle. I can't find help for Noctus with my ankle injured like that… at the very least, I have to set it. I can splint it with a branch from one of those bushes, which should be enough to last until I find help. And I need to find some way to move Noctus…

Spotting two large rocks near each other, Uliia dragged herself to them. She broke a branch off of a nearby bush, setting it in her mouth as she maneuvered her injured ankle in the gap between the rocks. Getting a firm grip on the bush, she bit down on the branch, clenching her eyes as she mentally braced herself, then pulled herself sharply forwards.

There was a loud click as her ankle was violently popped back into place, and a strangled scream forced itself from her throat as she nearly bit through the branch. Wiping the tears from her eyes, she pulled her ankle up to her, gingerly feeling for additional injuries. She gave it an experimental flex, sighing as no further pain came from the joint. Just dislocated, then. She moved to stand and hissed as a dull ache throbbed from her ankle. Okay, maybe sprained too.She tore the sleeve from her left arm, ripping the fabric in two, and broke two more branches from the bush, fashioning a crude splint. She took a light step, wincing slightly at the pain, but managed to stay upright. "Now to deal with Noctus…"

She glanced back down at the rocks she used to set her ankle. One was large enough to set the clone on. Pulling out her lightsabers, she sliced down through the rock, cutting a sort of sled from it. She raised it with the Force, levitating it over next to the clone and letting it cool down. With some effort, she dragged the clone onto the makeshift sled, setting his pack down below his feet. "Okay, now how am I going to move this? I don't have anything I can use to pull it…"

She glanced down at her tube top. She sighed, then pulled it off, tearing it into a long strip of cloth. "Just don't look, alright?" she joked to the unconscious clone as she ignited her lightsaber, punching two holes through the sled and tying the cloth through them to make a handle. "Now where to take him…"

Uliia squinted into the horizon, scanning the barren lands. There was the village the bomber crashed into, but that was easily a dozen kilometers away. She grumbled in annoyance, and was about to begin the long trek, but another structure caught her eye. A square, grey fortification only about a kilometer away. One with a very familiar logo.

"A Separatist outpost…" She glanced down at the unconscious commando, gulping. She sighed, then picked up the handle, limping towards the outpost. "Please don't make me regret this, Noctus…"

Author's note:

And with this, the climax of the story rapidly approaches. Shot down over Ryloth, Uliia turns to the Separatists to save a severely injured Noctus. Patches, Speedy, and Smokey have fallen victim to the terrifying Virulent-class droid starfighter. How will Jiana, Rhino, Quint, Falcon, and Trigger defeat this seemingly invincible droid? What will happen to Uliia and Noctus in the clutches of the Separatists? Find out in the next chapter!

Additional note: I have made a slight alteration to Uliia across the story. Though she spent most of her life on Coruscant, and does not have the typical Twi'lek accent, she does tend to fall back into that habit when stressed or emotionally charged, much like how Hera Syndulla's accent shows up when talking to her father Cham. Thus, Uliia now swears in Ryl, but only when spoken. She has only audibly swore once before, after the mission on Alzoc III (Chapter 4). That has been edited to follow this new headcanon. All spoken words (within quotation marks) that are in a language besides Galactic Basic are in italics (this does not affect thoughts). A few translations are as follows:

Kunta - fuck

Ixta eti - damn it

Szu'tak - shit

These translations are taken primarily from .org, a wonderful resource I recently found, as well as Wookieepedia. I will be utilizing both resources as I continue to expand upon Uliia's character and explore her background.