Episode 5
Blood and Mire
Thirty minutes after the sirens sounded a CIS Armada numbering well over three hundred warships punched through Naboo's Defense Network and launched a blitzkrieg campaign onto Naboo's Communication arrays.
Faster than anyone could have thought possible Naboo was now cast adrift from the rest of the Galaxy, and no one was the wiser.
Scores of droid bombers flew ahead of the descending droid army ravaging the defenseless planet and bludgeoning civilian targets for the droids to mop up. The initial assault laid waste to 30% of the Capital City of Theed and disabled the power grid, further crippling the options the Royal Guards had in rallying an adequate defense.
Padme had no delusions however, that they could somehow hold. It was only a matter of time before the city fell.
One hour after the invasion began the first wave of B-1 battle droids swarmed the city while the royal guards were still setting up the outer defenses. Though the invaders were routed four guards were killed and eight wounded, the visceral suddenness of death tanked the morale of the newer untested guards that had not taken part in the first invasion ten years prior. Despite the casualties the outer defenses were completed with the inner barricades shored with civilian vehicles and rubble plugging the holes in the ramshackle defensive line.
To Padme the barricades looked about as sturdy as the weak-kneed guard recruits, that is to say not much. Oh how she wished Anakin were here right now, but he was on the other side of the planet at the R&D facility. She prayed that he was alright.
Two hours after the Invasion began the majority of the rescue teams were drawn away from the casualty triage inside the palace's energy shield and redeployed to reinforce the city's defenses. They had done all they could for the devastated city and its residents.
Padme's heart went out to any survivors still trapped amidst the rubble and carnage but she had to choose between those already saved or spending manpower and energy they needed on the faint possibility of saving a few more people that couldn't add to their defensive strength. Guilt bit into her heart but she had to choose the many over the few. She prayed that her people would forgive her, and that she could forgive herself.
Three hours after the Invasion began another wave of Bombers swept across the city with the Royal Navy's pilots biting back, cutting down most of the bombers before they reached the city. It was only a prelude to the next wave of droids, this one much larger than before further reinforced with B-2 super battle droids and a squadron of AAT hover tanks. The AAT's went down with concentrated fire from mounted repeater cannons and heavy blaster fire but this time casualties mounted in the dozens along with the loss of three Flash Speeders, the royal guard's light security vehicle.
The fighting had been brutal but the outer defenses held, barely. Thinking minds sitting safe behind palace walls were useless in a battlefield so Padme threw herself into the triage effort under the steely eyes of Seava Lonnar, a matronly nurse from a local ER. Bringing back the dead guards draped over their still warm weapons was arguably worse than the fighting. Here the senator either carried a crying man or woman spilling out crimson into the brick and mire or she was face to face with the eyes of a brave man glazed over in death, one of many who had died on her order.
She kept seeing Anakin in those sightless stares, sneering, accusing.
It's strange to think that just a few hours ago Naboo was at peace and she was tangled up with her husband safe and warm in post-coital bliss. Oh how could things go so wrong so quickly?
The third hour blurred into the fourth as the droid forces crashed across the defensive line in rolling waves of steel and blaster fire, never giving the guards a second to catch their breath. Their only saving grace was that the enemy could only advance on one side of the city as the palace and the city proper were backed against a sheer cliff face. Though if they were pushed back into the palace plaza then Padme would be forced to open the hidden escape tunnels to evacuate as many of her people as she could, lest they fight a pitched battle with a droid army on one side and a long nasty drop on the other.
This time Padme was on the forefront of the fighting, though in a twisted way she was thankful for it. Getting shot at was a very good distraction from her worry for her husband's fate, and the pain in her wounded leg. Her trimmed muscles were still inflamed from the bacta treatment rapidly swelling and closing the torn flesh. She was good for the most part
"Mama! God make it stop! Please! Mama!" Had this been anywhere else than a battlefield Padme would have comforted the poor young woman clutching the shattered remains of her arm. This time however she just wrenched the guardswoman's jaw open and shoved a strip of leather between her clenched teeth for the girl to bite down on as agony lanced through her ragged limb. The woman was so consumed in pain she hardly seemed to notice and just bit harder into the leather as if it were the cause of her torment. Thankfully her whimpers stifled into muffled sobs and growls giving Padme a reprieve from her screaming as she dragged the guard into a medical speeder flanked by a team of volunteers.
"I got her." One of the volunteers relieved her of the screaming girl and laid her into the back of the enclosed speeder. When the middle aged man went to jump out of the speeder a crimson bolt lanced from out of nowhere and tore through the volunteer's chest. Padme gaped, blinking in shock as the man looked down at the smoking hole in his chest in confusion before crumpling to the speeder floor. The meaty thud the dying man made when he fell jolted Padme out of her stupor. She drew her hold out blaster and scrambled for cover as more blaster fire rattled the speeder's hull.
"Go! Get out of here!" She yowled over the reawakened cacophony of battle. A volunteer scrambled into the back of the speeder and tended to his fallen partner as the driver gunned the throttle and kicked up dust as he made for the triage. Padme flattened herself against a pile of rubble and peaked out towards the outer defensive line a hundred meters or so away. She could just barely hear the clanking thud of marching droids over the stuttering report of guards trading blaster fire with the invaders.
"Senator!" Padme whipped her head around as Captain Typho slid across a field of blaster fire and into cover beside her. "You're covered in blood."
Padme blinked then looked down at herself. Her borrowed guardsman body armor was drenched to the point the brown material was a crusty crimson-black. The dried blood on her hands crunched as she flexed her aching fingers. Besides her exhausted muscles there was no other pain.
"It's alright," She replied with a dry swallow. "It's not mine."
Typho assessed her numbed expression with a frown then hefted his heavy blaster pistol aloft and extended a gloved hand. "We need to get you to a safer location."
"The forward command center," She breathed, swallowing to wet her throat, dried from dust and her own adrenaline induced terror. "take me there."
"My Lady…" Her bodyguard began to say.
Despite being in the middle of a firefight Typho still managed to level an exasperated frown her way, as if he were trying to coax a much younger Padme from making a rash decision. Like going on a rescue mission with a Padawan to save a Jedi from a coliseum or using the palace's defense budget to purchase the stock an entire candy store when she had been struck with a craving for Aldeeranian caramel swirls.
"If I may, you would be far safer inside the Palace-"
"And how do you propose we do that?" Padme snapped back more icily than she had meant to. "Take another run through the city back to the palace? The medical speeder's gone. We're stuck here until we can turn these droids away."
Unlike her, Captain Typho kept his composure a better, though his long-suffering sigh did come out as more of a growl. "Then you are not to stray from my side. I'm sworn to protect you Milady and with the Queen still on Coruscant representing Naboo in the Galactic Peace Conference and General Ablest MIA,you are now the highest ranking in the city. We can't afford to lose you."
"I-" Padme let out a slow calming breath. "I know Captain. I understand, I will keep close."
Captain Typho studied her expression for any signs that she was lying then gave a curt nod. "Very well. We're too exposed here. Are you ready?"
On Padme's nod they both made a dash for the outer defenses as angry crimson bolts hissed by and dusted off the brick road beneath their feet. Padme's back slapped the barricade with her bodyguard taking cover beside her, both were out of breath but alive.
Squads of guards surrounded Padme on all sides, ducking incoming blaster fire and peeking out to take shots of their own. Every now and then a screech of agony tore the air as another droid blaster bolt found its mark and the unfortunate guard tumbled from the barricade, smoke wafting from singed flesh.
Captain Typho snatched a Guard Sergeant as he passed by. When the Sergeant saw who had stopped him he stiffened to attention, though he had wits enough not to salute in the middle of battle.
"At ease." Typho waved the man down. "We need to get to the Forward Command Center. Take us there."
"Y-Yes sir!" The poor guy's voice squeaked a little when faced with the weight of ordering around what was effectively their people's leader and her frowning bodyguard. "Follow me then ma'am, sir. I'll show you the way."
Ducking through the throng of controlled chaos the sergeant led the pair back several hundred yards back from the front line and pointed the senator and her bodyguard to a section of barricade overshadowed by a thick wall pockmarked by cannon fire. It looked solid enough to take a few more shots from an AAT. Though if tanks were to get close enough to fire on their position Padme knew Typho would pull her back from the front, her reasoning and logic be damned.
"This wall marks the outer perimeter to the command center." The sergeant explained above the thump-thump-thump of a nearby blaster cannon replying to the incoming volley of laserfire. He pointed to a circle of rubble manned by a squad of guardsmen laying prone behind the stacks of crumbled stone some few dozen yards away over a small clearing. "The entrance is behind that barricade my lady."
"Thank you sergeant." Padme called on her years of diplomatic rigor and cracked a calm appreciative smile for the mire and blood-blasted soldier. "You are dismissed. Stay safe."
The guard returned her smile with a bashful nod and a tip of his leather cap and slipped away; his S-5 heavy blaster pistol held aloft as he ran back ahead to rejoin his squad.
The guards at the entrance had spotted the sergeant leading Padme and Typho and the lieutenant recognized the senator of Naboo instantly and waved them both through.
The inside of the wall was reinforced by heavy armor plates with support struts anchoring the armor against the barricade to further protect the jerry-rigged command center set up inside. High ranking officers of the Royal Guard were milling around like panicked ants scuttling around their hill. Uniformed personnel worked furiously on computers, comm terminals, and translucent tactical maps balanced on top of their travel crates; and at the epicenter of this controlled chaos stood the Head of Security, a tall and handsome dark-skinned man barking orders and strutting around as he conducted this orchestra of madness.
"Director Panaka!" Padme's voice lulled the ambient rumble of tense conversation as every eye turned to the young woman sweeping into the command center.
"Senator?!" Director Quarsh Panaka squawked, a familiar expression of incredulous panic on his face. "What are you doing here! There's war going on outside!"
Padme rolled her eyes. Panaka had served as her bodyguard when she was a child then as Queen, before stepping down to make way for his nephew Typho to take the helm. He was familiar with the headstrong woman's style of "aggressive negotiation" but still, of all the blasted places to show up…
"I'm well aware Director." Padme cut in, she brushed a filth covered hand down her bloodstained body armor and felt sick from the gritty wet that clung to her fingers. "However, with the enemy knocking at our door caution is a luxury no one can afford."
Panaka looked to his nephew and Typho just shook his head with a helpless shrug. Panaka's lips thinned into a scowl then he sighed.
"Fine." He growled and pointed at a tactical map of the surrounding area and a comm station near the back of the room. "We're drawing up contingency plans for when we abandon the outer walls. A few of the governors of the surrounding cities are reluctant to cooperate while the world is under siege."
The room shook as cannon fire struck the barricade and muted blaster fire screamed outside, spurring the command Center back into action.
Padme bobbed her head, deferring to her former bodyguard's order then made her way to the indicated tactical map and joined the conversation of the officers already embroiled in a debate by the comm station.
The overall retreat plan had already been established while setting up the layers of defensive positions around and inside the city. However, Padme found hammering out the finer details was a lot harder than she had assumed, especially with the quickly deteriorating defensive situation.
There were over 854 guardsmen organized into 63 squads and the forward command center throughout the city of Theed. Out of those, most were part-time volunteers, with less than 59 active duty personnel. Many of the guards were retired or greenhorns armed with civilian sporting blasters or dusty antiques pulled from the dusty crevices of the Palace armory. The only thing that separated these novice recruits that barely knew which end of the blaster to point at the enemy and an unfeeling, uncaring horde of killer droids was a pile of crumbled rocks.
To say that the tactical situation was in dire straits was an understatement.
"How many operational transports can we use to get the civilians out of the city and to one of the surrounding settlements?" Padme asked, tallying the rough estimate of survivors. Just looking at the minute number made her ill. A quarter of a million people still drew breath. A sparse fraction of the original census count of 2,000,000.
"Some one hundred and forty-four speeder trucks of various sizes, three dozen cargo craft, twenty creature-drawn carts, and a smattering of four-seater transports, Senator." A young dark-skinned Officer with a jagged scar down his cheek answered from his comm terminal next to her. He turned to her, a grave expression on his face. "All told, we can only transport just over two thousand personnel. Maybe twenty-five hundred at best."
Padme's breath hitched. her nails dug into the wooden box her terminal was balanced on.
2,500. That was it. Out of the 250,000 souls clinging for dear life within Theed's city walls she had to choose just 2,500 of those that would have a chance at escape. She curled in on herself as agony clawed up her chest and seized her lungs.
Oh Ani. Where are you?
A guttural adrenaline-fueled shout from a female officer wrenched Padme from her devastated and dire realizations. The female Officer was out of her seat with her headset crushed against her ear and she shouted into the receiver then turned around and yelled, "Director Panaka! we got a caravan of civilians in-bound from the south-west! Sir, The Nabarrie House is with them!"
Padme's head whipped around so fast her messy bun bounced off of her ear. She made eye-contact with the female officer who blanched upon recognizing the Senator.
"How many vehicles?" Panaka noticed Padme's desperate expression from across the room, but even a Nabooian Noble house was not worth sacrificing his men for. Even if he had once served them as a bodyguard, confidant and friend, even though it tore at his soul to do so. Padme bit back the angry retort that bucked up her throat as tears stung her eyes. She knew duty and service to the people came first. It was her House and family motto after all.
The female officer glanced at Padme's anguished expression and swallowed before answering, "Some thirty speeders of various sizes with two hundred civilians and eighteen guards with four flash speeder escorts."
Hearing the numbers Panaka let out a tiny breath, thankful he didn't have to make the choice to ignore Nabarrie's plight. "Redirect Flash Squadrons 11, 14, and 23 from the wall and escort the convoy behind the battle-line! Hurry!"
Padme hiccupped in relief as the comms officers scrambled to follow the director's orders. She allowed herself a moment to wallow in her mixed and confused emotions before cramming them down to a dark corner of her heart to deal with later and schooling her face into a hard mask.
Grabbing a headset from a nearby console Padme kept one ear on the status of the convoy while she worked frantically with several of the other officers to plan for the eventual evacuation plan- and both were facing problems.
"Flash 11-2, watch your flank! Supers have rockets!"
"I see 'em, I see 'em! What the kriff! The blaster cannon's hittin' them but they're just not goin' down!"
"Forget scrapping them, just get those civvies outta here! Flash 14-Leader, help us out!"
"We got our own proble- TANK! -Gaugh! -ZzzZzzz-"
"14-Leader is down! 14-Leader is down! AAT's firing from the treeline! Fire back! Fire back god dammit!"
Super battle droids coming outta the- What the hell?! These things can FLY?! No one said they can fly!"
"Flash 23, this is Guard Squad Alpha-18 on the east flank wall. We can provide covering fire with stationary cannons. Just get those people inside!"
"Roger that Alpha-18. Approaching the gates now! Everyone inside! Now! Go, go, go!"
Even surrounded by several layers of thick stone wall and reinforced armor plating Padme could hear and feel the rapid canter of several blaster cannons firing all at once, slagging the enemy and melting through the charging droid ranks.
The moment she heard the rumble of speeders sweeping through the gate and behind Theed's outer walls Padme practically threw her headset off and scrambled for the door, Startling poor Typho and forcing her hapless bodyguard to chase after her.
The guards outside the door jumped as their well-known Senator limped out of the door as fast as her wounded leg would allow towards a nearby clearing. A few of the surviving Guard Flash Squadrons sped by, sporting smoking blaster holes and wounded drivers and behind them a line of the other surviving civilian speeders steered into the clearing hop-shod, their drivers beyond caring now that they were safe. around her shaken passengers tumbling out on quaking legs, still shell-shocked from their desperate flight from their homes and many collapsing and crying in relief.
Padme only had eyes for a familiar polished silverite plated luxury speeder marred by blaster-scoring near the rear of the collection of vehicles. her anxiety ramped up when no-one appeared. She rushed over faster, dodging around a couple kneeling on the ground, embracing each other, fearing that someone inside her family's speeder had been struck by a lucky blaster-bolt.
Then the passenger side door peeled up and Padme was nearly knocked off her feet by her father's embrace.
"Oh, my child! Thank the stars you're okay!"
Padme found herself choked up, her only coherent answer was wrapping her arms around Ruwee Naberrie and squeezed him with all her might, burying her head in her father's chest. The older man wheezed then chuckled and held his most troublesome daughter close. Behind him his wife, Jobal slid spryly from the speeder and threw herself at them both causing Padme's stony facade to crumble completely.
A voice in the back of her mind Padme noted how ridiculous she was being. before marrying Anakin she had never been this emotional. The rest of her told that voice to take a hike as she just basked in the relief and her parents' love.
Sola, her older sister and her husband Darred emerged from the speeder as well, her daughter cradling her younger daughter Pooja against her chest with Ryoo, her eldest, fisting the hem of her father's shirt.
"Hey little sis." Sola greeted dryly. "I see city life is really treating you well. Violence seems on the downward trend, yeah?"
Padme dragged her head from the warmth of her father's chest and leveled an unamused stare at her older sister's tasteless joke. "Really Sola? I mean really?"
"Oh don't be such a stick in the mud Paddy." Her sister cortled. "Dark humor is the only way I'm going to get through this with all my marbles. I don't know why you give me so much grief. Your Ani is like, way worse than me! Where is your fearless Jedi knight in baggy pilot leathers anyway?"
Padme tried to answer but the words stuck in her throat, and Sola's smarmy attitude gave way to shocked disbelief. "No. Oh Padme… I'm so sor-"
Padme closed her eyes as tears of worry burned at her nose and she shook her head." N-no Sola. He's not… I mean he's… I-I just don't know…"
"Honey, you're bleeding!" Jobal Naberrie gasped, completely oblivious to her daughters' exchange as she pulled at her youngest's clothes and felt the grimy dried crimson stained in her borrowed body armor and clothes.
"I-It's okay Mama," Padme sniffled, wiped her runny nose and patted her chest. "I only got a few stitches in my leg from some shrapnel. most of it isn't mine."
"That's not the problem!" Jobal nearly screeched.
Padme's brows drew down and she opened her mouth to reply when thankfully Typho jumped in for the rescue.
"Madam Naberrie, perhaps we can have this conversation inside the command center, where it's safest?" The bodyguard gestured towards the bunker, his blaster pistol held aloft in his other hand.
Jobal coughed and looked around at the other spectators audience to her hysterical outburst. "Yes. Of course."
Typho smiled, relieved that for once a Naberrie was actually taking his advice. "Wonderful, right this way-"
"MTT! Take cover!"
Padme whipped her head around towards where the shout came from as a vibrant red turbolaser bolt tore through a section of wall and blasted a part of the perimeter into dust and stony shrapnel. She grunted in pain and surprise when a well-muscled mass bowled her and her parents over onto the ground as another section of reinforced wall imploded, peppering the parked convoy with speeding shards and rock. Captain Typho untangled himself from his charge and knelt by the fallen senator as she regained her bearings and coughed from the dust left in the explosion's wake.
Just above the ringing in her ears and thump of blaster fire, Padme could hear her nieces' wails of terror.
"We need to get inside the command center NOW! Someone, get these civilians out of here!" The bodyguard hauled her and her parents to their feet and through the throng of panicked civilians, her sister and her family hot on their heels with Ryoo and Pooja screaming all the while. Many of the speeders revved back to life and sped away as Typho pushed past the command center's guards as they scrambled to defend against the imminent assault.
Tumbling into the bunker as it trembled from another barrage from the MTT's siege guns Padme hauled a fallen comms officer that was knocked to floor and shook the dazed woman like a maraca, "Is there still no word from the Republic?!"
"I-I-I-!" The officer was in shock, eyes rolling into the back of her head in fright.
Padme dropped the comatose woman back to the floor and leapt into the comm terminal, beating away on the interface, hoping to find some communique or stray transmission, or Something besides bloody static!
While Padme worked furiously on the terminal Typho shoved the Naberrie family against the far wall, with the children furthest back, their grandparents kneeling at the forefront shielding their daughter and her family.
Director Panaka drew himself to his feet coughing from where he had been thrown by the MTT's first impact and began spitting orders non-stop, scrambling guard platoons and squads to attempt to push back the MTT's relentless advance. He noticed the Naberrie clan and Padme but chose to ignore them.
The entire time the MTT's booming siege cannons grew louder and louder.
Another shot impacted the command center's exterior, drawing a paired scream from the little girls and dust and stone down from the ceiling.
Another shot struck, and another, and another, and another.
Padme barely noticed the wall finally give in time, crumbling stone and steel hurtling down towards her. On the edge of her hearing she recognised her Father and sister screaming her name. Time seemed to slow, and yet the tumbling debris seemed to move far too fast, as if she were moving through molasses. She kicked the comm terminal away and in achingly slow motion pulled the shell-shocked officer from the floor.
And time sped up, the wall smashed into the floor, broken stone crushing the comm terminal and the space Padme and the other woman had occupied a breath before.
Typho was at her side in an instant, helping his charge pull the unconscious officer by her other arm behind the stone wall for cover. When they set the woman down Padme kicked something soft, and held back a gasp at seeing a bloodied arm of an unlucky guard protruding from beneath the debris.
A cloud of dust kicked up by the collapsed wall swept around Padme and Typho, forcing both to cover their mouths. Padme squinted against the sunlight pouring in through the gaping hole in the wall and coughed. stray crimson lasers whipped through the opening and smacked into the opposite wall.
"To the top of the wall!" Director Panaka and a squad of royal guards and officers picked themselves up from the floor and charged the opening, sporting blasters spitting green plasma back at the advancing horde of droids.
Padme turned towards her little nieces' squeals of fear from the blaster fire and made eye contact with her mother and pointed to the side entrance. "Go! Get to the speeder and make for the palace!"
"Not without you!" Jobal spat. Padme's own eyes hardened to match her mother's steely gaze.
"I'm needed here! You and Solas' family are not! I said, kriffing go!" She shouted back.
Jobal's face twisted in anger but her husband grabbed her shoulders and actually picked his wife up by her waist and threw her over his shoulder. "Ruwee?! Ruwee! Put me DOWN! You kriffing bastard, put me down! That's my baby!"
"Sorry my darling, but that's not going to happen." He grunted from a pair of clenched fists beat his back and glanced up at his younger daughter with an expression she couldn't quite decipher. "You better come back to us."
Padme's throat constricted. she could only nod numbly as her father carried her mother as she thrashed on his shoulder. "Ruwee! When this is all over you're sleeping on the couch for the rest of your bleeding life! You hear me?! Life!"
Solas followed close behind with a bawling dust covered Pooja against her chest. She mouthed 'stay safe' as she passed, her husband and Ryoo in tow.
Padme cast her fleeing family one last longing glance then turned and began to climb the pile of rubble and twisted durasteel leading up to the collapsed opening. She and Captain Typho dropped as a rainstorm of crimson lasers poured over their position. She ignored the rock digging into her stomach and arms as she crawled towards Director Panaka taking cover behind a protruding durasteel plate twisted from when the wall fell.
"Director! I think we need to start thinking of our exit strategy!" She yelled over the cacophony of battle.
The dark skinned man took a few more pot shots at a cluster of B-1's nearby then squinted at her, the wrinkles beginning to form around his eyes deepening.
"Senator, this is our exit strategy."
Padme sighed in resignation as he turned and plugged two B-1's with rapid shots from his S-5 and slid into a sitting position against the durasteel plate, his eyes boring into her. "I have a team of Guards rounding up as many survivors as they can find to lead them through the Palace's escape tunnels while we buy them the time they need. You should go."
"I think not." Padme smirked at the open and familiar look of frustration on her former bodyguard's face. "Quarsh, you should know by now that I find face-to-face negotiation more my style."
Panaka's frown deepened, then he slumped with a resigned sigh. "Fine." he reached next to him and tugged a light sporting blaster rifle from under a poor guardsman's cooling corpse and tossed it to her. She caught the requisitioned weapon, but she was no longer smiling. "Don't die, Milady."
"You either." Padme replied, hefting the Webley repeater and finding another spot to prop up for the firefight.
Typho threw down on the rubble next to her and peeked over the boulder she found for cover. "That doesn't look good."
Padme checked her new blaster's charge pack and took a look towards the advancing foe. A smoldering trail of decimated rubble led to the feet of a massive boxy hovering dreadnought with twin ball siege turbolasers trained on their position. An MTT. Padme frowned. "It looks ray shielded. With all of our fire power we didn't even scratch it-"
The screech of fighter engines echoed overhead. A lone N-1 cut a turn and dove towards the breached wall, cannons blazing. The salvo churned earth and slammed into the MTT, lighting up its shield in hues of green. Somewhere on her left a Guard whooped in excitement.
The brief feeling of elation fled when the yellow fighter suddenly exploded from an AAT cannonshot. Slag and fire raining down across the battlefield as the chunk of metal smashed into the mud and carved a trench into the ground, and the MTT emerged from the attack unscathed.
Padme felt like throwing her blaster in frustration, which quickly turned to panic as the MTT's siege guns lit up her section of rubble, throwing rock and shrapnel into the air. Padme and Typho ducked and pressed themselves against the boulder and the rumble of the MTT's repulsorlift engine began to shake the ground as it drew closer.
Then the rumbling stopped and Padme chanced a glance over her boulder and blanched. The front bulb unlocked with a thud and slid forward, exposing racks and racks of fresh B-1 battle droids.
Padme threw her blaster against her shoulder and began firing. "They're off-loading droids! Shoot them! Shoot them!"
Her cries roused the guards and all around her blaster fire joined hers as they desperately smoked down the droids before they could activate. the MTT's cannons answered back in kind, blasting a section of rubble away, throwing a pair of eviscerated guards into the air. Gore and rock rained down around her as the bodies fell back to earth with a wet thud.
Despite their efforts the majority of the B-1's managed to deploy and activate, turning towards the defenders and began their march, backed by the MTT's siege cannons demolishing what remained of their breached barricades.
"This isn't looking good!" Typho shouted over the roar of blasterfire.
"You said that already!" Padme replied. "But you're not wrong!"
"They made it to the barricades!" Director Panaka shouted. "Retreat to secondary positions! Retreat!"
Padme traded looks with Captain Typho and both simultaneously slid down to follow the squad of guards falling back from their firing positions. Padme's breathing grew deafening in her ear as she ran through the destroyed streets of her precious city, her eyes trained on the back of a royal guard in front of her. Fear prickled at her neck like an itch, demanding she look over her shoulder or she would be shot in the back as they fled. Only rigid discipline instilled in her by long training sessions with Typho and Panaka held her composure together and kept her running.
The secondary barricades apparently were nothing more than a bunch of storefronts with the windows kicked out and any sort of metal stacked in front as some form of ramshackle armor. Padme followed Panaka's squad into what used to be her favorite flower shop on the corner of a four-way intersection. She threw herself underneath the brick window sill, her chest heaving as she sucked in air and ignored the stinging pain radiating from her wounded leg.
To her left and right the remnants of the Royal Guard hit the barricades beside her, sweaty hands shaking from adrenaline and weapons trained down the street as the thunder of metal boots marching grew deafening in their ears. Padme swallowed, suddenly acutely aware of how dry her throat became, and licked her cracked lips free of a drop of sweat that rolled down her forehead.
The first skeletal figure emerged from an alley. A viridescent bolt lanced from the floor above and swiftly cut the droid down in a shower of sparks and flailing metal limbs. more droids emerged from the alley, then street further down, then they even began to appear from among demolished buildings, stomping in an unfeeling, unstoppable advance like an undead horde.
Laserfire stuttered into the growing flood of droids, cutting down the front-runners, only for the ones behind to trample over their fallen without breaking their stride. Then as one the droid horde leveled their E-5 blasters with a whirring click of actuators and crimson death filled the air and spilled into the fortified flower shop.
Padme didn't even have to really aim to hit a droid with the sheer number of clankers in the street, her only real concern was keeping her head down and pulling the trigger. It was a surreal experience, fighting the droids in her own home city, a place she associated with safety and normalcy. This whole day just seemed...wrong, like a bad dream.
The world seemed to drift away until all she felt was the Webley sporting blaster recoil back into her shoulder and her heart thudding painfully against her ribcage. She kept one eye on her charge pack as her hands fumbled with the rapidly heating blaster rifle. When it became too hot to hold she set the hissing barrel on the window sill and kept firing until her charge pack died.
"My blaster's empty!"
"Here!"
Typho dragged an automatic carbine from beneath a smoldering corpse and tossed it to her. She discarded the smoking webley and caught the carbine, raising it to her shoulder.
A crimson bolt whipped from the droid horde. Padme's body jerked and the stench of cooked meat stung her nose. She dropped behind cover and blinked, the stench growing worse as heat and pain blossomed from her shoulder.
"Oh. I've been shot."
She looked down at the charred black canal gouged through her flesh, white bone where her shoulder joint met her socket jutted from the fried meat. She felt... detached at the horrific injury, as if she were looking at someone else's slagged shoulder. Even the pain didn't seem to register right.
"Milady?!" Typho fired twice more at the advancing droids then dropped beside her.
Padme looked up at him with wide eyes and mumbled a bit faintly, "I got shot."
She knew the symptoms of shock, intuitively anyway. She had studied such subjects under the very man who was shielding her from flying debris thrown up by the lasers eating away at their cover. Disassociation, confusion, panic, difficulty focusing. She knew what was happening to her, but it was very much another thing to experience it.
She blinked, fighting the fugue that threatened to take her mind in her delirium. "I'm- I'm fine Captain, keep fighting-"
"You're not fine! I can see the bone!"
"You sound like my mother." Padme sputtered. She pushed him away, until a laser bolt zipped just past his head and they both wisely ducked back down. Hot agony flared from her slagged shoulder, overcoming the numbing effects of adrenaline as spots filled her vision. She swallowed and managed to bite out, "Keep fighting. The droids will overwhelm us otherwise."
As she spoke the ground began to tremble again, and far in the distance she heard a building collapse. The MTT was getting closer, it's repulsorlift engines deafening as it tore through the rubble like wet tissue.
Padme managed to catch one horrified glimpse at the huge warmachine right before its siege cannon barked and the entire second floor exploded. She and Typho huddled behind cover as an entire section of the flower shop crumbled down around them. Through the din of combat the screams of dying men rose from the debris, screams that were swiftly and brutally silenced as laser fire poured in on their position.
The march of droid feet and the MTT's engines all but drowned out but her own ragged breathing. With a shuddering intake of breath on the cusp of a sob she closed her eyes at the world around her shook from the metal foot-beat of a thousand death machines-
-and at the every edge of her hearing, just above the ominous clammer, an odd whistling sound.
One that was quickly growing louder.
Padme gasped, her eyes flying open in abject disbelief as the whistling turned to a shrieking howl and the Proton Bombs took the MTT broadside, popping the behemoth open like a bullet through an apple. The siege transport sent up in an ear splitting explosion that threw fire and shrapnel across the decimated city street, scattering the droids congesting the urban battlefield as if they were leaves in gale.
The wounded senator twisted up to watch as a Squadron of Y-Wings howled passed and even the fiery pain from her blaster wound did nothing to damper the massive grin on her face
"IT'S THE REPUBLIC!" Her message got through!
[Sorry I'm late.] A refined and distinctly smug voice crackled from her personal wrist-comm. [ I seemed to have received my invitation only after the party began.]
Padme hiccuped and wiped the mess of mud, tears, and blood from her cheek as she replied. "No. No, Master Kenobi. You're right on time."
A blaster bolt slammed into the brick just inches from her head and she cleared her throat. "Though I would appreciate it if you would hurry up and greet our unwanted guests."
Obi-Wan Kenobi's cultured chuckle warmed the private Comm-Channel. [Oh, I intend to, Senator. Do keep your heads down.]
"Heads down?" Padme parroted.
Her question was answered when the droid filled street veritably detonated, missiles impacting in an accurate carpet barrage, the shockwaves punching Padme in the throat and rattling her chest, even from behind cover.
The Y-Wings responsible for the second bombing run arced across the sky as a wing of the brand new ARC-170 Starfighters following in escort, rear gunners firing a spread of lasers and swatting down a few stray Vulture Droids like insistent pests.
The roar of LAATi gunship engines rumbled through the ringing in her ears and Padme watched as an AT-TE dropped from its transport and slammed onto the intersection, the street cracking beneath its feet from the impact. More LAATi's swept in from the sky this time off-loading hundreds of clone troopers marked in the yellow visage of the 212st; their DC-15A Blaster rifles flaring hot blue plasma fire before their boots even hit the ground, cutting down the remaining droids with lethal accuracy.
One gunship set down a few yards in front of the decimated flower shop, its doors opening to reveal a squad of clone medics and-
"Obi-Wan?" hearing his voice over the comm-channel was one thing, but she was completely unprepared for the rush of emotions at seeing the brazen Jedi Master. Padme's knees shook as she tried and failed to rise from behind her cover to greet her friend. It was only Typho catching her under her wounded arm that kept her from collapsing.
Obi-Wan's confident grin slid off his face like oil at the horrid state he saw her in. He snatched a nearby medic by the arm. "Help the Senator!"
"Yes sir!" The clone dutifully scrambled over the building's remains and with Typho's help lifted her over the rubble and set her against the barricade. She was too tired to bother feinting her wince when the medic injected a combat stabilizer into her neck and sprayed her sheared shoulder with a thick bacta gel.
Obi-Wan wanted to help her first but sensed a fading life flickering beneath the collapse portion of the shop. With a breath to sink into a puseo-mediation and an exertion of will he lifted the brick and steel up and away revealing a bleeding and broken dark-skinned man.
"Uncle!" In a rare breach of decorum Typho joined another pair of clones and dragged Director Panaka's unconscious form from the debris.
A knot of shock and dismay lodged itself in Padme's throat at the limp body of her family friend and former bodyguard as Panaka was loaded onto a gurney and rushed off to a Medical LAAT gunship set down behind the AT-TE standing vigil next to the MTT's fiery remains.
Obi-Wan sat down with his back against the barricade next to her , breaking her wide-eyed stare away from Panaka's limp form. She recognised a familiar weariness on his shoulders that she could relate to. He hadn't spoken yet, just sitting next to her, providing a supportive presence while she collected herself.
She watched the Jedi Master out of the corner of her eye to distract from the unpleasant stinging from the medic working on her wounds. He was coming to terms with the carnage around him. Broken homes, crushed businesses, smoldering bodies, and a destroyed city he had once saved ten years ago.
He had been an apprentice then, when he still had Master Qui-Gon to guide him and ease his turmoiled mind. Now Naboo is under attack again, and this time he was the Jedi Master, and they were far too late.
"I'm… sorry, Padme." He whispered. They shared a long look, an anguished understanding passed between them. Her gaze fell and she gave a small nod. Closing her eyes for a moment she inhaled a deep breath and let it out slowly.
"We… We managed to hold them long enough to gather the survivors at the Royal Palace." She began. "My family is there. The Nabarrie Clan is respected as one of the leading Houses on Naboo, so my Mother and Father would be in charge of their safety."
Obi-Wan nodded. "Good. We couldn't land near the Palace with the shields still in place, so I'll brief Commander Cody to approach on foot and assist with the evacuation."
"We are still evacuating?" Padme asked, then hissed in pain as the Medic pressed a clean bandage over her blasted shoulder. She waved off the clone's apology and added, "Why would we? You're here now."
Obi-Wan shook his head. "As much as I would love to hold the city like last time, we are vastly outnumbered and outgunned, your forces are crippled. If we were to fortify this place it would be a juicy target for bombers, artillery or an orbital bombardment."
"What about your fleet in orbit? What about more reinforcements from the Republic?"
Obi-Wan scrubbed his face with a gloved hand and sighed. When he looked at her it seemed as if he had suddenly aged ten years. "My fleet is stretched too thin, fighting off the invading CIS cruisers I can't guarantee the city's safety from space. I also requested support from the Jedi Council but for the moment there are no other available units anywhere close to the Naboo system."
He dragged his fingers through his hair and breathed out, bleeding his anxiety out into the Force, before continuing, "The closest is Master Luminara or possibly Master Windu on Ryloth. Both could still take weeks at minimum for them to prepare a sufficient force to push these invaders back."
Padme blinked, digesting the dire news. Her eyebrows drew down in confusion. "I thought you had another with you. A Master Krell?"
Obi-Wan closed his eyes, his mouth a thin line. "He brought his fleet to the other side of the planet to engage the enemy armada at the Low Orbital Defense Array 13 over Fort Mickeal Research Center." He clicked his wrist-comm, checking for messages, even though he knew he wouldn't find anything then added, "He hasn't reported in since. No one has."
"Fort Mickeal?" Padme felt faint. "A-are you sure?"
"Yes. I've had my comm officers monitoring every channel we can pick up since the fleet went dark-" The deep, primal distress that rolled off the Senator in waves rocked Obi-Wan as if he had been knocked in the nose. A sickening dread roiled in the pit of his stomach. No. I couldn't be…
"Padme? Where's Anakin?"
A/N: Aaaand we're back with another episode of Push Me Away! I hope this chapter will make up for the loooong wait.
Shout out to Rajo for beta reading this piece. you're awesome dude!