Chapter Two: Meet the (Sort of) Extended Family
"INCOMING!" One of the clone troopers Theron and his master had suddenly found themselves commanding screamed and flung himself flat, the rocky ground crunching under his armored body. Master Torin had hit the ground a split second before the clones' yell, either sensing the trooper's distress or the displacement of the incoming artillery round. Theron dropped at the same time the clone did, alerted by his Master's sudden fall and the clone's yell. The round hit a moment later, spraying dirt everywhere.
Torin sat up, coughing from the cloud of dust now hanging in the air. "Sergeant!" he yelled. "Casualties?"
The trooper NCO sat up, kneeling in the dust cloud, his green striped helmet and armor seals keeping the dust from reaching him, and pressed his hand to the side of the helmet while his squad checked in. "All accounted for, General!" he shouted back.
"Master, I think I can take out that heavy gun if I go on my own," Theron said.
"That's a dangerous proposition, Padawan," the older Jedi responded.
"Yes, sir," Theron said. "But if I don't the entire company is going to have to find a way around, which means there'll be a hole in the battalion line."
Torin stared at him for a moment, and Theron felt the pressure of both his Master's eyes and the Force, evaluating him and his plan. Finally, Torin nodded. "Do it. After the next shell lands you should have enough of a gap to slip into the canyons." As Theron went to scramble away, closer to the canyons he would make a break for, Torin caught his arm. "And Padawan? May the Force be with you."
Theron grinned at the older man. "Just make sure you come running when I knock out that gun," he smirked. "I'd hate to leave you behind again."
Torin mock frowned at him. "We agreed never to mention Zeffo again," he said, his tone fake hurt. Then he smiled back at his Padawan. "Get moving, young one. We don't have long until the next shot."
Theron low crawled to the wall of the canyon to wait for the obscuring dust cloud that would hopefully allow him to sneak into the narrow side canyons without the droids noticing. He took advantage of the wait for the next shot by checking over his gear. The ubiquitous tan and brown Jedi robes covered his body, though he had augmented his usual attire with armor plates from the armory of the Star Destroyer that had brought him to this desert hell world. He was similar in size and build to the clones, so the chestplate, gauntlets, and armored boots fit him well enough. Even so, no one would mistake him for a clone. His hair, while just as dark, was worn longer than the maximum regulation length the troopers held to, hanging just long enough that he could blend into pretty much any group of human civilians. The rest of him was rather unremarkable, a thin mouth, hawkish nose, brown eyes, an average face for a human. He carried his lightsaber, of course, a single blade with a simple, leather-wrapped hilt and a yellow blade when ignited.
While many Jedi had quickly adopted armor, that was largely where the innovation stopped. Not so with Theron. Theron was a Mandalorian by birth, and thanks to the remote nature of Mandalore he hadn't been discovered and brought to the Jedi Temple for training until he was five years old. Since Mandalorian children were often taken to the battlefield at age eight, his parents had started teaching him unarmed combat skills and marksmanship from as soon as he had the awareness and motor skills. Thanks to his Force sensitivity, that had been even earlier than usual. This unusual pre-existing skill set had brought him to the attention of Master Torin shortly after his arrival at the Temple, one of the few Jedi Sentinels who believed that Jedi should be well versed in more weapons techniques than lightsaber combat. Torin had encouraged him to maintain and expand on his skills, eventually taking him on as his Padawan once Theron was old enough. Theron was now one of very few Jedi within the Order, and an even smaller number of Jedi Sentinels, whose first weapon they reached for in a confrontation wasn't their lightsaber, or even the Force, but a blaster.
Theron checked his weapons as he lay there, waiting for the next artillery shell to strike. Lightsaber, charged and check. DE-10 blaster pistol, check. DC-15a blaster rifle he had appropriated from a dead trooper, check. Spare ammo for both, check. The shell landed at almost the same moment he finished going over his gear, and as soon as the ricocheting shards of rock settled down he jumped up and dashed into the canyon he had picked as his alternate route. He ran along an elevated spar of rock, leaping from it to the lip of the next canyon leading towards his target, its floor several meters above the one he had been running above.
He hit hard, his hands scrabbling for a grip at the top while his feet flailed against the wall. His right hand found a rock stuck into the ground, his left still holding onto the barrel of his rifle. He swung the weapon up, depositing it next to the rock he held onto, then found another grip for his now-free hand and hauling himself up. As soon as he got his feet, he looked up and saw a dozen B1 battle droids staring at him, blasters leveled. "Oh, stang," he muttered, then kicked off with Force-assisted speed, leaving the rifle where it lay and drawing both his lightsaber and pistol. As he ran, he fired twice, the pistol jumping in his hand but the bolts striking true, boring through the control panels of two of the battle droids. Then he was on top of them, and his yellow saber blade came to life, sweeping in large arcs that dropped multiple droids each, part of the Ataru form of lightsaber combat. Ataru emphasized Force-assisted physical feats and acrobatics, making the user a difficult target and lending power to their strikes.
Even though they had caught him by surprise, the droids were dumb and slow enough that the worst injury Theron received was a singe on his chest plate where he let a bolt zip by instead of stopping a strike to deflect it. He stared down at the singe and sighed. He had been hoping to avoid something like this. Torin would never let him hear the end of it. Then he shook his head, circled back for his rifle, and continued down the canyon towards the artillery emplacement. It took him less than half an hour to make it to the base of the gun position, dodging a few more droid patrols he had actually managed to see coming this time. There was a cave cut into the base of the cliff, and he imagined that it would lead inside and up to the guns at the top of the cliff.
Theron stopped, closing his eyes and reaching out with the Force. He could feel dozens of Geonosian warriors buzzing around inside the cave, and the faint electrical displacement created by the presence of droids. And based on the amount of disturbance he felt, there were probably a couple hundred of them. It was a big cave. Theron pulled his senses back into himself and examined the cliff face in front of him. The first stretch of stone was smooth, but beyond that it became craggy and climbable. Theron dropped the rifle again, regret in the motion, but he needed both hands free for what he was about to do. The extra firepower would be nice, but he was a Jedi. He could manage without it.
He backed up as far as he could, then set out at a sprint towards the sheer stone. Once he was close enough, he tightened his legs and launched himself skyward with a massive Force leap that carried him halfway up the smooth face. He hit the stone face feet first, and nearly fell off when a starfighter flashed by, nearly smashing him flat against the face. Reflex kept his feet moving, carrying him the rest of the way up the unclimbable area, and he grabbed onto an outcropping, pulling himself to stand on it before looking up at the fighter as it disappeared over the top and the sound of laser cannon fire erupted. "What KARKING IDIOT is flying that fighter?" he whisper yelled. "I swear, if I ever catch up with that pilot I'm going to shove my blaster up his di'kutla shebs and pull the kriffing trigger." Theron shook his head to clear it. "Maybe some droid gunner would get lucky and… nope, gotta stop that, there is no emotion there is peace, there is no emotion is peace."
Once the storm inside him had calmed, he continued climbing, following the sound of explosions and laser fire. He eventually reached the top, just in time to see the fighter, which he now realized was a Jedi fighter (peace not emotion, peace not emotion), make one last strafing run before breaking off with a horde of Vulture droids following him. As Theron watched, the Vultures started landing hit after hit on the fighter thanks to sheer volume of fire, and the fighter plummeted out of the sky. There was nothing Theron could do for the pilot, so he turned back to the job at hand. While most of the triple A was destroyed, the artillery piece that had been giving the 8th Infantry hell was, of course, still intact. Theron hauled himself up with a sigh, knowing that there was no point in stealth at this point. A pair of B2 super battle droids spotted him almost immediately and began running towards him in their strange, lumbering gait, blaster arms extending towards him. Theron ignited his lightsaber and flicked the safety on his blaster, making sure it was off.
As far as useful Force skills went, there were two areas Theron was unusually weak in: the first was telekinesis, but that was made up for by his skill at enhancing his physical abilities with the Force. The other was harder to compensate for: he was horrible at entering the state Jedi used to predict their opponent's next move, making him piss-poor at deflecting blaster bolts without devoting all of his attention to it. So, rather than waiting for the heavy droids to open fire, he charged, firing a half dozen shots into one of their sunken processing units. The shot droid toppled, sparks flying from the hole in its armor, and he closed enough on the other that it couldn't bring its arm to bear on the Jedi, allowing him to lop it off at the elbow before delivering a strike to its knee joints that dropped it on its front. While not destroyed, it was definitely out of the fight without legs or weapons. He turned back towards the cannon, seeing a group of perhaps four dozen battle droids forming up between it and him, blasters coming to bear on him. Theron broke into a sprint, charging at the line of droids. They immediately opened fire, a sea of scarlet energy filling the air between them. He poured on the speed, slipping into a near-meditative trance as he called on the Force to push his muscles far beyond their normal ability to endure.
It seemed that the droid's photoreceptors couldn't even track him properly, as their shots began to be more and more wild until he was among them. His speed was such that their one-track minds at first didn't realize he had gotten in among them, and they continued to fire, maybe five or six droids being taken out of the fight by friendly fire before the droids caught on. He once again slipped into the rhythms of Ataru, leaping, spinning, rolling, and dodging around as the droids began to fire more carefully, their linked systems allowing them to aim around each other for the most part. Occasionally one of his dodges would result in a bolt taking down another droid, but the majority fell to the blasts of his DE-10 or strikes from his saber. By the time he finished, his armor had collected several more singes, as had his robes. He had been forced to ditch the cloak he had worn over his armor after repeated blaster shots had set it on fire, but he had managed to destroy them all. In the end it worked in his favor, as all those blasters together made on hell of an explosion when you overloaded their power packs.
Theron had the blasters piled at the base of the gun, just in case someone got funny ideas about remanning the gun. He strode away as the gun detonated, following the trail of smoke from the crashed fighter. The column of smoke came from an outcropping of rock beneath the destroyed AA guns, easily reached by a quick Force leap from the top of the hill. Theron landed next to the downed fighter as the cockpit canopy blew off, and a figure dragged itself slowly and painfully out of the ship. "Nice flying," Theron called. "Too bad you crashed. Oh, and nearly smashed me against the KRIFFING rock face!" His tone had become mocking after the initial compliment, and the pilot straightened up and glared back at him.
"I'm sorry, but this pilot just busted his ass taking out a whole battery of AA units. And who in the nine Corellian Hells might you be? Geonosis is no place for a smuggler," the figure grunted as he ignited two deep green lightsabers.
Theron snapped his own saber to life, the yellow light contrasting sharply with the green of the pilot's sabers. "Y'know, getting called a saber jockey I can handle. Mercenary doesn't bother me, it's how most of my people make a living. But a shabla smuggler?! Na jur'kadir sha Mando'ade, mir'shebs," he growled. Don't screw with Mandalorians, shit for brains. Then he charged, sweeping his saber through the tight, controlled strikes characteristic of Makashi, a sharp contrast to his other Ataru fighting style.
The pilot flipped and twisted out of the way of Theron's blade, blocking it with one of his own and landing behind him. "Mandalorian huh? There aren't many of your kind in the Order, so if you don't mind my asking, oh Great Adi'ke, how did you come by that lightsaber?" He retorted as he Force pushed Theron away.
"I built it," Theron said, calling on the Force to keep him rooted in place, "though you probably can't say the same, aruettii." he advanced in a line, launching a series of short, probing thrusts in an attempt to bypass the pilot's defenses.
The figure, obviously a practitioner of Jar'Kai, knocked aside each thrust with one blade and counter swiped with the second. This, with a combination of moves clearly taken from Djem So, pushed Theron back and eventually ended with the pilot catching him in a blade lock. "I can assure you Mando, these blades are of my own design. I feel we're dancing around the important question though. Whose side are you on?" He grunted as the two forced each other back and forwards in a test of leverage.
"I'm a kriffing Jedi, shabuir," he said, then spun the locked saber to one side, drawing his pistol with his off hand and shoving it up against the pilot's jaw..
The pilot's eyes widened in surprise, "A blaster? You're either lying, or a Sentinel. I feel confident in the latter, but just in case of the former…" he ended abruptly as Theron felt a surge in the Force around the man, and in a flash the pilot deactivated his first saber moving the hilt out of the blade lock and aiming it at Theron, a move straight out of Tarkata. He then used his second in the same way, except this time flicking his wrist and slicing the blaster in two.
He ended the maneuver by stepping back from Theron, reigniting the first saber until it reached his throat, and using his free hand to sweep away the dust that had collected on his shoulder armor, clearly showing the Jedi Order Crest. "Whatever the case may be, it would be a waste to fight anymore when there is work to be done. Could we possibly finish this after the Droid Factories are destroyed?"
"Fine," Theron growled. "But we are finishing this. I hate having to scrounge up new weapons. Do you know how kriffing hard it is to get a DE-10, much less modded the way I like it?"
"Not a clue my new friend, but you can tell me all about it on the gunship," the pilot said as he activated the com link on his wrist. "Commander Ragnar, this is Kiro. I've cleared the guns and all companies are clear for landing. Any chance you could spare a few squads to shore up a forward push to where the artillery used to be? I could use the assistance."
The grizzled voice of a clone trooper responded over the comm, "This is Ragnar. Good to see you're still alive down there General, and good job taking out the battery. I'll be over with the rest of the Black Racers as soon as we're planetside."
"Acknowledged Commander. I'll see you soon," he said as he ended the transmission, "Shall we?"
Theron had stayed quiet during this conversation, but now snorted loudly. "Planning to ride a gunship out, fighter jock?" he snarked, crossing to a destroyed droid officer and scooping up the RG-4D blaster pistol it had carried. "Only a nidraal pilot would wait for a ride when we can rack up the biggest kill count in the 8th by going for a stroll inside."
"You do have a point. We've got around a half an hour before any reinforcements make it to us, why don't we make the most of it by clearing a path for the clones straight into the droid facility?" he responded.
Theron didn't respond. Instead, he just grinned manically, Force leaped back up to the top of the plateau and the lift that would take them down inside, and disappeared over the lip, blaster ready and saber blazing.