Orian rushed to the side of the captain of the Firestorm, who had fallen unconscious. Daxius's face had turned extremely pale as he laid on the bridge, unmoving.
'Think, Orian, think!' Orian couldn't move the captain on her own, not all the way back to the ship, and even if she could the others were hardly in better shape. Turning her head to look over her shoulder, she spotted Piotr slowly heaving himself to his feet. The Besalisk gasped suddenly and clutched at his chest with one of his four arms, but downplayed it when he found Orian watching.
"Nothing like some broken ribs to help remember a battle, eh?" called Piotr over the sound of the surging rainfall. Piotr stood to his feet and looked around. "We got the dust kicked out of us! Lucky the captain saved the day and all... Hey are you all right there?" he called to a figure crawling up over the side of the bridge.
ARC-KL-335 hauled himself onto the bridge, assisted by Orian. "I'll survive," he replied through his dark-visored helmet. The blue striped clone trooper peeled off a glove and went to check the vitals of the other crewmembers, managing to revive the little green Whill Yiddles.
"Eurgh... pain there is..." he groaned, a small hand reaching up to his forehead, coming back slightly bloody.
Orian checked her Negotiations Droid HK-7 for any damage; for the most part it seemed that HK could be restarted after she fixed the circuit breaker, which had prevented any further damage. Looking up at the flashes that had suddenly filled the sky, she recognised it as blaster fire in the far distance, towards the central hub of Tipoca City.
"The Separatists have invaded Kamino full force. I must regroup whatever remains of my squadron and report back." stated KL-335. With that the crew got ready to head back to their ship; Piotr carried in his arms the captain, HK and Walush, whilst Orian and Yiddles flanked him. KL-335 led the front.
"I will escort you back to your ship, and on the way find my brothers," he told them, and they were led back into the building, down the winding corridor, until they reached the security bunker, where T3-S6 waited. The clone patched in to a terminal on the wall, and a hologram of the immediate area sprung out into the centre of the room. KL-335 surveyed it grimly.
"Most of my squadron has been killed in action, but the East and West districts are under Republic control. We've neutralised the Southern entrance; your ship is to the north, here." KL-335 indicated the Firestorm. "It seems ARC-HR-113 is still fighting up there; I'll bring you to him, then I must go back east and take my fighter to the sky."
Orian nodded at this, but was troubled. "How will we escape when there are probably squadrons upon squadrons of droid fighters up there? We can't manoeuvre thorough that without Walush awake!"
"I'll secure your exit on my way up," promised KL-335. They moved swiftly towards the northern platform where the Firestorm stood, through the gleaming white corridors, T#-S6 following. Two turns later, they heard sounds of battle, and stepped into a room where the walls were scorched and several dead clone pilots lay on the floor. A lone ARC Trooper held the gate to the platform.
"About time, Achilles!" called HR-113 to KL-335. "I was beginning to think you wouldn't make it!" KL-335 grinned at the use of his 'name'; personally he found a designation to be more sensible.
"'Lek, well I'm sorry to disappoint you, vod." KL-335 noticed HR-113's weapon and indicated it with a nod of his head. "Is that one of the prototype ARC casters? How's it hold up?"
"Terrible! This thing's a deathtrap; CM-002 had one nearly electrocute himself when he left it charged too long! Managed to overload it when we were overswarmed with Supers and took out over a dozen of them, killing himself in the process." HR-113 shook his head in frustration. "I'd like to know why they don't stock any DC-17 rifles here! I don't see why the Commando Troopers have priority over ARC's; we do by ourselves the job they need four to do!"
"Politics; Ori'buyce, kih'kovid. They're afraid we'll go rogue!" Achilles and HR-113 barked out a laugh at this. KL-335 turned to HR-113 and gestured to the exit leading to the landing platform where the Firestorm was located. "Any hostiles left?"
HR-113 nodded seriously. "I estimate up to a dozen hiding behind cargo boxes in front of the west bridge. I was going to go around across that part of the corridor that was blasted away when we came in and ambush those Seps, but my jetpack got damaged. You want to do the honours?"
Achilles mentally viewed the layout of the current area, and after a moment made up his mind. "Trade weapons with me; you lead these civilians back to their ship and distract them, I'll fry those droids from behind!"
The two ARC Troopers punched their fists together, and KL-335 sprinted away to circle around. HR-113 gathered the Firestorm crew and gave them their instructions.
"You must walk in single file behind me at all times. I will fire off blasts to distract the enemy as we slowly move down the bridge to your ship. In the case of a grenade thrown, do not scatter! At this close range, the grenades will have a few seconds before they detonate; the nearest will toss it over the side of the bridge, and the rest of us will duck down to avoid most of the concussive force. Close your eyes to avoid any disorientation; I can keep watch by using the polarisation filter in my visor. Nobody try to be the hero; this operation is for survival! Are we all clear?"
Everybody nodded their approval. A few moments later, HR-113's comlink crackled with the voice of KL-335.
"--in position. Gettin--...--ttack on my command."
HR-113 shook his head in exasperation over the poor signal. Pressing a tab on the side of his helmet, HR-113 switched on his nightvision and waved everybody into formation.
Achilles meanwhile leaned against the wall behind him and peered out around the corner. Sure enough, not 50 yards away was a small group of battle droids, 3 of them Super's. Achilles started charging up the ARC caster, sent a signal through the comlink, then, taking a deep breath, dashed out from around the corner towards the droids.
There was a large section of the corridor missing from the earlier turbolaser fire he and his brothers had so narrowly avoided. Achilles pelted his way across the last few feet and then leapt as far as his legs would carry him, trying to gain every last ounce of horizontal velocity he could. As soon as he felt himself begin to fall, he activated his jetpack and with a reassuring throttle of energy the boosters flared to life, alerting the nearest droid who turned his way to search for the sudden energy spike from its sensors. Achilles carefully timed the rest of his flight and killed the jetpack. To the droid it seemed as if a clone trooper had suddenly fallen short of his target and plunged to his watery death.
"B1-0095726, go check it out," crackled the vocabulator of one of the Super battledroids, and the scout droid walked to the lip of the broken corridor, ignoring the unrelenting rain that passed through. Stopping short of the edge, the droid slowly began to lean over.
Achilles pulled upwards and propelled himself up over the rim of the corridor floor by his fingertips, kicked outwards sharply and dented the battle droid's conical head. The droid fell backwards with a mechanical whine as Achilles released his hold on the trigger of the ARC caster, and the corridor was suddenly aswarm with what seemed to be arc after arc of lightning bolts, which ricocheted off the whitewashed walls and struck several droids that keeled over, their chips fried. Achilles unhooked an ion grenade and popped the pin, keeping his thumb on the clutch. Edging forwards, KL-335 prepared to meet the other 7 droids out of the original 12 sighted.
HR-113 received the signal and immediately the team moved out of the storage bunker, out onto the bridge which shortly led to the platform where the FireStorm stood. Almost immediately a burst of blaster fire came in their general direction, and HR-113 fired off a blue blast from his EMP launcher in response. The rest of the crew ducked down and slowly they all traversed the remainder of the bridge. HR-113 motioned for them to get into the ship, and then ran with a battlecry directly towards the enemy droids.
Orian, Piotr and Yiddles quickly scuttled up the ramp into the FireStorm, Piotr setting down the other three crewmembers he carried. T3-S6 came up the ramp soon after and set off for the engine room to directly start up the cruiser. Orian gathered them together and they tried to find the next course of action.
"Okay, how are we going to lift off? Only the captain and Walush can pilot this thing, and they're both unconscious!" said Orian.
"Know I do, the pilot how to wake." said Yiddles. He went over to the unconscious Dug and looked at him for a moment. Then with a resounding thwack! Yiddles slapped Walush into wakefulness. The pilot let loose a string of Huttese curse words and propped himself up.
"What happened?" he asked groggily.
Soon enough Walush was behind the command console of the cruiser and pressing buttons at his usual frantic pace. Yiddles had closed up the ramp, Piotr was working on replacing HK-7's circuitbreaker and Orian had moved the captain into the small medbay.
Achilles dodged blasterfire and dropped the ARC caster, drawing his commando pistol. Taking out the fourth to last droid he saw out of the corner of his visor his brother collapsing. With a cry HR-113 fell to his knees and clutched at himself, a smoking hole gushing blood from his chest. KL-335 flew into a fury as he detonated his last ion grenade and kicked the sniper droid who'd shot his brother off the west bridge, letting it fall to its death. Achilles rushed to his fellow clone, cradling him in his arm as he assessed the damage.
HR-113 coughed, and KL-335 removed his helmet at his request. Pulling his brother close to him, HR-113 uttered his last words.
"I-in water we're born... in fire we die. We... we seed the stars."
Achilles watched his brother's head loll back limply, a strange feeling in his chest making him feel constricted. Laying HR-113 down carefully, Achilles stood up, feeling shaken and numb. Almost mechanically, Achilles marched away, through the corridors he had lived his entire life within, to his fighter ship.
The FireStorm hummed to life, and hovered upwards, its docking legs retracting. Joined by a blue-striped ship, piloted by ARC-KL-335, the two made their way up into the stratosphere and beyond into space.
KL-335 said his goodbye's to the FireStorm crew. "You lot have a good set of heads on your shoulders. Good luck." With that he broke orbit with them and swerved towards the nearest conflict in the massive space battle, soundlessly playing out over the blue world below.
Orian sat with Walush in the pilot deck and they watched as the ARC-Trooper flew away. Plucking at a couple of switches, Walush made ready to leap into hyperspace, when Orian gave a sudden cry.
Motioning towards the direction that Achilles had flown, they saw his ship being chased down by a torpedo. Although Achilles barrel rolled and swerved violently, the torpedo still collided with his ship, and a crackle of energy sparked across the small fighter, its systems overloaded and dead. Orian brought up a viewscreen and focused it on the fighter; she could make out the silhouette of the clone, slumped forward in his seat.
"Walush, get over there and pull him in with our tractor beam!" she commanded, the Dug obediently doing so. Carefully the fighter was pulled into the docking bay, scanners showing the clone within was still alive. Orian hesitated, then turned to Walush again.
"Get us into hyperspace. We make for Tatooine. We stay in this orbit any longer and we're bound to get blown out of the sky."
With a start, a FireStorm's engines began to glow. Ignored by the gargantuan Separatist and Republic destroyers around it, it shot away from the watery world of Kamino, clone in tow, into hyperspace.