A/N: Sorry 4 the long wait for these chapters, i just moved to New York, took me a while to settle in. But rest assured, a lot more is coming! Enjoy!
Chapter 4
"Mount up boys!" Ed ordered as he pulled himself into the saddle. He had ridden a horse before, while on leave with Tex before Earth was captured and again on the holodeck en route to Apache. He was wearing desert camo gear with a pack and his gear in the saddle bag of his horse. The horse was an Arabian mare, and was a well trained magnificent creature. Ed patted it's neck as he settled. Then he looked at the others.
Of all of his team, only McCoy had more experience on a horse than he, and that was obvious as everybody else struggled to mount their steeds.
Jocelyn McCoy was indeed well experienced with horses. After all, she was from the south, and her family was very old fashioned, at the insistence of her great-grandfather, the original Doctor Leonard "Bones" McCoy, late of Starfleet Medical and the first starship Enterprise. She had known him throughout her childhood as a frail, yet still vibrant, old man. He had encouraged her to enter Starfleet medicine, but had died before he could see it happen. Many mourned his passing, and his funeral had many famous attendees, such as Ambassadors Picard and Spock, Captain Scott, and many, many others whom McCoy had known throughout his long life.
As it turned out, his passing had been what finally moved her to apply to the academy, and she was sponsored by, of all people, Ambassador Spock. So she had joined Starfleet and trained as a Doctor. When the war began soon thereafter, though, Jocelyn trained also to be a soldier, and she discovered that she was a crackshot with a blaster pistol. It was then that she decided to become a battlefield medic. Having already become a full Doctor before joining the MACOs, she was a senior battlefield medic. And when the first leader of the elite Shark squad died from injuries that could have been treated by a medic, the squads next leader requested a medic be added to her team, and "Bones" McCoy was that medic.
She and the original Shark squad had survived countless missions together, due much to her inclusion. However, it did not last forever.
Only a short time ago, Shark squad had been given another impossible mission- one that most of them would not return from. They had been sent alone to investigate rumors of activity on the abandoned, yet still dangerous, Geonosis, sight of the battle that began the Echo Galaxy's Clone Wars. The rumors had proved true when the MACOs discovered that the Borg had assimilated the entire Geonosian population, and was using it's droid factories to build a new form of combat droid, one that was nearly invincible, and that would be used to utterly destroy the Alliance ground forces.
Shark squad had reported in, and requested back-up. They had been granted their request, but had also been ordered to stop the construction of the droids. To do this, they had to battle twenty of the droids in addition to four Dark Drones that guarded the facility. Most of the team had been wiped out, but they had succeeded. Of the two that survived, only McCoy remained with the squad. The other had been honorably discharged by the Doctors when he displayed strong signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Now, though, they were in a completely different situation, Bones decided. For one, there were two teams, not one; and for another, the enemy force did not have any of the advanced combat droids, as they had killed the twenty and the Alliance forces had bombed the factory out of existence.
She looked around, and smiled as she saw most of them having trouble mounting the tall Arabians. Only Major Skirata and Colonel Carroll had mounted without trouble, followed by Jaina, who quickly adjusted to the horse, calming it with the force while she got on. Soran also quickly adapted to the Stallion he chose, and soon mounted it as if he had ridden a horse a million times before.
Of them all, Trapper seemed to have the most trouble, and McCoy could not restrain her laughter as Trapper finally got on the horse…backwards. Talon Karrde roared with laughter from the equipment sled, and even Trapper himself could not avoid an embarrassed grin. Of them all, only Soran and Serek did not laugh.
"I think there's something wrong with this horse sir," Trapper said, taking advantage of the situation. "He aint got a head!"
"Well, then you have something in common," Ed replied. "Neither of you has a brain!"
Again everybody laughed, and even Soran raised an eyebrow. Only Serek didn't seem to react, as he also finally mounted his horse. McCoy seemed to be the only one to notice this, and resolved to ask the Alderaanian about it.
Eventually, Trapper got himself turned around, and they were ready to depart. By now, as they had planned, it was dark, and they could leave stealthily, unobserved by the Imperials who still camped within two miles of the Outpost. The MACOs departed, following their guide, a native who had introduces himself as John Cochise. Without even saying a word, Cochise had taken the lead, and had set a pace towards what appeared to be the middle of nowhere.
After a while, as they all were tiring, the guide finally stopped.
"We'll camp here," he said as he dismounted.
"It's about time!" Trapper complained jokingly. "My rear end's sorer than a Ferengi on a planet that doesn't use money!"
"Well then, stop complaining about it and get off!" Gunny insisted, himself dismounting.
"Roll out the tents guys and gals, it's gonna be a short night!" McCoy said. She pulled her tent role and sleeping bag off of the sled, and began setting it up. It wasn't the most advanced technology, but, as her great grandfather always said, 'the less advanced the technology, the less the chance of it breaking down.'
As she rolled out her tent, she noticed that the others all had standard issue basic Starfleet-issue survival tents, except for Cochise, who, like her, had an old fashioned pole tent.
Cochise finished his tent first, and immediately entered it, going right to bed. Soran finished next, as he had discovered the most efficient method of building a tent long ago. The others soon followed, and they were all soon asleep. Before she went to bed, though, she noticed Jaina Solo and Colonel Carroll kissing one another before they went to bed in their own tents.
Solo and Carroll? She thought incredulously. Oh well, stranger things have happened. But she resolved to get the story behind it tomorrow.
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Gunny awoke to the smell of fresh coffee and food. He crawled out of his tent, and saw Cochise, Ed, and Soran sitting around the fire drinking coffee and eating biscuits.
"Are you all up early, or am I up late?" he asked as he moved to join them.
"We woke up an hour ago," Ed replied. "I couldn't sleep, Vulcans don't need to sleep, and Cochise says he always gets up early. Coffee?
"Sure," Gunny replied. Ed poured him a cup of black coffee from the metal pot that had sat on a grate over the fire. Gunny took a sip, expecting Starfleet ration coffee, but was presently surprised to discover that it was not. "Is this real coffee?"
"Straight from the fields at Earth," came a voice from behind him. It was Talon Karrde. "Last stuff left in the sector. Bought it off a neutral merchant who visited Earth a few months back, and didn't realize the value of what he had."
"Did he give you any news about Earth?" Gunny asked, curious about the fate of his birth-parents home planet.
"Nothing more than what you hear on the news every day," Karrde replied. "The people oppressed, overtaxing and assimilation or imprisonment to any who can't pay, and…rumors."
"What sort of rumors?" Ed wanted to know.
"Rumors of a growing resistance movement," Karrde replied. This caught the attention of Cochise.
"A resistance on Earth?" he inquired.
"That's right," Karrde confirmed. "They're very secretive, and their existence is unconfirmed, but rumor has it that they're planning a major raid on the Occupation forces soon."
"That's interesting, if you can believe it," Cochise observed.
"You can believe it all right," came the voice of Jaina from behind them. "What I'm about to tell you is highly classified, and can't go beyond us. I talked to Dad recently. He and Chewie went to Earth in disguise a while ago, and they found the resistance."
"So it is real!" Ed exclaimed. "Way to go Earthers!"
"Yes, it's real," Jaina confirmed once again. "But it's not very large, or well equipped. It started out as many small resistance cells, and, for the most part, it still is. Dad found the Las Angeles resistance first. From there, he found the Denver, Fort Worth, and Dallas cells, which were also large, and brought them all together, along with groups from around the planet. They formed and organized an attack on the Occupation capital in San Francisco, but that fell through when the Occupation somehow found out about it and moved to Rome."
"Why didn't they go to Paris, where the Presidium was?" Cochise asked, referring to where the President of the Federation was formerly based.
"You haven't heard?" Gunny exclaimed. "One of the first things they did after Earth surrendered was to level Paris in an orbital bombardment as a warning to all of Earth."
"I'm sorry, I wasn't aware of that," Cochise said. "It's hard to keep track of the news when the only way to communicate with the outside is through the Outpost, and even that has been jammed now."
"You were saying?" Ed interrupted. "About Frisco? Will they hit Rome now?"
"I doubt it," Jaina replied. "They do have a plan though. I'm not sure what it is, but they have a plan."
"Who has a plan?" Trapper asked as he sleepily exited his tent. "And do I smell caff?"
"Better," Karrde replied, holding a cup out to Trapper. "It's Coffee, straight from Earth. Here you go."
"We were talking about the Resistance on Earth," Gunny told him. "And…"
"SHH!" Cochise interrupted, gripping his phaser pistol tightly. He listened for a moment, and then, without warning, he and Soran both leapt at a dark sphere that was hovering behind one of the tents. Cochise fired a shot into it, and it fell to the ground. Soran picked it up and looked at it briefly.
"It is an Imperial Probe Droid, one of the new Seekers," he declared. "It has been watching us for only a short time, and did not hear our conversation. However, it is likely that the Empire knows we are out here, and will in all probability send a squad after us."
"Then we'd better split," Ed acknowledged. "Trap, go wake the others up, the rest of us will start packing."