Chapter Three
The next day proved to be uneventful. Vosh's men spread out into the nearby forests and foraged what they could. The planet was teeming with life. They found a plethora of small mammalian life forms inhabiting the surrounding trees and his men reported evidence of even larger animals. Neither the animals they caught nor the nearby water source showed any signs of contamination, so Vosh cleared both for consumption. Several of his troopers turned out to be rather talented cooks. Realistically, he could have moved the first expedition forward, but Vosh decided to let his men have a little R&R after being cooped up on a Star Destroyer for a week. That evening, over a dinner of some sort of roasted animal and local berries, Vosh and his squad leaders planned their first mission to their target coordinates. They would depart shortly after dawn, and Vosh would only take as many troopers as could fit on the 74-Zs and the AT-RTs. That limited the size of his force to fourteen men, himself and thirteen clones. A couple of his subordinates raised concerns about the small size of the party, but Vosh dismissed them. The rest of the platoon could make their way through the forest on foot in less than thirty minutes, and if Vosh desperately needed support, he could summon air support from the fleet that would be on station even sooner. He and his men went to bed well-fed, content, and prepared.
Eight hours later Vosh woke with a start. He knew he had been having a nightmare, but the details of the dream were already fleeing into the soft morning light that filtered through the tent. Vosh laid still for a few moments to collect himself. After a while, he shook off the last vestiges of the dream and got dressed, and stepped out into the sunlight. The party for the first expedition had already gathered—a team each from Aurek and Besh Squads, Doc, and Vosh himself made the twelve that would ride on the speederbikes. The AT-RTs were ridden by Thunder and Lightning, two specially trained Advanced Recon Force troopers. The two ARF troopers shifted uncomfortably and Vosh suspected he knew why. Even so soon into the Empire's rule over the galaxy, it was already trying to shake off the remaining vestiges of the old republic. Part of how it achieved this was by removing the trappings of individuality Republic High Command, and more specifically the Jedi Order, had encouraged the clones to develop throughout the course of the war. Instead of the often-colorful unit and individual markings, each clone now wore identical gleaming white plastoid suits of Phase II clone armor. This included the ARF troopers, who would have much preferred their old, camouflaged armor.
Sixer, a trooper from Besh squad approached Vosh and handed him a small container. Inside was a clump of the local berries covered in fine tan dust. "Crumbled readyrats sprinkled over berries. First thing I've ever eaten that made the blasted things palatable," Sixer said by way of greeting. Vosh nodded and picked a couple of berries out of the clump and popped them in his mouth. They were good; the berries covered up the taste and texture that made the readyrats so repulsive but still allowed him to consume the bar's nutrients. Truly the best of both worlds. "Are the men ready?" Vosh asked with his mouth full. The trooper nodded, "Yes sir. Most of us are ready to figure this thing out and get back to the action." Vosh cast a puzzled look in the clone's direction. "I thought you all would welcome a little peace. I'm quite enjoying the change of scenery." The clone shook his head, "Not us sir. A few rotations with no action and most of us get a little restless. We were bred for battle." As if to punctuate that last point, Sixer slapped a gloved fist against his chest plate. Vosh chuckled slightly. He had to admire the man's spirit even if he didn't quite understand it. But still, he couldn't help but wonder how much of Sixer's conviction was his own and how much had been artificially injected into his biology. The ethics of the republic using an army of what were effectively enslaved beings who had their very genetics edited to better serve their intended purpose wasn't something Vosh liked to think about, and he didn't let himself think about it now.
Vosh gestured for the assembled men to rally around him. "I know we went over the plan last night, but I want to make sure we are all clear. We are going to move to the target coordinates and take a look around. That's it. If we discover a compound or bunker with more than a few rooms, we'll pull out and come back with more troops. And remember we may have beings or droids of unknown origin inside. Only engage if your or another trooper's life is in imminent danger. No heroics, I want this to be a simple scouting mission. In and out. Understood?" A murmur of acknowledgment swept through the assembled troopers." Vosh nodded, "Alright, let's move out."
Vosh and the others split off into pairs, two men to a speeder. Vosh was paired with Doc. "Care to drive sir?" The medic asked as they walked towards their chosen bike. Vosh shook his head; he knew that if he drove there was a substantial chance both of them would be dead before they arrived. Vosh strapped his standard-issue helmet on and grasped Doc's shoulders as the man activated the speeder's repulsorlifts. Looking around to confirm everyone else was mounted, Vosh gave the signal to move out and the group set off slowly. The AT-RTs were in the lead, their metal feet trampling a path that was at least marginally easier for the 74-Zs to follow. The column moved slowly, nowhere near the top speed of the AT-RTs and 74-Zs. But Vosh knew that taking either vehicle through such a dense forest at anywhere near top speed would be suicidal. Lulled into relaxation by the soft rocking of the speederbike as its repulsors compensated for rocks and roots in their path, Vosh settled in to wait.
The change from forest to mountains was abrupt. As the party emerged from the tree line, they found themselves on a stretch of open ground some five hundred meters across. On the other side of the clearing were rock formations— massive, jagged, things. The formation had looked odd and out of place on orbital scans, but up close it was positively unnatural. Although they now looked more like massive rock formations than normal mountains, the mountains evoked images of spikes along the spine of some massive creature. Vosh suppressed a shiver. "Hardly looks natural, does it?" he asked Doc as the clone brought the speeder to a stop some twenty meters from the nearest rock face. "No sir," the man replied. "I've seen, by my count at least, action on ninety-eight separate worlds from Geonosis to Umbara, and I've never seen anything like it." Vosh blinked in surprise as he dismounted from the speeder. He hadn't realized that his quiet, diminutive platoon medic had such a storied service record. The battle of Geonosis, both of them in fact, had been extremely bloody and Umbara was a dark chapter in the war for the republic. A slog across a nightmare shadow world punctuated by the treachery of a Jedi general. Then another thought struck Vosh: if Doc had seen action at the first battle of Geonosis that meant he was one of the original batch of clones grown before the start of the war. He turned to ask the man, but Doc had already wandered off to check on the other troopers as they dismounted.
Vosh reigned in his curiosities and turned to the rock face. Absolutely nothing. No matter where he looked, he saw nothing but perfectly normal looking rock. Vosh ordered the men to fan out and search for two hundred meters in either direction. The story was the same. None of them could find anything to indicate this was anything more than a natural rock formation. Brow furrowed in confusion, Vosh retrieved his commlink, linked it through the main comm station back at camp, and keyed the mic. "Shore party to Dauntless." A distinctly tired voice came back a moment later. "Go ahead shore party." Vosh didn't recognize the voice. It wasn't the captain; more likely it was a junior bridge officer who had pulled the unenviable third duty shift. "Can you confirm the shore party's target coordinates as —" Vosh read off his coordinates from his datapad. For a moment all he heard were the subtle noises of the bridge officer keying commands into his console. "Confirmed shore party," he said after a moment. "Let me guess, nothing there?" Vosh chuckled, "You guessed it Dauntless. We'll begin a ground search." "Copy that sir," the officer replied. "I'll advise the captain. If you need us, you know where to find us. Good luck down there, Dauntless out."
"All right people, scanners out. Let's see if we can find anything in this rock." The group retrieved hand-held scanners and other tools from saddlebags strapped to the speeder bikes and fanned out along the rock face in pairs. As the men spread out, Vosh approached the rock face. The surface was relatively smooth with no obvious handholds or concealed handles. It was normal—the same weathered grey as the average rock on many planets the galaxy over. Without consciously realizing he was doing it, Vosh pressed his hand to the hard surface. It was warm, already beginning to soak up heat from the morning sun. But there was something more. Past the heat Vosh could feel a subtle hum. It wasn't the thrumming of machinery that could be felt if one pressed a hand against any bulkhead on a starship; this was something more. It felt urgent, like someone or something inside the rocks knew he was there and wanted him to find them. Vosh pulled away and stepped back. His head suddenly throbbed with the now accelerated pace of his heart. Fatigued, he closed his eyes and reached up to rub his temples. Then he realized he could still see the rocks. He could see them in his mind's eye, but in a way he couldn't. The face had become translucent. A few meters to his left a patch glowed a soft amber. Vosh focused on the glow and the hum began again. This time in his mind. As he focused the hum got louder, increased in its urgency. Something in the rock was calling to him. It got louder and louder, reaching a fevered pitch. Louder and louder until it sounded like a million insects buzzed in his mind, louder until…
Vosh gasped. His eyes flew open, and he gulped down air like a man who had almost drowned. He knew where the entrance was. He didn't know how he knew, but he knew. Vosh cast a furtive glance around to see if anyone had witnessed his outburst. It appeared no one had, but Vosh sighted Sixer and his partner, a trooper named Comet, turning to begin another sweep that would take them past the entrance. Their scanners wouldn't detect it; he knew that for certain. Vosh moved to intercept the pair. "Sixer do you have det-cord?" Sixer nodded, unhooking the spool of ribbon-shaped explosive from his belt. "I need some here." As he spoke, Vosh outlined the entrance with his finger. Sixer and Comet looked at each other. "Sir," he started slowly, "we've passed by here three times now. The scanners indicate nothing." Vosh nodded hurriedly, almost manically. "I know, I have a hunch, just trust me." The clones looked at one another, shrugged, and set to work laying a frame of explosive around where Vosh had gestured. When Sixer had connected one end of the ribbon to his remote detonator the three moved to a respectful ten meters distance and Vosh gave the clone the nod to detonate. The detonation traveled along the cord almost instantaneously, the length of the ribbon burning through the rock to whatever lay beneath before exploding with a loud pop. For a moment nothing happened. Then slowly, ponderously, a chunk of rock pitched forward from the face and crashed to the ground.
The rock shattered on impact and kicked up a cloud of dust. Vosh pushed his way through, fanning the dust away from his face and coughing. Before him, in the hole the detonation had cleared, he could see the dull gray of durasteel. His superiors had been right. There was something at these coordinates, and Vosh and his men had just uncovered it. Vosh knelt to inspect the uncovered structure. It wasn't buried far, perhaps ten centimeters. Vosh turned to call for more det-cord only to find Sixer was already there, inspecting the jagged edges of the hole. After a moment he wedged his armored hands between the rock and durasteel and pulled. The rock moved. Sixer paused for a moment then looked down at Vosh confirming what Vosh himself had only just realized. "It's a facade, sir." Sixer grabbed an edge with both hands and pulled. A half-meter chunk split clean from the face and came with him. Vosh didn't need to summon the rest of the party; the explosion had already done that. Two minutes later the façade had been removed. The door itself was unremarkable—tall and wide enough for a single average-sized man to pass through at a time. Wholly unremarkable except for the fact that it couldn't possibly have been here. Here buried beneath an unremarkable rock face on a very remarkable hidden world in the Unknown Regions.
What interested Vosh was what surrounded the door. A half-meter-wide frame surrounded the door itself and carved into this metal were what appeared to be runes. Vosh wasn't a linguist by any means, but he had received some basic training in the officer's academy, and he knew that runic languages were exceedingly rare in the known galaxy. Most of the major species had given up runic languages over twenty thousand years ago, eschewing them for either the Galactic Basic or Aurabesh alphabets. This structure, whatever it was, was either constructed by an as-yet-unknown species or it was almost unimaginably ancient. "I don't suppose any of you study linguistics in your spare time?" Vosh asked sarcastically. A small chuckle swept around the crowd as several troopers shook their heads. Doc stood separate from the rest of the group, splitting his time between peering at the runes and the datapad in his hand. "We'd need a translator droid, sir. That or we get images and start running them through the database on the destroyer, but even then there's no guarantee we'd get a match." Vosh nodded; without a lot more time and a lot more dedicated scientific hardware the chances of them ever translating the runes were slim to none. "Well luckily for everyone, I speak a universal language!" Sixer spoke up from the front rank of assembled clones. "Oh yeah, and what would that be trooper?" Sixer removed his det-charge from his belt with a sly grin. "Explosives."
Vosh pulled the party, along with their speeders and walkers, back fifty meters distance from the door. They arrayed themselves in a loose semicircle centered around the entrance. Several of the troopers had their rifles trained on the door. "When this blows, I want a standard sweep and clear pattern!" Vosh called, crouched behind one of the 74-Zs, his own blaster pistol in hand. "And blasters on stun! Whoever's in there we want them alive!" He looked around to confirm that his men understood before flicking the selector switch on his own weapon. He turned to Sixer. "Hit it." Vosh couldn't see it, but he had no doubt the trooper had an ear-to-ear grin as he raised the detonator. "Knock, knock."
The shockwave of the blast swept past them the barest fraction of a second before the clap of the explosion sounded and then another fraction of a second after that the heat washed over them. Vosh rose from his crouch into a shooter's stance, pistol trained on the door. Most of his men were already moving as the dust cleared. But the door was still standing. The leader of the first entry team brought his fellows to a halt with a raised fist. Everything stood still for a moment. Vosh relaxed his stance and turned to Sixer; the man had removed his helmet and looked utterly dumbfounded. "Sir I put enough explosives there to buckle the hull on a cruiser. Anymore and I would have brought the kriffing mountain down." Vosh nodded as he stepped out from behind the speeder. As he strode towards the miraculously intact door, a portion of his mind idly noted that he had never heard a clone curse before. Sixer knew as well as Vosh did that the amount of explosives he had placed would have been sufficient to blow open the doors of the Emperor's Palace on Imperial Center. It should have cut through this door like it wasn't even there. "Do we have any heavier explosives?" Vosh asked as he reached the entrance. "No sir," Sixer replied as Vosh knelt to inspect the blast marks. "Anything larger we'll have to bring down from orbit." Sixer reached up with an armored hand and rapped his knuckles against the center of the blast mark. Some charred flakes of durasteel floated down to earth, but the door held. "Nothing's ever easy," Vosh commented, rising to his feet. Sixer nodded, "No sir, but I'm used to explosives making them easier." Vosh cast a sympathetic glance at the trooper. "Alright, we'll scan and record everything we can from out here. If you don't have a scanner, fan out and look around the rocks and the tree line. See if we can find any evidence of who built this thing." The party slowly scattered just as it had when they first arrived barely twenty minutes ago. Vosh watched them go for a moment then turned and idly reached up and brushed his hand against one of the runes.
Vosh's mind exploded. Fear, no not fear, terror, rushed forth from the depths of his subconscious. Traumatic memories and nightmares and fears long repressed by his mind sprang forth seemingly in front of his eyes. In an instant, Vosh passed beyond fear, beyond terror, beyond his training, beyond even his instinctual fight or flight response. In that instant, Vosh was utterly certain he was going to die. He drew his blaster, but his trembling grip couldn't bring it on target. "Help!" The shriek was shrill with terror, a sound that no living being should have ever been able to make. He stumbled over a rock and fell back. He never tried to get up and run, only scrabbled backward, eyes darting between the unimaginable horrors that only he could see. He wasn't cognizant of a pair of armored arms grabbing his shoulders. "Lieutenant! Lieutenant!" The figure above him dropped down, letting his weight pin the struggling officer. "Lieutenant!" For a moment Vosh didn't recognize the face reflected in the man's helmet. It was feral, its eyes wide with a fear man hadn't known since his days huddled around campfires in caves. Then Vosh realized that was his face. And that realization gave his mind just enough room to stop reeling and to start scrabbling for purchase. Then the man above him turned his head and Vosh's mind descended again. "My medpack! Upper compartment, right section, third pouch from the left. It's a sedative, bring it to me! Quickly!" Had the troopers taken any longer, Vosh would have gone insane. As it stood, he was able to remain balanced on a precipice; on one side the solid, stable, ground of reality, and on the other an infinite void of madness populated by the nameless horrors of the darkest parts of his mind. Another man rushed into Vosh's vision. This one holding an injector. The man sitting on top of him took the injector, popped the cap, pressed it against Vosh's neck, and triggered it. Vosh didn't feel the sting in his madness. But he did feel the drug's effects. His vision darkened, and he fell. Fell for a long time down a long tunnel until finally a sweet merciful darkness claimed Rolim Vosh.