Note: This happens right after the previous one, and while it is a data dump, it does also work as a background for Theta Squad.
The hum of the engines signaled the five armored forms to let out a barely contained breath.
Theta squad was not a standard Clone Commando pod for various reasons.
The first is that they formed the squad on their own from the remains of a half dozen pods after a horrifically failed mission.
Kren, a world they spent four years on, was a disaster for them.
A traitor let the seps know they were coming and their insertion ended up with three transports being shot down across the planet with seven survivors from the commandos and a single clone pilot.
They'd hidden their fallen brothers and stockpiled the equipment they carried.
Alec Thorne joined them there, he'd been a Jedi once, or rather a youngling shipped off to the medcorp before the war broke out and the seps took the planet only a week after Geonosis.
He'd left the hospital there and never looked back.
At first he was loyal to the Republic, but never to the Jedi.
He'd found them hiding out and decided to help.
When the hospital was bombed, he started helping more than just patching them up.
When two more of the commandos died during a mission they planet to take out the hyperdrive construction facility, the others decided to give him one of the stored sets of armor since his identity was discovered by the CIS forces.
Eventually, they'd created a plan to escape the planet, taking out the communications systems of the world before hijacking a light freighter in the process, but losing another commando on the way out.
Four years on the planet and five clones survived them.
They'd decided on Theta for their name from the only Pod to be completely wiped out during their insertion, a tribute to the fallen.
They'd managed to obtain a transmission of a Republic attack on Utapau and chose it as their course.
That was an hour before Order 66.
They arrived after the remaining Star Destroyer was purged of "traitors" and agreed with Rex's views.
Ryloth was their first actual chance to complete a mission since the disaster that left them behind.
Four commandos and someone they viewed as if he were one of them from the beginning.
Alec had landed the Memory of Kren, the same HWK-290 transport they hijacked to escape the planet they'd fought on for years and prepared for the other four to infiltrate the city before suiting up in the armor he'd claimed so long ago and positioned himself to cover them.
A running blaster battle through a twi'lek city was harrowing, but doable as they hijacked a load lifter to steal the shipment of stormtrooper armor the local garrison had been sent.
It was the star destroyers arrival in orbit that let them slip out and into the freighter to make the run for orbit without pursuit.