Chapter 4

We rode through the rest of the day and by nightfall, we were exhausted. "C'mon, guys," I yelled over the roar of the repulsors, "The navigation computers will still be programmed to the same coordiantes in the morning. We need our rest." We set down in a small valley, hoping that is was low enough that our bikes wouldn't be spotted by enemy scouts looking for us. The night was cold and cloudy. Fortunately, our armor kept us from being affected by too much of the cold, but we could still feel the hard air's bite against the lighter parts of our uniforms where our armor didn't fully cover us. We didn't start a fire as a precaution against the smoke giving away our location, and the cloud cover obscured our few of the stars. The complete and total darkness was slightly unsettling. Random noises came from all around us, including the soft rumble of explosions coming from the far-off battle. These didn't usually affect us (after years of fighting, there was hardly anything that could distract us from well-needed sleep. You never knew when you would get another chance), but there was something odd about the constant, almost muffled sound of crunching snow and ice. It was almost like footsteps. It WAS footsteps. I turned on my helmet's night-vision setting and slowly got to my feet. It looked like Zan and Alex heard the noise, too, and they started to do the same. We slowly rose to our feet and abandoned our make-shift camp as quietly as possible, circling around the source of the noise. It was approaching the camp, not knowing that it's ambush had been backfired. As soon as it reached the spot where, not five minutes ago, I was lying down, we all realized what our intruder was. It was a clone. In standard issue Delta armor.

"02!" exclaimed Zan.

Startled, Matt whipped around and brought his blaster to face Zan. Then, realizing who it was, lowered his weapon and laughed, relieved. The reunion was joyous, but short-lived. After a few pats on the back and some more relieved laughter, Matt told us his story. Apparently, he had found some sort of CIS base, but they pinned him down and were looking for him as we spoke. They jammed his long-range communications, which is why he couldn't relay his location to us. That's when I noticed something strange.

"Matt, what happened to your Scout armor?"

He was wearing what looked like a compilation of Scout standard armor, unpainted Commando armor, and droid armor...all smothered in oil and grease.

"Well, the droid armor was more useful for covering my exposed body parts than this lightweight sniper stuff, so I salvaged some from the droids I broke. But, the story behind the Commando armor is a bit of a tragedy."

He led us over to a spot not far from where we were. It looked like a make-shift grave. Next to the grave, were three piles of Republic Commando armor that were missing certain parts that Matt was using.

"I whipped the grave up when I found the bodies and the droids had lost my trail. Apparently, they were the ones who sent a warning to the Republic, which is why we're here now. It looks like that warning cost them."

The four of us stood there in silence for a while. Then Zan looked at me.

"Well," he said quietly, "no need letting their loss be in vain. Let's go, we have work to do."

Zan turned toward where Matt said the CIS base was, but Matt grabbed his shoulder.

"Wait, there's also no need letting this armor go to waste."

"He's right," I said, "This armor isn't going to protect us from an onslaught of battle droids. We need to prepare. We need rest. I know we want to get off of here as soon as possible, but I'd rather it not be in a body bag."

So we took the armor and rigged it to fit our Scout armor (Boy, was it MUCH heavier than the sniper armor that we were accustomed to, but we managed to walk in it. We kept our own helmets for the sake of keeping comms simple as none of us wanted to reprogram our ID tags into the Commando helmets. Then, we rested for the night. I was on first watch. Nothing happened. I'm assuming nothing happened during Zan and Alex's watches, since I wasn't awakened in the middle of the night by blaster fire. We decided to let Matt sleep through the night without a watch, because he obviously didn't get much sleep during his days of isolation.

In the morning we packed our things and formulated a plan. Matt had scouted out the exterior of the base, but he didn't know much about the interior, or why the hell a CIS base was in the middle of nowhere on Mygeeto so far away from the main battle. Or how the tank knew where we were. All of which was necessary information. We were about to put our stealthy little Scout plan into action, when all of a sudden we heard the sound of distant repulsors.

"Oh, God, not more Lancers," I muttered.

"No, the sound is too deep for speeder bikes." replied Alex as we were both looking out into the cold void toward the sound.

Whatever it was, it was getting louder, and closer. The wind-blown snow was still hindering our vision too much to see anything farther than a few meters. Zan was the first to figure it out.

"REPUBLIC GUNSHIPS!" yelled Zan over the ever-closing roar.

On my HUD in my helmet, I noticed Manny and Rex had come back within range. I have no idea how they found us so quickly, but God, was I grateful. One of the LAAT gunships dropped down close to us. The others just kept zooming past towards the unseen CIS base. Rex and Manny jumped off the gunship, then it took off to join the others. Our Scouts were fully reunited once again.

"HOO-AH, everyone! Long time no see!" said Manny.

After another short-lived, joyous reunion filled with laughter and back-pats, we filled Rex and Manny in about our half, and they filled us in about theirs. Apparently, the other Deltas on the Mygeetian frontlines encountered the same modified AATs we did, and when Rex and Manny showed up and briefed them on our situation, they were more than happy to give us some backup and create a new frontline closer to the CIS base. Apparently the tactic worked, since the other line was retreating towards the CIS base. So now our stealthy plan was thrown out the window, since apparently the CIS knew an attack was coming at their not-so-secret base.

"But, we're not off this rock, yet," said Rex at the end of their story.

Manny finished for him, "They want us to infiltrate the inside of the base while the attack is going on outside the base. They want us to figure out what the base is there for and to see if we can take it down before too many clones are killed."

It looked like we had quite a job on our hands. But I was ready. After facing a tank head on, jousting with a few lancer droids, and putting on some Commando armor, I was ready for anything those droids could throw at us.