CT-1552 – Bothawui
'Dreamer.'
That was what his fellow clones called CT-1552, a reference to his mind's propensity to wander except for in the heat of battle. A name that would be a compliment in any other sector of the galaxy, and it was a sin he was forced to bear.
Many clones had wondered whether he had been in the vat too long, whether his training had been too soft. Such concerns were rendered moot within his first three battles, where he'd excelled past his peers.
When a fateful battle on Kamino claimed the lives of his fellow squad, there were many pondering what do with him, where he was supposed to go. In light of his unique personality but excellent combat skills, he was put on guard duty at the Jedi Temple, possibly the dullest duty that command could find.
Yet he didn't remain there long. During an intrusion in the temple, he helped track down the perpetrator with a knight who decided that he would tag along for missions outside the Jedi Order. Before long, he was back in battle, right where he belonged.
The planet of Bothawui was temperate enough, not the worst battlefield that the clone had been on, but definitely not the best. The incredibly powerful and complex spy network was the specialty of the planet, the intelligence they produced utilized by the commanders back in the Core.
With the planet's proximity to the Outer Rim, that naturally made it a target.
"Looks like we've got a full forty down there with a tank," Jedi Knight Durel said, lowering the binoculars from his face and looking at the clone trooper. "What do you recommend, Dreamer?"
One of the information banks of the Bothans lay ahead of the droid forces, one with valuable intelligence on the Separatists that had been recently uploaded by the little spies. The Republic had yet to send someone with the authority to pick it up, leaving the few Republic forces on the planet in the uncomfortable position of defending it instead of simply bringing it to Coruscant.
"Hard to say," the clone trooper said, staring down the canyon at the clone troops below. "Guerilla warfare's been working well to slow them down, but we can't take on forty and a tank."
"We've got enough Bothans to do it, I believe. Ten should be enough."
"Perhaps, General," he said as the Zabrak stood up next to him. "But I don't know that we can do it without losses."
"You may have a point." He scratched at one of the horns on the crown of his head. "Hm...Would you be able to draw some of them off?"
"Of course, sir. How many would you need?"
"Half of the droids and the tank, and you get the Bothans."
"Deal, General."
Calling the Jedi Knight a general was stretching it, and they both knew it. While he held the rank of general, the Zabrak didn't lead armies or battalions. All he did was run special missions, small operations that could reverse the course of a planetary battle but required only a handful of elite soldiers.
"Alright. There's an intersection about three-hundred meters up. We need to hustle."
The Zabrak took off at a run toward their speeders, and CT-1552 was right behind him. Along the way, a small group of Bothans joined them.
The small furry aliens were a tricky kind, that much Dreamer knew. For all their scheming and trickery, however, they were excellent guerilla fighters. Their size made them difficult targets to hit, and it seemed as if everyone on the planet had been trained with a blaster since they were children. While they would never serve as an effective army, they were absolutely peerless special operatives.
The Jedi Knight had yet to ignite his lightsaber. It was a favorite trick that Dreamer had seen him use time and again, to wait until some of the enemy unit had already broken off before he activated his weapon and drew attention to himself. Every single time, the droids fell for it.
They clambered onto their vehicles and took off through the sparse vegetation above the canyon walls, barreling toward an intersection far ahead. The path wound down, leading them deeper into the canyon as they approached their destination.
"Alright," Dreamer said when they reached the intersection. There was adequate cover, boulders aplenty and brush livened by the streams in the bottom of the canyon. "Operatives, with me."
"Following," one of the Bothans answered in a choppy semblance of Basic.
The diminutive aliens followed the clone trooper down one path while the Jedi took the other. Dreamer didn't set themselves right on the mouth of the path, moving further in to allow them more cover to fall back.
Dreamer heard them before he saw them, the steady clank of the droids' uniform footsteps and the dull rumbling of their tank. He kept his rifle aimed in, the DC-15 steadied on the boulder he knelt behind. The clone waited in tense silence, a familiar deceptive calm before the storm of battle.
He didn't fire when they came into view, waiting for the droids to pause in the middle of the intersection.
"Which way do we go?" one of them asked, turning to his metal comrade.
"The commander should know." They looked up to the tank. "Commander, which way do we go?"
"Forward," a voice said inside the armored vehicle.
"There's a split in the path."
"What?"
No longer amused with his enemies' antics, Dreamer opened fire. The blue bolts of the weapon cut into the unaware droids, who immediately cried out in alarm and spun to face the clone.
One thing that couldn't be said about the droids was that they were slow to react. For all their bumbling personality, they still possessed the processing power to adapt to changing conditions quickly.
But Dreamer wasn't alone. When return fire forced him back down under cover, the red blaster bolts of his enemy carving the air over his head, the Bothans took their turn.
They had hid all over the path, small enough that it was easy for them to find good cover. They opened fire, cutting into the enemy lines. While they weren't quite as accurate as the clone, they still did enough damage in their first salvo that the droids had to step over their fallen brethren to advance.
Dreamer started to move to the next position as the tank rumbled toward them, only to pause when he heard an alarmed cry from his general.
"Ambush!"
"Hold your position!" Dreamer shouted to the Bothans.
Instead of running from the fight, he ran right toward it, pumping his arms for speed and diving behind a boulder in the split. He turned to glance down at the Jedi's path.
Droid destroyers had emerged from behind General Durel, along with another tank. The Jedi was desperately trying to fend off the attack at both sides, his dual-sided lightsaber flashing green with each deflection.
It seemed that instead of springing an ambush, they'd played right into a trap. Whoever was conducting this attack had known they were on the planet and had likely known enough about General Durel to know where he'd be making his stand.
It all spoke to a gnawing sense that Dreamer had, dismissed by his brothers as impossible. There had to be some mole in the government, someone working against them.
For the moment, though, he could do little but try to help the Jedi Knight evade the trap. He kept up his fire on the front lines, even tossing an EMP grenade that wiped out a small handful of droids. The tank was closing on his position, but he had to hope that General Durel would get back in time.
"General!" the clone trooper shouted. "General, over here!"
The Jedi Knight managed to get close, but no amount of gunfire or deflections could change that the general was pinned down at the front and back by tanks and blasters both.
General Durel was hit just before he reached Dreamer, a blaster bolt punching through his upper torso. With a gasp, the Zabrak Jedi toppled, landing right next to Dreamer.
The clone didn't hesitate, dragging the Jedi the rest of the way as the droids attempted to finish the job. He pocketed the general's lightsaber, then heaved the still-breathing general onto his shoulder.
He dearly wished he could've stayed and continued the fight, but the destroyer droids would soon be upon them. In combination with the battle droids and a pair of tanks, there was nothing that he or the ten Bothans could do.
With that in mind, Dreamer pushed off from the boulder, moving as fast as his legs could carry him as he was weighed down by the Jedi.
It was a combination of luck and the Bothans' skill that delivered the clone trooper back behind the boulder he'd originally began the attack from.
While the Bothans had managed to remain unharmed during the battle, partially out of Dreamer's rush to the front, there were more battle droids marching up from behind to block off their escape.
"To the rear!" Dreamer shouted. "We need to escape!"
Of course, he doubted the Bothans would manage it alone. Once the battle droids were in range, they would cut down the alien soldiers as they lay exposed. Then it'd be Dreamer's turn.
He still had an option, one he immediately sought out.
The clone grabbed his speeder, pulling it to him and fishing the detonation charges from his pack. They weren't his first choice, and they were just as likely to collapse the canyon walls as not, but he had no other options.
He looked up at the approaching battle droids and quickly set a ten second timer before turning the speeder around and setting it on autopilot.
The vehicle shot toward the line of droids, who seemed far more interested in the Bothans than the improvised explosive charging toward them. Dreamer heard the grind of the destroyer droids behind them as they rolled toward his position, and he tossed a smoke grenade behind him.
With a detonation that rocked the entire canyon, the battle droids were laid low just as the smoke grenade exploded behind him, screening the dozen Republic troops from view.
"Run!" he shouted.
The Bothans didn't need to be told twice, taking off from their position and to the pile of battle droids that were still attempting to get up. A few of the aliens took a moment to finish off the droids, but most just carried on to escape.
Dreamer was right behind them, his legs and back both screaming from the effort of hauling the limp Jedi. He snagged one of the Bothans' speeders on the way by, the floating vehicle coming with him with little resistance as he ran.
Once he judged them far enough away that they were out of range, the clone set his general down on the back of the speeder.
The Jedi Knight was still breathing, but the bolt had been close enough to his heart that the clone feared permanent damage would set in if he didn't see proper medical attention soon. As he continued to follow the Bothans, Dreamer lifted the comm unit at his wrist to his helmet.
"This is See-Tee-One-Five-Five-Two," he reported. "Republic command, we have a Jedi wounded and Separatist forces bearing down on one of the intelligence databanks. I have enough forces to keep up a defense, but I can't hold unassisted. Please advise."
For a moment, there was no answer. Republic officers were likely scrambling on the other end of the call, trying to figure out the appropriate response to a mission that had gone so awry. Finally, a voice all too familiar answered.
"One-Five-Five-Two, this is Command." The voice belonged to one of his brothers, a clone. "We'll be sending a small transport with supplies and to pick up the general, everyone else is engaged."
The clone trooper didn't begrudge the lack of support. Bothawui was never supposed to be a battleground, and the forces protecting it were sparse. While reinforcements were incoming, the surprise attack had left the Republic slow to respond. General Durel had simply been in the area at the time of the sudden assault, and if it weren't for his strategies, the Separatists would've already managed to infiltrate well over a dozen databanks.
"Roger, Command. Be advised, we have close to sixty battle droids, five destroyer droids, and two tanks bearing down on us. I think I can set up a defensive perimeter at the databank and defend it there if I have the right supplies."
"I'm receiving orders from higher up," Dreamer's fellow clone said. "They want that intel, and the Bothans are authorizing retrieval by any means necessary. That means you, One-Five-Five-Two."
"It'll be done, sir. I can't promise that the databank will be in one piece."
"You have your orders. See that the intel gets back here."
"Roger."
"We fight?"
The question came from one of the Bothans, Corporal Gebb-Tik. The small alien stared up at the clone trooper, fear in his brown eyes as he rubbed at the small beard formed by the fur at the end of his snout.
"Yes," Dreamer said, kneeling down to look at the aliens. "But I have a plan..."