-The Hideout-
Our footsteps echoed from the durasteel grates down the long tunnel that was big enough for a speeder to fit though. Dense moisture was ever present and the air was dank, and thick with a musky sliminess. We traveled down the long corridor of the underground facility until we came to an intersection. I reached out with the Force but wasn't able to gain any sort of direction in either of the other two ways the tunnel split.
"Okay the homing beacon is pointing us that way," Anakin said gesturing to the right. "Let's split up; Ahsoka and I will take the left, you two take the right, just in case we miss something important. I figure we'll find a terminal around here somewhere and snatch a layout."
It seemed simple enough. I checked my comlink to be sure we could contact one another. The group split and Master Otarri and I ventured down the right of the tunnel which eventually emptied us out in a hanger. Separatist ships sat all around on racks and the speeder we tracked rested on the shining grey floor.
"Hey, Master look! The device we saw before is gone," I said to him walking up to the back end of the speeder. The hanger was completely empty so neither of us were too concerned about being spotted yet. We did, however, keep wary eyes on the entrances and exits.
Otarri looked around as if trying to discern where the device could've gone. His gaze rested on a ship that I had never seen the likes of before. It was sleek and deadly looking; it looked fitting for an enemy officer or mercenary. "That's Grievous' ship."
"How many thermal dets do we have again?"
He looked at me with a smile, "Enough."
I followed him over to the strange ship and carefully lowered my pack to the ground on the other side of the cockpit by the engine exhaust. "One on each side?" I said, tossing him one of my thermal explosives.
"That should do."
I slipped my det into the exhaust folds, hidden from view. My pack replaced, and the dets set and primed, we jogged to an exit and prepared to enter when the silence was shattered by an alarm klaxon. Red lights vertically spun around the walls from fixtures meant to be used only in emergencies. In this case, the base was compromised.
Master's comlink beeped. He hit the receive button and switched on the holoimage setting. An image of Ahsoka and Anakin sprinting through the tunnels dodging blaster rounds appeared. One seemed to graze Ahsoka's clothing and burn through her robes because she held her arm with her hand, a look of pain on her face as she ran. She seemed to be okay for the moment and let go of her injury.
"So, we may or may not have met a bunch of old friends a second ago. Where are you?" Anakin asked between breaths. He spun and swatted several incoming bolts away with his lightsaber.
"We found a hanger and our changeling's speeder. No resistance so far-obviously not so for you," Master said raising his eyebrows. "Are you headed our way?"
"Yes, just passed by where we split," Ahsoka replied.
"Ok, we'll create a small surprise for the company behind you and move a speeder to slow them down. Get ready to jump over it and behind some crates for cover," he said closing the link.
Before he had even finished I was running to find our cover. I found a stack of crates behind a Sep drop ship and used the Force to move three at a time. I set them up four wide and two rows tall with two more in the top center, and another two in the very front facing the corridor's end. Master was already Force moving Grievous' ship to cover the exit with just enough room for the others to jump over. While he moved the odd ship into place I placed two more crates in front of it on either side so that the droids would be funneled to where we wanted them to be. I noticed he already had the detonator in hand, primed and ready to blow; I followed suit.
Within seconds of setting up our trap and jogging back to the makeshift cover, blaster fire could already be heard steadily getting louder in the hall. The noise poured out of the hall and bounced around the polished floors and shear walls of the hanger. One bolt hit the crate I was ducking behind and pushed up against me; not hard enough to hurt, but enough to make me wonder what good the crates would do in a moment.
"Ahsoka, jump!" I heard.
Two bodies landed next to us and we hit our dets. A whump flowed over us, making my stomach feel squeamish and strange. Heat and a deafening roar followed immediately after. The tops of my hands and the back of my neck got hot, almost to the point of being burned, but immediately subsided. The crates, surprisingly, held up and protected us from the blast. I got out my lightsaber and held it in front of me to check for stragglers. One unlucky droid was crawling his way along the floor away from the wreckage towards a blaster; I ended his trek with a stab through the head. Besides the one droid, nothing else was still intact to report the explosion or be of any threat to us so I returned to the group. Anakin was busying himself patching up Ahsoka's blaster burn. He used bacta spray and a groan emanated from between her gritted teeth as it began to take effect. I noticed on my way back over that the two crates in front were all but disintegrated, and a dangerous looking, knifelike piece of shrapnel was lodged in the box in front of Ahsoka's face.
"I'd say you were pretty fortunate!" I said acknowledging Ahsoka and pointing to the crate. Her eyes got wide and she looked rather startled. "Glad you're unharmed."
Ahsoka's face softened, if only for a second, to express a small smile which went away as quickly as it came. "Thanks."
A raspy voice cut through the silent recovery from the blast. It coughed and sputtered but recovered with a final hack.
"Jedi."
The word dripped with hate, malice, and arrogance; it conveyed that our kind was not welcome here, presented us as some sort of alien ideal, and stated that the speaker didn't see us as a threat which was the most frightening of all.
"Grievous," Anakin said softly, grinding his teeth.
"I notice Kenobi is not with you. Same, that I should have to kill you all without any challenge."
"Well if you'd looked more carefully at us, I bet you'd recognize someone, Slimo," Ahsoka retorted.
"Ah yes- Padawan Tano. I recall chasing you away as you ran back to your precious master."
Ahsoka was headstrong and hated being labeled as an underling, but she kept quiet when her master motioned for her to.
"I remember you being more outspoken little Jedi," Grievous' voice boomed from a speaker in the middle of the hanger ceiling. "No matter, you will all die soon anyway. I have installed a few traps to keep you from leaving. You've already seen and vividly experienced the Separatists' newest weapon. The Force Wave Generator was only the beginning, and you were the perfect field test. But- *a pause* you destroyed my ship! You'll pay with your lives Jedi!"
A shower of sparks rained over us as Otarri's lightsaber pierced the speaker, burning a hole straight through the center and frying the circuitry.
He shrugged, "I was getting sick of being insulted and listening to the voice."
"Fair enough," Anakin said.
My eyebrows furrowed with a foreboding of what might be to come, "What do you think he's done with the FWG tech? If one burst was enough to knock us all out and send us flying...I fear that if this technology is widespread across the galaxy, our clones lives are at great risk. The plans can't leave this lab- it could cost us the war."
"I agree," Otarri said. "We need to disrupt their operations here and intercept any of those machines and plans we find."
"Yes, but let's not split up this time," countered Anakin.
"Done. Hows' that door over there look? It seems to go into the facility," Otarri asked pointing to the other side of the hanger.
"Looks good enough for me, c'mon!"
We ran to the door and blew passed it, following the corridor into the heart of the facility.
"Move!"
A bolt whizzed by me, right where my head was. It would've hit me if Ahsoka hadn't Force pushed me out of the line of fire.
My masters and Ahsoka and I were held up at a crossing of two paths. Each of us was watching a section of corridor accept the one behind us towards the hanger. Ahsoka and I were defending one section and each of our masters took another. She was on one side of the path and I on another. I was preoccupied with a droideka, and didn't see the super battle droid lining up a shot, but since Ahsoka didn't have a droideka on her plate, she was able to save me. The bolt caught a few strands of my hair and burned straight through them, leaving a foul stench which lingered in the air.
"Get ready, I'm about to have an opening!" cried Anakin.
A few more waves of blaster fire were shot at us when Anakin finally said the word. We peeled off towards his section, dodging and swatting away bolts as we went. Otarri came up behind us, following Anakin, who charged ahead, crushing any droids he came upon with his deadly blows. I was putting my double edged lightsaber to great use by reflecting the fired bolts back to their owners in front of us. I was getting tired though, as were my companions. We sped through the corridor but we all struggled to suck more air into our lungs. The droids behind us did not suffer from fatigue and continued to chase us at a great pace. However, even though it seemed as if we were in control of where we went, I had a weary feeling that we were being corralled to a destination of the droids' choosing. My fears were not misplaced.
The corridor opened up into a small factory of sorts, and sounds of machinery filled the air. It was a simple factory, nothing like the one on Geonosis from what I had heard from clones and other Jedi. Even though it was simple, it was by no means small. Both above and below us conveyor belts and assembly lines moved millions of pieces and parts for the FWG devices while mechanical arms and numerous droids carried out their monotonous tasks of soldering and putting together the prototypes.
The droids behind us still pursued, but more were running towards us. In the middle of the catwalk, we were stopped by a great falling bucket full of melted down durasteel. In broke clean through the catwalk and force us to separate. Ahsoka and I jumped left onto an assembly line and our masters jumped right onto a conveyor belt. Both Ahsoka and I began hacking away at the frame of the assembly line, eventually cutting through several weak points and ruining a dozen devices.
An object crashed onto the conveyer with a great thud. The conveyer was crushed beneath its huge, clawed feet. White plates led from its ankles, all the way up to the very top of its jagged, armored body. Organs pulsed and lived inside the alloy frame. A red and grey cape enclosed around its-his frame, and billowed at his feet. Several lightsabers were collected on his right side by his waist.
I gulped and stared slowly from his feet to his glaring, animal-like eyes.
General Grievous, the Jedi Hunter, had arrived.