Seventy Two
Echo moved towards Marlo.
"Do it, do it now," he hissed as he grabbed her pack and threw it at her.
She quickly got up from her seat as Echo crept to the cockpit to finish off the pilot and take charge of the controls.
His heart was pounding hard.
Freedom.
Home.
Freya.
He was so close now, he could taste it.
Taking a moment to familiarise himself with the weapon from the dead guard, he took a deep breath and opened the door to the cockpit.
A Rybet sat at the controls.
"Hey, how's the warden going?" He asked as he continued to map their course to Iridonia.
Echo was cold and calculating, "dead, just like you." A single blast from the pistol and the alien slumped over the controls, the craft suddenly lurched downwards, until the ARC moved the corpse and slid into the still warm seat.
"You OK back there?" he yelled over a shoulder.
No answer.
"Marlo, what are you doing?"
Annoyed he dragged the dead alien back to where the guards body lay and looked in horror at the site.
Marlo was hesitating with the hypo and the warden was beginning to rouse.
"Do it now Marlo!" He ordered, his voice booming throughout the passenger hold.
She jolted at the tone and turned to face him, her skin as white as a plastimug back in the GAR mess.
Echo watched as the wardens' eyes began to blink open slowly, his head lolling slightly.
He sprung forward and grabbed the hypo from Marlo's limp hand. He looked at the hairy creature and without second thought plunged the needle into the Devaronian's neck. The monitor was still attached and he listened as the monotonous beeping noise slowed until only a high pitched sound on the audio was heard. He looked at the flat green line on the monitor and satisfied, reached forward and turned it off.
The warden was finally dead.
Echo had killed three people in a matter of twelve minutes.
Marlo looked at Echo and suddenly he was no longer the broken young man she had rebuilt. He had reverted back into the ARC and the trained killer he was bred to be.
He said nothing and turned back to the cockpit.
The auto pilot began sounding, indicating they were about the leave hyper space. Echo needed to get in there and check their coordinates and, more importantly, radio the Republic.
He smiled to himself as he jumped back into the seat.
He loved flying and this trip was made all the more sweet given what he had endured over the past nine lunar months, sixteen days and twenty one hours.
Not that he had been counting.
.
"Whoa, where did he spring from?" The V-19 fighter broke sharply to the left to avoid a mid air collision with the smaller passenger craft. The pilot leveled his voice, "Tracer, cover my six while I take a closer look at this guy."
"Copy that Four-four."
Echo had come out of hyper space into a dogfight between a Republic destroyer and a Separatist frigate.
Within a second, the small craft from the Citadel had been shot by a stray pulse, taking out part of the communications hub.
Echo needed to avoid being hit again, and find a channel to radio in on, before it went all together.
"Mayday mayday, this is CT-21-0408. Mayday, mayday this is CT-21-0408." Echo repeated the distress call while constantly aware of the V-19 bearing down on him.
.
"What do you make of that Sir?" Commander Wolffe had seen the small craft break into orbit from the safety of the star destroyer's bridge.
General Koon was standing next to him, his large hands clutched together thoughtfully as he watched with interest the arrival of the smaller yacht.
It was by chance that they, had come across the small Separatist frigate as The Intrepid came out of hyper space. The Sep's had somewhat foolishly engaged the Republic destroyer, they were outnumbered from the very beginning, but as the air fight began to slow to an end, the arrival of a smaller craft sparked renewed interest.
"Wolf Three to Wolf One, do you copy?"
"Copy that Wolf Three. What have you got Four-four?"
"I think we may have come across a prisoner exchange Commander. That ship had Citadel markings down one side."
The Kel Dor stood straight. Commander Wolffe noticed his height loom above him. The Citadel was a renowned Jedi Prison. Plo Koon was curious as to what they stumbled upon, although, he felt no distinctive disturbance indicating a Jedi being on the smaller ship.
'What secrets are you harbouring little one?'
"We need to coax that ship over to us and catch it in the traction beam. It is obviously transporting someone of some significance for them to meet in such deep space. Warthog and Tracer, high tail it back to Four-four and give that craft a Republic welcome aboard."
"We're on it sir."
The V-19's screamed past the bridge and the three members of the seasoned Wolfpack closed in on the smaller passenger ship.
'Fek,' Echo thought, 'they're all over me.'
"Mayday, mayday," he continued, frantically trying to find a channel that would receive and recognise the distress call.
Echo had been out of action too long. He needed to get a signal over to them before they shot him down.
'Come on, come on,' his fingers punching in various combinations of numbers. He then remembered the Republic distress signal that an ARC could use in trouble for immediate extraction.
"Emergency Code seven-three, repeat emergency code seven-three. This is CT-21-0408. Mayday, Mayday. Do you copy? Repeat Emergency Code seven-three, repeat emergency code seven-three. This is CT-21-0408. Mayday, Mayday do you copy, over?"
It was hopeless.
The communications channels continued to crackle after the first hit. The V-19s were getting closer and he had to out manoeuvre them before they brought him down.
"Ameteurs," he said to himself as he began to weave the ship in between the two destroyers, constantly sending the Mayday message and recalculating the jump to hyper space and Coruscant.
.
"Look at that guy will ya?" Four-four announced over the comm. "Whoever or whatever he is, he's one hell of a flier."
"Yeah, I'm having trouble keeping up," Tracer was coming in a sorry second to the unknown pilot.
One last try before he shouted behind him, "strap yourself in Marlo, we're jumping to hyper space again before they shoot us down. We'll head into Ground Zero ourselves."
Marlo had moved up into the cockpit and took to the seat next to Echo, he didn't have time to protest as he heard the small clip of the safety harness being fastened.
"Why are they shooting at us?"
"Because they think we're the enemy," Echo continued to play the cat and mouse game in space before he flicked the button and pushed the joy stick forward.
"He's going to make the jump, repeat he's making the jump!"
Four-four let out one bolt of blue which caught the back end of the craft as it moved into hyper space.
Alarms began beeping loudly as the stars streamed past them.
"Fek!"
Echo was trying hard to control the ship and keep it on the course the computer had programmed.
It was useless, the main stabilisers had been compromised and she bounced out of hyperspace, spinning wildly.
The two occupants rendered unconscious.
.
Four-four and Tracer headed back in. After landing and logging their flight manifest they headed to the debriefing room with their fighter comm logs.
"There was something odd about that ship," Four-four couldn't get the nagging feeling out of his head and stopped.
"The only thing that was weird, was that you didn't shoot it down ner vod. He was an easy target."
"I didn't recall seeing you anywhere near him Trace," Four-four retaliated.
"Well, you wouldn't move your fat shebese out of the way brother so I could get a clear shot," he laughed and slapped him on the shoulder, "come on, get changed and grab a caf. Warthog has a game of sabacc starting in ten."
"No, you go ahead, I'll meet you up there," Four-four was distracted. He didn't want to just let this one go as Tracer had, and headed over to the communications room before he linked his stored comm data in.
Placing a pair of earphones on, he sat and listened intently to the communication from the small craft. Static was the only thing they had all heard as they tried to raise the ship on their own comm channels, and enlisting the help of the on-duty sound engineer, he managed to scramble something that could have been deemed a message on the data retriever. Fueled with this new information, he strode with purpose to his commanding officer.
"Sir."
"Enter." Commander Wolffe was busy writing up the incident with the Separatist frigate. "Four-four. I would have thought you'd be in a flight sim, trying to hone your corralling techniques?" he said with a hint of humour.
Four-four looked down, trying to hide the smile as he sat next to Commander Wolffe.
"What is it Four-four."
"Sir, there was something odd about that smaller craft. I took my comm data to the engies and they managed to decipher something through the static."
"Let's hear it," Wolffe said as he leaned forward and placed the chip into his data pad.
It sprung to life, the black screen replaying the data the oscilloscope had managed to collate.
The crackling noise made the listening difficult, but not impossible. There was however, something that made every hair on the back of Wolffe's neck stand on end.
"Crrrcht 21 kuuuu kaaaaaaaaaa ma kuuuuu ay crrcht keee seven kuuuuu kaaaaaa crrrh keeee kaaaaaa three keeeeeeeeeee kaaaaaaaaa day keeee crrrcht CT keeeeeeeee kaaaa."
The screeching continued and both winced and strained to listen to the entire message.
"There is someone talking there sir. There, did you hear that? CT, he said CT! Sir, do you think it was a clone?"
Wolffe finished listening to the recording before turning it off. "What do the sound boys think?"
"They couldn't get anything more, said it could be anything. He flew like someone trained on Kamino sir. He was good, better than any clanker I've come across, or alien for that matter. He never fired on us sir, not once."
Wolffe sat back in his chair. "Well, we lost track of him once he hit hyper drive." He handed the device back to Four-four, "if he's a clone, he'll now have to find his own way home. We've been recalled back to Kamino." Wolffe raised one eyebrow, "we are now playing escort to the new recruits of the 212th and the five-oh-first."
.
Stoyan stirred from his sleep for the fourth time that night.
There was something closing in on him; two very real threats, but he knew it wasn't Yoda.
He didn't know why, where or how, but they were coming.
And for the first time in his life, he was scared.
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