LordDarthYoda- Yeah, in terms of earth shattering revelations 'you could have been a superhero' is a pretty big one. And I think you've made a good point about her eagerness and how that could be a negative thing if she were to be 'cut down' as you said. I think that Nara and Sascha will be keen to protect her though

SpeechBubbleMe- Sascha so rarely goes against Aurine that its a bit of a surprising moment. But I mean what could possibly go wrong...

A/N - Posting late so nothing from me...

Anyways, all reviews, follows, and favourites are deeply appreciated as always.

Please enjoy the next chapter.

Chapter 31: Fighting, Opportunities

"Though the Jedi are a constant nuisance, we are advancing inexorably towards the remaining two cities that we have not captured. Progress off our main army is slow, between the rains and the constant traps that the defenders are laying for us, but we are progressing. Perhaps soon, our struggle will be over.

-From the Journal of Pravin Ecalt, Twelve days in to the Invasion of Ubrora

Jedi Knight Tiplee surveyed the rearguard of the droid army through macrobinoculars as it advanced through the Napier Valley. Whoever was in command of the army was proving to be a cautious commander. The rearguard was staffed with four battle tanks, several droidekas and a glut of battle droids. The droids, or whoever their commander was had chosen their terrain well, as the droids were in front of a wide open section of the valley that allowed them to spread out without being too overextended. There was also no discernible cover in the immediate area. It would be impossible to sneak up on the rearguard, impossible to draw them into a trap. Unless Tiplee had a battalion of Jedi with her and some tanks of her own, she wasn't sure that she could dislodge such a force. But she had to try.

"What's the plan, General?" her dutiful, trustworthy Lieutenant Dev, asked. Over the past week, she and the Ubroran Rangers had raided, harassed, and attacked their adversary, inflicting a reasonable amount of damage. Their casualties had been extensive though. She had left several of her wounded compatriots at a small village a few days ago under the care of a local doctor. Others had given their lives for the cause, which pained her, but that was what happened during war, sadly. Her pack was not what it was when they had left their base, and she wasn't what she had been either. A week of hard fighting, sleepless nights and minor wounds had sapped her of much of her strength. Her left wrist was bandaged, sprained after falling during a battle. Her right knee wasn't quite right either, having twisted it during a desperate attempt to avoid incoming fire.

She shook her head and lowered her macrobinoculars, "There isn't a plan in existence that would allow one Jedi Knight and ten soldiers to do any damage to that group of droids. I'm afraid that our usefulness may be at an end."

"So, it's over?"

Tiplee jumped down from her perch and took a drink of water from her pouch, the water was old and stale but at least was slightly refreshing, "It's not over because we are still alive, but this little excursion is over. I won't throw the lives of our pack into a battle we cannot win."

"Generous of you, General," muttered the Ubroran.

"I mourn those we have lost, Lieutenant. We have done good work, and delayed the enemy as much as we could. But now we must accept that we cannot do more."

This was going to go down as a loss, Tiplee knew. She had thought that by taking these elite troops and making them into a raiding force that they might inflict significant damage on the droid army, but they had never become more than just a minor nuisance. They were an annoying little instinct that stung a beast, but could not stop it from devouring its meal.

Tiplee pulled out her comlink to report her failure to Aurine. And to report that it might be time to put plan 'B' into action.

Aurine Brynar pulled her cloak around her tightly, trying to stop the torrential rain from soaking her even further. Try as she might, she had no way of fending off the rain, which had barely let up for a week now. At one point she had hoped that the rain might delay the droids enough to allow her traps to succeed. Yet, while her traps had worked to some extent, she knew that it would not be enough. As much as she continued to put herself on the front lines, she wasn't having much of an effect. Morale was plummeting because all her troops could see the same thing, death was coming up the Napier Valley, and they had no way to stop it.

As much as she was a relatively powerful Jedi Knight, she was not an army. As much as she was a great tactician, there was no way to overcome the massive numerical advantage their enemy had, unless their commander made a huge mistake. And Aurine had a grudging respect for whoever was in command of this army, he was being cautious to be sure, but he didn't need to take any risks. She wished that she was up against someone who was stupid, who made mistakes, but fate was not being kind to her.

She turned and went back inside her mobile command post. Inside were her command staff, such as they were, four harried-looking Ubrorans analyzing the information as it came to them, and one fellow human, Colonel Jeffs. "Any good news?" she asked.

Glum faces answered her, "We lost contact with Guardian squad a few minutes ago."

Guardian squad was one of the 'active duty' squads that were currently harassing the enemy. "Where? I'll lead the rescue operation."

"There is nothing to rescue, Dovetail squad confirms that there is no one left."

Aurine sat heavily in her chair. An entire squad of soldiers had died and she hadn't even sensed it. She had closed herself off from the Force gradually since the war started, the rawness of the emotions around her meant that she could not deal with all the energy around her. But still, she should have been able to know or feel that Ubrorans, her troops, were dying and she was doing nothing to stop it.

Aurine Brynar was losing more than just the war, she was losing herself.

Sascha Whitestar waited beside Nara and a squad of resistance fighters for a droid response team to show itself in this corridor. Ten minutes ago they had annihilated a patrol with their usual ease, and now, if their intel had been correct, a response team of droids would have been sent out from the main base to see if there was anything left to salvage of the patrol.

There wasn't of course, he, Nara and some resistance forces had made short work of the eight battle droid patrol. Yet, he and Nara felt that they needed to make a little more impact than taking out two or three patrols a day, they needed to make an impact on the numbers of droids in the city. And luring a larger force to its destruction was one way to make an impact.

Sascha answered his ringing comlink, "Yes?"

"Master Jedi, it's Arslan. I'm watching a droid force moving towards you. They…uh…they have a tank."

Sascha sent a silent thank you to whichever Ubroran had started broadcasting their video feeds to the rest of Ubrora, because it made it a lot easier to track what the droids were doing, "Thanks Arslan, we'll see you back at Headquarters."

"Aren't you going to abort the mission? I said they have a tank!"

Sascha shrugged, "They are about to have one less tank, Arslan." He clicked off the comlink.

"What's this I hear about aborting the mission?" asked Lirri who had saddled up beside him to hear the end of comlink discussion.

Nara snorted, "Don't worry, we aren't aborting. Not a chance. The droids having a tank with them doesn't change the equation. A droideka...those are trouble. But a battle tank is pretty useless against us. Tanks are built to fight armies, they aren't good against insurgents." The Togruta turned to him, "Sascha, do you have a plan?"

He smiled, "Don't I always have a plan?"

A few minutes later, he and Nara were perched on a nearby rooftop, waiting for the detachment of droids to make their way to them. The rest of the resistance fighters, including Lirri, were hiding around the corner, waiting for their signal to emerge. He tapped his fingers nervously against his upper arm. The fighting never worried him, it was the moments before the fight that were the hardest to endure.

After a couple of nervous minutes, the droids made their appearance. There were about fifteen or so battle droids flanking a large, impressive looking Armored Assault Tank, which were set to walk down the street just in front of them. Its main armament was a turreted laser cannon that gave the tank a 360 degree range of fire. The secondary armaments were side mounted laser blasters that had a much more narrow range of fire. He and Nara were going to get rid of both of those weapons.

The two Jedi closed their eyes, before they began. They required perfect concentration for this task and visual stimulus was always so distracting. Surreptitiously, the Jedi ignited their lightsabers. They had already made a silent decision that Sascha would take the easier task, and Nara the more difficult one. Simply put, Nara was stronger than he was in the Force and had a better control of telekinesis. Usually this didn't matter, but today it might.

Turning blindly, because their eyes were still closed, the two Padawans trusted in the Force and threw their lightsabers towards the tank. Using the Force, Sascha directed his whirling teal blade towards the side-mounted laser cannons on the near side of the tank, while Nara's was being pointed towards the main turret and gun on the other side of th tank. In the Force, he felt his teal blade cut easily through the side cannon, chopping it neatly in two. Concentrating deeply still, he recalled his blade towards his hand, and he felt it smack back into his palm. Opening his eyes, he saw Nara's gold and silver lightsaber hilt float gently into her outstretched hand. He could tell by her expression, that she had managed her task perfectly.

"Good stuff Nara."

"You too."

"Let's finish the job."

The Togruta gestured towards him grandiosely, "After you, little human."

The battle tank was now just an armored battering ram. Intimidating, but functionally useless, assuming one had the wherewithal to move out of the not particularly fast moving or tank. Sascha signaled Lirri and her resistance fighters and he jumped down into the stunned battle droid formation, Nara right beside him, her blue eyes showing off their usual determination.

The droids were now caught between two Jedi carving them up and a menagerie of resistance fighters firing blasters at them. A droid with better programming would have realized that they were dead to rights already and would have tried to inflict as many casualties as possible against the Ubroran fighters. However, as they had proved numerous times before, battle droids just weren't that smart. They focused their fire on the Jedi because they were the closest targets and because the droids could only categorize them as 'melee attackers.' Usually beings that attacked with melee weapons would have been vulnerable to blaster fire…but Jedi were much less concerned by blaster fire, especially from such a paltry numbers of droids.

The battle, already over before it had started, ended perfectly for the Jedi and their allies. With the battle droids destroyed, the two Jedi used their lightsabers destructively, making sure that this particular battle tank would no longer be operational for a long, long time. Sascha jammed his lightsaber through the engine compartment, doing what was probably thousands of credits in damage. It made him feel like a little vandal, which was a weird thing for a Jedi apprentice to feel. But this mission had been full of a lot of weird feelings.

Now safely ensconced back in Lirri's house, he, Nara, Arslan and Lirri were discussing the day's events. While it had been a good day in that they had caused damage to the droid army without having any setbacks beyond the minor scrapes that a few resistance fighters had accumulated, mostly from throwing themselves into cover too vigorously, they needed to make sure that they weren't missing something obvious.

The meeting went fairly quickly, Lirri was the de-facto leader of the Ubroran resistance, but wasn't tactically savvy enough to offer many insights, yet. Yet the Ubrorans were equal partners, whenever they would voice something, he and Nara would always consider their suggestions and say why they were wrong. The two Jedi had to educate their hosts on the art of war, and they could only do that through explanation.

"Okay, anything else?" he asked, hoping to end the meeting so he could talk with Nara for a bit before turning in for the night.

"I have something I'd like to report," said Arslan. "I'm getting rumors through some of my connections in the broadcasting community that the droid army is building a communications centre in Bontha. Some functionary has contacted some of my engineer friends about installing a very high tech communications grid that I assume would be used to coordinate their droid army from the ground."

"Interesting," he said, "It would be a useful military target…but the second that the ground communications falters, the droids will revert to their primary mode of communications, with the Reprisal which is in orbit." And if they could some how take that out, the army would shut down. But he may as well have hoped to win the Megacredit lottery on Coruscant without buying a ticket.

"That's the wrong way to think about it, Sascha," said Nara, "think about what kind of hardware they'd need to build a communications centre. If we could steal a transmitter we maybe could construct something that could punch through the jamming from the Reprisal."

"I don't know how to build a transmitter that powerful, Nara. And dare I say, neither do you."

Nara looked unhappy, but nodded in agreement.

"If I may," interjected Arslan, "I have some knowledge of how modern communications devices work, and I have friends amongst the communications techs of Bontha. If given the correct equipment, we might be able to fashion something that might get through the jamming."

"There was a lot of hypotheticals in that statement, Arslan," Nara pointed out.

The Ubroran shrugged, "I offer hypotheticals when there is uncertainty."

"What are the chances that it's a trap?" asked Nara.

"It's probably pretty high," he admitted, "There is no reason for Vash Varless to build a communications centre here. Specifically it makes no sense to build one here and not in Gamudo, a city they control. It doesn't make logical sense, except as a trap to draw us out."

"Still, if it isn't…" said Nara.

Both Jedi dropped into silent contemplation. How much of a risk could they afford to take to get a message through to the Republic, to the Jedi Council? If they managed to get anything through… a task force of Jedi Knights could be dispatched within hours, and Vash Varless' pirates couldn't hope to stand against a concerted Jedi force.

But if it was a trap…

"I guess we ask Master Brynar about it," concluded Nara unhappily. Sascha nodded in agreement. He understood her disappointment. As much as they had been given a great deal of independence since the invasion started, they were still just merely apprentices and when making such big decisions it made sense to ask his Master.

"Do you want us to leave the room?" asked Lirri.

Sascha waved away her concern, "No, it's fine. This concerns the resistance, so it concerns both of you, so you should be here to have your voices heard. We're all in this together after all," he added. He pulled out his comlink and dialed for his Master, hoping that she would be around to give them an answer to their question. She'd answer eventually, he knew, but he was hoping that he would catch her at a convenient time from…whatever exactly she was doing.

"Yes, Padawan?" answered Aurine.

"Hi Master, I have Nara, Lirri and Arslan here so I'm going to put it on speaker." After he pressed the small button on his device, which allowed it to operate as a speakerphone, he continued, "Arslan has found evidence that the droids are going to be building a communications tower here in Bontha."

"What's the source?" asked Master Brynar.

Arslan cleared his throat awkwardly before speaking, "I have gathered the information from what I believe are reliable sources. Based on the number of confirming reports I've received from several different engineers, I believe the intel is good. Whether or not it's being planted by someone…I frankly don't have the experience to say."

"And what do you plan to do with this communications centre? Blow it up?" asked Aurine.

"Well, I was thinking," said Nara, leaning towards the tiny transmitter, "That if we raid this facility, and we could get the right parts, we could maybe build a transmitter of our own, something powerful enough that we could get a message through the jamming and to Coruscant."

"Do you think that's possible?"

"I'd say it's a possibility," said Nara.

"I don't know, Padawans, this seems like a trap," observed Aurine.

"It does," Sascha admitted, "But if it isn't, and we could end the war within a fortnight."

"What does the Force tell you?" inquired his Master.

He bit his lip, he hadn't had much instruction or guidance from the Force since they'd landed on Ubrora. That wasn't entirely out of character for him, but he found it rather annoying. This was perhaps the toughest test he had ever faced as a Padawan, and yet the Force was silent. Wonderful. He glanced over at Nara who slowly shook her head. "Neither Nara nor myself seem to have received any guidance from the Force."

Aurine was silent for long moments. Finally, she spoke again, "I sense…danger, but opportunity in your future, Padawan. I think, that perhaps this is the opportunity in your future. Take your time and be careful in planning your mission, Padawan, but I believe that the risks outweigh the potential benefits. You have my go-ahead to undertake this task."

Sascha probably should have been excited by that statement, by the faith that was being placed in him, but instead he felt a cold, hard, lump form in the pit of his stomach. He clapped his hands together to cover his discomfort, "Okay, we'll get started right away on planning. We'll let you know if anything changes."

"Message me your final plan for me to confirm. May the Force be with you." And with a click, she was gone. For a moment, he felt a deep sense of loss. He hadn't seen his Master for almost a fortnight now, and he missed Aurine. She was always a steadying influence for him, and while he had thought he had been ready to display some independence, it was times like these that he missed her presence and her wisdom dearly.

"So," said Lirri, "how many fighters do you want to take with you? I'd have to take an official count, but I think we can bring quite a few resistance fighters with you Jedi. We may not be the best, but we'll fight hard."

"I don't think we can ask you to take this on," Nara said, echoing his own thoughts. "The resistance fighters are too new, too green to be going on a mission like this. This feels like a mission for just Sascha and I."

He nodded in agreement, "I think that the best use of the resistance at this point is as a distraction, try to deplete the garrisons that the droids have so that maybe we don't run into as much opposition. We are going to need stealth to succeed."

Lirri looked unhappy at being left out of the action, but nodded, "It will be as you wish. We'll make a nuisance of ourselves tomorrow. Arlsan, help me plan out what targets to hit." Lirri and Arslan left the table, already in animated discussion.

"So Nara," he said casually, "Are you ready to walk into this trap?"

"Isn't walking into traps what we do as Jedi?"

He scratched behind his ear in a nervous gesture, "I suppose. This one feel different for some reason."

"Scared of a few droids?" Nara teased.

"You know I'm not afraid of droids, Nara."

The Togruta playfully reached out to punch his shoulder, "you sure?"

He rolled his eyes at Nara's attempt to lighten the mood, "Let's get down to planning."

Nara shrugged languidly and kicked her feet up on the table, "What's to plan? We pick a time to attack…then we attack."

"Let's see if we can put just a little more effort into it than that."

Nara brought her booted feet down, "Fine. You always were the diligent one."

He and Nara planned throughout the night, evaluating contingencies, running through scenarios and double and triple checking the route they would take to the communications tower. They pored over their datapads, trying to identify what they would need to steal to have any chance at making a working transmitter that would be powerful enough to punch through the jamming from the Reprisal. Finally, with bleary eyes they slept, knowing that tomorrow was a crucial day, both for themselves and for Ubrora.

Sascha hefted the empty backpack he was carrying, trying to judge it's weight and how much it might slow him down. It didn't weigh much right now, but if they had to carry equipment it might be a significant obstacle later on.

He looked over towards Nara, who was adjusting her boots, "Ready?" he asked.

"I was born ready," replied Nara, a wan expression on her face. Both of them were feeling the tension of what could be the turning point in invasion of Ubrora. If they could steal the parts they needed help could soon be on the way, help that they so desperately needed. They were also clearly putting their lives in danger as well. The two of them fully believed that the communications tower that was being modified was on some level, a trap. Yet that angular, three-storey building could be where they saved Ubrora, or where they perished.

"Come on, Whitestar," said Nara, giving him a friendly slap on the back, "let's make this fun, whoever disables the most droids is the winner."

He raised an eyebrow at Nara, "really? This is what you've been thinking about all day?"

"Sure. I see you aren't too thrilled at this idea, how about if I spot you a five droid lead."

"I don't need an advantage to keep up with you," he retorted playfully.

"Sure you don't."

"You haven't even said what the winner of this 'contest' gets."

"Don't worry, it's an unbelievable prize of unimaginable value."

"Wow, seems like something I really want to win," he said sarcastically.

"So you're in?"

"You betcha."

Nara started off towards the communications tower. He took a deep breath, calmed himself and followed her into the unknown.