They left the informant in the med bay. After a few gruelling hours the Twi'lek had spilled some coordinates. The supposed rebel encampment was on Kuuniru's main continent roughly a hundred clicks away north of the capital hidden away in a massive cave system.
Vas, Zero and Creed boarded a shuttle while a sizable army detachment made ready to support them if needed. Somewhere Zero had organised three speeder bikes that were loaded into the shuttle. With a line of communication to their reinforcements established, the shuttle's ramp closed and they rushed towards the atmosphere.
"Remember, we're only the scouts. When we have confirmed the location, we call in the cavalry," Vas said, strapped to one of the chairs and cramped between two speeder bikes
"I should do it alone," Zero said, looking Vas straight in the eyes. "That's my job. You are as clumsy as… Well. Ace isn't here but both of you are still too loud. Especially you."
"What if you need help?"
"I spent more than a month alone in the jungles of Felucia without supplies. Nothing this world can throw at me will even make me break a sweat."
"Here are a lot more humans and other sentients instead. The far more dangerous predator if you ask me."
Zero nodded, accepting that point.
"We'll quickly confirm their position and then call reinforcements. That's my order."
"Do exactly what I do out there. For the first time, I think I'm actually glad Ace isn't with us. Since he injured his leg he isn't good at sneaking anymore," Zero said.
"But he would be useful later once we storm the caves. Where is he anyway? I haven't seen him in almost a week," Creed asked.
"He has his special orders and will join us in due time."
They spent the remainder of the flight examining the scans of the area surrounding the caves. There were five obvious entrances with possibly several more that were hidden in the thick underbrush nearby. The big trees with their thick canopy all over the area had also hindered the scanners to a degree that an army could hide underneath without them noticing. In front of the entrances was a sheer cliff which was probably guarded by the rebels. Instead, they would approach from the back through the forest.
The shuttle landed closer to the capital than their actual target but if they had flown any closer, it would attract too much attention. They switched to speeder bikes that would be much harder to spot once they were underneath the trees.
While Creed was only wielding his E-11D carbine, a vibroblade and a few grenades on his belt, Zero was loaded in gear. In addition to his usual sniper rifle and cloak to blend him in with his surroundings, he had a pouch slung over each shoulder and a jetpack –definitely not the standard Imperial model– attached to his back. Vas had no idea how they always managed to acquire this gear. As unit commander, he had never paid for any of them. Vas himself was only carrying his blaster, a vibroblade, a minimalistic med-pack and a few handy tools spread over the pockets in his uniform.
Vas got on his own speeder bike and they rushed from the clearing. All other thoughts vanished as they hurtled with deadly speed through the dense forest. One inattentive moment or one wrong turn and he would slam into a tree. He was glad when they had a short stretch of farmland but the forest was back soon enough.
"That's close enough," Zero announced and stopped his speeder next to a big bush that would shield them from view.
"But we're still more than ten clicks away."
"We don't want them to hear us and they have probably set up sensors as well."
"You're the expert. Pretend as if you were in command from now on. Tell me what I have to do."
"Return to the shuttle and let me do my job."
"Not that, let's go."
Zero retrieved four drones, not bigger than his fist and sent them out to scout ahead. From the other pouch, he pulled a dozen small droids that looked like centipedes and sent them out as well. They weren't fast as they scanned the ground in front of them. If they continued at this pace…
"How long will this take?"
"A bit more than ten clicks, so ten hours."
Vas sighed and they got moving on the path cleared by the drones and insects. Zero stopped here and there to cut off parts of the foliage with his vibroblade and attached the cuttings to his cloak and armour, making him blend in more and more. Whenever Zero stopped, Vas had to look a second time to spot the man. But even this fascinating change became dull after a time. His companions have never been known to be very talkative but they said absolutely nothing on their slow march. After more than two hours of this, he couldn't bear the oppressive silence anymore and if he didn't do anything else soon, he would become careless. No one could stay alert for hours on end surrounded by the monotony.
Every time he walked past one of the trees with its rock-hard skin that reminded him more of a reptile than bark, he saw an endless amount of identical-looking trees right behind it. The yellow canopy was so thick it almost blocked out the sun in its entirety, plunging everything into a dim twilight as if the day was already over. The only break in the monotony was when Zero crouched, raising his rifle. Vas and Creed followed his example and waited for the eventual animal to appear in the distance. Then their slow walk began anew.
"With all these drones this is easy. Was this similar to your time on Felucia?" Vas asked.
"As long as you still have them. They break easily. Especially on a world as toxic and with so much wildlife as Felucia. From small flying rippers that would latch onto you to suck you dry to massive beasts like the Acklays that would split you in half with their massive claws. The enemy was the least of our worries there. In comparison, this forest feels dead."
"According to ISB reports, there is also a native intelligent species living on the planet."
"Fortunately I never saw them but they are deadly close-quarter fighters and they have a weird connection to the forest. Now silence and focus on the mission."
For the first time since they had arrived in the system, Vas had nothing to do. His body walked like a droid after Zero, allowing his mind to wander. What was happening in the rest of the system while he was slowly walking through the forest? There was still time to turn around. Zero and Creed could continue on their own and he could focus on the myriad of tasks waiting for him. He could continue the interrogations, look through comms records, help the search of the missing freighter –unless they had found it by now–, search the mining colony for the remaining rebels, send reports to Coruscant which he had let slack a bit, talk to his father as he had promised the Captain and so much more.
But he decided against it. He liked the peace and quiet. All the problems would still wait for him once he returned and half a day wouldn't make a difference –at least for him. The senator's children were still out there somewhere. Surrounded by their captors and ripped out of their usual lives for almost three weeks by now, they must be terrified. But hopefully, their captivity would be over soon. There was a good chance the children were held captive in the caves less than ten clicks away. In a shuttle less than a few minutes away, it would take him till the morning to get to them.
"Hang in there, we're coming to get you out," he whispered.
Vas lost track of time when the sun eventually went down. While his comrades had integrated night vision in their helmets, Vas' open-faced helmet that came with the ISB uniform had nothing like it. Instead, he put on separate night vision goggles, plunging their surroundings in unnatural shades of green and black.
Suddenly Zero dropped on his belly. Sluggish from the hours of walking it took Vas a few seconds to react. Vas dropped to the floor and unholstered his weapon.
"The drones have found a layer of sensors. Visual, audio and heat sensors."
"How close are we?"
"Less than a click."
"So our enemy is really here," Vas said, with excitement building up in him.
"Or at least someone is here. It could also be a separate group of smugglers," Creed noted.
"Do you think the informant could have lied?"
"No, he was utterly broken in the end but there are always surprises."
Vas reached for his commlink. He had imposed long-range comm silence unless it was something really important. But when he switched to the channel, he only received static and not the kind of static that contained hidden messages. The long-range communication was blocked entirely.
"Do your long-range comms work?" Vas asked.
"Negative, how did we not notice that? That's sloppy," Creed said.
"How long is the range of the drones?"
"A few hundred metres if you want to control them personally," Zero said. "But we can send it to fly straight in one direction basically forever if you need."
"Good, let one drone fly ten clicks out from here and test the comms. If it still doesn't work let it fly further away. I want it to send a message to the Army detachment waiting for us. If they don't get another message from us within an hour they are to engage with everything they have. A frontal assault on the caves. Until then we should have enough time to confirm where the children are or send another drone to stall them longer."
Zero called one of the drones back and a minute later it rushed back the way they had come.
"Alright, then let's do this," Creed said, checking his blaster.
"In a minute I will disrupt the sensors. On their side it will look just like a temporary malfunction but once the minute is over we have to be through and hide somewhere because someone will surely come to check it out."
Zero counted down to one and then they jumped up and darted towards the line of sensors. Vas looked around for any sign of alarms going off or rebels sprinting towards him but nothing of the matter happened. They ran for a few minutes until Zero stopped and looked around.
There were no bushes or other cracks where they could hide.
"Up a tree?" Vas suggested.
Zero looked around in surprise and when he talked, he could hear the respect in his voice. "Good idea."
Zero walked back the way they had come and with the help of a branch and a handful of dry leaves disguised their steps enough that Vas –an inexperienced tracker– could see no sign that someone had ever passed through here. Meanwhile, Creed had climbed ten metres up the tree without any gear to where the canopy began and lowered a rope down. With its help, they were all up in no time and tried to find a comfortable position to stand in. Vas sat down on the fork of a branch, looking down at the ground below them. His stomach protested and tried to convince him he would fall any second but Vas stayed put and didn't move.
"Movement," Zero whispered after a few minutes and Vas slowly turned his head. A Twi'lek had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. His weapon raised, he walked right underneath them.
"It is always surprising how people just don't look up," Creed mused, keeping his weapon aimed at the alien.
Vas wanted to reply something but in comparison to his companion's, his helmet wasn't soundproof. All things considered, the ISB uniform wasn't practical at all.
The Twi'lek surveyed the area for several minutes until he turned around and retrieved his commlink.
"There is nothing out here. Probably just another glitch. Open the hatch, I don't want to go all the way around."
Vas smiled as a concealed hatch opened nearby and the Twi'lek climbed down a ladder. Once the hatch was closed and there was no movement anywhere around for a few minutes, Zero gave a signal and they climbed down the tree again.
"Do we risk going in there?" Vas whispered as silently as possible, conscious of the audio sensors nearby.
"It's a risk. Once we're climbing down that ladder, we're ripe for the picking and can't really defend ourselves," Creed said.
"But it sounded like it was a back entrance and maybe it isn't as guarded as the cave openings."
"There has to be only one enemy and we're all dead."
"I'm the commander, it is my decision. We're going down that hatch," Vas decided.
"I thought we pretended that I would be the commander," Zero said.
"Not anymore. You did a perfect job getting us here undetected. Now it's my turn. Send your centipedes to find that hatch and see if there are any hidden sensors."
They didn't find any sensors but a latch disguised as a branch that if pulled aside revealed a scomp link, the most common access port for astromech units. Although it was a bit outdated and rusty it looked like a Clone Wars-era design. However Vas wasn't convinced there were no safeguards at all, so he used his datapad to do a low-level scan of the surrounding area and revealed three cables leading away from the scomp link. Two for power and one for data. He could try to hotwire the system but the risk of triggering an alarm was too high.
Vas retrieved a scomp cracker from one of the pockets in his uniform. He placed the roughly hand-long metal stick in the socket of the scomp link and activated it. It turned several times before it sank in a layer into the socket. The next layer took almost a minute and once it had sunk again, it started turning again, trying to brute force the next layer of access codes.
"This might take a while," Vas whispered and looked around.
"Why does this hatch have such complex codes?" Creed asked. "I have seen these scomp crackers open doors faster in an Imperial Garrison."
"Why did you need to crack an Imperial door? Shouldn't you have the access codes for that? No, wait. If I think about it, I don't even want to know."
"Good choice."
"The cracker is more familiar with Tepublic or Imperial encryption systems. I guess this is originally a separatist outpost of some sort or we're just unlucky and it has to test a lot more codes."
A few tense minutes later the cracker sank completely into the socket and the hatch hissed open. The Scomp cracker wound itself back out of the socket and Vas pocketed it again.
"We could really use Ace right now," Zero complained.
"Well, he isn't here right now and it would be too late to turn back now," Vas said and pulled the hatch open completely. The ladder was at least forty metres deep and only the end was illuminated by a dim, flickering light.
A/N: I hope you liked today's chapter because it only gets better from here. Tomorrow will be an especially long chapter with a wild — — — — redacted for spoiler reasons — — — —