It all happened in a matter of seconds. The electric crack of the laser in the air, Boss rapidly ordering everyone to get into cover, the Colonel's body dropping to the floor.

"SBD's inbound!" Scorch declared as he threw an EMP grenade into the desert to unveil a hidden Super Battle Droid dispenser.

The squad quickly began focusing all fire power against the heavily armored droids before observing more dispensers activate and rise from the sand.

"Sev, get into sniping position. Fixer, revive the Colonel".

All commandos were equipped with Field Bacta Units for emergency revival. Even after tanking a Super Battle Droid headshot, all hope was not lost for Colonel Bugtra. Boss was pinned down and couldn't get a clear visual on either the enemies or his squad. He shouted down his comm link in a panic.

"Fixer! Fixer! Tell me we're not too late! Tell me we're not too late!"

"We're not too late!"

"Are we too late?"

BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-CRZZT

"…we're too late"

"SHIT!" The rest of the team winced slightly as a result of both the bad news and Boss's shouting in their ears.

"BLEEP-BLEEP-CHIRP!"

Suddenly Fixer heard the distressed sounds of the recon droid and saw it was also getting fired on!

"Arthur!" he cried out before quickly stopping himself.

"Fixer who's Arthur?"

"…No-one Boss!"

Scorch made a mental note to chase that up later but in the meantime, the SBD's had already killed one of them and were getting closer to the bridge. The more SBD's they killed, the more dispensers would rise from the sand and increase their numbers. Boss ran out of cover to get back to the LAAT. He dodged the laser-fire inches above his head and ran towards the gunships storage unit. There he found a weapon they had stolen from their last mission: A Geonosian elite beam weapon. It seemed to have dropped outside the storage unit which apparently had not been closed properly. As he turned, he tripped up on a nearby speeder before quickly getting back up and climbing the Observation tower where Scorch was throwing grenades. From the tower he saw the SBD's were seconds from the bridge and the shots starting to connect with the commando's Armor so there was no time to waste.

"Delta's, get clear!" he ordered just before activating the weapon. The squad quickly obeyed orders before a white-hot beam ripped through the SBD's and dispensers, reducing them all to a steaming mixture of liquid metal and molten glass."

The squad leader leapt from the tower, landing near his commando's before throwing the now spent and useless beam weapon to the ground.

"OK, Delta Squad. Listen up. Bugtra's dead, so we can either go home and stare into space or we can complete this mission, and the next one, and the next, and every other mission, until we win this war, or we all die of old age, or boredom, or...well, I don't know what else. Is that understood."

"Yes, boss."

"Lock and load."

The data managed to be extracted without any further incidents and the team returned back to their base, albeit in a much worst mood then when they had left.

On the way back, Scorch attempted to lighten the mood since he found the squad's silence oddly unnerving.

"At least we saw what that weapon could do in the hands of 'a real soldier'. In a way it was like Geonosis!"

"Show some respect, would you, Scorch?" snapped Sev.

"Too soon?"

"Yes!"

"My bad."