The low drone of the gunships accompanied their brief mourning of the captain. Other gunships had seen the explosion, and the comm chatter was panicked at best.
"Picking up a distress call from the surface, looks like a crashed consular class cruiser." The pilot called.
The squad saw Sparky looking around, taking in the situation. "Okay." He said, though more to himself before turning to the communications unit in the bay.
"All squads, continue with the mission objectives, Gundark squad is following the distress beacon." He relayed.
A wave of affirmations followed through the comm, and the pack of gunships followed onwards whilst their own began the descent towards the surface.
As the ship banked into a loop, circling the ship, the clones peered out the edge towards the crashed ship, then looking over the horizon.
"Droids! Point four!" Riptide shouted, pointing over a dune.
The squad watched in horror as a droid at the front of the pack shouldered an E60 rocket launcher, and fired.
"Incoming!" The sergeant shouted. The pilot dived the gunship low, but it was no use, the homing missile locked onto the ship and impacted, engulfing the ship in a fireball.
With the doors being open, all of the occupants flew out of the troop bay, dropping a handful of metres into the coarse sands of Geonosis.
They landed near the initial crater of the consular, the squad slowly picking themselves up after the impact.
"Sound off." Was the order from Sparky.
"Riptide here."
"Spooky ready."
"Elf here, not dead yet."
"Anvil ready."
Was Gundark's sound off. "Sarge?" Was Sparky's question.
Riptide peered over the edge of his cover, to see the white armour of a clone half buried in the dunes, neck resting at a bad angle.
"Didnt make it." Riptide answered.
"Kriff." Sparky cursed. "Riptide, Elf, search the ship."
"Wilco." Was the response, as Riptide found Elf and the two climbed up the wreck of the ship, spying an opening in a breach of one of the roof laser cannon assemblies.
Peering into the interior, Riptide judged it clear, and hopped down, landing in a roll to alleviate some of the impact of the fall, Elf followed in a second later.
The lights were out, and the two toggled their small flashlights, providing small cones of illumination through the hallways.
The two rounded a corner and immediately found a body. The long brown cloak immediately outlined them as a Jedi, and Riptide quickly set to work following the procedure they had been trained for reporting the death of a Jedi.
He retrieved the lightsaber, and activated a locator beacon coded to mark the death of a Jedi, and planted it on the body, allowing later forces to retrieve it.
The two continued on, marking another seven Jedi corpses through the main sections of the ship. The two were moving silently in case any droids had made it onboard.
A clatter of metal ahead alerted the two, Riptide signalling forward through the rudimentary hand signs the regular clones were taught to use in basic training.
Stacking up by the open door, Riptide swung round the doorframe, levelling his rifle to survey the room.
As he turned, the room was illuminated a brilliant white as a lightsaber was triggered, the wielder leaping towards Riptide.
Riptide cried out and dived away from the door back into the hallway, as the lightsaber swung and impacted the doorframe.
"Friendly! Friendly!" He let out in a panicked yelp. He scrambled backwards as the blade wielder paused, spying two of the soldiers.
She pointed her lightsaber at the two. "Are you with the republic?" She demanded.
The two clones shared a glance, before Riptide replied. "Yea ma'am." He replied cautiously, wary of the blade wielding teenager.
"Take your helmets off." She demanded.
The two moved slowly and removed their helmets, revealing their identical faces.
"Twins?" She questioned.
The two clones again shared a glance, guessing that she hadn't been informed as to the clone army. "Uh, no Ma'am, Clones." Riptide responded.
She went to question again but hesitated. "Are you medical trained?" She again demanded.
"I took an extra class, but nothing special. We weren't assigned a medic." Riptide replied.
"In." She ordered. Nudging her lightsaber towards the door. He followed her order cautiously, entering. He now had the chance to survey the room.
Hunched in the corner, was another brown mass, a Jedi cloak.
"Help her." Came the shaky order.
Riptide looked cautiously over to the padawan, who still held her lightsaber levelled at him and Elf, before slowly stepping over to wounded Jedi.
Retrieving the small aid kit from his utility belt, he popped it open and pulled out the painkiller and bacta dressing, and readied the kit.
The Jedi, had both her hands pressed tightly over the wound, where blood slowly trickled through between her fingers.
"Ma'am, may I see the wound?" He asked.
Her eyes slowly opened, clocking his face, and her padawan behind him. She slowly pulled her bloodstained hands clear, before they flopped down at her sides.
He inspected the wound, applying a light bacta spray, which drew a pained hiss. He felt the white blade reach closer to his neck.
He could see the piece of metal lodged in her side, it's jagged edge caught on flesh and other internal bits.
"Okay, I cant fix this by myself, but I can stop the bleeding. We will need to call for a medevac." He explained slowly.
He gave the painkiller to the wounded Jedi, then applied the bacta bandage to the wound, as his wrist comm chimed.
It lit up and blaster fire could be heard. "Riptide, Elf you better get out here, droids are closing!"
He thumbed his comm and switched channel. "This is CT Twenty-Four Twenty-Six, I need a medevac and recovery team to sector Epsilon-Four, we have a downed consular class cruiser, ten plus Jedi deceased, one severely wounded. How copy? Over."
The padawan was glaring at his wrist comm so much he thought it might burn up. A burst of static ripped from his comm as an answer came. "Affirmative CT Twenty-Four Twenty-Six, we are enroute, Over."
The padawan sagged with relief, shutting of her blade.
"Can we go back outside now? Our squad is under fire." Elf asked.
The lightsaber wielding sagged, nodding, as she crouched by her masters side.
The two clones scurried out, moving back to the hole in the hull. They climbed up, seeing the big group of droids closing in.
The rest of the squad was prone on the edge of the crater, firing out at them, to which He and Elf soon joined from atop their vantage point.
"Nice of you two to come back!" Was Anvil's jest, firing his Z-6 into the mass of droids.
"We've got a medevac on the way, there's one wounded inside!" Riptide reported back, firing towards the horde of droids.
Red lasers screeched overhead as they kept their heads down. On the horizon, a spider droid began making its way towards them.
"Spider droid's incoming." Spooky called out.
"We're so kriffed." Elf muttered.
As they continued to rain fire, the low droning of a pair of gunships sounded from the behind, before one of the ball turrets fired, slicing the spider droid into pieces, while the LAAT's main cannons destroyed the remaining droids in the attacking horde.
Its side doors opened, and another pair of clones hopped out to join engaging the remainder of the droids, whilst the denoted medical staff rushed towards the wrecked consular class cruiser.
A red blaster bolt passed right between Riptide's shoulder plate and helmet, he felt the residual heat as it shot past, and ducked back down to the dune to take a moment. Beside him, the repeating fire from Anvil's Z-6 cut down both droid and bug alike, uncaring of circuitry or sentience.
Peeking over again, Riptide stood and fired, as the number of incoming droids slowly dried up, the heavy supporting fire from the gunship doing a great deal in turning the rest of the droids to slag.
"Rip, Elf, get back inside and see if you can help the medics." Sparky ordered. Both nodded and climbed back into the downed consular class.
The medics had entered and dropped some chem-lanterns to illuminate the darkened interior. Better that than try to restart the potentially breached reactor.
Already, the first corpses had been placed into body bags, the two clones walked further into the ship back towards the room where they had been earlier held at lightsaber point.
They rounded the corner to see a trio of medics all fussing over the wounded Jedi, large cases of medical equipment surrounded them, with different packagings discarded on the floor.
The two slipped in and stood by the padawan as she watched her master be operated on, the skilled hands of the medics slick with blood as they worked on the gaping wound.
"She'll be alright. These boys have done so much medical training they could it with their feet." Elf spoke, rocking on his heels.
"You're the twins from earlier." She said, turning to look at the identically armoured figures. "Twenty four twenty six."
"That's me, commander, he's fifty one forty nine." Riptide answered, pointing with his thumb at Elf.
She nodded, eyes flitting back to her master, and the blood bag that was being held above her by one of the medics.
"I want to go outside." She said.
"There's a breach in one of the cannon assemblies, we'll show you." Riptide offered, walking back through the ship.
He climbed out the hole, and was going to offer his hand to the smaller Jedi, before she leaped out perfectly on her own. Elf scrabbled up besides her.
She stopped to look out over the vast dunes of Geonosis. Above, gunships continued to fly, whilst acclamators cast long shadows on the ground.
She walked down the slanted hull and hopped down into the sand, observing the rest of the squad. Always a stickler for procedures, Sparky snapped to a crisp salute.
Riptide and Elf hopped down too, and the former made his way to their downed gunship, and crouched down over their sergeant's body.
He quickly cleared his pockets and brought out the holodisc that had their briefing on. Returning the his squad, alongside the Jedi commander, he triggered the disc. It's blue display showed a map of their surroundings, alongside their marked objectives.
"We've fallen short of our landing marker." Sparky began.
"Understatement." Anvil grunted.
A lone blinking red marker betrayed their current position, far from their set objectives.
"What was your mission?" Gundark squad looked over to the jedi padawan, who didn't even reach past their soldiers.
"We were to secure a federation coreship, and to destroy a droid factory, Ma'am." Sparky reported.
The padawan looked at the map. Her skin tone wasn't far from their own, a good tan. She had the eyes of a hunter, their dark eyes sparkled in the harsh light of the desert sun, thin slits. Riptide watched with his own as she scanned each of the squad, taking in all of their features. Their identical faces, slit visored helmets, the bandoliers they wore, adorned with extra supplies.
"Get us a ship." Her tone was authoritative, and she held her chin high, she met each of them, her irises bore into their own. "Lets finish your mission."
"Sir yes sir."
The troops were familiar with the drone of the gunship now, though each were wary of going down a second time.
The clones held onto the handlebars atop the troop bay, whilst the Jedi padawan stood on her own, perfectly balanced through whatever mysterious power they wielded. Ahead, the top of a trade federation coreship was slowly arising from the massive circular holding bays that dotted the horizon. Spooky looked out over the edge of the gunship, to spy a column of republic tanks approaching the dome, the occasional arced shot from the AT-TE's mass driver cannons arcing through the sky to hit the coreship.
To their flank, a pair of gunships joined them, their pilots eyeing the padawan in the open compartment, and joining in with their plan. Their gunship bulled a hard bank to bleed off their speed, before each of riptide squad deployed their rappel lines, fast roping down to the roof of the core ship. Nightshade looked over the edge, and jumped, touching down with a grace unique to that of the jedi.
The other gunships, their troops not having the unique airborne training of gundark squad, touched down and deposited their contingent of troops onto the roof of the dome. The commander wasted no time in igniting her silver blade and plunging it into the hull of the ship. She dragged it through the thick metal, the edges of the cut bleeding molten metal. She finished the cut, and stepped back, allowing the breach to fall through, below into a large hallway.
The clones heard the crunch of a pair of droids being crushed under the falling platform. The boys were quick to follow their commander through the hole, rolling as they landed. Anvil came up from his roll, powering his beloved Z-6 as a group of four droids came to investigate the noise. As he filled the corridor with blue laser bolts, the rest of their impromptu platoon grouped up, following the airborne trooper's lead as they stormed through the corridors.
Speed was their weapon. That, and their trusty rifles.
Bursting around the corners, they lay into a group of ten droids, flattening them before they could bring their rifles to bear. A rogue shot passed over their shoulder, and Nightshade was quick to launch herself to the front of the group, swirling her lightsaber to deflect the incoming fire from the super battle droids that were attacking them.
The other clones, who were at the back of the group and now the functional front, quickly fell into cover in the gaps behind the hallway's ridges, peeking out to pepper the more thickly skinned super battle droids. At the back of the group, gundark took turns firing a stray shot, careful not to hit any of their brothers in front of them.
They turned when their heard and felt the floor rumbling, as three brown wheels flew round the corner, pulling to a stop some distance ahead of them. Gundark watched in horror as the unfurled, and shielded themselves. Their two twin laser cannons priming with a dreadful whine.
"Destroyers!" Sparky yelled, as the first fired a pair of bolts, hitting one of the other clones low in the backplate. They groaned and crumpled forwards to the hard floor.
Looking over her shoulder, Zoe Nightshade decided something brash needed to be done, and so resorted to pulling back her lightsaber arm, before launching her saber in a disc-like spin at the super battle droids. She was quick to dash forward, following the path of her lightsaber into the lead droids, before calling it back and rampaging through the last of the group with a practiced speed and ease.
Turning, she saw the destroyer droids had the clones thoroughly pinned down. Behind them, the large doors of the control bridge lay. The extra door shields closing over the default doors.
That would be a problem.