It had been ten minutes and fifty-two seconds since Tech had been incarcerated in a cell separate from the others – or, at least, in a cell separate from Wrecker, as Crosshair and Hunter were, at the time, being brought to Nu'osa's headquarters.
Tech was not optimistic about the chances of all four of them being put in one cell again, as he was certain Nu'osa would not repeat such a mistake.
And Tech's chances of escape on his own were very low. He could take down two droids, maybe three, if they were not commandos; he would attempt it, at least. It was all the farther he could plan, without having further particulars to work with.
In the meantime, his cell was smaller than his team's previous one, and as a result it made walking harder; he reached the wall in only three steps and had to turn and take three steps back. He could not keep it up for long, as frequent repetition of this movement would cause vertigo, a sensation Tech had no fondness for.
Instead, he slowed and came to a stop, standing with his back against the wall as he attempted to think of a way to get out. At least being imprisoned did not take away his ability to reason – even if that ability was not currently helping him in the least, because Tech could see no way out of this, for any of them except maybe Wrecker, that did not involve Echo.
It was irksome, being a prisoner and unable to act. At least if he had been taken instead of Hunter or Crosshair, he could have sent Echo a message and used their special code to inform him that there was a double-sealed door between Nu'osa's headquarters and the rest of the prison.
Tech sat down. He was concerned by Crosshair's and Hunter's extended absence from the prison area. A good deal could happen in eleven – now twelve – minutes.
"Perhaps Nu'osa could not reach Echo on the comm," Tech muttered, taking off his cracked goggles to rub at the bridge of his nose. "Perhaps Echo refused to answer him, a decision in which I would actively encourage him."
He knew better than that, though. Echo could not help but answer the comm. It did not seem to be in the ARC's nature to not help people – a characteristic which was good and also, at times, irritating in the extreme. One might almost say that Echo, when he knew someone was feeling unwell, had the tendency to hover.
Down the hall, a door banged open, and the regular tromp-tromp of approaching battle droids made him hurry to the barred window of his cell and peer out.
Two B-1 droids were half-dragging Hunter, who looked only semi-cognizant, and two commandos were gripping Crosshair's arms.
Very much not to Tech's surprise, Crosshair was still struggling against them every few seconds. Tech sighed and rolled his eyes.
They stopped in front of Wrecker's door, which was across the hall and down from Tech's position, and a commando droid put its gun against Crosshair's head. "Do not attack, clone," it said to Wrecker. "Or the clone dies."
"AW, FINE!" Wrecker roared back, clearly thwarted. "Whatever! Stupid clankers."
And Tech heard him stomp to the back of his cell.
The lead commando droid opened the door, and the B-1s pulled Hunter forward.
"Get in there, Republic scum!" one yelled, and they shoved him inside. The sergeant didn't faceplant against the floor, as far as Tech could hear, but that was probably only because of Wrecker.
The cell door slammed.
"There!" The B-1 brushed its metal hands off, sounding smug. "So much for that!"
"No, stupid," said another droid. "We still have to get the sniper in with the little clone."
Tech drew himself up to his full height and waited at the door, eyeing the offending droid with as stern a glare as he could muster. Just because he had a habit of keeping his head bent did not mean –
"Hey," said the droid, slowing to a halt. "Get away from the door or I'll shoot you."
But Tech was feeling uncooperative, and besides, he knew Nu'osa intended to keep them alive, which meant the B-1 could not carry through its threat. Raising an eyebrow, he inquired, "Why should I get away from the door?"
"Because . . . I'll shoot you if you don't? The droid rubbed at its head and gestured with the blaster, then turned to appeal to the commando droid. "Uhhhh – what do we do about him?"
The commando's expressionless metal face swiveled first to Crosshair, and then to Tech. "Comply," it said, and its eyes flickered off and on again. "Or I will proceed to stage three without waiting."
"Stage three?" repeated Tech.
Crosshair shrugged and explained laconically, "Worse than what just happened upstairs."
"Ah." Tech considered, then slid his loosened goggles back up his nose. The crack in the lens was really starting to irritate him, if only because it showed up as a long line across the center of his vision. "I suppose I will comply."
With deliberate slowness, he walked to the back of the cell, turned to face the door, leaned back against the wall, and folded his arms. "You may now enter," he said.
Crosshair smirked, and the B-1 said, "Thank you."
One of the other battle droids reached over to ding the talkative one in the back of the head. "Don't talk to the prisoners!" it said.
"Yes," said Tech, tilting his nose up. "Do not address me without express permission. Your programming is clearly faulty."
"Quiet, clone!"
The droids shoved Crosshair inside. He spun and attempted to reach one of them, but the door slammed shut half an instant too soon, and the droids clanked off.
Growling in exasperation, Crosshair slid down the wall and ran a hand through his hair. "I hate Twi'leks," he said.
Since Tech understood this to be an outburst against the situation and Nu'osa, and not the entire race of Twi'leks, he did not ask Crosshair for an explanation. Instead, he said, "I assume you are mostly uninjured?"
"I'm fine." Crosshair stretched, wincing a little. "Electroprods, stun batons. Hunter's not doing well."
"I assumed as much," said Tech, frowning. He sat down next to Crosshair and tapped his fingers rapidly against one knee. "What did Echo say?"
Crosshair's expression lightened. "Well," he drawled. "I heard him calling Nu'osa a money-grubbing tailhead."
"In response to what?"
"No idea," the sniper told him. "I didn't hear what Nu'osa said. . . I was out of the room and down the hall. Sure heard Echo, though."
Tech felt a flicker of amusement.
"He won't surrender," said Crosshair.
"Excellent," said Tech. "However, at the same time – he won't leave."
"Course he won't," Crosshair answered.
"Which makes me wonder . . ." Tech drummed his fingers against his knee again and huffed, irked all over again at his inability to do anything. "What is it he is planning?"
Echo sat in the cockpit of the Havoc Marauder, which he had moved – with great caution – to a valley east of the fortress and much closer in than previously. With his hand on the edge of the consol, he turned the pilot's seat back and forth as he waited for the proper time to put his plan into action. The time since Nu'osa's call had passed, both more quickly and more slowly than he'd have liked, and the second hour was very nearly up.
He hadn't been doing much in that time, apart from running Tech's special shielding program too, to confuse any possible sensors Nu'osa might have.
Outside, the rain still came down in sheets, streaking the viewport and drumming on the roof before spilling over the edges in a constant stream, and what little sunlight remained was fading rapidly.
It was only the weather that was allowing him to move out an hour before sunset, and Echo was grateful for it.
But the ability to move in sooner was the only advantage the weather was giving him. It would slow him down significantly, between the limited visibility and the fact that the sand was getting harder to walk in.
Echo sighed, irritated by that particular fact. He'd been around sand and water before, near some ocean or other, and it had been packed hard by the pounding of the waves. But not on this planet, nope. This sand was weirdly soft, almost spongey, and it seemed that the more it rained, the softer it got.
If Echo found himself up to his knees in quicksand, on top of everything else . . .
. . . and then got hit by the lightning that continued to flicker intermittently –
"Yeah, okay," he grumbled to himself, checking his chrono for the tenth time in as many minutes. "Maybe quit catastrophizing."
There was only a minute remaining until Nu'osa's call, now, and Echo took off his helmet and ran a hand over his face, trying to look stressed and worried. Fortunately, Echo had never been as bad an actor as Fives.
Echo took a deep breath, double-checked that he had his supplies and weapons, and that the datapad he'd remotely linked to the Marauder was ready, and sat down again in the pilot's chair. He leaned his forearms on his knees, frowning.
The light for an incoming call blinked, and he answered it hastily. "Echo here," he said quickly, as the Twi'lek warlord blinked into view. "Nu'osa, listen –"
The long, patient sigh that he got in response made him hesitate. "Must we go through this again, Echo?" Nu'osa asked. "Don't you understand yet? I have Wrecker here, and I will be forced to have his arm broken if you do not listen."
Echo's instinct was to snort and say 'good luck with that', but he restrained himself, instead saying, "No, listen. I know you said I only had an hour, but just . . . Look, I'll come to where you are. Just – leave them alone."
In the background, Wrecker yelled, "What? Echo, you can't surrender!"
Nu'osa rested his chin in one hand, considering. "Very well," he said. "How far out are you?"
"Probably two or three minutes," said Echo, letting his exhaustion be heard in his voice. "If I fly the shuttle."
"I will give you five minutes," decided Nu'osa.
"And you'll let the others alone?" Echo checked. He didn't want to oversell his act, but it seemed a reasonable thing to ask – and besides, he did want to know.
Nu'osa bowed grandly, one hand on his heart. "I will leave them alone, as you long as you arrive in the allotted time," he said. "Never let it be said that members the Saresh clan do not keep their word."
Echo gave a stern nod, ignoring Wrecker's protests in the background, and hung up the call before the name really registered.
When it did, he groaned and put his forehead on the consol. "Really?" he said, and sat up, directing his attention to the ceiling. "There's an entire galaxy for crime families to run around in, and somehow another Saresh ends up on the very planet we're on and captures my team?"
Typical. Actually, he should have expected it.
Echo gathered his gear and stomped out into the rain. At this rate, maybe Dooku would show up next. And General Grievous. Oh, and Ventress. Put them with Nu'osa, who now that he thought about it did look like Tar Saresh, and it would be just like old times, except for the part where Echo was by himself, without the help of the Jedi. . . or the Deltas. . . or the other clones. . .
The sand was the same, though, if a lot more soggy and hard to walk in.
Grumbling under his breath, Echo made his way to the top of the hill that shielded the Marauder from view. As he neared the top, he dropped to his stomach and crawled up, just a little. The side of the fortress was only twenty meters from him, now, and although he could see the spider droids that were still on top, they did not notice him. They were idiot droids with poor motion sensors that weren't designed for rain, and Echo intended to take full advantage of that fact.
Slouching down against the nearest bit of rock, he plugged the secondary extension on his scomp link into the datapad and remotely activated the Marauder. As the shuttle lifted a few feet into the air, Echo felt a grin tug at his face. He'd never thought about it before, but oh, the pranks he could play on Tech with this newly programmed ability –
He tried to focus, but the mental image of Tech shouting and running after an entire shuttle as it hovered only just centimeters out of his reach made Echo actually snort with suppressed laughter.
Clearing his throat hard, he made himself focus. This was serious business. He had only three minutes left. Carefully, he let his mind slip into the data stream that connected the shuttle to the datapad, and therefore, his headgear. Now he could 'see' through the Marauder's sensors – and the rest was easy.
Well, easy except for the fact that it gave him a pretty impressive headache, but Echo just squinted against the throbbing and continued to guide the shuttle around the long hill and behind it, until it was lined up with the front of the fortress and some three hundred meters distant.
Only then did he let it glide upward, gradually, until it was in plain view of the fortress – and of Echo.
Immediately, the battle droids in the fortress started shouting for someone to 'call the boss, tell the boss there's a shuttle approaching from sector four-sixty-two d, quick, alert the boss' –
Disconnecting himself from the ship's sensors, he made the shuttle fly another fifty meters, slowly, and was half-aware of Nu'osa's voice through the rain as he landed it. He paused before shutting down the engines; then he remotely opened the boarding ramp – and, a few seconds after that, he turned off the running lights.
The Marauder disappeared from view almost completely in the dark and rain, and Echo smirked. Nobody would be able to tell that he wasn't coming out of the shuttle.
"Watch carefully!" ordered Nu'osa, and Echo caught sight of him for an instant as he stepped past a spider droid. "The ARC trooper will be arriving in a couple of minutes. He is not to be harmed, but do not let him attack you. If he gives any difficulty, warn him that I have Tech and Crosshair in my headquarters."
Echo couldn't stop to groan about this new development, because he was too busy sliding silently down the hill to the base of the fortress wall. He really, really wanted to know how the Seppies dragged these fortresses around. There was probably a frigate in orbit around the nearby moon or something like that. Or maybe, Nu'osa was rich enough to keep a couple of semi-permanent fortresses on the planets he frequented.
Whatever the case, Echo was annoyed by the existence of the slippery durasteel walls that stretched above him.
Echo drew his pistol, attached his grappling hook, and waited until the patrolling droids marched past, making a ruckus as usual.
Then he shot the hook into the base of the overhang. Then he let himself get hauled up. And then he crawled silently over the edge, rolled across the narrow top of the wall, and let himself hang by his fingertips from the opposite side, the cable held loosely between two fingers.
Just like a hundred incursions before. Echo smirked and let himself drop, almost twisted his reinforced metal ankle in the soupy ground, staggered and cussed under his breath, and crept off to the back of the fortress proper.
If his memory was correct, the prison cells in this model of fortress were always at the back.
Of course, there was only one problem to his plan. Tech and Crosshair were not in the prison right now. . .
Another problem walked by, in the form of a B-1 which had probably taken a wrong turn or something, and Echo broke its head off.
"Hey!" said the head in surprise, before its last vestiges of battery life vanished.
Dropping the metal with a soft clunk, Echo moved on. He had about half a minute left, probably, before Nu'osa got suspicious and decided to try comming the Marauder again.
Echo used those thirty seconds as efficiently as possible. Kneeling near the back door of the fortress, he planted a miniature EC grenade, courtesy of Wrecker and his tinkering, and stepped back. The localized surge knocked out the door's lock, and Echo slipped inside.
He didn't have time to pause and look around, but as he crept down the narrow, empty durasteel hall, he did appreciate the sudden lack of rain pouring down his visor.
Now to find his teammates. Prison cells were in the back left quadrant, at least usually –
"Huh," grumbled a familiar voice. "Cross and Tech have been gone fifteen minutes already!"
Wrecker's only answer was a sigh from Hunter.
Echo checked the corridor, hurried forward, and scared both his squad mates by straightening up in front of their cell door.
"Echo!" exclaimed Wrecker, then clapped a hand over his mouth. "Sorry. Uh, what are you doing here?"
"Admiring the Seps' architecture," Echo said, and jammed his scomp link into the cell door lock. "What do you think I'm doing, Wrecker?"
Hunter, who was sitting in one corner, just stared at him with a sort of tired indifference until Wrecker dragged him to his feet and gave him a little shake. Then, giving his own head a shake, Hunter made his way over.
"Come on," said Echo, and yanked the door open. "Let's get out of here before Nu'osa figures it out."
His squad mates had just exited the cell when a blaring alarm sounded.
"Aw, kriff," grumbled Echo, reaching into his pack. "Time's up."
From down the hall came the sound of approaching droids, and Echo tossed Wrecker a pistol and barked, "Get that inner door sealed!"
Wrecker rushed to obey, and Echo grabbed Hunter's arm and pushed him towards the outer door. "Get out to the courtyard," he ordered, over the rapid-fire shots from Wrecker's direction. He shoved another pistol into the sergeant's hands and said, "We're going over the wall."
"Right." Hunter moved quickly towards the door.
There was a slam, then a metallic crash from the inner door, and Echo turned back to see that Wrecker had tugged a panel of durasteel off the wall and thrown it, edge-first, right into the door.
"Door's sealed!" Wrecker called cheerfully, and thudded after them.
"Great," said Echo, as the droids hammered and yelled on the other side of the inner door. He opened the outer door and stepped forward. "Now let's get out of here."
"What about Tech and Cross?" asked Wrecker.
Echo grimaced. "Frankly," he said, and was interrupted by a laser that scorched into the wall next to his head.
"Frankly," he repeated, shooting the droid, "I thought you guys would all be in the same area, and by the time I found out it was too late to change my plan."
Another droid fired, and Echo and Hunter took it out at the same moment. Then, shooting whenever they saw a droid, they rushed after Wrecker, towards the wall.
Now, the droids were using stun lasers, and Echo had to dodge two of them before he could locate the ascender cable, which he shoved at Wrecker. "I'll have to go back for the others," he said, peering into what he could see of the courtyard. "But first I need one of you on the ship."
"Right," said Wrecker, already halfway up the cable. He hauled himself over the top and reached down to help – then turned his head quickly from one side to the other. "Uh, Echo?" he said. "Where's Hunter?"
Echo spun on his heel, only just in time to see two commando droids hauling the unresisting sergeant back through the door he and the others had only just left.
"They must have been on the roof!" he shouted, charging after them. His anger at such a rookie mistake on his part lent him speed, but not enough. The door slammed before he could reach them, and then the next wave of droids attacked.
"We'll have to come back!" Echo yelled, hurling a couple ECs into the approaching droids. His back was against the wall, and a stun round hit his leg, then the wall next to his torso. "Wrecker!"
The next stun round hit him right in the arm, and Echo felt the world blurring just as his teammate grabbed him by the back of his cuirass and hauled him bodily to the top of the wall.
