Hey folks, Grubkiller here.
Here's part 3.
Enjoy.
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Iziz, Onderon, Royal Army HQ.
Lord Sanjay Rash, High councilor of the Royal Court of Onderon, watched as the images in front of him began to flip, one by one, to a series of camera feeds. Some were first-person views, and from the graphs and icons surrounding the images it was immediately clear the signals were coming directly from a series of probe droids that accompanied different droid patrols. Two of the screens, though, were taken from an overhead angle, high above the trees.
The landscape around the droids were thick jungles.
"The feed you are watching now is live, sir." The shimmering blue hologram of Colonel Sutter said.
The elderly broad-shouldered man with short-cropped gray hair and a wide mustache standing next to Lord Rash, General Akenathen Tandin of the Royal Guard, leaned in, his green-eyed gaze fixed upon the displays in front of him.
On one of the cameras, he saw the ruins of the place where the rebels had been hold up for the past few weeks, a place that was rich in Onderon's history, or rather that of the Mandalorians that once used it as a based centuries ago. Carnage spread across different screens as the droids began to move through the smashed outer wall of an ancient Mandalorian camp. Probe droid cameras panned across charred debris, toppled crates, and the bodies of both droids and rebels alike.
Mostly droids, to no one's shock.
"R-11, zoom in on marked entity," a droid voice said through the holo-speaker. Some droid tech in the CIS command post on Dxun, it was assumed. One of the probes, with an "R-11" visible in the upper right corner of its display, turned and focused on a body of a rebel soldier. A thin illuminated square appeared around it. The probe droid hovered closer and a pair of battle droids turned the bundle of gore over.
Rash just starred.
It had once been a man, half of his face burned off by an explosion.
He swallowed and then exhaled. Men of his stature weren't accustomed to seeing the innards of a scorched human body From the perspective of the probes, the droids were marching toward the buildings in the center of the compound. The buildings were mostly just metallic or concrete blocks that served as hangers (or would if the rebels had any ships), barracks, etc. Most of the buildings had chunks missing with holes big enough to ride a Dalgo through, or were completely flattened, with fires billowing out of some of them.
The tanks that did the damage were now smoldering wrecks as well, though. Droid parts were scattered all of this part of the base more than anywhere else. Small creatures called Cannoks, that reached the knees of the average human and were ugly as could be, were chewing on anything that looked eatable, even droid bits if you could believe it.
That image caused Rash to roll his eyes. "Those things will eat anything won't they?"
Suddenly, all at once the screen went fuzzy, as an explosion ripped through the view screen, so powerful that the sound overwhelmed the speakers. When the smoke cleared and the holocams cleared up, the viewers noticed several droids had been blasted to oblivion.
Rash gripped the back of technician's chair in front of him, squinting at the display. The blurriness abated, then came back even stronger. He could have sworn that he saw something in the shadows. He soon realized that they were men.
"Looking for us, clankers?!" a posh voice shouted from far off.
"Who said that?" Okalin, Lord Rash's bivall advisor, asked at the same moment the droids in the video feed voiced the same question through the speaker.
"That voice sounds familiar." Rash said.
The droids all moved toward the source of the taunt, their focus tight and, Tandin noted, utterly robotic, much to his disapproval. He would much rather have used his own warriors to fight these rebels, for multiple reasons. Were he in such a situation, with a platoon of men, they'd be behind cover and scanning the nearby rooftops before even sparing a glance at the person who'd spoken. These bots, though, worked on a simplistic set of rules.
"THIS AREA IS SEPARATIST TERRITORY! ALL TRESPASSERS WILL BE REMOVED!" one of them stated. As a single organism the platoon of robots marched up to the building behind which the young man with disheveled black hair toward the ruined rebel meeting hall, displaying limited tactical prowess.
The young man tossed an object into the ranks of droids, and another explosion ripped through them.
Then the probe droids all flew off into the direction of the young man. But after a few seconds, all of the screens that showed what they were recording went dark, almost all at once. Tandin could have sworn he saw a flash of yellow energy in front of one of them before it cut out. It almost looked like a spear. It could have been a laser blast, but it looked too accurate to just be one laser blast.
Dxun, jungle moon, near the abandoned rebel base.
Lux Bonteri ran through the jungle, ducking under branches and jumping over roots, trying to outrun the probe droids that were now tailing him. The mission was to hit the droids and then run off into a direction that went away from their new hideout.
That way the droid army could search anywhere their base wasn't.
But these probe droids were proving to be persistent. They hovered and flew through the dense foliage, blasting as they went. Under normal circumstances, he would be worried for his life.
Were it not for his guardian angel.
A Togrutan Jedi, whose fighting spirit was as fiery as he skin, stood in the branches atop the trees ahead of him, and as he was running past them, she quickly took her short yellow lightsaber and used the force to send it flying like a boomerang towards one of the droids, and it flew through all three of them before spinning back and flying back into her hand.
Then she deactivated her saber, hooked it back onto her belt, and jumped off of the tree as if nothing happened.
She walked passed Lux, who was beaming at her. She smirked and ran her finger across his jawline as she walked passed before Lux followed her.
CIS supply depot, Dxun.
Miles away, General Rahm Kota watched as the laser gate was deactivated, allowing several battle droid platoon attack craft to hover out of the base and slide off into the direction of their latest objective.
Vulture droids zoomed overhead, bombing some imaginary target that the rebels had long vacated.
It's been like this for a couple days.
The rebels strike from the shadows, attacking small patrols, and then melting into the jungle. The CIS would spend hours trying tho find their camp, only for another attack to happen miles away in the opposite direction.
Probe droids and star-fighters flew over the jungle, only to see a whole lot of trees and a whole lot of nothing else.
Now it was time to hit a bigger target.
And now they had found it. With Ahsoka and several other rebels scattering into small groups to ambush more patrols, Rex and Kota had gone off to lead two separate sections of the rebels to attack bigger targets. One was gathered near a large resupply depot, which was fueling the CIS efforts in the region.
That was about to change.
Rex looked up at the cliffs that overlooked and saw Steela and a small team of insurgents ready to strike. He gave her a hand signal, and she struck. She looked down her scope and allowed the droid's head to enter her crosshairs.
"Execute." Rex said, and she squeezed the trigger.
The droid's head disappeared in a shower of sparks and smoke, before its body fell out of the guard tower.
"What the-!?" The other droid on the opposite guard tower started, before another bolt pierced its torso and he slumped over the railing of his tower. The commotion caused a score of battle droids to scramble and investigate the commotion.
But with no guards watching the entrance for a few seconds, Captain Rex gave a series of hand signals, and his men rushed forward from multiple directions. When they got up to the gate, they lobbed a dozen EC detonators over the it.
"Uh-oh!" Several droids exclaimed in unison, before the small droid poppers detonated, and released a series of energy pulses the fried the circuits of everything in range of their blasts.
Blue sparks of energy danced on droids and control consoles before they all went dark. The droids that had been dancing with life were suddenly slumping to the ground in lifeless heaps.
Rex and the rebels rushed in and expertly swept across the small base, blasting droids and clearing out every building. With the base no secured, they were now free to liberate whatever supplies their beasts could carry back, before sabotaging the rest.
CIS Starfighter Base, Dxun.
Another attack occurred.
Once again separatist forces scrambled to respond. STAPs patrolled the jungles, and droid squads maintain double watches around their base perimeters.
Vulture droids and Hyena bombers scrambled to devastate the areas where rebels were last spotted. Normally the rebels were long gone, but they were getting better at rapid response. Some rebel patrols were lost to serious bombing campaigns.
Persistant droid patrols were able to hold their ground against hasty rebel ambushes and force them to retreat.
So the rebels had to be equally persistent.
Now, more rebels were positioned in tall trees, or down below atop cliffs that overlooked the starfighter base. Kota, Saw, and the rest of the rebels watched as the droid fighters took off and screamed toward their targets.
Saw looked through his micro-binoculars and looked over the base. It was heavily guarded, with durasteel walls surrounding the base, and with AAT tanks and Spider droid walkers guarding the entrances. Battle droids scanned the walls to make sure their weren't any structural weaknesses in the walls, which were manned with E-WEB turrets and snipers.
"It's heavily fortified, General. We aren't taking that base anytime soon."
Kota chuckled. "Gerrera, I said we were putting the droid fighters out of commission, not the base."
Saw lowered his binos and looked at him. "How are we supposed to do that?"
The General pointed at the base again. "Take a look at those fighter bays."
Saw shrugged and looked through his binos again, scanning the base one last time where Kota told him to look. Then thats when he spotted the fuel tanks and power stations that were alongside the hanger bays.
"I see the fueling stations. But how are we supposed to hit them from here."
Kota just smiled. "Gather all of your thermal detonators to me."
Saw looked at him blankly for a few seconds. Then he looked at the others, who were all watching intently, before they started passing their grenades to him. When they had a good pile going, the Jedi master stepped forward and lowered himself to his knees in a meditative position. He closed his eyes and for a minute nothing happened.
Then, the grenades started floating up into the air as one. The rebels all looked on in amazement.
"Don't hit the detonator until I tell you to." Kota said, eyes still closed. Then the grenades all flew off into the direction of the hanger bays.
Saw waved his hands. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, that's gotta be half a mile. There's no way you'll make it."
Kota snorted. "I'm a Jedi, boy. Size and distance mean nothing to me. Now be ready on that detonator." He snapped.
Gerrera didn't have time to retort or be offended, when the grenades all flew into the air, hundreds of feet, out of the trees and over the heads of the unsuspecting droids, until they were all rolling across the deck. Several droids saw them, dumbfounded and confused, before the grenades rolled over to the fueling station.
"NOW!"
One of the rebels hit a button, and a few dozen explosives went off, igniting the fuel tanks, causing a massive ball of fire to spew up and out from the tanks, ripping through landing pads and hanger bays, and destroying dozens of droids and several droid star-fighters that hadn't launched.
Alarms blared across the base, and droid maintenance crews scrambled to contain the flames.
The rebels cheered and clapped for General Kota, who stood tall above them before he walked away from the cliff and back into the jungle, with the rebels following soon after that.
"Not bad, Jedi." Saw said. "Not bad at all."
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Deep in another part of the jungles of Dxun, Ahsoka and Lux continue to trek through the trees and ravines that cover the thick landscape. So far they've managed to avoid anymore encounters with droids.
But neither have they had any contact with the other rebels, or from General Kota. Orders were to maintain a strict comms blackout for these missions. They were expected to get back to base on their own as best as they could and as quickly as they could.
Of course, neither of them were in any real hurry to get back to base, enjoying each other's company without any interference from the others.
But suddenly, Ahsoka stopped. A feeling came over her, a slight tremor in the force.
She felt cold.
She closed her eyes and reached out with the force. There had been so much suffering in this area. Long ago, a great battle took place on Dxun between the Republic and the Mandalorians. The brutality of that battle had left an impression on this area, even forty centuries later.
And now another war was happening here all over again. She couldn't help but draw parallels between the Jedi back then and those of today. The ones under Revan's command who were brash and reckless, and those who stayed on Coruscant, who were distant and aloof. One group fell to the Dark Side, the other lapsed into complacency and nearly collapsed the Order.
'I can't believe it. Is history really repeating itself?'
Lux paused, just realizing that Ahsoka had stopped dead in her tracks. He walked back to her.
"Ahsoka, is something wrong?" Lux asked, as he took one of her hands into his own. "You seem lost."
Ahsoka let out a small chuckle. "I hope not. We still have a long way to-"
But she saw Lux's concerned face and ended the joke right there. He stared at her for a few seconds, then he tilted his head a little further.
'God, those eyes,' she mused.
Then she rolled her eyes at Lux. "Oh alright. I felt a disturbance in the force. We're close to an ancient battlefield and I could feel its impact in the force." She looked down at the ground. Lux still held her hand in his, brushing her knuckles with his fingers. The sensation sent shivers down her spine. "There was so much pain and suffering in this battle that I can still feel what they were feeling. The anger, the despair, the pain. Sometimes it can be too much."
'Like Jabiim.'
Ahsoka felt Lux grasp her chin between his thumb and index finger and lifted it up to look her in the eyes.
Her eyes. Those sparkling blue depths that drew him in...
They didn't say anything. Although, Ahsoka noticed the distance between their faces was closing. Her heart skipped a beat when she finally something hot and soft tickle her lips. Her mind was drawing a blank until she felt her lips parting open - almost on their own - allowing something to protrude into her mouth.
She opened up her glazed eyes to see that she was being kissed.
For a moment, she just stood there, trying to figure out what happened, while Lux ravaged her mouth. His hands brushed down the sides of her lekku, down her breasts and exposed waist, and came to rest on her hips, pulling her closer to him, drawing her in to his warm body.
The cold feeling she had been feeling previously seemed to have disappeared entirely.
When Lux finally ended the kiss, still holding Ahsoka close to him, he looked at the dumbfounded Togruta, whose mouth hung open, eyes half closed.
Ahsoka's heart raced and her cheeks burned. She opened her moth to scold him, but all that came out was a very slow and weak, "Y-you're... terrible..."
Lux chuckled, as he grasped Ahsoka's hand and led her along the path.
"Just terrible."
The two of them continued hiking back to base, but along the way, the two star-crossed youths continued to tease each other and be playful with one another. So much so that they seemed to lose track of time.
As the sun began to slip over the horizon, Ahsoka and Lux decided to make camp for the night.
Eventually they found a nice creek with a waterfall, which ran over a rocky cliff, secluded by enough foliage to give them decent cover. As Lux set up the camp site, Ahsoka took this opportunity to take a bath in the small creek. She stripped herself of all her garments and stood under the small waterfall, which filled the clearing with a very audible trickling sound.
She took the soap she had borrowed from Lux and began running her soapy hands over her body. The water was about thigh deep, so if anyone was watching her...
Ahsoka grinned.
Her grin widened when she heard something disturb the water behind her. She didn't react as if she was alarmed. But she did raise her arms behind her head, and push her chest out when she felt a familiar presence approaching from behind.
Her heart began to race just as Lux wrapped his arms around her and began massaging her breasts. "Mind if I join you?" he asked. She gasped heavily as her equally exposed lover pulled her closer into his embrace, whereupon he buried his face into the crook of her neck, which he smothered with his lips.
Ahsoka let out a small yelp as she felt the small buds on the tips of her chest where pinched. She arched her back and reached behind Lux's head to bury her fingers in his luscious hair.
"It's about time." She moaned. "How many more hints did I have to drop in front of you?"
Lux chuckled and spun her around so that she could face him and pulled her closer. She felt... something pushing against her abdomen, causing her to blush fiercely.
But then Lux noticed something, something in Ahsoka's eyes. They seemed to be glowing. Watering actually. Like she was on the verge of tears. "Is something wrong, Ahsoka?"
"Why Luxie," Ahsoka said flirtatiously, lazily hung both of her arms around Lux's neck and leaned even harder against him, squashing her chest against his. "What could possibly make you think that?" She asked as she made to press her lips agains Lux's again, only for him to pull back and hold her by her biceps.
She frowned at him, but he only cocked an eyebrow at her.
Ahsoka rolled her eyes at him. "What do you want me to say Lux? That I've missed you for so long? That I never stopped thinking about you since the day we met? How about how I no longer believe in The Jedi Order's rules on attachment?" Ahsoka rambled on before she paused. "Or that I love you?"
Lux's eyebrows flared up.
She lowered her head in embarrassment, blushing fiercely, but Lux lifted it up to make her look up at him.
"I haven't stopped thinking about you either, my love."
They beamed at each other for what seemed like an eternity before their lips met in a passionate manner.
When they eventually parted their lips, Lux lifted her chin to begin kissing her neck.
She closed her eyes and gasped.
"So, how long until we have to get back to the rendezvous point?" He asked between kisses as his hands began to roam down her body, from her chest, down her waist, and finally resting on her backside.
"Oh," she moaned, "at about this time tomorrow night." She said, before she pulled out of his embrace, pulled him by the wrist, and began leading him out of the creek. "Plenty of time." She said as she continued to lead Lux behind a set of bushes, where they would spend the night consummating their relationship.
They were breaking all kinds of rules.
But this war had broken all rules of peacekeeping Jedi and a civilized Republic.
The Force wouldn't be thrown into turmoil if one obscure Jedi with no master and a former junior politician with no home broke just a few more.
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Well folks, that was it.
Hope you enjoyed.
Grubkiller out.