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Separatist command post, The tomb of Freedon Nadd.
Deep in the swamps of Dxun, Separatist forces had set up shop on the entire moon. Anti-ship cannons dotted the landscape, and they were radar directed from this very station, the tomb of Freedon Nadd. The Dark Jedi who ruled Onderon, and whose royal blood line still endured today.
It was a powerful symbol, one that reminded men like Colonel Jabuli Sutter what they were here for, as they fought to protect Onderon and preserve its independence in the face of the Republic.
He looked out over the region in front of him, a small, lush valley, with a swampy pond out in front, and protected by a battalion of battle droids, and a platoon of well motivated soldiers of Onderon.
Real Onderonians.
Not the filthy terrorists who undermined the will of the people, who threatened her very existence, all for the sake of an all consuming state, run by decadent and corrupt senators, who need slave soldiers to be bred to fight their wars. Soldiers that were copied off of a Mandalorian warrior.
The irony was not lost on most people, especially to an Onderonian.
'Mandalorian clones,' Colonel Sutter thought with disgust about the brutes who ravaged his world so long ago.
These clones fight because they were bred for it. Sutter fought for his family, his culture, and his people. Anyone who wasn't willing to do the same, and rely on clones to do it instead did not deserve to rule the galaxy.
Onderon was isolated and surrounded by a galaxy of enemies, far off from the closest allies from the Confederacy in the Outer Rim, and its people and even its army were divided. But his faith was strong. He would not fail the realm and people of Onderon.
As the red-headed colonel looked out over the landscape before him with his piercing blue eyes, an OOM-series droid commander walked up to him.
"Colonel Sutter, we detected an energy burst in the system and briefly picked up a small ship in orbit above Dxun, near sector S-11. But our scanners lost it completely."
The droid handed the colonel a data pad, which showed the relative size of the ship and its last known position. Then he pulled up an image of all the known rebel cells in the system. Most of them were still on Onderon, deep in the jungles outside of Iziz, cut off from one another and too weak to do anything independently. There were no known rebel cells on Dxun, and yet that is where an unregistered ship was close to.
"Did you detect any further unauthorized transmissions coming from the system?" Sutter asked.
"No sir."
"We know that the rebels have made contact with the Republic. And if there was a ship going to Dxun, and not Onderon to support the terrorist cells there, then there must be one operating here on Dxun. Send units to check out sector S-11 and then move out from there and sweep the jungle in all directions. Scramble fighter patrols and probe droids to assist in the search. Then send a message to Iziz, tell them what we've discovered, and then send another message to the fleet, recommend they go to yellow alert."
"Roger roger." The droid said before he carried out his orders.
Within the hour, platoons of battle droids marched out and began to sweep the jungle for any sign of the terrorists.
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Onderon Insurgent Camp.
Back at the rebel camp, deep within the jungles of Dxun, pairs of rebel trainees continued to rush back and forth between their starting point and the deactivated droid tank. They climbed abort, deploying their dumby grenades and then got back in line.
Under the watchful eye of the Jedi and clones, they were improving.
The rebel leader, Saw Gerrera, cheered them on, motivating them.
"Come on!" He called out. "Move it like a soldier, like a real soldier!"
The next pair was a man and a woman. They rushed towards the tank. One climbed up to attack the turret hatch, and the other to the pilot seat.
Climb, deploy, run, repeat.
"Come on, Dono. Pick it up, Hutch." Saw called. "You can do better than that."
The next pair made a run for the tank.
"Come on, hustle!"
One of the men tripped after deploying his grenade.
"I said hustle!"
Another pair ran up, making the coarse in record time, and deploying their rock grenades without tripping.
"That's what I'm talking about." He said, slapping one soldier on the shoulder as he ran past.
Saw looked around the camp and liked what he was seeing. Master Kota was drilling these men to march and teaching them hand to hand skills. The clones took them through their own exercises, including running in formation, tactical movements, how to clear a building, etc.
Ahsoka, when she wasn't managing the tank exercise, was teaching the rebels how to move silently, and blend in with their surroundings. She would simply lead a group of soldiers into the jungle. If the made a single sound, even stepping on a leaf, it was an automatic failure.
She even came up with a game. All they had to do was find her in the jungle. Very few ever managed it.
But there were some whom Saw was less enthused about. He walked passed the infirmary and saw several rebel troops who were nursing wounds from training accidents. One man had failed to keep his weapon pointed down range and didn't practice proper trigger discipline. His buddy paid for it with a stun round to the back. Now the failure of a trainee was running laps around the camp at the very moment, per General Kota's orders.
Some had broken limbs and bruises from hand-to-hand training with the ARC troopers.
But one rebel, who Saw hesitated to refer to as a man, was sitting on bench in the corner, with just a few small cuts and some dust on his face from the tank exercise. Lux Bonteri sat still, as Saw's sister wiped his face down with a cloth before applying a small bacta patch. Steela seemed to be taking her time, causing Lux to get fidgety, but Saw knew that she was just using this as an excuse to baby him.
Saw shook his head disapprovingly.
He walked up to them. Lux saw he was coming and seemed to tense up, embarrassed.
"You sure you're up for this?" Saw asked.
His sister glared at him. "Saw..." Steela started.
But Lux was quick to speak up.
"It was an accident."
Saw ignored him.
"If those were real grenades, you would've had us both killed."
"Just stop it." Lux said as he was going to get up, as if to challenge him.
But Saw shoved him.
"Sit down, boy. This isn't the Senate. You've got no talent for this." Saw said before he started to walk off.
Lux stood up again.
"It's going to take a lot more than muscle to defeat the Separatists." Lux said. Then a sly grin creeped across his face. "Like brains for example."
Saw didn't seem to like that last comment. He turned around and got up in Lux's face. "You got something to say, Senator?" He asked, placing venomous emphasis on the last word."
Lux leaned in closer. "I just did."
Both men looked like they were about to come to blows. But then they heard a loud whistle rip through the room. Everyone turned to see Ahsoka Tano standing there, and they all snapped to attention.
She walked in front of the formation, stopping in front of Lux and Saw, who still looked like they wanted to kill something. She studied them for a moment, before calling out to the rest of them room.
"Next exercise is in 10 minutes. Unless you boys have other plans," she said, glaring at Lux and Saw, "fall in, now!"
"YES MA'AM!" They all called in unison, before running off to the next phase of their training.
General Kota stood tall, with his chest puffed out naturally and his hands clasped behind his back.
A pair of Trade federation destroyer droids. The insect-looking droids were curled up in their transportation modes.
Master Kota called out in a loud, yet soft and gravelly voice, to the crowd of assembled rebels.
"Destroyers are quick, pack twin blasters, and come with their own shield generators. Nothing short of a cannon will pierce it. But they do have two weaknesses, and you will need to work together to exploit them."
He gestured to Rex, who pressed a button on his wrist unit.
The droids unfolded with a series of metallic crunching noises, standing up on three claw-shaped legs, before its bubble-like shield activated.
Kota continued, as Ahsoka walked up with a deactivated EC 'droid-popper' detonator.
"The shields deflect high-velocity attacks. But what the shields don't stop are slow or stationary objects. They're designed to absorb them so nothing hinders their movement."
Ahsoka walked behind the droid, bent down, and gently rolled the grenade towards the droid, and it passed through the shield with no difficulty. She then turned to the rebels.
"Destroyers are blind from behind. A distraction combined with a rear assault will give you a kill." She said as she tossed some grenades to some of the rebels in the front row, including Saw, Lux, and Steela. "The trick is to get the right speed on the droid popper."
Rex pressed another button, and a second droid popped up into its attack mode.
"I got sick of carving rocks, so we're using real grenades now." Ahsoka said, causing some of the men to chuckle. "But they're still deactivated. Just concentrate on getting it
past the shield."
Saw stepped up first, and looked at Lux.
"Watch and learn." He said, before he rolled his grenade across the ground. But it rolled too quickly and bounced off the destroyer's shield so hard that it actually rolled back to Saw's feet.
He just looked down at it, dumbstruck.
Lux Bonteri slow clapped in a mocking fashion as he stepped up, causing Saw to fume on the inside. "Quite brilliant."
Then Lux slowly swung his arm back and forth with the grenade and gently released it, and it rolled towards the droid and rent right through the shield. A few rebels clapped and cheered.
"Hmm. Nice touch." Ahsoka said as she looked at Lux.
Lux gently bowed his head, "Thanks."
But they both lingered on each other for a few seconds, their blue and green eyes locked on each other, both getting lost in each other's gaze. The world around them seemed to disappear. Most were oblivious to their connection, but a few noticed.
One of them, Steela, looked at the Togruta with undisguised contempt, but Ahsoka barely noticed. The only thing that shook them out of their connection was Steela walking past Lux and bumping his shoulder, snapping him out of his trance.
"Not bad." She smirked before snatching a grenade from the pile and confidently winding her arm up.
Then she swung her arm and released the grenade, only for it to have the same result as her brother's. It bounced off the shield and rolled right back over to her.
She balled both of her hands into fists and exclaimed in frustration. "Ugh!" Then she lowered her head. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment. Making a fool of herself was one thing (Saw did it all the time), but she had just made a fool of herself in front of the one person that she was trying to get the attention of.
Ahsoka, arms crossed over her chest (so tightly that her cleavage began to press up out of her outfit), looked at Steela with the look of a school teacher lightly reprimanding a troublesome youth.
"Be mindful of your frustration." Ahsoka said in a soft tone, one that Steela felt irritated by. "It'll only hold you back."
Steela slowly raised her head up, glaring at Ahsoka with one eye.
Lux noticed her frustration and decided to offer a friendly hand.
"Here." He said, placing his hand on on wrist, and the other on her shoulder, causing her heart to start racing. "Use your shoulder, let your arm swing," he said as he swung her arm back and forth in a gentle underhand arc, "and keep your eyes on the target."
Holding another grenade, Steela allowed Lux to guide her arm the way he showed her, and she released the grenade when she felt that the moment was right. The grenade rolled slowly across the ground, before it nudged against the bubble shield and came to a rest between the droid's legs.
"Great." Lux said praisingingly, and everyone cheered for Steela.
She smiled and looked at Lux the same way Ahsoka had, and Lux flashed a small smile back.
"Alright people, let's get back to work." Kota called out, getting everyone's attention, "Everyone pair up. We'll practice in groups."
Everyone began to separate into two different groups. Steela turned away from Lux, not letting her eyes off of him until she had to and walked to the grenade pile. That's when Ahsoka walked past Lux, slowly walking by him. She faced forward but her eyes rolled over to Lux. He caught her glance and he became lost in her eyes again. With an extra swaying of her hips, an entranced Lux followed Ahsoka to another group of rebels, just as a disappointed Steela walked back over carrying a pair of grenades.
She looked down at the grenades in her hands with disappointment, then she looked at Lux again, standing with that tail-headed hussy.
Then Saw walked up to her.
"Hey sis, wanna help me practice?" He asked.
She looked at him and smiled. "Sure."
And with that, they walked off to join the rest of the men who were with General Kota. But unbeknownst to them or anyone else in the base, a pair of B1 battle droid snipers had found the camp and were watching the rebel's every move.
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Separatist command post, The tomb of Freedon Nadd.
At the CIS command center on Dxun, located at the tomb of Freedon Nadd, activity was buzzing more so than usual. Vulture droids screamed by overhead on patrol. Probe droids creeped through the jungle, and battle droid patrols marched through the jungle.
Although, looking for rebels was difficult in this terrain, which was probably why they chose it. The thick fog and dense foliage made it difficult for larger droid units to maneuver. To make matters worse, the jungle was crawling with vicious beasts of all shapes and sizes, more than a few didn't seem to mind chowing down on droids of all things.
But the Colonel wasn't worried.
Standing there with his hands clasped behind his back, the young officer secreted confidence.
The insurgents are scattered and weak. The idea that the few rebels on this moon could pose any sort of threat were remote.
"Colonel," one of the droid comm operators said, right behind him.
Sutter turned his head over his shoulder to look at the droid.
"Sir, some of our scouts have spotted activity near a small cluster of buildings in sector S-29." The droid said, passing a data-pad over to the Colonel.
Sutter took the data-pad and looked at it. The map that was displayed did indeed show several ruined buildings. A small hanger, some perimeter walls, which had huge gaps due to centuries of neglect and decay.
Not centuries. Millenia.
"It looks like an old Mandalorian camp from the time of the Sith Civil War, maybe even before that." He looked at it, stroking his chin thoughtfully. "Very well. Send a battalion of droids with an attachment of armored support. They'll march separately in companies. Divide the armor accordingly. They'll converge on the base and clear it out."
"Roger, roger." The droid saluted.
Moments later, about eight hundred droids and two dozen AAT tanks began to march out. They didn't stay together for long, needing to maneuver through the jungle. The days of the rebellion were numbered.
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Onderon Insurgent base, Sector S-29.
The rebels were far past their grenade training. Most had gotten the hang of it, but a few were still struggling to get their grenades to roll slowly. But now it was over, it was time to start target practice.
A group of battle droid heads were bunched up in formation, riddled with blast marks from the other rebels using them so many times. This was what most of the rebels were good at from the start, many of them hunters previously, Including Steela and her brother Saw, their family being descended from the famed Beast-riders of the Onderonian wilderness.
Some, like Lux, who were city-dwellers, didn't handle blasters that often, unless they were soldiers.
It was Steela's turn. She stood in front of the droid heads, separated by about twenty feet, and put a round through each of their heads with her scoped rifle.
The rebels clapped and cheered at Steela's success.
"At a girl, sis!" Saw yelled.
"Impressive," Kota said, walking up to her, "Most impressive. But fixed targets are one thing."
"Too bad most of the droids you brought us are a bit immobile." Steela said.
Kota gave a chuckle. "How about this?" He asked, as he raised both hands and caused all of the droids to lift up off of the ground, then they all began to move around quickly in the air.
Steela shifted her rifle from target to target, squeezing off rounds. Most of them hit, but a few didn't.
"Not bad." Kota said. "But let's see what happens when they advance."
With the Force, the droids stopped spinning around and began to advance toward her rapidly.
This time, she hit all of them.
The rebels clapped and cheered even louder than before. Even the Clones began to nod their heads in impressment.
Kota nodded, his face wearing a neutral expression. "You have clearly mastered your ability to focus." He said to Steela, who shrugged. He then turned to the rebels. "As have the rest of you. You've made excellent progress over the last two days. Soon, you'll be ready to face the Droid army and take back your world.
The rebels cheered even louder and celebrated. They shared drinks and rations, and for once they had something to focus on other than the slow and painful march of defeat.
But amidst the celebrations, Captain Rex noticed that Ahsoka had managed to tear herself away from a slightly confused Lux Bonteri for more than three minutes (Not that it was any of his business) and began to walk towards the edge of the camp away from the celebrations.
She pursed her lips and scrunched up her face, as if she was trying extra hard to focus on something.
"Commander, are you alright?"
Ahsoka didn't answer right away.
"Commander," he said again,
Ahsoka snapped out of her trance-like state to look at him.
"Everything alright?" He asked.
She pointed out to the tree-line, as if pointing to something far beyond what the scouts guarding the perimeter could see.
"I hear something out there. Almost like a thunder storm." Ahsoka said.
Rex wasn't surprised that Ahsoka was able to hear what he couldn't. Her people's lekku had special eco-location abilities. She was able to hear something four times as far away as any human was capable of hearing.
The CLone captain frowned when he was sure that he was able to hear it as well. He threw up a spherical remote. it flew up about a hundred feet and showed him a holo-map of the surrounding jungle.
It only took him a few seconds to figure out what it was. Just beyond the tree-line, he could see what had become an all too familiar sight.
"Droids!"
Ahsoka turned and shouted. "Take cover!" Before a storm of red blaster bolts poured out of the jungle.
Rex and Ahsoka hit the deck right away. Some rebels who were patrolling the perimeter were cut down immediately. A few managed to take cover and return fire, only to be forced to retreat or be cut down.
Most were cut down.
Ahsoka ignited her lightsabers and started to deflect blaster bolts, catching a few droids with their own firepower. She threw both sabers like glowing boomerangs through multiple tree branches, causing them to fall to the ground and trip up several droids.
Rex tossed a grenade and blasted several droids in the front ranks to bits.
Anything to slow them down.
It was only when they saw the tanks that they made the decision to make a run for it. They, and what few rebels were left on the perimeter, rounded a corner of a bombed out hanger bay and rushed back to the center of the camp.
They found the rebels had dropped everything and were preparing for a fight. Ahsoka and Rex ran into Kota, Fives, Echo, Steela, Saw and Lux.
"It appears the training is over." Saw said somewhat jovially, as an explosion ripped through one of the buildings nearby.
"General, I estimate at least one company of droids, with maybe half a dozen tanks providing support."
"Padawan Tano, take the right flank with Gerrera and the clones. Steela and the sniper teams will provide covering fire from the trees on the left flank. I'll take a quarter of the remaining men and blunt their advance once they reach the center of the camp. The rest of the men will have to scatter into the jungle.
"But it's only a hundred droids and a couple tanks. We can take them," Saw said.
Another salvo of explosions ripped through the camp, engulfing several rebels that were standing nearby.
"No." Kota said firmly. "Enemy reinforcements are more than likely to be nearby, so the base has already been surrounded. It's only a matter of time before we're overrun and slaughtered. Our only hope is for the men to scatter into small groups and use the jungle to cover their escape. We'll act as a rearguard before we join the rest of the men."
Saw looked like he wanted to say something, but held his tongue, before reluctantly nodding his head.
As they planned, Ahsoka, Saw, Rex and the Clones, along with Lux and a few other rebels tore off into the right flank, and Steela to the left, while Kota and the majority of the men that were staying set up defensive positions.
Meanwhile, the rest of the men had begun to pack up whatever they could carry and burn the rest. Of course, the CIS were a real help in that regard to that last part.
Nearly half of the camp was a smoldering ruin (or at least more so than it had been), and the droids began to advance into the main part of the camp. General Kota pulled his saber out of the sling on his back and ignited it, the brilliant green blade acting as a beacon for the men around him to rally behind.
"OPEN FIRE!"
The brilliant blue plasma bolts of the Republic-made weapons provided to the rebels answered the CIS barrage. Droids fell apart in pieces, but for every droid that fell, at least half a dozen took its place. These were numbers that the presently dwindling rebels couldn't not replace at this moment.
Steela's men picked off droid after droid, putting their training to use. But eventually, the droids managed to track their rounds and answer in kind. The treetop sniper perches were lit up by another storm of droid fire, wiping out half of the snipers. Nearly Steela as well if it hadn't been for her branch being shredded by plasma beneath her, causing her to fall down.
The CIS tanks managed to maneuver around the buildings, bringing their firepower to bear on the rebel positions.
One of the rebels pressed a button that controlled the pre-laced minefield, and wiped out the lead tank in the formation, and at least twenty droids went with it. But the remaining tank answered back, killing even more rebels.
"There's too many, fall back!" Kota ordered.
As the rebels fell back again, Ahsoka and Saw's group laid down covering fire, distracting the last tank, while Kota's men sprung a new set of mines on the advancing droids, wiping out most of the remaining droids, but not the tank, which still blasted away at Ahsoka's position.
As the Tank's main cannon swiveled towards them, Ahsoka called out. "Duck!"
She turned to Saw and Lux, using the Force to push them away from her, while she and the clones dove for cover.
The tank fired, wiping out another trio of rebel troops who were bunched up together.
Ahsoka got back up, using her sabers to deflect the blaster fire from the Tank's droid riders.
Nearby, Lux and Saw were just getting back up. The droids didn't seem to notice them, which gave Saw an idea. "Hey, Bonteri," he said, pulling a grenade from a pouch on his belt, "you ready to try again?"
Lux smiled and nodded before do the same. Soon, both men started tearing off in the direction of the tank, just as the last of the droid escorts were cut down by their own re-directed fire, curtesy of Ahsoka.
"Hey, what are you doing!?" She shouted over the sound of battle
"What you taught us." Lux called back.
Saw and Lux climbed onto the tank, which as advancing on Ahsoka. She was very careful to deflect the secondary blasts away from the tank, so as to not hit her friends.
Saw blasted the front hatch open and tossed a EC detonator into it, which detonated and fried the circuits of the droids and instruments inside, leaving the tank immobile. The tank turret was still a threat, which Lux sought to rectify.
He climbed up onto the turret without falling, and tossed a grenade, a thermal detonator, into the hatch, which was already open.
The droid commander caught the grenade, but just looked at it, and Lux at him for a split second of befuddlement, before he started to climb down. Lux began to make a run for it.
"Uh-oh!" the droid said before the grenade it was holding exploded.
Lux was just starting to run away, only for an invisible force to surround him, and yank him the rest of the way, over a fallen tree, before Ahsoka used the force to block the incoming fire and shrapnel.
Lux looked up in amazement at how Ahsoka held back the force of a explosion in the palms of her hands. When it was all over, she lowered her hands and looked down at him.
"We, uh, need to clean you up." She said as she reached down to help him up.
He smiled, blushing slightly, only no one could tell. Lux was covered in dust from head to boot. His black hair was now all gray, as if he had just aged about 40 years.
"I like it." Saw said with a laugh. "Now you look more like a soldier than a politician."
"Well, maybe," Ahsoka interjected, as she started playfully brushing Lux's hair, causing the dust to fly everywhere, "a good politician needs to get dirty now and then."
Ahsoka then walked off, using the force to rip a droid's head off its body and fly into her hand, leaving Lux to stare longingly after her before he went to rejoin them.
The rebels all met in a rendezvous point deep within the jungle, far off from the rebel base. Some of the rebel scouts in the cliffs above watched their base as it was occupied by droid reinforcements.
The other rebels gathered around the Jedi.
"Take confidence from this victory." Kota said. "But rest assured, there will be more droids coming now that they know your position. But it doesn't matter.
You're ready now. We are going to take the fight to the droids."
The rebels all cheered, fists raised in the air.
They had started off this rebellion as just a handful of beast-riders, too far from the city and too few in number to affect any real change. But with a few extra weapons, training, and motivation, and the inspiring words of a Senator with Jedi friends they now felt that they could take on the worst the droid army had to throw at them.
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