Chapter Twelve

The pang of blasterfire rang out sporadically across the makeshift firing range Ghes and Rex had instructed the militia to carve into the Ondaronian jungle.

Out of the seemingly unstructured chaos of it all, a single pattern could be recognized; the shots always came in pairs. Sometimes this meant two in quick succession, sometimes two spaced out by a few seconds, but it was always two.

This was one of the first lessons the two career soldiers had forced upon their new trainees; controlled shots were taken in pairs, no exceptions.

For something that was, on its face, so simple, it proved a surprisingly hard concept for many of them to grasp. Most of the militia's recruits had grown up handling blasters and didn't consider what Rex termed "basic marksmanship training" worth their time. They could already shoot, after all, and why relearn something you already knew?

That wasn't the point, of course, as Ghes and Rex had gone to exhausting lengths to explain. The real point of training like this was firing disciplined, aimed shots quickly, eventually under stress, but Ghes had said that would come later.

So, yes, these basics were important, even if the people they were training could already shoot.

Well, most of them anyway…

"One miss, high." Ahsoka said, observing the results of the last round of shots on the crude, scrap metal silhouette that sat in the brush a hundred-fifty meters away through a pair of macrobinoculars.

Lux grimaced.

"I hit the head, though." He said, carefully laying the DC-15 on the ground in front of him. "That's good, right?"

Ahsoka wasn't sure why she'd been paired with Lux for this, especially considering that she was the only of the Republic advisors participating in the training event. Anakin and Obi Wan weren't even at the range, and Ghes and Rex were both observing as instructors, while she was on the firing line, sharing one of the decees with Lux.

"Headshots are only good if you can repeat them, Bontieri." Ghes's voice crackled out of Lux's headset. "Stick to the body until you learn to hit the broad end of a nerf."

"What?" Lux stammered, looking around in confusion. "How did he…"

"Your mic's open." Ghes said again through the headset. "Di'kut."

Ahsoka looked over her shoulder at where Ghes sat perched in a tree toward the center of his half of the firing line. He was scanning the line of targets with his own binocs, but she shot him an annoyed look anyway. He'd know.

"Sorry." Ahsoka said, waiting for Lux to stop fidgeting with his headset so she could hand him the binocs. "Ghes really is a n… a likeable guy when you get to know him."

"I'm sure." Lux mumbled, grabbing the binocs and pushing the decee towards her. "So, you and him?"

It wasn't any great mystery to Ahsoka how Lux had figured out about her and Ghes. Since the initial… unpleasantness of their arrival, Ghes had been very unsubtly affectionate towards her whenever he knew Obi Wan wasn't looking and Lux was. For someone who wasn't jealous, he seemed very determined to make sure Lux knew exactly what the score was.

"Yes." She said, shouldering the heavy rifle and making a few adjustments to its optic. "For about a month and a half now."

"Not exactly the "Jedi way", is it?" Lux said, propping himself up on his elbows to look through the binocs.

"And joining an insurgency isn't very senatorial." Ahsoka countered as she settled into her firing position. "Seems like we've both strayed a little from our given paths."

Shooting was, at least in Ahsoka's mind, a lot like meditation. Both required her to clear her mind, pushing out all distractions. Next, she breathed deeply, in and out, in and out. The difference between this and meditation was she held on that final exhale for one, two, three…

"Kandossi, commander!" Ghes called out after he saw the two shots tightly grouped in the top left of the target's "torso". "Droid or organic, the chakaar's dead."

Ahsoka allowed herself a smug smile as she lowered the weapon. She considered herself a pretty good shot for a Jedi, at least at longer ranges where skill started to matter as much as instinct.

"Wait," Lux said, having already dropped the binocs before she'd even finished firing. "A month and a half? Wasn't that before…"

"Yes." She said, holding out the rifle for him to take. "By a few weeks."

"Oh." He said, gingerly taking the weapon and once again laying it on the ground in front of him. "Is that why he hates me so much?"

"Partly." Ahsoka admitted with a shrug as she grabbed the binocs from where Lux had dropped them. "You pulling a blaster and accusing him of being a Death Watch assassin didn't help."

"I suppose it wouldn't." Lux said sheepishly. "I am sorry about that. I'm not sure what came over me. When I saw that armor, I just… panicked."

That wasn't too difficult for Ahsoka to understand. For most beings in the galaxy, particularly those who'd fought against them, Mandalorian beskar'gam was a sight to be feared. She'd never experienced that reaction, of course, if only because Phase-I armor had shared the iconic T-visor with its Mandalorian predecessor. But Lux's experience was more… limited.

"As long as it doesn't happen again." Ahsoka teased. "I don't know if I'll be able to hold him back next time."

From his impression in the Force, it seemed Lux took that a little too seriously.

"You going to shoot?" Ahsoka said, glancing down at the rifle still sitting on the ground in front of him.

"Yes…" Lux said nervously, eyeing the decee cautiously for a moment before finally grabbing it from the dirt.

Ahsoka knew all too well that Lux was at least competent with a blaster pistol, but he handled the rifle awkwardly. The DC-15 was a long, heavy weapon, attributes that limited it's popularity even with the clone troopers who'd been training with it for most of their lives. It was a distinctly military blaster, something almost alien to anyone other than professional soldiers and mercenaries. The only person she knew who fit both categories was Ghes, and even he considered the weapon, at best, situational.

As Lux shouldered the rifle, his lack of confidence was almost as apparent as his lack of familiarity. This had to be the ninth or tenth round of firing, and he wasn't getting much better. Ghes calling him out probably hadn't helped.

"Group Aurek," Rex voice called from Lux's headset. "fire at will."

The shots from the rifles around Ahsoka were more consistent this time, a string of steady, two-round bursts of semi-automatic fire. All except Lux, who rushed his shots.

"Two miss." Ahsoka said, grimacing at the results. "One high, one right."

"Damn." Lux swore, letting the barrel of the decee sag into the dirt.

"Bontieri!" Ghes shouted over the com channel, startling the younger man. "Get that barrel out of the dirt!"

A red-faced Lux complied quickly, raising the barrel up before taking the weapon and once again laying it on its side in front of him. If he'd been embarrassed when Ghes had called him out before, he was even more so now.

"All lanes hold your fire." Ghes said with a heavy sigh. "I'm on the move."

As a chorus of voices came over the com acknowledging the warning, Ahsoka rolled over to see Ghes clambering down from his perch and jogging down the firing line towards her and Lux. He was aggravated and more than a little annoyed with Lux, she could tell, though she wasn't entirely sure why. Ghes had shown quite clearly that he had very low expectations of the younger man.

"Alright, Bontieri," Ghes said as he took a knee between her and Lux. "what's the deficiency here?"

"I… I don't know." Lux said, still embarrassed and more than a little frustrated.

"Hmm…" Ghes hummed as he thought for a moment, considering the target downrange with the enhanced vision his helmet provided him. "What do you think, cyar'ika?"

Cyar'ika, it was a mando'a term that had become Ghes's pet name for her in the time since they'd arrived on Onderon. He'd translated for her when she'd asked as "sweetheart", except without the sarcastic implications that the term had in basic. Though Ahsoka suspected he'd started using it as part of the "show" he was putting on for Lux's benefit, she'd have been lying if she said she didn't like it. Besides, Lux didn't speak mando'a, and she doubted Ghes had translated it for him.

"I think it's mostly a confidenc thing." Ahsoka answered after mulling over the question in her mind for a few moments. "The decee is a heavy weapon with a lot of kick, that can be a bit intimidating."

Ghes nodded thoughtfully and Lux turned away to hide his reddening face. Surprisingly, Ghes seemed to pick upon this.

"Oh, don't be too embarrassed, Bontieiri." He said, grabbing the rifle off the ground and wiping spots of dirt off the paneling with his thumb. "It's perfectly normal to be nervous your first time handling a real weapon. Hell, I was a bit skittish first time I fired a heavy blaster. Of course, I was nine…"

Ahsoka rolled her eyes. Ghes couldn't even try and help Lux without being condescending, could he? This petty, immature streak from him was starting to get on her nerves.

"Well, since seeing a skinny little Jedi handle this weapons platform apparently isn't enough of a confidence booster," Ghes continued as good naturedly as he could while maintaining the same patronizing tone. "I'll just have to demonstrate how it works in the hands of one of us ordinary humans."

He didn't move into the prone position that Ahsoka, Lux, and everyone else on the line had been firing from, instead staying up on one knee as he confidently shouldered the rifle and lined t up on the target she and Lux had been firing at.

"Are you observing, commander?" Ghes asked, once again all business as he adjusted the optic, something Lux had to forgotten to do before the last round of firing.

"I am." Ahsoka answered, bringing the binocs back up to her eyes. She briefly considered suggesting that Lux should be the one observing, but quickly realized that that wouldn't help. This point of the demonstration was the form, not the result.

Ghes fired three times, twice in rapid succession and then a half second's break as he adjusted his aim for the third.

"Three on target." Ahsoka reported as she lowered the binocs and turned towards Ghes and Lux. "Two torso, one head."

"There." Ghes said smugly as he lowered the rifle. "See, Bonitieri? Nothing to it but practice and a little confidence."

Lux didn't seem especially reassured by the demonstration of Ghes's marksmanship, or the patronizing attitude that had accompanied it.

"I thought you said not to aim for the head?" He snarked bitterly, picking himself up off his stomach and sitting back on his haunches so he was more or less even with Ghes's chest.

"I told you not to aim for the head." Ghes shot back, still facing downrange, probably admiring his handiwork. "I hit what I put in my crosshairs. Besides, the triple tap is more of an adv…."

Ghes's voicd trailed off into silence as he shifted his gaze along the treeline at the end of the range. A moment later, he stiffened, fixed on a point behind the line of targets. Ahsoka followed his line of sight as best she could with his eyes still hidden behind his helmet. At the same time as she saw a brief glint of sunlight reflecting off polished metal, Ghes let loose with the decee, tracing a line across fifty meters of jungle before the blaster fell silent once again.

"What did you do that for?!" Lux screamed, having dropped back down onto his stomach once Ghes had started tracking his target sideways.

"Shut up, kid." Ghes snapped, still looking through the blaster's optic at the sot where'd he'd stopped firing. "Did you see that, Rex?"

"I do now." The captain's voice cracked over the com. "Is that what I think it is?"

"Looks like." Ghes responded grimly. "You have eyes on, Ahsoka?"

She'd had the binocs back up before he'd even asked, zooming in on the area where Ghes was still aiming the decee. It didn't take her long to notice the large, black flattened sphere sitting in a tangle of underbrush, a wisp of smoke rising slowly from a fire burning near its heart.

"You see it?" Ghes asked again.

"Yes." She answered, grip tightening on the binocs as she put the pieces together in her mind.

"See what?" Lux asked angrily, frustrated at being left out of the loop. "What was he shooting at? What's going on?"

"Trouble."

"A probe droid." Obi Wan said as he looked over the armored bulb "head" of the droid with its four dangling arms, mostly intact except for the shattered photoreceptor and burned out interior. "And you're certain there was only one?"

"As much as I can be." Ghes said, looking down at the wrecked droid with his thumbs hooked casually through his belt, calm outer appearance belying how on edge the probe's discovery had put him.

While, as usual, he was in no hurry to admit it, Ahsoka could tell that he was just as worried about their little rebel training center being discovered as anyone else, and for much the same reason.

The fact of the matter was that none of the Republic advisors, Ahsoka included, believed that the rag tag group of dissidents were ready to take on a droid army, certainly not if the Separtists choose to launch an all out attack. There just hadn't been enough time to teach anything more than the very basics. And what worried Ahsoka most of all was how little many of the militia seemed to understand this.

"I say let the droids come?" Saw Guerrera, Steela's brother, said with a wicked look in his eyes, mashing his palm with his fist. "That's what you've been training us for, after all, isn't it?"

Of the three who had positioned themselves as the leaders of this little rebellion, Saw was by far the most outspoken, most impulsive, and, by extension, the most popular among his comrades. It wasn't hard to see why that was the case, not when his only competitors were his more reserved, calculated sister and Lux, who seemed to have come to his position almost entirely through his late mother's popularity, since most of the others saw him as little more than a spoiled rich kid playing revolutionary. This went doubly for Saw, and probably had something to do with why he seemed to weirdly respect Ghes more than the other advisors.

So far, the feeling wasn't mutual.

"Don't be stupid, kid." Ghes said with more than a little irritation in his voice. "None of you are ready to take a Sep company in a straight fight, not with armor support, at least."

"You taught us how to fight tanks!" Saw insited. "And destroyers! There's nothing they can through at us that we're not prepared for!"

Ghes let out an exacerbated sigh. He'd disagreed with some of the exercises Anakin and Obi Wan had wanted to teach.

"They taught you tricks." He said. "If you want to run a hundred meters head on across open ground at an assault tank or a destroyer, be my guest, but you're not going to accomplish anything except getting yourselves killed."

"While Col. Marczak may not be very… diplomatic, he does make a fair point." Obi Wan said wearily. "What we've taught you won't do much good in a pitched battle. Our best option is to break down camp and move to a more secure location were we can continue to prepare unmolested."

"That could take weeks!" Saw fumed. "And we're sick of waiting! We need to start taking the fight to Rash and his cronies now!"

"It's going to be pretty hard for you to "free" anything if you're all dead." Ghes shot back angrily.

"I agree with Saw." Lux chimed in, much to everyone's surprise, even Guerrera's. Especially Guerrera's.

"What?" Saw said dumbfoundedly as he looked back over his shoulder at Lux.

"I said I agree with you." Lux repeated with more confidence. "We're never going to accomplish anything hiding in the jungle. We need to start fighting back."

"I'm glad you two are finding common ground." Obi Wan said, his increasing frustration obvious in his voice. "But the fact of the matter remains."

"Forgive me for interrupting, master." Ahsoka said deferentially as an idea began to form in her mind. "But, since we know the droids are coming, why don't we just lay an ambush for them?"

It seemed the obvious question to ask, or at least it did to her. After all, the point of contention seemed to be whether or not they could take on a droid attack force in a direct confrontation, so why not avoid that fight altogether and hit them when they weren't expecting it?

"Colonel, captain," Obi Wan said after a considering the idea for a moment. "is that feasible?"

"With the force we have right now?" Ghes said, crossing his arms across his chest and looking skyward as he did the calculations in his head. "Probably. But we can't do it here. Not even a droid brain is di'kutla enough to fall for that."

"We'd have to catch them en route," Rex continued, picking up on Ghes's line of thinking. "while they're still in marching formation."

"Our scouts know this jungle better than anyone." Steela Guerrera said, speaking for the first time since the meeting had started. "There are only a few trails wide enough for a large group to use. I can have sentries watching all of them by the end of the day."

"Droids won't bother with trails if they have armor." Rex said, shaking his head. "They'll use the main roads as far as they can and then cut as straight a path as possible through the jungle."

"That just makes it easier, then." Ahsoka said. "All we need to figure out is where they enter and we can set up anywhere we want along their path."

"Ms. Guerrera," Obi Wan asked. "do you think your scouts can accomplish that?"

"Shouldn't be too difficult." Steela answered. "Not if they're just going to crash their way through like you said."

"They will." Rex reassured her. "Droids have a very straight forward way of thinking."

"Once we have an idea were they're coming from I'll take a team to survey a good location to set up." Ghes said. "Until then I'll go over some basic ambush tactics so we're not walking in to this completely unprepared."

"Good." Obi Wan said with a note of finality. "It's decided then; Ms. Gerrera, go brief your scouts. Commander Tano and Captain Rex will assist Colonel Marczak with the preparations. Mr. Gerrera and Mr. Bontieri, you may participate in the preparations if you'd like, but I would advise all three of you to consider what course of action you wish take to take."

"No matter what happens, this location is still compromised." Anakin continued. "The Seps won't stop with one attack. As long as they have the resources, they'll keep coming."

The three militia leaders exchanged a brief look and a series of quick nods before Saw stepped forward.

"With your permission, generals," He began, doing his best to be more respectful than he had been before. "We'd like to move into the city."

"You all agree on this?" Obi Wan asked, a little skeptical.

"It's like Saw said before." Steela said. "We need to start bringing the fight to Rash if we're ever going to have a hope of liberating Onderon."

The two older Jedi exchanged a look of their own, though it did not betray much of their thoughts one way or the other.

"I will need to discuss that further with General Skywalker, of course." Obi Wan said. "But, should this operation go well, I see no reason why that shouldn't be our next step."

"We need to talk about Lux."

"I'm pretty sure we already did." Ghes responded, his helmet's external audio set so low as to be barely audible above the ambient noise of the jungle around them.

"Well we need to again." Ahsoka shot back, matching his volume and trusting his audion receptors to pick up on her voice as well as her naturally superior hearing did his. "Because you obviously weren't listening the first time."

Less than a meter from her, Ghes shifted almost inperceptively beneath the leaf covered camouflage netting he wore draped over his armor like a cloak. They'd been in this position for while now, exactly how long Ahsoka wasn't sure, but it had to be getting close to an hour, at the far end of the ambush line relative to the direction the droid column was reported to be approaching from. At the other end of the line, farthest away from them and closest to the approaching droids, were Anakin and Obi Wan, since the two senior Jedi were least likely to be spotted by their quarry and were limited in their ability to take part in the fighting by the Council's orders anyway. The rest of their force, around forty of the militia members deemed most competent by Ghes and Rex under the later's supervision were strung out along a roughly two-hundred meter line as straight and evenly as the over and concealment provided by the terrain made practical in between the two end points. According to the reports offered by Steela's scouts, this should allow them to engage the droids along the entire length of their column once Ghes caught sight of the lead element and gave the signal.

Hopefully it wouldn't be too much longer before that happened.

"I was listening." Ghes insisted. "I promised I wouldn't kill, which I haven't, so I don't see what we need to talk about."

"What happened to giving him a chance like you promised me you would?"

"I didn't say that." Ghes corrected. "You said I should give him a chance, I said I wouldn't kill him."

"Really?" Ahsoka said flatly. She'd have been tempted to call him out, if not for the fact that she'd used pretty much the same excuse for not doing what she'd been told more than a few times. But that didn't make it any less irritating.

She sighed.

"You could at least stop picking on him."

"I'm not… Okay, maybe I have been a little hard on the kid." Ghes admitted. "But it's not…"

"And would you stop calling him "kid"!" She added, cutting him off sharply. "Lux is the same age as me!"

"It's not about his age." Ghes insisted. "It's about him being a spoiled little politician trying to play soldier!"

"I'm sorry not everyone had a Mando father to turn them into a supercommando like you did, Ghes." She shot back mockingly. "I'm sorry Lux is just a regular guy trying to fight for his planet instead of just a mercenary!"

"Oh really, little miss high and mighty Jedi Knight?" Ghes hissed bitterly. "The Republic's not exactly paying me extra to sweat my shebs off in this shabla jungle teaching a bunch of di'kutla farmers which way to point a blaster. I'm here because osik like this seems to be the only way I'm ever going to get to spend any time with you."

"Don't try to make this about me." She snapped.

"I'm not!" Ghes said, then, with a sigh, shifted again so that he was looking at her rather than down his rifle's sight. "It's just, we've been here, what? Three days? And this is already the longest we've been together since Umbara."

"I know." She said. "But it's not like we didn't know that's how this was going to be going in."

"Doesn't make it any easier," Ghes pointed out.

"No," Ahsoka agreed. "and I guess neither does spending all the time we are together arguing."

This was frustrating. On the one hand, this hostility between Ghes and Lux had to end. It wasn't doing their mission any favors and it was aggravating to Ahsoka on a personal level because, while she'd already resignered herself to being unable to do anything about Anakin's bull-headed resentment of Ghes, she would have preferred for everyone to just get along. On the other hand, Ghes did have a point about how little time they'd been able to spend together. She wasn't naïve enough to believe that Ghes and Lux would be able to work out whatever was causing the hostility between them alone, but maybe she could afford to back off for at least a little while.

"Ahsoka?" Ghes asked after she'd been silent for a few minutes.

"Sorry." Ahsoka said with as heavy a sigh as she could manage at this volume. "I was just thinking, I don't want to fight about this anymore right now. Let's just talk about something else."

"Probably a good idea." Ghes agreed, giving off a noticeable sense of relief in the Force. "What do you want to talk about?"

"I don't know…" She began, reaching for anything that came to mind. "The other day at the Temple, before Barriss interrupted, it sounded like you were abut to ask me something?"

"Oh, yeah." Ghes said, remembering. "That wasn't anything important. Just a stupid idea I had."

"Really?" She asked. "Because it kind of sounded like you were asking me to move in with you."

"I know that would never work." Ghes responded. "I just figured I'd, you know, give you your own access code and you could keep some of your stuff there, and I guess it'd give you a place to hide out if you ever needed to get away from the general and I'm not around."

"I… I think I'd like that." Ahsoka said. It did sound nice, having a place she could be alone. Technically, her dorm in the Temple was supposed to be that place, but, as with so much else in the Jedi Order, that came with some caveats.

"Just don't go trying to redecorated on me." Ghes joked. "It took me forever to get everything the way I like it."

Ahsoka rolled her eyes.

"And here I was already buying furniture."

"I have furniture."

Now, isn't this better than arguing? Ahsoka thought as she laughed quietly to herself.

"No, Ghes." She said. "You have a couch, a chair, and a table."

"Which is furniture." He shot back. "What? Do the Jedi offer a course on internal decorating or something?"

"No." She said, working over her next verbal jab in her mid before Ghes said something that instantly ended the conversation.

"Go for Marczak." He said coldly, switching back to his "on mission" mode.

"What is it?" Ahsoka asked into the silence as Ghes was listening to whoever had been trying to contact him.

"Say again, general." Ghes said, tapping a button on his gauntlet to route the response through his helmet's external audio.

"I said we're hearing heavy repulsor vehicles coming through the forest." Anakin's voice came hissing softly over the com channel. "Maybe two hundred meters out, maybe closer."

"Roger." Ghes confirmed. "Let us know when you make visual contact."

"Hold on…" Anakin's voice came again accompanied by the muffled rustling of undergrowth, presumably him shifting positions. "Obi Wan says he can see lead the same tank."

Are they on course? Ahsoka mouthed and Ghes repeated the question over the com.

"Obi Wan says they're a little north of where they should be." Anakin relayed. "But not far enough that it should be a problem."

Ahsoka felt the little knot of tension that had been building while Ghes had been on the comm with Anakin begin to fade. That was the one thing that could have screwed the entire plan. Sure, droids were predictable, but the jungle wasn't. The Seps could have run into a terrain feature, like a marsh or a recent rockslide, that hadn't been on the maps and that the scouts hadn't known about, something that wouldn't cause repulsor vehicles any trouble but that infantry wouldn't be able to cross. Maybe something that'd force the droids to alter course enough to unwittingly avoid the ambush lying in wait for them. Sure, it wasn't especially likely, but they'd been unlucky enough times before for her to be a little worried.

"You copy all that, Rex?" Ghes asked over the com.

"Roger, colonel." He answered. "Passing word down the line now. We'll be waiting on your signal."

"Roger." Ghes confirmed before clicking off the com channel and turning back to Ahsoka. "You ready to go, cyar'ika?"

"As ready as I'll ever be." She said, hand moving to the holstered blaster pistol at her waist and fiddling with the retention strap.

She was thinking about how effective the weapon was going to be at what she guessed was going to be at least a hundred meters when Ghes stuck the butt of his rifle out towards her.

"Take it." He said when she didn't immediately realize what he wanted her to do.

"You sure you're not going to need this?" She asked, though she complied anyway.

"I need to get something ready and it'll be easier with two hands." He explained, grabbing something off his belt and rolling back onto his stomach.

Accepting Ghes's explanation, Ahsoka shouldered the rifle and aimed it toward roughly the same point he'd been watching since they'd been out here. Though it was significantly shorter and about two-thirds the weight of a decee, it was still clearly a heavy blaster, and Ashoka found it easier to shift closer to Ghes and brace the barrel against the same exposed root of a nearby tree he'd been using. There was an optic on the weapon, but she remembered that it required Ghes's HUD to work properly, so she flipped up the backup sights and sighted through those instead.

Though she'd never fired the rifle before, she'd handled it a few times when Ghes had been trying to teach her about the intricacies of blaster mechanics, since he'd essentially built this one himself. None of the concepts had been particularly diificult for her to grasp, but she still preferred working on engines, computers, and droids. Less chance of something literally blowing up in her face.

It wasn't more than a few minutes before Ahsoka began to hear the hum of heavy repulsors and the cracking of trees being bent or broken by the durasteel plated bulk of Separatist AATs. It wasn't too much longer after that that she first caught sight of the lead vehicle, the standard light brown paintjob providing poor camouflage against the darker colors of the surrounding jungle.

"That the command vehicle up front?" Ghes asked, finally finished with whatever he'd been working on.

"Yeah." Ahsoka confirmed, spying the skeletal form of a OOM commander droid poking out of the vehicle's turret.

"This is what I love about fighting droids." He continued with a chuckle. "So stupid."

Ghes pushed himself up off the ground and assumed a kneeling position next to her with his right arm stretched out towards the oncoming droid convoy, what looked to Ahsoka like three tanks and at least a company of B1 droids on foot.

"Ghes!" Ahsoka hissed as loud as she dared. "What are you doing?! They're going to see you!"

"Just a few more meters…" Ghes muttered under his breath, seemingly ignoring her.

Ashoka watched as the lead tank stopped less than a hundred meters away and the droid commander looked first down at his turret, then directly at their position.

"Ghes!" She yelled again, less concerned about making noise now that they'd apparently been spotted. She trained her sights on the exposed commander's torso and thumbed off the safety, not that taking the droid out would do much to stop the tank from obliterating them.

The AAT's hull rotated slowly to face them, but the turret was quicker.

"There it is." Ghes growled as the barrel of the heavy laser cannon leveled on them.

Ahsoka heard the whoosh and felt the heat of the backwash through her cloak as the rocket leaped away from the launcher on Ghes's wrist, sidewinding through the air for forty meters before leveling out along a flight path that brought it into the turret ring just under the gun mantlet. The resulting fireball inside the tank cleaved the turret from the hull, sending the charred hunk of durasteel crashing upward through the canopy as the jungle around the now leaderless droid force erupted in blasterfire.

Ashoka began adding to the deluge of fire a moment later, thumbing the selector lever on Ghes's rifle down another notch to automatic and sending a stream of red bolts screaming down towards the droids, still standing parade straight in formation rather than scattering for cover like any organic soldier with half a brain would have.

"Three to five second bursts!" Ghes yelled over the noise of the firefight as he dropped back to the dirt next to her. "Don't break my blaster!"

"I know, Ghes!" She snapped in between bursts. Maybe he'd gotten a little too in the whole military instructor part of their mission.

"Sorry." Ghes replied sheepishly, realizing what he'd done. He pulled a power pack out of his bandolier and laid it on the ground for her. "Another pack when you need it."

"Thanks." Ahsoka said, smiling when she glanced down at the indicator and realized it was almost dry. She fired her last burst, dropped the drained pack, and slammed the new one home. "Any idea how many are left?"

"Hold on." Ghes said, peaking his head up a little higher over the root system they were using as cover and holding his hand to the side of his helmet. "You want to give me a sitrep, Rex?"

"We're hitting 'em hard, colonel." Rex called over the comm Ghes was still routing through his external speakers. "But I don't know how we're going to knock out those other two tanks!"

As if to emphasize Rex's point, a shot from one of the vehicle's heavy laser cannons shattered a tree close to Ahsoka and Ghes's position, sending splinters of burning wood raining down around them.

"See if you can get some droid poppers under them, take out their repulsors." Ghes replied coolly, bringing himself back up on one knee. "And try to give us some cover, we're going to flank left."

"Roger, we'll shift right." Rex said. "Does that mean you have more of those rockets?"

"Negative, we'll have to figure something else out." Ghes said, clicking off the comm before turning to Ahsoka and holding up his hands. "Rifle."

"Really?" Ahsoka said, pulling the weapons back in towards her body, rolling on to her side and tossing it the short distance between them. "You brought how many kilos of gear and you only brought one rocket?"

"Hey," Ghes shot back, shouldering his rifle, switching back to semi and firing two rounds downrange. "laser guided, anti-armor, smart rockets like that are two thousand credits a pop! I can't afford to carry more than one! All I have left is unguided frag and HE."

"Improvise it is then." She unclasped her cloak and dropped it on the ground next to her, it was liable to get caught on something while they were running.

"Always seems to work out for you and the general." Ghes joked, having the same idea she did and dropping the camouflage netting he'd been wearing over his armor. "Ready?"

Ahsoka drew her blaster pistol, took a deep breath to steady herself, and nodded.

Ghes took the lead, stepping carefully over the root system they'd been sheltering behind and took off at a crouched run roughly perpendicular to the direction the convoy had been travelling in before the ambush. It wasn't very difficult for her to keep up with Ghes, surefooted enough but significantly slower than her even when he wasn't weighed down by his armor, and, after the first meters, he gestured toward the point they were headed for and waved her forward.

He dropped down into the shallow stream that had managed to cut enough of a depression for them to take cover in shortly after she did, breathing hard through his helmets filters while he held his rifle tightly against his chest.

"Colonel?" It was Obi Wan's voice that came over Ghes's com this time. "What's going on? Do you need our assistance?"

"Of all the…" Ghes muttered, the strain of their dash still evident in his voice. "Do you have blasters?"

"No…"

"Then unless you want start throwing rocks, general!" He snapped and closed the com channel. He looked towards Ahsoka as she cocked an eyebrow at him. "What? I'm not the one who said no lightsabers!"

Ahsoka rolled her eyes and dismissed the stress fueled outburst, though she wasn't sure if Obi Wan would do the same.

"So…, do have any ideas yet or…?"

"I'm working on it." He said, rolling onto his side and peeking over the top of the bank towards the rear of the remaining droids and tanks.

"Well whatever it is we're going to do, we'd better do it quick." She said as a heavy laser cannon boomed and two rebels disappeared from the Force.

The loss of their commander and the initial shock of the ambush had put the droids on the back foot, but even with most of their infantry support gone, the AATs could still do a lot of damage now that their crews were regaining their bearings.

As Ahsoka watched the two remaining tanks pound away almost blindly at the jungle, a burst of blue light appeared under the one on the left, at what had been the rear of the convoy, and the vehicle sank slowly to the ground as its repulsors failed.

"And there's our opening." Ghes said, reaching behind him and pulling a magnetic charge off his belt, which he held out to her. "Think you can get this on the reactor housing up under the turret?"

Ahsoka bit her lip as she looked toward the immobilized tank. She'd have to cross a lot of ground, but there was plenty of cover, and they hadn't been taking any fire since they'd changed positions…

"I can." She said finally, grabbing the detonator and hefting her blaster pistol. "You going to cover me?"

"I'll be right behind you." He confirmed, replacing his blaster's power pack.

"Try and keep up this time." Ahsoka said with a smirk as she stood up out of the streambed and began bounding her way towards her target, cover to cover, with Ghes following a few meters behind her, staying low.

The droids had to have either lost track of them when'd they'd left their original position or just forgotten about them entirely, because they went unnoticed long enough to reach a fallen tree less then thirty meters behind the two AATs, now the only part of the convoy left standing after the last few droids fell to rebel blasterfire.

Ahsoka looked to Ghes, who jerked his head toward the immobile tank and patted the stock of his rifle. She nodded, then vaulted over the charred and pockmarked trunk, creeping the remaining distance to the tank at a crouch while Ghes popped up and braced his rifle against the tree to cover her approach.

Charge in hand, she searched the looming rear hull of the armored beast. There should be a maintenance hatch just under the…

"Hey!" Cried the shrill voice of a B1 droid from above her.

She looked up to see the tank commander leaning around the open hatch, sidearm in hand. Ahsoka rolled to avoid the flurry of shots from the droid's pistol, firing back with her own sidearm only for the bolts to be absorbed by the armored hatch the slightly smarter OOM droid knew enough to seek shelter behind. Ghes's shot were similarly ineffective, and the droid continued to spray bolts down at Ahsoka in a desperate attempt to keep her back.

This continued for a few tense moments before a low-pitched whistle was followed by the crunch of crumpling metal as the droid was jerked out of the turret by an unseen force and fell to the ground in a crumpled heap.

Ahsoka smiled briefly to herself as she saw the fist sized rock lodged in the machine's head, then returned her attention to the momentarily defenseless tank. She quickly spotter the maintenance hatch under the turret that accessed the reactor and tossed the charge with a little extra nudge from the Force. The device locked onto the hull and Ahsoka ran, vaulting back over the tree and landing next to Ghes as he detonated the charge, sending shards of half melted durasteel flying as the hull plating around the reactor shattered.

"That's two!" Ahsoka yelled over the fading roar of the explosion, grinning like an idiot from the Togruta equivalent of adrenaline flooding her system.

"Then let's try fo…"Ghes began before being cut off by a laser cannon round that splintered the trunk they'd been taking cover behind and sent them sprawling into the dirt.

Ahsoka rolled over to see the last tank's turret turned toward them and the hull rotating to follow suit. Still feeling the effects of the close miss, she tried in vain to struggle to her feet while next to her Ghes fired wildly at the vehicle, trying desperately to hit an optic or something, anything, to throw off the gunner's aim just enough to extend their lives just a few moments longer.

And that's when Ahsoka saw Lux running out of the brush, Saw in tow, both holding droid poppers and making a beeline for the tank bearing down on her and Ghes.

Lux hopped up onto the hull and went straight for the pilot's hatch, jamming a vibroknife into the seem between it and the hull, while Saw used the lower surface as a stepping stool to swing up onto the gun barrel. Much like had happened to Ahsoka moments before, the tank commander sprang up out of the turret hatch, blaster in hand and ready to be brought to bear on Saw before a blue bolt screamed out of the jungle and tore the machine's head from its shoulders. His task now made all the easier by the droids attempt to defend its vehicle, Saw tossed the grenade into the open hatch just as Lux managed to jimmie the pilot's hatch open and do the same. A second later, the AAT sank to the ground, weapons barrels drooping as the electromagnetic discharge of the droid poppers fried the crew as well as the vehicles internal electronics.

Though it didn't show through his helmet, and there was no way he'd ever admit it, Ahsoka could tell Ghes was dumbfounded as the two rebels who had just saved them walked over to them, though she couldn't tell whether it was because of who had done it or that what they had done had even worked in the first place.

For her part, Ahsoka just felt drained, the rush of the battle and being moments away from death crashing hard now that the danger had passed.

"Are you all right?" Lux asked, helping her to her feet as Saw did the same for Ghes over his very loud objections.

"Get off me…"Ghes grumbled, pushing Guerrera away before having to grab onto his shoulder to steady himself a moment later.

"We're fine." Ahsoka said, being far more gracious about accepting the help then Ghes was. "Thanks for the save by the way."

"You couldn't have all the fun, right?" Saw said cockily. "Besides, after all you've done for us, it'd just look bad if we let the clankers blow you away."

"Ahsoka!" She heard Anakin's voice call out, and she turned her head to see him and Obi Wan jogging towards them, with Rex and the rest of the rebels not far behind.

"Are you all right?" Her master said as he stopped to look her over. "No injuries?"

"No." She reassured him. "Just a few cuts and bruises."

"I'm fine too." Ghes interjected. "Just a little concussed, not that anyone cares."

"Yes, we're glad you survived as well, colonel." Obi Wan said sardonically then raised an eyebrow. "Though, in the future, you may want to pay more attention to who it is you're talking to."

"Yeah…" Ghes said, rubbing the back of his helmet, and letting out an embarrassed laugh. "You kinda caught me at a bad time there, general."

"Yes, I suppose I did." Obi Wan agreed, smiling good naturedly. "And I can't deny that your plan worked out better than I expected."

"An entire droid company wiped out in under fifteen minutes." Anakin said, sounding more than a little impressed.

"And with minimal casualties on our side." Obi Wan added, he nodded approvingly towards Saw and Lux. "Clearly your fighters are more capable than we gave you credit for."

"Does that mean…?" Saw began, a tenable sense of anticipation in his voice.

"Yes." Obi Wan agreed. "You are free to move forward, with the Republic's blessing."

"Thank you, General!" Saw beamed. "We won't let you down, I promise."

"Indeed!" Lux added. "Rash and his Separatist puppet master's aren't going to know what hit them!"

Author's Notes:

Seriously? You're all still here?

Sheesh, what does a guy have to do to be hated around here? i go through all the effort to shit all over a weirdly well liked character, going so far as to have Ghes wail on, ridicule, and otherwise belittle the guy, and the only comment I get is from someone agreeing with me! Christ, at this point the only way I'm going to get out of spending the better part of the next two years (conservative estimate) finishing this thing is to say something that's either so horrifically racist that it would make Nathan Bedford Forrest blush, or start pushing ideas so far to either end of the political spectrum that you all just write me off as a complete nut. Damn my solid work ethic and strong sense of morality built by a good home life and Catholic education that would never allow me to become someone so reprehensible just to welch on work!

Seriously though, I would like to thank everyone who takes the time to read this, especially those of you who've been reading since the beginning and have stuck with it through twelve chapters, one hundred and nineteen pages, and just four shy of fifty thousand words (I count off my word doc, so that doesn't include these Author's Notes sections). You guys are the reason I'm able to keep up the motivation to keep doing this despite everything else vying for my attention on a daily basis. I put off finishing this for a while thinking that the ambush at the end would be a quick little scene I could knock out in an afternoon. It wasn't. That took three days to get the way I wanted, and I'm still not happy with how abruptly it ends. Add the eight hours it took me to transcribe it from my notebook into word, and another day for my editor to take a look at it, and you can probably guess why this is coming out on the twenty-eighth rather than the twenty-third like the last two months updates.

Well, that's going to be it for this month, I'm honestly pretty drained today. Remember to follow, favorite, review, yadda yadda, you get the idea.