Hey folks, Grubkiller here.
Here's chapter 2 of this story.
Enjoy.
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Utapau, Outer Rim.
Pau City was a cauldron of battle.
From his observation post just off the landing ramp of the command lander on the tenth level, Clone Commander Cody swept the sinkhole with his electrobinoculars. The droid-control center lay in ruins only a few meters away, but the Separatists had learned the lesson of Naboo; their next-generation combat droids were equipped with sophisticated self-motivators that kicked in automatically when control signals were cut off, delivering a program of standing orders.
Standing Order Number One was, apparently, Kill Everything That Moves.
And they were doing a good job of it, too.
Half the city was rubble, and the rest was a firestorm of droids and clones and Utapaun dragon cavalry, and just when Commander Cody was thinking how he really wished they had a Jedi or two around right now, several metric tons of dragon-mount hurtled from the sky and hit the roof of the command lander hard enough to buckle the deck beneath it.
Not that it did the ship any harm; Jadthu-class landers are basically flying bunkers, and this particular one was triple-armored and equipped with internal shock buffers and inertial dampeners powerful enough for a fleet corvette, to protect the sophisticated command-and-control equipment inside.
Cody looked up at the dragonmount, and at its rider. "General Kenobi," he said. "Glad you could join us."
"Commander Cody," the Jedi Master said with a nod. He was still scanning the battle around them. "Did you contact Coruscant with the news of Grievous' death?"
The clone commander snapped to attention and delivered a crisp salute. "As ordered, sir. Erm, sir?" Kenobi looked down at him. "Are you all right, sir? You're a bit of a mess." The Jedi Master wiped away some of the dust and gore that smeared his face with the sleeve of his robe-which was charred, and only left a blacker smear across his cheek. "Ah. Well, yes. It has been a ... stressful day." He waved out at Pau City. "But we still have a battle to win."
"Then I suppose you'll be wanting this," Cody said, holding up the lightsaber his men had recovered from a traffic tunnel. "I believe you dropped it, sir."
"Ah. Ah, yes."
The weapon floated gently up to Kenobi's hand, and when he smiled down at the clone commander again, Cody could swear the Jedi Master was blushing, just a bit. "No, ah, need to mention this to, erm, Anakin, is there, Cody?" Cody grinned. "Is that an order, sir?"
Kenobi shook his head, chuckling tiredly. "Let's go. You'll have noticed I did manage to leave a few droids for you ..."
"Yes, sir." A silent buzzing vibration came from a compartment concealed within his armor. Cody frowned. "Go on ahead, General. We'll be right behind you."
That concealed compartment held a secure comlink, which was frequency-locked to a channel reserved for the commander in chief.
Kenobi nodded and spoke to his mount, and the great beast overleapt the clone commander on its way down into the battle.
Cody withdrew the comlink from his armor and triggered it.
A holoscan appeared on the palm of his gauntlet: a hooded man.
"It is time," the holoscan said. "Execute Order Sixty-Six."
Cody responded as he had been trained since before he'd even awakened in his creche-school. "It will be done, my lord."
The holoscan vanished. Cody stuck the comlink back into its concealed recess and frowned down toward where Kenobi rode his dragonmount into selflessly heroic battle.
Cody was a clone. He would execute the order faithfully, without hesitation or regret. But he was also human enough to mutter glumly, "Would it have been too much to ask for the order to have come through before I gave him back the bloody lightsaber. . . ?"
Obi-Wan Kenobi never saw it coming.
Cody coordinated the heavy-weapons operators from five different companies spread over an arc of three different levels of the sinkhole-city. He'd served under Kenobi in more than a dozen operations since the beginning of the Outer Rim sieges, and he had a very clear and unsentimental estimate of just how hard to kill the unassuming Jedi Master was. He wasn't taking any chances.
He raised his comlink. "Execute."
On that order, T-21 muzzles swung, shoulder-fired torps locked on, and proton grenade launchers angled to precisely calibrated elevations.
"Fire."
They did.
Kenobi, his dragonmount, and all five of the destroyer droids he'd been fighting vanished in a fireball that for an instant outshone Utapau's sun.
Visual polarizers in Cody's helmet cut the glare by 78 percent; his vision cleared in plenty of time to see shreds of dragon-mount and twisted hunks of droid raining into the ocean mouth at the bottom of the sinkhole.
Cody scowled and keyed his comlink. "Looks like the lizard took the worst of it. Deploy the seekers. All of them."
He stared down into the boil of the ocean mouth.
"I want to see the body."
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The order is given once. Its wave-front spreads to clone commanders on Kashyyyk and Felucia, Mygeeto and Tellanroaeg and every battlefront, every military installation, every hospital and rehab center and spaceport cantina in the galaxy.
Except for Coruscant.
On Coruscant, Order Sixty-Six is already being executed.
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Dawn crept across Galactic City. Fingers of light brought a rose-colored glow to the rest of Galactic city, but it wasn't the morning sun. The wind-smeared upper reaches of a vast twisting cone of smoke could be seen off in the distance.
The smoke pillar could even be seen from the courtyard of Coruscant's military complex.
Amidst the the militaristic statues, red and black Republic banners, and floodlights, the massive doors opened up. When they did, they revealed a platoon of white and red armored clone troopers from the Coruscant Guard. In the dark overcast sky, which glowed from the light of a huge fire, several gunships were flying around, scanning the base grounds for suspicious persons or activities.
They were on the hunt.
Their prey: Jedi Knight Ahsoka Tano. Like all Jedi, accused of treason and marked for immediate termination, by orders of the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic.
Behind them, Ahsoka Tano, who was concealed by a gap between the massive dual layered double doors, stuck her head out to watch the clones walk by. Two of them were holding leashes, which were connected to the throats of the meanest looking Massiffs she'd ever seen. As the heavily armed clones marched, the dog-like creatures sniffed about, trying to pick up Ahsoka's sent.
When they walked passed Ahsoka, she gently snuck behind them. As she made it to one of the columns, which were lined up with massive twenty foot tall clone trooper statues, one of the Massiff's began on growl. It turned around and pulled his handler to look at the statues. It caught a glimpse of Ahsoka and made like he was going to pounce before he barked at her. The clone handler looked at where the dog was looking and saw nothing.
He whistled before he yanked on the chain leash, coaxing the dog to comply with its master.
"Come on Grezer. There's nothing here."
The dog stopped growling and continued to walk with his clone handler, who moved to catch up with the rest of his platoon.
But up above, Ahsoka was perched on top of one of the massive clone statues. She looked down and waited until the coast was clear. As she did, she was trying her best to process everything that had happened in the last couple hours.
First she had been sent to the Center for Military Operations out in the Federal district. She and some Jedi healers were seeing wounded clones who were being brought back from the front to put some of their healing abilities to good use, which Ahsoka did, not that she was as good as the actual trained healers. Then she received a message on her com link, which she took in one of the comm centers in the base.
She had received a general message from Master Shaak Ti. All Jedi who were on Coruscant were ordered to make their way back to the Temple, which was going into lockdown.
She was utterly confused by the message. What happened next gave her a good picture of the situation on Coruscant.
Out the corner of her eyes, she saw the four clones standing inside the comm room on guard duty, two facing her and two flanking her.
Ahsoka's heart started to pound in her chest. "Troopers?"
She could tell one trooper was speaking. But his external speakers were turned off. Instead, she saw the men gesturing, as they listened to their helmet comms. They were speaking to each other, and didn't want her to hear it.
But her Lekku allowed her to hear his whispered command from inside his helmet.
"Kill the Jedi."
Then their arms raised, but before they could aim, she already summoned the force to send him flying into the large holo-projector in the center of the room, knocking their heads against the base of it. She stood on the holo-projector and summoned her lightsabers, igniting the blades with a snap-hiss, just in time to start deflecting blaster bolts from the two clones that had been flanking her.
She batted them away, and used the force to rip their rifles out of their hands, and hacked them both in pieces, before she used the force to knock both troopers into the metal wall behind them.
Then the door behind her hissed open again, revealing Clone Commander Fox and squad of Clone Troopers. She looked back at them, turned to face them, and she watched them fanning out around her.
"Stand down!" She ordered.
But they ignored her, and they began to open fire on her, and she deflected them, spinning and twisting around so quickly that she looked like a tornado of green energy, as she deflected every blast that came her way. Soon, instead of aiming at the men, she started deflecting blaster bolts up into the ceiling, and soon, smoke and sparks filled the room, and then seconds later, the green lights disappeared.
"We got her!" One clone called out.
"Cease fire!" Fox called out.
They slowly advanced. But as they stepped through the thick smoke, they looked at the holo-table and were shocked to find no body laying there riddled with blaster marks. Then they slowly looked up to find a gaping hole had been blasted into the ceiling.
Fox turned to the rest of the men. "She's on the loose. Fan out and search for her. Make sure no one get past the perimeter."
"Sir, yes sir!" The Clones said in unison.
As she thought back to the events that brought her to this situation, just then a sharp pain came across her, not physical, but mental. It was a tremor in the force, as she felt so many of her fellow Jedi all across the galaxy suddenly react only to be snuffed out completely, including many who were close to her.
Plo Koon, Barriss Offee, and so many more, were no more. Her eyes began to water, and she winced in pain, clutching her chest as she ached.
But then the base doors began to open again behind her, revealing Clone Commander Fox and several Troopers.
"There she is!" Fox shouted while pointing at her on top of the twenty foot Clone Trooper statue. Ahsoka recoiled in fear, turned around, and force jumped off of the statue. "Quick, stop her before she gets to the shuttle!"
Ahsoka jumped on top of the 'First Battle Memorial', which was an enormous red-brown slab of rock that was carved from Geonosian rock, which was apart of a memorial that commemorated the names and numbers of clone soldiers that fell in the first battle of the Clone Wars. A quote from Kal Skirata, one of the Mandalorians that was contracted to train the clones, was also engraved on the wall. "It's not enough for us to remember them. It has to be something the whole galaxy can understand."
She ran the length of the sculpted rock wall, trying to put some distance between herself and the pursuing clones, who began to open fire. As she ran, she ducked to avoid the incoming blaster fire. When she reached the end of the wall, she force jumped off of the ledge and into the middle of open ground. But that's when a large turbo-laser turret rotated to face her. It's barrels tracked her movements and unleashed a hailstorm of green laser fire. Green laser bolts hit the ground behind her, motivating her to run towards her ship much faster.
Commander Fox, his men, and the barking Massiffs they brought with them, continued to chase after her. That's when the turbo laser turret stopped firing and aimed at her Jedi shuttle. It fired another salvo, causing the ship to go up in a green and black explosion that threw Ahsoka across the ground like a rag doll. She looked up to see her ship reduced to smoking debris. She then looked back at her pursuers with fear. She got back up and ran away. She saw a flight of stairs that led down away from the base. She stopped and skidded across the floor and rushed down the stairs, her clone pursuers hot on her heals.
Her com-link buzzed, still tuned in to Clone channels.
"What's going on?"
"We've found her. She's heading towards the industrial pipeline."
"All right, don't lose her. We'll be right there."
Ahsoka was ran on the catwalks that ran the length of the massive pipeline complex.
The clones were hot on her heals. They stopped, took aim, and fired. Blue energy bolts flew in her direction. They flew past her or hit the railings around her. Ahsoka turned and ran along another catwalk.
Some clones followed her on that catwalk, or they ran along an adjacent pipeline to continue firing on her. Stun blasts continued to fly or land all around her. She activated her lightsabers, turned around, and blocked three of the bolts that were right on target. She then turned back around to start running away again, her sabers still ignited. She found another staircase and jumped on the railing, sliding down it until she reached the bottom before she ran across to another staircase that led up to another catwalk. As she rushed up the steps, the clones began to fire on her again. She jumped over the railing and turned to face her pursuers. She was met by a wave of stun blasts. Ahsoka held up her blades and began to gracefully and expertly block the oncoming blasts, their blue energy crackling off of her green blades.
The clones stopped firing and began to run after her again, causing her to run away deeper into the industrial area.
Ahsoka kept running.
The clones fired as they pursued.
Ahsoka knew it was coming. She swung her blades behind her back to block the stun blasts. She then turned around and crossed both of her blades in front of her face to stop more shots. When she saw that they were aiming for her feet. In response to this new tactic, she deactivated her blades and began to somersault backwards several times, the shots hitting where her feet used to be.
She reactivated her sabers and began to run again, blocking as she went.
"Try to box her in. Don't let her escape. Tell me what you see from up there."
The Gunships began to fly along the pipeline she was on.
"She's moving west along the central viaduct," A gunship pilot said.
Ahsoka was coming up on a tall conduit that divided the pipeline into sections. She stopped and turned to see the two gunships flying towards her. She turned around and force jumped into the air. She back flipped and spun in the air before she landed feet first onto the catwalk of the next pipe section.
The gunships flew alongside her.
"All right, we got her now."
One gunship flew alongside Ahsoka and the side hatch opened, revealing a squad of clones that fired on her as she ran. She was blocking with her sabers, and front flipping as she ran to dodge the shots she couldn't block.
"This will knock her off her feet." One of the clone said.
A slight tremor in the force told her that it was a clone with a rocket launcher.
He aimed it near Ahsoka. He fired. Smoke shot out of the back of the launcher and propelled a projectile in her direction. It hit the pipeline and sent her flying. She dropped both of her sabers. One fell onto one of the pipes and fell to the ground. The other landed on the catwalk which she was hanging from with her fingertips. As she hung there, she saw the clones from earlier firing on her behind. Laser blasts flew past her. Ahsoka pulled herself up and force jumped onto another conduit that allowed her to increase her field of vision. She turned around and used the force to summon her one remaining lightsaber blade. It flew into her hand and she activated it before she jumped away.
But when she tried to rush up to another catwalk, a gunship ascended right in front of her.
"Not so fast, Jedi traitor." The pilot said over the loudspeaker.
She tried to run back, but was blocked by more clones and snarling Massifs.
And there she was. In the middle of a spotlight from two gunships and surrounded by Clones who just a couple hours earlier were her friends and allies, who fought alongside her previously.
All around her, more clones began to gather on the pipelines above her or rappel down from the gunships above her.
Before the clones could move to kill her, she looked to her left and jumped onto one of the pipelines.
"Fire!" Commander Fox ordered.
She landed on the pipe as the clones began to fire a storm of stun blasts at her. But she swiftly cut a whole into the pipe and jumped in, disappearing from sight, and leaving the clones baffled.
Later, Ahsoka moved through the pipeline and went into a storm drain that went underground. She avoided the clone patrols that were in the drain with her. She could hear their comm chatter and their feet splashing through the water.
She eventually came across the hole that overlooked one of the massive holes that led from the surface down into the Coruscant underworld. The wind gusted into the hole creating a breeze that was quite unsettling.
"There she is!" Someone shouted.
She looked over her shoulder and shared one last look with the clones, just as they raised their rifles, before she jumped into the hole.
Blaster bolts hit the ground where she was standing just a split second ago. The Clones rushed to the edge just as reinforcements arrived. They watched as Ahsoka descended into free-fall for what felt like an eternity. She stopped when she landed on a freighter that slowly descended into the underworld.
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Bail Organa was a man not given to profanity, but when he caught a glimpse of the source of that smoke from the pilot's chair of his speeder, the curse it brought to his lips would have made a Corellian dockhand blush.
He stabbed a code that canceled his speeder's programmed route toward the Senate Office Building, then grabbed the yoke and kicked the craft into a twisting dive that shot him through half a dozen crisscrossing streams of air traffic.
He triggered his speeder's comm. "Antilles!"
The answer from the captain of his personal crew was instant. "Yes, my lord?"
"Route an alert to SER," he ordered. "The Jedi Temple is on fire!"
"Yes, sir. We know. Senate Emergency Response has announced a state of martial law, and the Temple is under lockdown. There's been some kind of Jedi rebellion."
"What are you talking about? That's impossible. Why aren't there fireships onstation?"
"I don't have any details, my lord; we only know what SER is telling us."
"Look, I'm right on top of it. I'm going down there to find out what's happening."
"My lord, I wouldn't recommend it-"
"I won't take any chances." Bail hauled the control yoke to slew the speeder toward the broad landing deck on the roof of the Temple ziggurat. "Speaking of not taking chances, Captain: order the duty crew onto the Tantive and get her engines warm. I've got a bad feeling about this."
"Sir?"
"Just do it."
Bail set the speeder down only a few meters from the deck entrance and hopped out. A squad of clone troopers stood in the open doorway. Smoke billowed out from the hallway behind them.
One of the troopers lifted a hand as Bail approached. "Don't worry, sir, everything is under control here."
"Under control? Where are the SER teams? What is the army doing here?"
"I'm sorry, I can't talk about that, sir."
"Has there been some kind of attack on the Temple?"
"I'm sorry, I can't talk about that, sir."
"Listen to me, Sergeant, I am a Senator of the Galactic Republic," Bail said, improvising, "and I am late for a meeting with the Jedi Council-"
"The Jedi Council is not in session, sir."
"Maybe you should let me see for myself."
The four clones moved together to block his path. "I'm sorry, sir. Entry is forbidden."
"I am a Senator-"
"Yes, sir." The clone sergeant snapped his DC-15 to his shoulder, and Bail, blinking, found himself staring into its blackened muzzle from close enough to kiss it. "And it is time for you to leave, sir."
"When you put it that way ..." Bail backed off, lifting his hands. "Yes, all right, I'm going."
A burst of blasterfire ripped through the smoke and scattered into the dawn outside. Bail stared with an open mouth as a Jedi flashed out of nowhere and started cutting down clones. No: not a Jedi.
A boy.
A child, no more than ten years old, swinging a lightsaber whose blade was almost as long as he was tall. More blasterfire came from inside, and a whole platoon of clones came pelting toward the landing deck, and the ten-year-old was hit, and hit again, and then just shot to rags among the bodies of the troopers he'd killed, and Bail started backing away, faster now, and in the middle of it all, a clone wearing the colors of a commander came out of the smoke and pointed at Bail Organa. "No witnesses," the commmander said. "Kill him."
Bail ran.
He dived through a hail of blasterfire, hit the deck, and rolled under his speeder to the opposite side. He grabbed on to its pilot's-side door and swung his leg onto a tail fin, using the vehicle's body as cover while he stabbed the keys to reinitialize its autorouter. Clones charged toward him, firing as they came.
His speeder heeled over and blasted away.
Bail pulled himself inside as the speeder curved up into the congested traffic lanes. He was white as flimsiplast, and his hands were shaking so badly he could barely activate his comm.
"Antilles! Organa to Antilles. Come in, Captain!"
"Antilles here, my lord."
"It's worse than I thought. Far worse than you've heard. Send someone to Chancellor Palp... -no, strike that. Go yourself. Take five men and go to the spaceport. I know at least one Jedi ship is on the ground there; Saesee Tiin brought in Sharp Spiral late last night. I need you to steal his homing beacon."
"What? His beacon? Why?"
"No time to explain. Get the beacon and meet me at the Tantive. We're leaving the planet." He stared back at the vast column of smoke that boiled from the Jedi Temple. "While we still can."
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With the Jedi Order overextended, spread thin across the galaxy, each Jedi is alone, surrounded only by whatever clone troops he, she, or it commands. War itself pours darkness into the Force, deepening the cloud that limits Jedi perception. And the clones have no malice, no hatred, not the slightest ill intent that might give warning. They are only following orders.
In this case, Order Sixty-Six, which had changed everything.
Hold-out blasters appear in clone hands. ARC-170s drop back onto the tails of Jedi star fighters. AT-STs swivel their guns. Turrets on hovertanks swung silently.
Clones open fire, and Jedi die.
All across the galaxy. All at once.
Jedi die.
Across the galaxy, even such renowned protectors of the Republic and esteemed members of the Jedi Council as Masters Stass Allie and Plo Koon were not exempt.
In the blink of an eye, they went from being the leaders of the Republic's clone army... to being its targets.
But not every Jedi fell victim to Palpatine's plan. Some, either by luck, or by skill, or by virtue of the fact that they were not directly involved in the war, survived.
Yet all are now considered enemies of the Republic.
Toola, in the Outer Rim.
On the snow-covered plains of Toola, a company of Clone Troopers, equipped with armor rated for cold-weather warfare, were marching over land and hill, in the direction in which they last saw their quarry escape to.
No heavy vehicles. Too noisy.
Riding on large woolly creatures with tusks instead, the clones made their way through the snow.
One of the clones that was scouting ahead was the first over the hill, and he spotted two objects in the snow.
STAP speeders. Small ariel weapons platforms used by Separatist battle droids. He rushed on ahead to investigate the discarded speeders. He checked their fuel tanks. Empty. Next to the speeders were two sets of tracks in the snow. He used his visor to zoom in on the path the prints took. He couldn't find who they belonged to on the horizon, but he could tell where they were going based on the mapping date that were given when the battle started.
He turned back just in time to see his commander riding on one of the large snow creatures.
"Commander Keller, one of the STAPs is out of fuel." The trooper reported before he gestured to the footprints. "They ditched them and set off on foot. They're heading toward Ithaqua station."
"Comm ahead. Alert the garrison at the station."
Ithaqua Station.
Kai Hudorra, a Bothan Jedi Master with brown fur, peaked over a crate that he and Jedi Padawan Noriah Na were hiding behind.
They were just on the edge of the main settlement, Ithaqua station, which floated on top of a half-frozen body of water. It housed the planet's only spaceport, and thus, the Jedi fugitive's way off world.
"I think it's clear..." Master Kai started, before several troopers walked into the nearby plaza, establishing a checkpoint. "No, I spoke too soon! Troopers."
"What are we going to do, Master?" Noriah, a teenage human female, asked.
Kai observed his surroundings and began to assess his options. Troopers in front, an icy lake around them, and a short list of viable options.
"There are four ways to get past any obstacle, padawan: Around, over, through, or under. 'Around' and 'over' are currently denied to us. Going through could result in us getting shot, so..." Kai said as he walked up to the edge of the wooden bridge and lowered himself into the icy water below. "...we will go - Brrr - under."
As Kai dissappeared under the water, Noriah hesitated. Then she looked around, and saw that a pair of troopers were starting to patrol down the path that led into the settlement.
She shook her head. "Ohhh!" She groaned in exasperation before she lowered herself into the water after Kai, just as the troopers walked by their initial hiding spot.
Downward into the icy water they swam, the young padawan following the master.
They swam for a long time, angling steadily deeper before they swam forward through a series of columns that held the settlement in place, the light from the surface fading slowly away behind them. The minutes slipped away, and Noriah began to have second thoughts about what they were doing as she began to lose all feeling in her cold, numbing body.
Then she saw Kai swim upwards, towards the metal foundation of the settlement.
They broke the surface, and there was a pocket of air just beneath the metal, enough for their heads and shoulders to break the surface.
Noriah shivered as her master began to cut a hole into the metal foundation above them with his blue lightsaber.
"M-master... the w-water... s-so c-c-c-cold..."
"I know," he said as he finished cutting a hole, which fell into the water with a splash. They then jumped through one at a time, and found themselves in some kind of warehouse, full of crates and, thankfully, devoid of sentients.
As Noriah climbed in and sat against a wall, tucking her knees up to her chest, Kai pulled a large crate over the hold they cut, to keep out the cold, and to make sure no one knew that their were intruders.
"M-master H-Hudorra..." Noriah spoke up. "...the c-clones are everyw-where. why are th-they, trying to ki-kill us? Why di-did they ki-kill M-master Simms? Wh-what are we g-going to do?"
Kai Hudorra noticed a tear escape her eyes and stream down her cheek.
In truth, he had been asking himself those questions for the past thirty-six hours...
After weeks of stalemate against Separatist forces, He, Master Simms, and her padawan, Noriah, led an assault team against the droid's main power generators, while the rest of their troops made a diversionary assault.
Their ploy was successful. But shortly after their victory, their own troops inexplicably turned against them.
Vastly outnumbered, Hudorra and Na had no choice but to flee, While Master Simms paid for their escape with her life.
Master Hudorra continued checking the crates for useful supplies. "We are going to make sure that your master's sacrifice was not in vain. We are going to survive." Then he pushed the top of another crate open, and it was full of animal skins. "Ah, these will do."
"Get out of those wet clothes, and put this on."
He handed her a large pelt and turned away as she began to undress.
"After a moment's rest, we will decide what to do next."
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New Plympto.
On the forest world of New Plympto, a squad of clones were patrolling through the woods, using their helmet lamps to scan the dark, nighttime forest.
"Are you sure he came this way, Lieutenant?" One clone asked.
"Yes, Captain." The other responded. "Unless he doubled back, or left the main road."
"If we don't find him, I'll send in another unit with a life-form scanner...
The clones continued their patrol, and eventually moved on down the road.
When their lights were long gone, a man with green robes and long-blonde hair got up from his hiding place in the grass next to a thick tree.
For a moment, Master Dass Jennir had feared that his luck had run out. But it seemed to have held, and thus he continued his flight through the forest. He ran through clearings and over fallen trees in a direction away from the clones.
But then he lost his footing on a slope, and began to involuntarily slide down the ridge, where he came face to face with one of the natives of this planet.
The Separatist-aligned Nosaurians.
Reptillian, and bipedal, they also had horns that were angled back on their heads, and they were about a foot-and-a-half shorter than the average human. But they were stout fighters with thick skin. They were not to be misjudged for their size.
Jennir had led his clones into battle against many of these creatures and their droid allies.
When Master Jennir finished sliding, he and the Nosaurian faced off, but neither made any sudden movements.
The Nosaurian's equipment was piled up next to him, out of reach.
His blaster and axe too.
A shot from the blaster or a swing of Jennir's lightsaber would alert anyone within eyesight, especially that of the clones that hunted him.
But even unarmed, a Nosaurian was not to be underestimated. He had claws, sharp teeth, and...
Oh no.
Then Jennir dove forward, tackling the alien to the ground, and he grabbed his snout, clamping it down with all his strength, and the creature trashes and growled.
"No! Don't open your mouth." Jennir hissed.
The strangest part of this species anatomy was their ability to illuminate their gums, which could briefly light up a dark room. Useful for sending signals to other members of their species.
It was something that Jennir could not allow.
"Look, I mean you no harm. I'll let you go, but you must promise not to flash your gums. There are clone troopers in the woods above us. Blink if you understand."
The creature blinked in affirmation and Jennir let go, and the alien got up, sputtered, and dusted himself off.
"Many thanks for not killing me, human."
"Keep it down," Jennir hissed. "But you're right to thank me. I could have killed you."
"But you didn't. Why not?" The alien said as he stroked his jaw, before looking over his new compatriot. "You could be a smuggler, or a Republic spy, but if that's the car, why would you be concenred with the presence of your own men?"
Then he looked at the human man's belt, and saw the cylindrical object hanging from it.
Moving swiftly, the alien grabbed his battle axe and assumed a fighting stance.
"Jedi!"
Jennir put his hands up, at shoulder height, and took a step back before he hissed, "Not so loud, you understand?"
"No?" The alien asked, not faltering on his fighting stance. "I think I do."
He relaxed his grip on his axe, but kept it pointed at the Jedi's chest.
"I think the rumors we've been hearing about the clones turning against their Jedi Generals are true!"
Jennir didn't answer, but his face tightened up.
"It's true, isn't it?" The alien asked.
Jennir averted his eyes. "Yes."
The alien stared at him for a few seconds, before suddenly, he fell onto his back, cluctching his ribs before he guffawed loudly.
"HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!"
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Well folks, that was part 2.
Hope you enjoyed.
Until next time, Grubkiller out.