Chapter Text
Chapter 9
Captain Maze found himself once again peering out from a dark alley at the next obstacle in his team’s way. The six clones had made quick progress from the sanctuary of the pottery store to the northern edge of the city. Now that they had reached their destination, the plan was to scale the walls of the caldera and tackle the perimeter ion guns above.
A job easier said than done. Sagujero sat in a deep crater that sloped gently from its tiered western edge to sharp cliffs on all other sides. The range finder built into Maze’s HUD calculated the distance to the rim above them at 112.6 meters. It wasn’t the highest point in the city, but it still made for a long climb. Fortunately, a steep wall was exactly what Maze and the others were looking for. Patrols on the rim would be less likely to see them coming from an abrupt edge.
Maze brought up the icons of the team’s reconnaissance remotes. There were several fewer now than when he’d last checked. STAP patrols or sniper scouts must have finally taken notice of one and started tracking them down. Maze wasn’t terribly concerned by this, however. They were nearly past the part of their mission that relied heavily on real-time recon images.
For now, though, he did need the remotes. He selected the one nearest to their position and watched as it zoomed in on the cliff’s perimeter above him. They were directly beneath one of the city’s eight large ion gun turrets. While much smaller and less powerful than the planetary gun at the Separatist headquarters in the city to the north, each of these was capable of bringing down a larty with one shot. They were the reason his team’s gunships had to fly below the cover of buildings and they could devastate General K’kruhk’s reinforcements when they tried to land.
The remote highlighted the turret above, as well as the two that sat half a kilometer away on either side. They would scale the wall here, then split up into teams of two and attempt to capture those three turrets. The remote also picked up a patrol of five battle droids marching along the wall. Maze decided it would be better wait for them to pass than to attempt neutralizing them and risk detection.
Maze signaled the other members of Azure Team to hold position as the droids clanked by above. After so many recent close calls, the clones had reached an unspoken consensus to minimize use of the comm system, even their short-range, secure frequency. It might have seemed like they were being paranoid to an outsider, and perhaps they were. Maze had yet to meet a veteran without a healthy dose of paranoia.
Once the droid patrol was a healthy distance past their position, Maze waved the team forward. He and the others darted out of the alley and approached the steep wall. Each of them knew exactly what to do now. Maze pulled out the collapsible grappling hook from his belt and slotted it into the barrel of his carbine. The entire DC line of BlasTech’s rifles was designed to fire the grapples and could easily put one over the edge of the one hundred-odd meter wall in front of them. He sighted up above and fired.
With a muffled pop, the hook shot up, trailing a high-tensile micro-cable behind it. When the cable stopped free-spooling, Maze gave a gentle tug. The grapples were self-deploying and would affix themselves to any hard surface on contact. The hold felt solid and the recon remote showed six tiny hooks attached to the edge of the cliff. Feeding the end of the cable into the micro-winch on his belt, Maze signaled his team and waited for their confirmation. With the team ready, Maze flipped the switch on his winch and felt his weight being lifted from his waist.
Maze and the others could have climbed the cable hand-over-hand if they had to, but the winches let them “walk” up the wall with their high-traction boots, leaving a hand free. The ARC used his to train his blaster’s sights on the edge above. The mechanical advantage would allow him to save energy on the climb, but he still felt ludicrously exposed on the side of the naked wall.
Slowly and surely, they made their way up. Two meters before they were finally to the top, Maze signaled the team to stop and gave the edge a final scan. The droid patrol was now nearly a kilometer away. If they moved quickly, they should be able to slip over the edge in the darkness without being spotted. They did so, and Maze was glad to have fresh arms to pull himself over smoothly and quietly.
After collecting their grapples, the team ran at a crouch for the shadow of the ion gun turret. The turrets were large towers that reminded Maze of a description of ancient lighthouses that he’d read about in a text on historical maritime navies. But rather than stone and mortar, this tower was made of durasteel and topped with the long barrel of an ion cannon.
Creeping up to a stack of supply crates behind the turret, the clones hunkered down. Maze pointed at himself and Plaz, then jerked his thumb back at the ion cannon. He then indicated that he and the trooper would provide cover for the commandos as the squad split up to take the ion cannons on either side of their position. Case nodded and sent Rust and Slab to the left, then hurried off to the right with Leven.
Maze reflected that Totten Squad didn’t have any trouble taking orders, as long as the orders were ones that they agreed with. He shook his head as he shouldered the verp rifle to cover his arc. He was tired of the commandos and their idiosyncrasies. He was also tired of the snags they kept hitting on this operation. Taking these ion cannons was essential, but relied on everything going right. If they could capture all three quietly, and if they could use them to neutralize the other turrets, and if flight lieutenant Twenty-two could get the third larty in the air, then they might stand a chance at surviving the air strikes they would bring on themselves. It was a lot of ifs.
Maze realized that he was allowing himself to get frustrated and took a deep breath. One thing at a time. Just like always. Anticipate and react. That had been his mantra during training and it had saved his life more times than he could remember.
Through his scope, the dark shapes of Case and Leven crept up to their target and disappeared into cover. Behind Maze, Plaz signaled that Rust and Slab were in position as well. The ARC nodded and set a countdown timer for five minutes. They would listen for word from the larty pilots that the gunships were standing by for support, but the longer they waited, the more they risked detection. When the time was up, they were going in, with or without air support. If they were on their own, they’d have their hands full surviving inbound Predators, but he’d deal with that then. One thing at a time.
* * *
Coarse grains of sand pelted Ogdai’s face as he rode a speeder bike at the head of a column of his warriors. Sand was everywhere on Saleucami, even within the sheltered caldera cities. Most locals, as well as the Separatist’s organic soldiers, required goggles to protect their eyes when riding uncovered repulsor-craft. Ogdai and the rest of the Morgukai clones, however, paid the stinging grains little heed. The black, glassy substrate of their volcanic homewold, Kintan, had honed the Kajain’sa subspecies of Nikto into beings ideally suited for such desert climates.
Kintan. He had never actually been to the planet, but the very word stirred feelings of pride and hope in Ogdai’s heart. He and the rest of his unit were part of the first batch of clones hatched on Saleucami. They had been trained in the ways of the Morgukai warriors by their progenitor, Bok. He had taught them of both their tragic past and of their glorious future. Bok had once been the last of the Morgukai, but with the raising of the Shadow Army, the cult had been reborn.
As Ogdai’s skills grew, he had been inducted into Bok’s circle of elites. The head Morgukai had shared with those chosen few their true purpose and a path to honor. The Separatist leader and Bok’s lorda, Count Dooku, had promised the warrior that when the war to destroy the Republic was over, Bok could return to Kintan with his army. They would pry their homeworld from the slimy grip of its Hutt owners and root the Morgukai tradition back into the land that had birthed it. That noble dream had driven Ogdai every day since. The only thing that stood in its way was the army that currently trapped them on Saleucami.
Today, that meant purging the invading bug boys from the city. Ogdai’s immediate lorda, the former Jedi named Skorr, had given him the honor of killing the saboteurs at the magma reactor, a pleasure he anticipated eagerly.
The ten warriors shot through the dark streets at full speed. When they had nearly reached the reactor complex, Ogdai noticed the burning hulk of a Multi-Troop Transport under the guns of three droid tanks. It would have normally called for further investigation, but the tanks were neither giving nor receiving fire and there was little time to waste.
They pulled up to the front of the building and dismounted their speeders. The complex only had one entrance and the wide bay door in front of them looked perfectly untouched. If the enemy had come in this way, they hadn’t breeched the entrance by force.
“Ka’syr, Drig, find out where bug boys got in,” Ogdai ordered. The two warriors remounted their speeder bikes and took off in opposite directions to sweep the perimeter of the building. Ogdai entered a security override code into the control panel and the half-meter thick durasteel door cycled open.
Ogdai’s warriors drew their blaster rifles and covered the opening door from positions that gave them optimum cross-fire of the front lobby. The empty room flared with pulsing red emergency lights and an alarm klaxon sounded every other second. It gave Ogdai hope that they might not be too late. Security droids and emergency bulkheads would slow the enemy’s progress.
The Morgukai entered the building in pairs, covering one another. Ogdai was technically in command, but his warriors didn’t require any orders. They had their mission and knew exactly how to see it done. Before he could step through the entrance, the comlink in Ogdai’s left gauntlet buzzed. He brought it up to this face and answered.
“Enemy breached through vent in eastern wall, Lorda,” Drig’s voice reported. “We follow now.”
Ogdai pictured the holoimages of the facility that he’d studied shortly after arriving in Sagujero. The four emergency vents each went down to a separate reactor, but the vents themselves were chambered and were too small for a human. The enemy clones would have to descend several floors and make their way through numerous corridors before they could reach the hexagonal lower level where they could do any damage.
“Yes. Follow their path. We try to head them off.” Ogdai responded. “Switching to silent running.”
Ogdai shouldered his rifle and glided forward with the long, heel-first strides that he’d learned from his Anzati instructors. The vampiric assassins were not Morgukai, so Ogdai had cared little about their culture, but they were unparalleled in the arts of stealth and infiltration. While he had come nowhere near to their level of mastery, Ogdai was proud of the way that he and his brethren had learned to disappear into the shadows and move without making a sound.
The black armored Nikto spread out and flooded down the wide, metal corridor like a wave of dark liquid. Halfway down the hall, a door slid open and punctuated the flashing red emergency lighting with bright white illumination. Simultaneously with the rest of his warriors, Ogdai’s rifle snapped onto a small figure that peered out from the doorway.
Whatever it was, the creature was clearly one of the reactor’s civilian staff, rather than a large, armored clone trooper. Its small size likely saved its life. Belatedly, it caught sight of the Morgukai moving toward it, squeaked and ducked back into the room. Before the door could close again, two warriors had burst into the room and gestured an all clear to the others outside.
Ogdai stepped in to see roughly a dozen civilians of various species—though primarily dwarfish Ugnaughts—cowering around a large table in the break room.
“Enemy came through here,” Ogdai barked. “Anyone see them?”
The group of technicians continued to cower and looked even more afraid as he approached them. Perhaps none of them had seen a Morgukai warrior up close before. “You,” Ogdai said, leveling a finger at a pale human male with thinning hair. “What you see?”
The man swallowed. “N-nothing. We were evacuating when we heard blaster fire. Mr. Jessen sent us in here and—”
“Pah!” Ogdai cut him off. He should have known it was a waste of time to bother with the civilians.
Leaving the technicians behind without another word, the Morgukai redoubled their efforts to catch up to their prey, sacrificing stealth for speed. Further down the corridor, they came upon signs that the enemy had already passed through. A Wroonian technician sprawled next to a pile of shattered battle droids. The brief firefight had happened very recently: the smell of discharged blasters lingered on the air and fresh blood was still pooling slowly beneath the tech’s corpse. Ogdai noticed a small blaster in the blue skinned alien’s hand and fought down a wave of contempt. The Wroonian had been a fool. Only a warrior had any right to bring weapons into battle. Those who died imitating true killers deserved their fate.
After rounding a bend in the corridor, they reached the door to the turbolift that led to the lower levels. Its control panel flashed red. The security team must have shut it down to limit the enemy’s movements. Fortunately, Ogdai had codes to unlock it. It was possible that the clone troopers had sliced in and gained access to the lift anyway, but if they hadn’t they would have been forced to take the emergency stairs. Punching in the code, Ogdai hoped for the latter.
Somewhere below were his enemies. Ogdai and his brethren would find them and pit themselves against the Republic’s finest. Only the best would come back up alive.
* * *
From his rooftop viewpoint, Skorr watched the wreckage of the last STAP crash to the ground. He had hoped to gather some good recon images of the amphitheater’s defenses by sending a flight of the patrol craft into the cavern from multiple approaches.
The clone defenders had thought differently and managed to shoot all nine down before a single one of the droid-piloted fliers could get so much as a look in.
Skorr cursed under his breath. If I could just get in there with a squad of Morgukai… He had spent the past quarter of an hour working with Ogdai’s second-in-command to come with a way of doing that. Nothing looked good. The enemy’s field of fire and blistering arsenal were simply too good to get inside without taking huge losses. Skorr didn’t like his own odds against the turbolasers on the CR-25, either.
It was looking more and more like he’d have to throw everything he had at the clone troopers and hope there would be enough of the stealth ship left to salvage afterwards.
“Commander!” a voice called from behind. Skorr turned to see the young Koorivar lieutenant climbing the ladder to the roof. He let the alien close the remaining distance between them before answering.
“One of your men better have found something useful.”
“No sir, not one of my command. Major Ravaal…” He cut himself off and blanched. “I mean, private… Um, fusilier Ravaal?”
“Spit it out,” Skorr snapped. “Or you’ll be demoted to private yourself.” Skorr reflected that stripping Ravaal of his rank was turning out to be more trouble than it was worth. Come to think of it, he couldn’t quite remember exactly what the officer’s failure had been in the first place.
“Uh, yes, sir. Well, Ravaal has been following our assault on the enemy defenders, and he found something he thinks you could use.”
“Oh, and what’s that? He didn’t happen to find General Grievous offering us a hand did he?”
“No, sir,” the fusilier carried on past Skorr’s sarcasm. He clearly wanted to deliver his message and escape the Dark Jedi’s attention as quickly as possible. “He found this.”
The lieutenant thumbed on a small holoprojector and rotated the image for Skorr to see. “These are old maintenance records from the amphitheater.” A blue, three-dimensional representation of the real life opening in front of them spun slowly in the air. The Koorivar zoomed in on the portion of the image that extended up into the rock wall. Three tubes snaked through the rock from the ceiling of the cavern to the surface above the caldera.
Skorr peered closer at the image, intrigued. “What are those, lieutenant?”
The young soldier seemed to forget his earlier discomfort and smiled. “We’re not sure, sir, but they appear to be vents or skylights, carved out by magma. The indigenous people who inhabited the caldera before modern technology might have used them to—”
“Are they accessible?” Skorr demanded.
The fusilier’s smile quickly vanished. “Yes, sir. These records show that the surface accesses were capped with durasteel hatches and the tubes now house electrical cables for ceiling lights that are no longer in use. Ravaal assured me that it’s highly unlikely that the Republic soldiers could have gathered intelligence on these tubes. He had them pulled from back-catalogued files that don’t exist on the municipal mainframe.”
Skorr was already in motion toward the ladder. This was the answer to his problem. Those clones are mine, he thought. That ship is mine. “Lieutenant,” he called over his shoulder.
“Sir!” chorused the simultaneous replies from both the Koorivar and the Nikto.
Skorr turned back and pointed at the fusilier. “Not you,” his finger drifted to the Morgukai. “You. Gather four squads and call down our cargo-fitted Predators. I need you,” Skorr’s finger jabbed back to the Koorivar, “Here. Once we’ve got their backs turned, you’ll bring a full battle group in to secure the amphitheater. I also need you in contact with Major Ogdai. Anything he needs at the reactor that we don’t need here, you get to him. Think you can handle that?”
The fusilier straightened and snapped off a salute. “Sir, yes, sir!”
“Good. Get to it.” Skorr tilted his head up to gaze into the darkness at the ridge above the amphitheater’s mouth. “Just one more push,” he said to himself. Then this night is behind me, and I will be the hero of the hour.
* * *
“All systems green,” Lock reported over his helmet comm.
“Roger that,” reported Teal Team’s crew chief. “Your med droid is docking himself now. You should be good to go.”
“Thanks for the assist, Teal.”
“Yeah, thanks a lot mate,” said Frost, his voice sounding stronger than it had a few minutes earlier. “We owe you one.”
“Ha! If things get as hairy as I think they’re going to, you’ll have plenty of chances to pay us back.” Lock watched the crew chief and Captain Forr jog back from where they’d helped to get Frost strapped into his turret. He turned back and offered a quick salute. “Good luck, Cobalt.”
The two clones remounted their gunship as it rose slowly from the ground on its repulsors. Dust billowed in its wake as it took off and disappeared into the dark streets. Lock and his crew were on their own again. It felt good to be back in the seat of a gunship, even if that meant being behind the pilot’s flightstick instead of the gunner’s controls he was used to. Unfortunately, that was about all that felt good.
After getting picked up by Teal’s larty, the clones had made their way to their present location, in hopes of putting a downed gunship back in the air. They’d found the gunship in perfect working order, but its crew had been butchered to the last man. Some of them he’d only known for the few months that they’d been assigned to the 271st, others he’d trained with his whole life. But all five were more than just fallen brothers—they’d been Lock’s friends. What was most disturbing about their deaths was how they’d been killed.
Sergeant Ten, their crew chief was lying over a hundred meters from the vessel in a crumpled heap, his head bent at an unnatural angle. It appeared that he’d fallen or been thrown from the gunship while it was still in flight. What killed Hitch, the port side gunner, was a mystery. When they pulled his limp body out of his bubble, his vitals were cold and his armor sensors showed that he’d been dead for over an hour. There were no signs that he’d died on impact from a crash landing or concussive forces during flight. There was no doubt, however, about what had killed the remaining three clones.
As a flight officer, Lock had spent the majority of his career in the air, but after the battles he’d flown in were over, he’d spent countless hours searching for survivors and assisting with the cleanup of shattered warzones. He’d seen the damage done to man and machine alike by plasma fire, laser blasts, explosives and flying shrapnel. He’d also seen the effects made by the signature weapons of his Jedi Generals. The corpses of the starboard gunner and both pilots that they’d pulled out of the cabin each bore the unmistakable burn marks of a lightsaber blade.
Knowing they were up against a Jedi sent chills along Lock’s spine. He knew from the briefing that the former Jedi Master, Sora Bulq, was in charge of Saleucami’s Separatist forces. There was also an appendix that another of Dooku’s traitors—Scar or something—was suspected to be on planet. It was one thing to read their names and another entirely to see what an enemy Jedi could do. For a single being to take out an entire larty crew…
Well, the idiot should have destroyed the gunship, too. Let’s see what happens the next time you get into this bird’s sights.
Thoughts of revenge helped focus him, but Lock was still shaken. Try as he might to ignore it, he was acutely aware of the hole in the back of his flight seat. The skin on his back prickled right where the lightsaber had burned through and killed Lieutenant Tare. Lock squirmed, as if trying to scratch an itch he couldn’t quite reach.
“Steady, sir,” Bin said quietly from behind. “Let’s try to put it out of our minds for now, eh? We need you on top form.”
“I am on top form, Sergeant,” Lock snapped back. “Just keep your eye out for bogeys and worry about your own job.” He felt instantly guilty for his words, but Lock was as annoyed at having his mind read as he was of Bin’s ability to shrug off the deaths of their comrades.
“Roger that,” Bin replied, utterly matter of fact.
Lock sighed. “Sorry, Bin. Not your fault. I’m just not happy about leaving more dead brothers behind.”
“I know. We’ll come back for them. All of them.” A series of static pulses on the team comm punctuated Bin’s last words. “Whoa, here we go.”
The signal meant that Captain Maze and the rest of his team were in position. In another minute, they would take control of three ion guns and open fire on the remaining five. Cyan and Teal team’s larties would help mop up the canons that survived. With the perimeter guns out of the picture, Lock would finally be free to ascend above the cover of the buildings and engage the swarm of enemy aircraft that went after Captain Maze.
As Teal’s crew chief had put it, things were about to get hairy. Lock wished he felt more confident about their chances than he did. He’d do his best, but he knew he wasn’t as good of a pilot as Captain Wake. Furthermore, Bin wasn’t an experienced co-pilot, Frost was only fighting through chemical assistance and sheer willpower, and their fourth member, Bargain, was manning a bubble turret in combat for the first time.
“Okay, boys,” Lock said, willing calm and confidence into his voice. “About a minute to go-time. Everyone ready?”
“Good to go,” Bin said, suddenly sounding more serious than normal.
“Yes, sir, Lieutenant,” confirmed Bargain.
“You know it, Loot. Payback time.”
Frost’s words, and the grim tone behind them, helped settle Lock’s nerves. They reminded him of Sergeant Ge’verd’s parting advice. Your gunner Frost is a good lad. Get him back safe.
That I will, Lock thought. Who cares if we’re going in a few rounds short of a full plasma cartridge? We’re no worse off than any of the other teams in this crazy op. Lock eased power into the repulsorlifts and watched the meters on the altimeter reading rise. The familiar feeling of controlling the awesome power of an LAAT/i settled in and Lock knew he was ready, too.
“You said it, Private. Payback time.”