(Astera):
If the planet had been bad, the inside of Dooku's castle was worse. The cold permeated every surface of the room - a thick, oily feeling that settled like a blanket over me the deeper we headed into the building. The office, if you could call it that, was worst of all. The shadows here almost seemed to speak to me, whispering sinister promises designed to tempt me into the dark power it offered. Whispers that took all my concentration to block out.
"Something wrong?" Hunter asked when I shivered again, shoulders hunching against the onslaught of whispering and cold.
"I can feel the Force," I murmured back quietly, blasters whipping for each corner as we descended the steps into the cavernous room, ready for any hidden threats. "The dark side. It's unnerving."
"This place gives me the creeps," Wrecker agreed, staring at the glass artwork of a window. It had probably been beautiful once, but now, shattered holes gaped in several places, harsh sunlight streaming through them and cutting blinding shapes into the floor. The room felt too large to really be called an office; it was something I expected of a throne room: cold, unforgiving, and huge, the ceilings easily stretching a good fifteen metres above our heads. An office fit for royalty.
The main entrance to the office slammed open, an entire squad of clones on the other side of it. Our blasters jerked up automatically, three stuns hitting the middle clone simultaneously before any of them could react.
We were already backing for the display table at the very end of the room - the only form of cover in this blasted space - even as the trooper was knocked off his feet from the sheer force of the blasts, blue fire filling the air as his compatriots returned fire. I squeezed off another few stun blasts before leaping over the sloped surface of the desk, providing the cover we desperately needed. Smoke curled up where the bolts had burned into the desk, more troopers on the opposite end falling to stun blasts each time we risked ducking out to fire. Though with each trooper that went down, another stepped up to take his place, the barrage of bolts never ending as we took cover behind Dooku's desk.
"Any idea how we're getting out of here?" Wrecker fired off two more stuns, hastily dropping back down to avoid the shot flying over his head before popping right back up to return fire. Hunter's visor darted up to the broken windows, calculating our odds of survival if we jumped, to the slight indent in the section of floor we stood on. It dipped subtly with a creak as I shifted my foot back to centre my balance again, still firing stuns as more troops gathered at the entrance.
I frowned, glancing down at the panel I could now see was clearly outlined around us. Hunter's fingers had already pressed to the area, feeling the change of weight as the pressure on it increased, forcing it down further. "We're not going out, we're going down. There's a lift below us. Cover me."
Another two clones went down as Wrecker and I obediently stuck our heads up again, stuns blasts following us out. Hunter went to work on the consoles in front of him, the screens lighting up and several messages flashing across them as he hurriedly began to press random buttons.
The doors on either side of the room had been forced open now too, even more clones charging into the room and down the stairs. The lead clone on the left side was struck in the face with my stun, pitching sideways off the steps and landing on the ground in a crumpled heap with a loud thud. It did nothing to stop his fellow troopers, live rounds doubling in frequency as they sailed past our heads.
"What is taking you so long?" Wrecker paused momentarily to yell at Hunter, jerking back when a bolt skimmed off the desk next to his head.
"I'm trying! Tech usually does this!"
"Let me try." I bumped him out of the way, Hunter taking my place to fire at the now advancing clones and my fingers flying over the screens in search of the switch to turn the lift on. I was no Tech, but I was familiar enough with similar systems that it took me less than a minute to find the controls for the lift.
The troopers, seeing their edge in numbers, had begun to press forward, advancing halfway across the room by the time the lift powered up with a sharp hum, the section behind the desk already beginning to slide downwards slowly. Too slowly. One perfectly placed shot pierced the display, the screen instantly fizzling out with a spark of fire and the lift grinding to a halt. "It's jammed!"
"Well, I can fix that!" Wrecker had a grenade in hand before he'd even finished speaking, lobbing it at the troopers with thick smoke expelling over them and sending them scattering. Their shots became erratic, unable to aim properly in the face of the smoke obscuring their vision.
Taking advantage of the confusion, Wrecker leapt upwards, ramming both feet into the lift. He repeated the action a second time, the lift screeching on its mechanisms as it was forced down half a metre.
"Wait, don't! No-" Hunter began, guessing his intentions, but it was too late. The larger had already slammed his weight down on the lift a third time, cutting his words off with a scream as the impact dislodged the panel, the three of us dropping along with it into the depths of the lift's shaft.
Somehow we managed to keep our footing, even when the lift's mechanisms kicked in and caught against the sides of the lift, violently slowing our descent before we crashed into the bottom of the shaft.
His blasters already out, Hunter felt for the button to open the shaft, Wrecker and I briefly casting our weapons to either side of the small hangar bay. Seeing no enemies, we moved forward cautiously, approaching the hangar doors opening over the ruined remains of the city.
"The regs have all the entry points to the castle surrounded," I noted, staring at the many paths up to the mountain, each one crawling with distinct white-clad forms. Too many for any of them to be a viable escape option.
"Not all of them." Hunter pointed down towards the bombed city, the only place empty of patrolling clone troopers. "Our way out is down."
Wrecker moaned in resigned apprehension as Hunter affixed a grappling hook to the floor, throwing the line over the edge and letting it unspool all the way to the ground. "I knew you were going to say that."
"We'll use the city ruins as cover and trek back to the Marauder." The larger clone had already stowed his blaster and had taken hold of the line before Hunter had finished speaking, the other clone activating the comms for a much needed update on the team in the sky. "Tech, did you reach the escape pods yet?"
"Not exactly! We are using an alternate mode of transport." Tech's voice held a note of alarm. "My calculations have us crashing for the upper forest region of the planet!"
"Crashing?!" Hunter and I both exclaimed at the word, my eyes flashing up to meet his visor. I had no idea what they'd managed to get themselves into now, but it didn't sound promising at all. There was no response from any of the three in the sky, even as I started down the grappling line after Wrecker, dangling several metres above the city with only the strength of my arms to keep me from plummeting to the surface.
"Tech, report."
"We are alive," came the eventual reply. "But where we are, I am not fully certain."
"The Empire's gonna come looking for their containers," Echo cut in over the channel. "And for us."
"Get out of sight, and lay low," Hunter instructed them. "Once we get to the Marauder, we'll come for you."
"Roger that." The comms went silent once more, leaving the three of us to make our way down into the ruins, picking our way through the burned and mutilated remains of what had once been Serenno City. The damage looked more severe now that we were up close - several gashes marred the dirt, carved deep by the lasers the Empire had used on them. These gouges were the last remnants of the tragedy that had occurred here, but now they would serve to hide us in our getaway to the Marauder. At least something good could have come out of them.
"Get down!" Hunter pulled me against the wall of the trench at the sounds of ship's engines in the air, one hand encircling my wrist as he pressed us both back into the rock, watching the clone transports flying over us. Faint warmth bloomed in my cheeks, staring down at our connected hands rather than at the very obvious threat in the sky. He was still holding my wrist. Why was he still holding me? There was no need-
He let go before I'd finished forming the thought, my arm dropping limply back to my side as he crept over the rubble of stone to spy on the landing transport without looking once at me. I followed after a moment's hesitation, the flush deepening and glad they couldn't see it underneath my helmet. It was just pulling me under cover. Nothing else. I wasn't even sure why I'd focused so much on it.
I shook my head subtly, erasing any trace of those thoughts. Something was off with me. It must be the planet. Staving off the effects of the dark side had to have affected me more than I thought. I needed to get my head straight.
"They're setting up a perimeter," Wrecker observed with a scoff when I'd caught up to get my own look at the clones fanning out in front of us. "Like that'll stop us."
"They know our forces are split," Hunter mused, staring down at the group of regs calculatingly. "They'll monitor comm channels."
His hand was suddenly at his helmet, relaying a short, coded message to the three on the planet somewhere. "Havoc-2, the fourth sun is setting. Plan Double Zero."
"Copy that." Two words. That was all the response needed. I'd only memorised half of the ninety-nine plans the Batch had in place for various situations, but Double Zero had been the very first of them. Go radio silent.
I flattened to the floor as a clone bearing the distinct pauldron that ranked him as captain twisted towards our hiding place, scanning over his surroundings with a suspicious air. With the patrols, we weren't getting out of here anytime soon. But if we stayed where we were, we were definitely risking detection. "We need better cover."
Hours later, on the constant move dodging patrols, we were high above one of the trenches, spying on another clone squad sweeping the area. Through the rangefinder, I could see each detail clearly, right down to the thorough sweep of every corner, the precise spacing of the squads and tight formation they kept that provided no chance of hiding from them. There was no sneaking out of here.
Hunter lowered his macrobinoculars, deep in thought at the sight of the roving patrols. "We're gonna need to break through their ranks. How many explosives do you two have?"
"Used mine on the Imperial transports."
"Nothing that'll do any damage," Wrecker grumbled. "Just a couple of smoke bombs."
He was only half listening to us, staring at something in the distance with his binocs slowly raising to confirm whatever it was he had his sights on. "Ten o'clock."
I didn't need the rangefinder to see the two Separatist tanks stranded and nearly overturned in the rubble ahead of us. Wrecker laughed quietly beside me, the clone clearly gleeful he would get to blow something up today.
"Old Separatist tanks. Now you're talking."