A/N: Wasn't planning on updating but Bad Batch Season 3 Trailer just dropped and I needed to do something about it. No spoilers for anyone who hasn't seen it yet (go watch it if you haven't trust me) but it's seriously so good and I had so many emotions watching just the trailer. The actual series is going to make me cry I think. ARGH I'm so excited. Gonna be so fun to write :,).
Astera:
Our entry point into Rampart's Venator was the maintenance tunnel behind the first generator. One that required a long climb up an even longer ladder. Hunter had insisted I go before him, and even then I could still hear Wrecker's groans at the bottom of the group, increasing in frequency the higher we got. It only stopped when we hopped up into the empty control room, Tech immediately going for the table in the centre of the room with the rest of us fanning out to check the tunnels.
"Wrecker, get to work on the hatch." The larger clone obeyed Hunter's order, climbing up the second ladder and thumping the hatch experimentally before engaging the small laser attached to his pack.
Rex glanced around the tunnels briefly, watching Wrecker cut through the hatch. "Haven't been in these maintenance tunnels since the war," he remarked offhandedly to no one in particular. For the first time, I noticed he wasn't dressed in his usual clone armour, but in a standard brown shirt and blue vest. Unremarkable civilian clothing. All the better to blend into a crowd with, I realised. His clone trooper brothers would not recognise him at first glance in anything but his armour.
"Gotta say Rex," Echo began, "Coruscant's the last place I'd expect you to be."
I had to agree with him on that one. I myself hadn't imagined ever returning here after Order 66 had been issued.
"It's worth the risk." Rex shrugged as though it was obvious. "More and more of our brothers have been waking up to what's been done to them. I can't turn my back on them."
I saw the effect those words had on Echo, his shoulders squaring slightly and his back straightening. "How many have you reached?" He asked, suddenly more invested than before.
"Not enough," Rex responded grimly, arms folding across his chest. "Troopers who know too much are a liability to the Empire. I'm working with a few contacts I trust, but we're spread pretty thin. Help's hard to come by these days."
Echo's gaze shifted contemplatively to the floor. I didn't need to see into his mind to know what he was thinking, especially after all the times he'd tried to pressure Hunter into helping old allies. I just wondered if he would actually follow through with it when all this was done.
"Got it." Wrecker grunted from above us, wrenching the broken hatch open and starting to climb again, only to halt and groan. "Great. Ray shields."
"Leave it to me," Tech said without hesitation, turning back to the control table and his fingers flying across the controls. Hunter, meanwhile, turned to Rex, suddenly realising we were missing a very crucial part of the plan.
"And how are we getting onto Rampart's Venator?"
"I'm taking a lesson from your squad." Rex grinned. "We improvise."
I rolled my eyes, stifling another groan. "I had a feeling you were going to say something like that."
Soft chiming sounded from Tech's datapad. All of us turned to look up at the hatch, seeing the bright red ray shields power off simultaneously and the second hatch at the top flash green. Our way was clear.
Wrecker hauled himself topside first, followed by Rex, then me again before Hunter. The Venator loomed above us, as huge and intimidating as it had been poised above Kamino, raining hellfire down on the cities.
My right shoulder pulsed in phantom pain at the memory, and my hand flew up automatically, rolling out the joint. Hunter's visor snapped to me, carefully tracking the movements of my shoulder, like he was worried I'd somehow injured it again.
"I'm fine," I reassured him quickly. "The Venator brings up some bad memories."
He grunted in affirmation and started moving, spurring the rest of us into a sprint down the narrow passageways. Troopers were on patrol everywhere - I could hear their comm chatter around us the further we ran, increasing in frequency the closer we got to Rampart's ship.
Hunter's raised fist had us all halting behind the nearest cover we could find - a low bridge serving as some kind of walkway - the enhanced clone peering around the support columns to watch two troopers and a service droid with a cart piled with crates march past us and disappear around the corner. Once he was sure they were well and truly gone, he dropped his hand, darting for another opening the opposite way the clones had gone.
Only the other way was not much better. Between us and the entrance to the ship were dozens of troopers on their designated rounds. Many of them were accompanied by hounds, sniffing at the floor, and spotlights swept the grounds, brightly illuminating the large empty space in front of us. There was no way we could cross that without attracting attention.
"There's not enough cover." I could hear the grimace in Echo's voice as he surveyed the shipyard. "We won't get across the shipyard undetected."
A speeder lifted off in front of us, revealing the air traffic lanes above us, transporting crates into the ship. Hunter tracked their movements, his head cocking to the side as he studied them, then the second transport directly in front of us.
"Not on foot."
I had two seconds to register what he meant before he ordered us to move, and then we were running towards the second platform.
It was already starting to leave the ground before all of us had made it - Wrecker and Tech had to jump to grab the bottom of the speeder before it could take off completely. Wrecker dangled precariously by one hand for several heart stopping seconds before I caught hold of him with the Force and pulled him up the rest of the way, both his legs wrapping tightly around the bars with a strangled noise.
"He's still not better with heights?" Rex muttered to Echo as the larger clone mumbled something that sounded a lot like "Don't look down" repeatedly under his breath.
"This is him better," Echo told him drolly. Wrecker's grip only tightened on the metal bar he hung from as his frantic mutterings increased in frequency.
Tech's datapad chimed, a noise I'd long since learned meant he'd successfully hijacked something. "I have bypassed the controls," he informed us seconds later. "Hang on."
The speeder accelerated suddenly, rising through the air at double its previous pace. With the Force thrumming through me, I could hear the confused warbles of the droid pilot above us, wondering why its speeder had stopped responding to its controls. Not the undetected approach we had been hoping for, but it was better than charging across the open shipyard.
Tech manoeuvred the transport into the Venator itself, wildly dodging obstacles and jerking it higher into the air. Too quickly - I let out a sharp hiss as my helmet slammed into the metal above me, the clang echoing around me as the others fell victim to Tech's uncontrolled steering.
"And he hates it when I pilot," I grumbled, clutching the metal tighter and resisting the urge to rub my throbbing head.
"Tech?" Hunter called out warningly as the other clone pulled the transport even higher, forcing it nearly vertical. My stomach dropped as the feeling of weight left me, my body drifting away from the bar before I locked my legs around the metal, clinging onto it with every ounce of strength I had.
The speeder cleared the lip of the wall and Tech levelled it out again, bringing the speeder as low to the ground as he possibly could.
"Now!" He disconnected his data pad from the speeder and jumped off, free falling to the ship below. I let go of the speeder and followed him, tucking my legs into my body and absorbing the shock of the fall by pitching forward into a roll as soon as I hit the ground.
Our entry point was just in front of us, one of the many maintenance hatches on the topside of the ship. Tech pried open the door controls and set to work, plugging his datapad in and thumbing buttons until something within the hatch clicked. It shuddered open, and we filed inside, blasters drawn and at the ready.
Security inside the Venator itself was surprisingly minimal, one of the few breaks we'd caught on this mission. It made sneaking onto the bridge all too easy - there were only two clone troopers stationed in the room, and both went down to stuns before they had time to register our presence. Tech went straight for the control panel tucked away in the corner of the room while the rest of us fanned out, checking every section of the bridge for possible threats.
"Well, that is unfortunate." Tech's words had us all halting in place and turning towards him, spread out at various places in the room.
"Wanna narrow that down?" Rex asked him from the front of the bridge, Echo coming up at his shoulder to peer at the readings.
"Energy conduits are offline." Tech thumbed buttons on his datapad, eyes squinting at the screen. "The only way to retrieve the data is to reroute power, which will most likely trigger a security breach."
Hunter glanced towards me briefly. "How much time will we have?"
"Not much."
"Then let's make it quick." Tech nodded at Echo's suggestion and dropped to one knee, retrieving a data card from underneath the panel and inserting it into its designated slot the same instance Echo plugged his scomp in.
The bridge roared to life, lights blinking on and washing the room in its harsh, artificial light. I squinted against the harsh glare and pivoted for the door at the opposite end of the room, my senses automatically casting out for the inevitable arrival of the enemy troopers.
It felt like only seconds before I heard their thundering footsteps in the command room, felt their presence moving for the bridge door. Six, if my Force enhanced senses were to be relied on. Which they always were.
"We're about to have company." I cocked my blaster and aimed for the door, ignoring the achingly familiar anxiety coursing through me. We'd avoided direct contact with the Empire so long the blasted feeling hadn't resurfaced in weeks, but now, it was stronger than ever. The fact we were on Coruscant itself could be to blame, but either way, my fear had no place here right now. I gritted my teeth and shoved it to the back of my mind, fingers tightening on the triggers of my guns.
"Wrecker, seal the door!" Hunter ordered the larger clone, who nodded immediately and turned to plug the door controls full of blaster bolts, rendering them completely useless. Though effective, It was only a temporary solution - the door shuddered violently, straining against the broken mechanisms as the clones on the other side attempted to override it.
"The door won't hold much longer," Hunter warned Tech as the door jerked again, squealing half open this time. The barrels on my guns began to tremble as my grip tightened further, my breath coming in hard pants.
Tech, however, only waved a dismissive hand towards Hunter, eyes glued to his datapad and completely oblivious to the dire situation and my near panic. "I am expediting the file transfer as quickly as possible."
Only seconds later, the doors wrenched themselves open and troopers poured into the open space, blaster bolts filling the air. Upon seeing the blue fire, my fear melted away, replaced by the carefully honed instinct to move. Force-enhanced instincts drilled into me from the beginning of my Jedi training.
I dived underneath the first onslaught, rolling behind the nearest cover available and returning fire. Wrecker went for the left side next to Echo and Tech, Hunter and Rex keeping the troopers' attention on them in the centre of the room. Between the four of us, five of the six troopers went down to stuns in the first thirty seconds, the sixth one ducking low behind the command table where none of us had an angle on him.
"Hostiles confirmed on the bridge!" I heard him shout, my heightened hearing easily picking up the words despite the loud blaster shots and the distance between us.
"He's calling for backup!" The blaring of alarms started up no sooner than the words had left my mouth, more troopers piling into the command room too small to hold them all. And as if that weren't bad enough already, the whine of ion engines picked up outside, four of the small fighters whipping past the transparisteel windows. They'd called in air support.
"New plan." Hunter commanded from the bottom of the small room, ducking under a series of bolts that scorched the command consoles behind him. "Fourteen, five, eighty-six."
"All of them?" Wrecker asked incredulously at the same time I shouted wildly, "What one's eighty-six?" I knew fourteen and five, but I was still making my way through the damned list of plans they had, and eighty-six was one of many that still hadn't stuck in my mind.
"Yes," Hunter only answered Wrecker before moving on, too preoccupied with the situation to tell me what I needed to know. "Echo, man the cannons. Deal with the air support." There was no response from the cyborg clone, but the familiar sounds of cannon lasers and explosions from outside told me he'd heeded the order.
"Data transfer is complete." Tech yanked the card out of its slot and replaced it in the container he'd retrieved it from. Beside him, Echo's scomp whirred in the ship's socket, priming the ship's engines for the destruction that would be plan five.
"Plan five, set!"
"Activate!" Hunter wasted no time in yelling. Echo jerked his chin down in a sharp nod and spun his link again, sending the artificial command spiking through the ship's database.
Metal rasped outside with an ugly shriek as the engines rumbled to life and the ship jolted forward, scraping against the supports that held it upright. Venators were ill suited to fire up in such an environment - the ship shook violently, rocking the troopers on the other side of the bridge off balance and sending them staggering. Wrecker, seeing his opening, charged out from behind cover with an elated cry, taking down two troopers with stuns and bulldozing the rest in a mad dash for the door, leaving it clear for us to follow him.
"Security teams will be swarming this trench," Rex panted, whipping up his blaster to stun the next set of clones barrelling down the corridors. "We need an exit strategy."
"Got one," Echo replied. "We're going over them."
"Over them?" Rex repeated questioningly. A question no one got to answer, as the ship suddenly lurched and tilted sideways, the structures holding it up too damaged to support it any further.
I was thrown forward as it impacted the ground, fetching up on the nearest wall while the others around me stumbled to their knees. We didn't have the luxury of recovery however, as more troopers were hot on our heels, blue fire chasing us through the corridors as we scrambled back to our feet and dashed for the nearest escape pod. Five of us crammed shoulder to shoulder inside the small space without a second thought - Rex was the only one who hesitated at the entrance, casting a warning look in Tech's direction.
"These escape pods are not operational."
"We only need them to eject. I can handle the rest." Tech shrugged like it was obvious, spinning his chair back to the controls and beginning to prime the pod.
"You wanted improvisation." I grinned at him underneath my helmet. Rex only shook his head at me and shut the hatch behind him apprehensively.
"This should be interesting."
At the press of a button, all ten of the escape pods ejected from the ship, thrusters firing up and shooting forward at a terrifying speed. Tech hauled on the controls, jerking our pod skyward and over the side of the ship, towards the very front of the docking yard.
"I would suggest you all hold onto something." His cursory warning did nothing to prepare us as the pod went into a steep nosedive, sending the proximity sensors blaring loudly in alarm. My stomach dropped instantly, and my arm shot out to grab something, anything that would keep me in place when we inevitably crashed. Wrecker moaned from beside me, his large hands gripping onto his seat as tightly as he could.
But even so, my body jarred violently as the pod impacted against the ground, helmet colliding hard with Echo's and my teeth knocking against each other. It bounced and rolled, bodies knocking into each other and ending up in crumpled heaps at the bottom when the pod finally skidded to a stop.
Hunter was the first to get up, popping the hatch open to reveal our clear escape route. "Not bad," he remarked approvingly.
"I was off by 6.4 metres. Not my best." Tech climbed out after him with a shrug, moving for the locked service hatch we had entered from and leaving a dazed Wrecker to recollect himself. Ships soared above, but none of them were focused on us as we disappeared back into the tunnels, instead clamouring for the smoking remains of Rampart's damaged Venator.