Astera:
Setron stank. So badly. The putrid smell of the planet permeated the thick, humid air, washing over me in a hot wave when the Marauder's ramp lowered. I wrinkled my nose as I stepped off the ship, Wrecker sniffing audibly behind me before pulling a face and flipping his helmet down with a loud noise of disgust. "Smells like rancid Jotaz out here."
"That's putting it mildly." Thankfully I'd had the foresight to put my helmet on before the ship had landed, but it only took the edge off, the smell somehow still assaulting my nose despite the filter in my helmet.
"There's nothing on the scanners." Hunter held up the steadily beeping datapad, thumping the side of it with a scowl I could feel, even without the Force. "The Empire could be jamming our sensors."
"Or there might be nothing here." As far as I could tell, there was no notable human presence when I cast out my senses, the only lifeforms populating the area the thick mess of plants and trees we could see. Though we could have just been too far out for me to sense anything. Either way, these were the coordinates we'd been given, and we weren't leaving until we'd investigated them.
The familiar uncomfortable churning of unease had started up the second I'd set foot into the jungle, but it only got worse as Hunter turned and forged deeper into the trees without further comment, Wrecker gripping his gun in both hands and following after him. I trailed behind a little slower, muscles tense and searching for the threat that I was more than certain was lurking somewhere around us.
"Oh no." Hunter's low exclamation had me raising my head and hurrying to his side, inhaling sharply at the completely decimated remains of what had to have been the laboratory Roland had been talking about. The pattern of destruction was almost familiar - I'd seen it somewhere else. I just couldn't remember where.
"Woah." Wrecker stepped up on Hunter's other side, staring down at the destruction that had been wrought on whatever this used to be. "That's Hemlock's lab?"
"What happened here?" My rangefinder clicked down automatically, letting me examine the ruins more closely. Some kind of twisting vine had completely overrun the remnants of the base, thick, dark and so convoluted it was impossible to tell where they had originated from. This destruction... this had been at least months ago.
"They destroyed it," Hunter said grimly, lowering his macrobinoculars. "Another orbital bombardment."
That explained why it was familiar. Those gouge marks were identical to the ones that had marred the city on Serenno. This base had been obliterated by the cannons of Venator Star Destroyers.
"But... Omega." Wrecker's voice had gone pale, thin with fear as the implications slowly became clear for him. I-I-If she was here-"
"Don't say that," I interrupted him, my words sharper than they needed to be. They wouldn't have just left her to die if she had been brought here, my intuition told me that much. Hemlock had made too big a deal of taking her for that. But doubt was a powerful thing, and it niggled away at me, filling my head with fears I wasn't even sure were rational. "We don't know if she was."
"The Durands' intel could be wrong." I don't know who Hunter was trying to reassure more, us or himself, but I grabbed onto his words anyway - it was the last comfort we had left. She couldn't have been here."Let's get down there and check it out."
The uneasy feeling started up again as soon as we headed back into the trees, only now I was starting to feel like we were being watched too. Slowly, my hands crept to my holsters and withdrew my blasters, senses on high alert for any sort of movement.
The faint sounds of branches rustling had both Hunter and I stopping, the clone raising his fist to stop Wrecker behind us. "We're not alone."
We spoke at the same, my hands creeping for my holsters and resting on the handles of my guns. His enhancements and my Force sensitivity had always meant we were able to sense things coming before the others, but as of late we'd been weirdly in sync, our warnings to Wrecker coming in tandem.
"You guys have to stop doing that. It's getting creepy." Nevertheless, Wrecker raised his blaster, barrel pointing into the trees in search of a target. I cast my senses out once again, feeling for the presences I knew were around now. All I could tell was that they were distinctly human, and they were very close by.
"Freeze!" A heavy accent and a makeshift weapon were all I registered before the first boy leaped down from above. The second one dropped down on our other side, boxing us in against the trees. They were young, close to Omega's age, and familiar. I'd seen their faces before.
"Drop your weapons!" His own was nothing more than a sharpened stick, and Wrecker only laughed, holding up his blaster a little higher.
Blaster beats stick, kid."
"Wrecker." Hunter admonished the other clone, lowering his blaster and throwing a hand out to stop him before he did anything reckless. "They're regs."
"Cadets?" I dropped my own arms, straightening in surprise. That would explain why they looked identical, and how I knew their faces. I'd seen the same face on Kamino several times before. "What are you doing all the way out here?"
"And who are you?" The first boy ignored my question and jabbed his sharpened stick towards us a little more insistently, prompting both clones to put away their own blasters and take off their helmets.
"We're clones," Hunter told him. "Same as you."
"You don't look like clones," the first boy said suspiciously, refusing to drop his stick. The other one, however, seemed to recognise them - his eyes widened and the makeshift weapon dipped, the cadet's defensive stance relaxing only slightly.
"They must be 99s. Defective."
"Defective and effective!" Wrecker announced proudly. I rolled my eyes at his grin, holstering my blasters and folding my arms, which drew the cadets' attention to me again.
"What about her?" The one in front of Wrecker jerked his stick towards me, still unconvinced. I kept my hands flat and open as I slowly raised them to my helmet, lifting it off my head and tucking it under my arm.
"Not a clone, but I'm no threat either."
"What are you two doing out here?" Hunter repeated my earlier question, both boys sharing a look instantly with a scowl.
"What's it look like?" The first cadet snorted. "Surviving. Or trying to. No thanks to the Empire."
"They send you to finish us off?" The second one brandished his stick again at the thought,
"Do we look like we're with the Empire?" Wrecker gestured almost incredulously down to his coloured and thoroughly abused armour. With the Empire indeed. We looked more like a bunch of pirates than soldiers at this point.
"What do you want?"
"We're looking for a young girl," I answered, shifting my helmet under my arm. "She's a clone. We think she was sent to the lab there."
Their defensive stances finally relaxed fully at the news we weren't here for them, the blades of their makeshift weapons moving away from us. "Never saw anyone like that," one of the cadets said truthfully. "But Mox might know about her."
"He won't talk to them," the other one cut in with a hard glare at his brother. They weren't the only ones here. How many of them actually were?
"Please." Hunter pushed forward, half pleading in his desperation. "We have to find her. She's... part of our squad."
I didn't miss the way he hesitated before saying 'part of our squad', or how Wrecker's expression fell, his eyes dropping to the ground. My free hand touched the red cloth around my wrist automatically, something that had become a habit whenever the thoughts were too much. Like the part of him I carried with me could bring me comfort.
The two cadets' eyes met and the one in front of Hunter nodded almost reluctantly. "Stick to the trail," he warned us. "Follow our steps. And don't touch the vines."
A less than enthusiastic agreement, but if it brought us closer to finding Omega, I would take anything. Wrecker and Hunter seemed to be in agreement, as they nodded when we glanced between us, all three of us putting our helmets back on and following the cadets into the trees.
Both of them kept their tight grips on their weapons, heads on a constant swivel with a hypervigilance that reminded me of Hunter sometimes. It only confirmed what I'd been sensing - there was some kind of threat here. Though I still couldn't feel any sentient presence other than our own.
"When the Empire transferred us off Kamino, we thought we were getting more training," One of them, Stak, told us, carefully brushing aside a branch with his weapon. "Took samples of our blood."
"Why?" This wasn't the first I'd heard of strange experiments going on in the Empire - the information we'd recovered from the Zillo Beast's transport had told us enough - but we still hadn't learned the reasons behind this experimentation. "What was the Empire doing here?"
"Whatever they wanted."
"At least we escaped before they destroyed this facility," The other one - Deke, he'd called himself - added.
"And you survived out here alone ever since?"
"We're soldiers." Stak answered Hunter's question with a shrug as we split up to move around the tree, only for his face to fall when he remembered. "Or... we were supposed to be."
Clones were hardy. They'd been trained to be since birth. But these two were still kids - they should have still been safe on Kamino, being prepped for civilian life if they were never meant to fight in the war. I couldn't help but think of Omega and what would have happened if she had been forced to survive in a clearly hostile environment like this instead. It left a bitter taste in my mouth, one that didn't fade when I remembered it was these two and their friend that had been left here instead. They didn't deserve this.
"Stop." On the other side of the tree, Deke turned and raised his weapon, slowly inching backwards with an expression of apprehension on his face. Wrecker froze, the meaty looking vine he had just shouldered aside twitching and beginning to retract into the trees. Stak hurried over to his brother with Hunter and I close behind him, bodies tensing at the sight of the moving vine.
"What?" He questioned, completely oblivious.
"Wrecker, behind you," Hunter warned, a hand creeping for the blaster at his hip. The vine reared back as soon as the larger clone turned - huge, threatening and definitely alive. As far as I could tell, that thing wasn't attached to any creature. The forest itself was attacking us.
"Run!" Deke and Stak were dashing for the nearest bush cover while all three of us pulled blasters out, blue bolts sinking into the lashing out vine that did no apparent damage. All it did was cause the vine to recoil with what I could have sworn was an audible hiss.
"Don't fire!" Deke shouted from their hiding spot. "It gets hostile when you shoot!"
"You mean it's not already hostile?!"
"No!"
Wrecker had a point though; the vines were reaching for us again, two more tendrils joining the first. It was much too late to do anything but double down - we retreated backwards, still blasting away at the vines even though our shots were doing nothing against them.
Wrecker was jerked back suddenly with a confused scream - I whirled automatically to see the vine that had wrapped around him yank him against the nearest tree, already beginning to drag him upwards. He struggled against it, but it had completely constricted his arms. All he was able to do was kick his legs against the tree to no avail and bellow our names, hoping he could grab our attention.
"Wrecker!" Panic gripped me and I was drawing on the Force before I was even fully aware, grabbing for a lightsaber and leaping upwards as the blade ignited and swept out in a blinding arc. He fell and hit the ground with a thud, the stump of the moving vine flailing with a shriek and recoiling back into the trees it had come from. The other end of it thrashed on the ground where Wrecker had thrown it off, shooting into the undergrowth with almost snake-like movements.
"Come on!" Stak had run out from underneath their bush cover with Deke while the vines were distracted, fleeing into the trees behind us. We didn't hesitate to run after them, hot on their heels with weapons still gripped tight in our hands.
They kept running long after we had left the murder vines behind, finally coming to a stop when there was no sign of the vines anywhere. Wrecker promptly doubled over and braced his hands on his knees, shoulders heaving with the effort of trying to regain his breath. My own pants were coming hard, but I still didn't let myself relax, both Hunter and I still scanning the jungle for any sign of those vines. Deke and Stak's attention, however, had been taken by something else.
"I never thought I'd get to meet a Jedi in real life." Deke's voice was quiet, him and Stak focused intently on the humming yellow blade poised at the ready. "Not after the war ended."
"Yeah, they're a bit of a rarity now." I couldn't bring myself to tell them I wasn't really one anymore, finally powering off the yellow blade and hooking the hilt back on my belt. Next to me, Wrecker straightened, finally recovering enough to speak.
"What was that stuff?"
"Slither vines," Deke said grimly. "The Empire made it. It's some kind of experimental weapon, but they lost control of it."
"And probably why they ordered a Base Delta Zero on their own facility," Stak added. They had that habit of finishing each other's thoughts that most clone squads had had in the Clone Wars, I noticed offhandedly. Harbinger Squad especially had managed to confuse me on several occasions by planning strategies that way. Before I'd caught on and started doing it with them.
"We'll be safe on the crag." Deke jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "The slither vines haven't spread there."
"Yet. And this time, don't touch anything." Stak's words did nothing to reassure us, but it wasn't like we had much choice anyway. Our other option was to battle the slither vines into the base, and I doubted there was much more to salvage inside those ruins.
"Lead the way." I gestured into the trees, stepping back and letting the two boys march past me with their sticks held high.