The Force Wills - Chapter 135

The mass rhythmic thumping of durasteel on stone echoed through the street, a sound that would be forever ingrained in the galactic consciousness.

A drum that heralded occupation, war and destruction.

The droid forces numbered a full company of B1s, B2s with AAT support in the front and rear of the column that marched down the street in the northern sector of Iziz. Their destination and true target was not difficult to figure out, as this major road was the main thoroughfare that would lead into the western Slagworks.

The moon of Dxun was bright in the night sky, yet another sign that a storm was on the horizon. An ancient belief that had been assimilated into Onderon culture thanks to ancient Mandalorian occupation of the habitable moon.

“Fire!”

From the alleyways, roofs and windows, the combined arms of the OLF and Royal Guard troops began sending massed fire into the armored column.

Droid poppers and thermal detonators were flung into the night and detonated, turning dozens of droids into scrap.

The droid response was instant, returning fire and suppressing most of the onderonian positions.

A contingent of six Commando droids jumped out of each AAT, each throwing their own grenades towards the enemy.

Multiple buildings erupted into flame.

B2-ACMs, which had been sprinkled among their standard B2 brethren, raised their triple barrel wrist blaster and started hosing the Onderonian positions with rapid Repeater levels of fire.

The AATs, only one of which had been destroyed, traversed their turret and with a single shot, blew out the complete facing of a building, almost turning it into a crumbling ruin.

Six rupings, flown by Guard troopers, swooped down from the east, their passengers dropping thermal detonators.

The entire street was turned into a maelstrom of fire and concussive shockwaves that blew out every window.

The predators turned into tactical bombers began flapping their wings furiously, gaining speed and immediately scattering.

Steela scowled at the holoscreen in front of her, showing her the real time view from an OLF member wearing a visual sensor. She leaned on the central planning desk in the converted command center in OLF HQ and stared at me with haunted eyes. “You were right, Ahsoka.  Dxun damn it, you were right.”

I unfolded my arms and manipulated the large tactical holo model of the city, deleting the representation of the droid column.

That entire ambush and battle had been but one of nine that had occurred simultaneously, the others of which were being overseen by General Tandin and a number of his high ranking colonels. Each of which had their own holotable and were coordinating forces under their command.

“It was just a matter of time before General Kalani began to adapt his tactics to counter our own. Hence, why I suggested we use minimal personnel in these ambushes and use our Life Decoy Fighters.”

They were essentially a basic floating drone. Made with parts sourced from all over the Slagworks and thanks to Lady Thalindra’s support, the more specialized parts were also not a problem. They were no larger than human head, which could mimic a human lifesign to most droid sensors and were armed with an underslung DC-15 carbine bolted onto it.

Most of the OLF who had taken part in the ambush had actually been two blocks away, safely ensconced inside the basement of a building with the control terminals for the drones. Those terminals didn’t look any different than a large format datapad, allowing rebels to generally carry them without suspicion.

Of course, the LDFs couldn’t replace everyone on the front lines. Grenades still had to be thrown and I was still waiting for a shipment of basic grenade launchers that could be attached to them. 

“How many?” Steela asked flatly.

It was almost a ritual habit between us at this point.

“Three dead from the ambush group, seven wounded and retreating.”

She closed her eyes and her fists clenched in anger. “If only King Dendup’s plan was feasible.”

It was almost a refrain with her. The King’s initial thought had been to draw away the fighting from the capital, by a tactical retreat of loyal onderonian forces towards the eastern mountains and conduct the war there. Where the narrow passes would mean that the superior numbers of the droids would not be much of an advantage. It would also insulate the people of the city from the fighting and destruction, avoiding collateral damage and loss of innocent life.

It was a strategy that unfortunately showed the king’s lack of experience with any real form of warfare.

Such a withdrawal would only make the Onderonian army a sitting duck for CIS air power, which there was very little of in Iziz, thanks to the OLFs early strikes. That was not the case for the neighboring city of Vanreer; which according to M8s orbital observations, had three squadrons of Vultures and Hyenas ready to fly on any massed target that presented themselves. Forty thousand troops marching through the jungle would be massacred before they could even make it to the mountains.

The enemy owned the skies and whether the King liked it or not, the city, its people and infrastructure was the only shield the army had against it.

“I should be out there,” she slammed her fist against the table in frustration.

“General Steela Gerrera,” I reminded her, my eyes flashing my own pointed anger against her. “The King did not bestow that title on you lightly and you are the face of this resistance to the people. Getting yourself killed by a stray blaster bolt from a B1 is not in the interest of your people, only your enemies. Your sniping days are over and you’d be best served teaching those skills to others.”

“Who are more expendable than me, you mean?” she snapped back with hostility.

“Precisely,” I nodded. “Welcome to another real and very ugly face of war, Steela. Sending others out to achieve an objective, knowing that it's very likely that they’ll not come back.”

Her anger bubbled higher and I felt her spirit in a dark, spiraling turmoil.   

“And…what? I just accept it? Just like that?!”

“No, you accept that burden and live with it for the rest of your life,” I reached into my shirt and brought out my necklace that featured seven crystalline holotags. “These represent the six original pilots who died under my command of Wraith Squadron. The seventh is actually a datachit that features the names of every soldier of the 501st, Resolute pilot and navy man who have died whilst I was in command of the ship. Do you even want to know how many names there are?”

Steela only gaped at me, her mind struggling to come to terms with the concept. Her imagination brought up the worst as the idea settled into her head like a virus. Eventually, she shook her head, “No.”

“This burden you will carry because you have no other choice. The alternative is letting it break your spirit, at which point you will have failed not only yourself, but your people and those under your command, who look to you to be their guide through the hard times.”

Her jaw clenched and lips pursed, even as despite her own efforts, a rogue tear began trickling from her right eye and down her cheek. “Dozens of our own have died already, many more will-”

She cut herself off and angrily wiped the tear away from her face.

“It will always be painful, Steela,” I said softly, placing a hand on her shoulder. It was a good sign that she didn’t shrug it off. “They fight willingly, knowing they will possibly die. That there will be no more tomorrows. They do it for their families, for the future and for the man or woman who is next to them in the fight.”

“And now I can’t die, now I can’t be next to them in the front lines.”

“Practically speaking, no. Unless you’re a Jedi and have been holding out on me all this time?”

She snorted at my lame attempt at humor, but it did manage to slightly calm the turmoil of her inner-self.

“Commander Tano!” General Tandin called over the low din of the command center, which was becoming more and more lively as alarm was sweeping through the colonels and others.

“On my way!” I gave Steela a look of support and strength, pushing on her spirit with the lightest of Battle Meditations to help her out of the spiral of defeatism. Her back straightened and a measure of surety and confidence shone out of her again like a dim light getting brighter, regaining its strength.

I hurried to the other side of the command center.

Tandin pointed at a holoscreen that showed a live view from a sniper who was on overwatch duty. “We just lost an entire squad to that.”

Hovering in the air menacingly, were five saucer shaped droid gunships.

Eleven meters in diameter with an armored upper profile, whilst its ventral side was utterly bristling with hung munitions that didn’t exactly look like a standard missile. It took me a moment to realize I was actually looking at flex ordnance launchers, which had 14 missile racks. It also had a distinct forward ‘nose’, from which a turreted heavy laser cannon and two dual mediums was hung and tracking the ground, looking for any more targets to present themselves.

Anything that got beneath that amount of firepower was dead.

The lack of armor from below told another story as well. “Let me guess, shielded?”

Tandin nodded, “Even DC-15X snipers on their most powerful setting had no effect. Anyone who tried was quickly killed by those dual mediums, which have an extremely high rate of fire.”

“Interesting that the Separatists chose Onderon to debut an entirely new gunship weapons platform. More than likely, this planet was being used as R&D for its development. Republic Intelligence would never think the enemy would do it in Republic space. You heard nothing of this?”

“Nothing specifically,” he shook his head. “I just knew that Rash had given the orders for prison labor to be diverted to somewhere in the highlands at the request of Dooku. This was just a month after his grab for power. It’s more than likely that a secret base was built there for the construction and testing of these gunship droids.”

We watched on the screen as the droid in question stopped on the spot, yawed and shot off towards another direction.

“General retreat and scatter for all units,” Tandin ordered his colonels. “Until we can take down those gunships reliably, commander, this battle cannot continue.”

“Understood, general. I’ll see to it.”

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“What do you think, Chewie?”

The big wookiee was seated on a small cargo pallet he had converted into an appropriately sized chair. A place he could rest his legs from overseeing the small ‘cottage’ factory line he had set up in a neighboring warehouse with two dozen volunteers - who were each responsible for a single step of assembling the LDF drones.

The din of mechanical assembly, the whizzing of laser welders and the rumbling of fabricators hung in the air. The volunteers, the youngest of whom were teenagers all the way to an old twi’lek grandmother, worked with a passionate zeal and minimal conversation.

“We could build a shield penetrator with local supply and industry. After all, they’re just heavily modified repulsors that create grav sheer bands that forcibly warps shield boundaries.”

I nodded, “The problem then would be militarizing it, making it small enough, sticking it on the end of a rocket small enough to be carried by a single soldier.”

“Ideally, we would ask the Jedi Council for the launchers that clone heavy assault troopers use.”

“I’ve contacted Anakin already, even if he manages his best case scenario plan, the soonest we’d see a delivery of those launchers would be in two days.”

“Could we afford that time?”

“Not really,” I sighed, my fists clenching in frustration. I could go out there right now and bring  every droid gunship down with minimal effort. The only problem was that it would be overtly the supernatural intervention of a Jedi, which I had been keeping on the down-low as much as possible. The whole ‘rebellion initiative’ would fail if it required a Jedi to constantly prop it up.

Chewie combed his fingers through the fur of his head, clearly thinking about the problem. He stared at his bowcaster, which was leaning against his chair.

“I might have an idea,” he growled eventually. “It’ll be clunky as you say and will need two people to operate.”

I frowned briefly before smiling, “How long would you need?”

“With no sleep and three of my better technicians here - come back in eight hours.”

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Chewie would not be the only one going with no sleep.

The wounded and the dying streamed into HQ.

Thankfully, I was not the only generally qualified medic anymore. With General Tandin’s mobilization had come fifteen doctors and 78 nurses of various specialties.

We had quickly run out of space within the first hour and outright commandeered the nearest suitable building to turn it into a field hospital. Further constraining us was the need to be discreet, as the droid gunships were patrolling the skies above our heads. The only advantage we had was that there were only five of them and General Tandin had set up an observer network that were reporting their position at all times.

“Aargghhl-”

The writhing male togruta soldier went silent underneath my hand as I rendered him unconscious with the Force. His lower right leg was barely held on by a sinew of flesh, whilst a field tourniquet was the only thing that had kept him from bleeding out on the way here.

All the medtechs had brought as much supplies as they could reasonably carry on their backs and hospitals had donated bacta patches and entire containers of the life preserving fluid, as much as they could afford to give away. Yet it seemed in just two days of battle, we were burning through those supplies at an unsustainable rate.

“Commander?” prompted the rather mousy looking human nurse, Lezi, who was helping me. 

“Give him a general antibiotic, the leg is gone.”

My lightsaber burst into brilliant green life and with a slight flick, I severed the leg and cauterized the major blood vessels.

Lezi flinched at the sight of the weapon, but quickly recovered and administered the medication with a hypo.

I spent the next five minutes using the Force to ensure the arterial pressure would be held, before reaching down and pulling off the tourniquet.

“Bacta bandage.”

Lezi unwrapped the precious thing and secured it over the stump.

“Plasma infusion.”

She put a large medical brace around the soldier’s upper arm and tapped a few buttons on it. It whirred into life as it gave artificial blood replacement for that which the soldier had lost from its internal reservoirs.

I spent the next minute with my mind’s eye within the togruta’s body, encouraging natural blood production, speeding up the digestive system, balancing the disrupted metabolism and easing the shock symptoms.

“Mark him stable, we must move on.”

It was just the beginning and I wished I could just let the next ten hours blur into a mess of memory, but my training made that impossible.

I remembered each treatment, each death.

The feeling of having to use the Force to wade into the guts of someone, pull out every bit of shrapnel lodged in them and stitch them back up.

The argument with a stubborn doctor who didn’t want my ‘Jedi nonsense’ helping his patients.

“Doctor Jorva, I have trained under the best Jedi Healers in the galaxy, who in one case has almost seventeen doctorates from a variety of the best universities that you could care to name.”

I glared at the stubborn man, acutely aware that we were making a scene and distracting from the life saving work going on around us. In response, he puffed up and tried to look down on me, despite the fact that he was actually just slightly shorter than I was.

“This is a place of science and medicine, not your mysticism-”

My hand came up in a blink and I twitched it, bodily grabbing the idiot with the Force and sent him twirling upward into the ceiling, as if he had just entered a null gravity zone.

“Wh- what?! Stop! Let me down! Undo this-”

A somewhat theatrical twitch of my finger sent him into slumberland, whilst I dumped him onto the floor beside a bed and out of the way. The eruption of both amusement, relief and astonishment from every nurse and doctor around me, told the story of how Jorva was regarded by everyone. 

I hurried to the patient that he had been stopping me from seeing. “Lezi, 3 mil Pomezzid now.”

“Yes, commander,” she hurried to comply, filling a hypo as I hurriedly tried to fix an arrhythmic heart that had been just seconds from giving out completely.

Twenty minutes of delicate work later, I was done, but now I had to pay the price by taking over and checking Jorva’s patients.

Thankfully, for all his bluster and stubbornness, he was a fairly good doctor and medtech. There were no glaring oversights besides the one I had just intervened in. 

My comlink chirping interrupted the checking of a nasty blaster wound to the chest, which had collapsed a lung.

“Yes, Chewie?”

“It’s as ready as it will be.”

“Be there in ten minutes.”

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The weapon looked like Chewie had taken inspiration from the Fatman portable nuke launcher, except it was a closed durasteel pipe, nearly one and half meters long, with a barrel diameter of 25 centimeters. A curved pad was bolted on underneath so the user could rest it on a shoulder. The handles looked like they had been cut straight from a speeder bike, whilst two small datapads welded on both sides of the launcher acted as a computerized aiming mechanism. 

One of the largest technicians in Chewie’s employ, a burly twi’lek, was hefting the entire thing on his shoulder, testing the ergonomics, how easily it could be moved and aimed.

On the floor of the workshop were ten rounded bulky projectiles. They were so fresh off the assembly line that they hadn’t even bothered to paint the exterior alloy.

“Ahsoka, you look just about as good as I feel,” Chewie grumbled tiredly from his makeshift seat on a bucket.   

I was operating on a deficit at this point, using the Force to sustain my alertness and energy levels.

With a minor grunt of effort I picked up a projectile, probing it with technometry.

It had the guts of a high yield thermal detonator as a warhead, whilst the propulsion was the primary field coils and controls of a repulsor that had started its life inside the drivetrain of a speeder.

I frowned, “Where’s the shield pen?”  

Chewie gave me a toothy grin of wookiee satisfaction. “The repulsor itself becomes that in the final moments, just before shield contact is made. There is a proximity sensor in the front that precisely tells the onboard computer when to shift from propulsive to grav shear mode. It naturally burns itself out, but that doesn’t matter, when in the next few milliseconds it explodes against the hull of the droid gunship.”

I carefully put the projectile down and placed a hand on the launcher tube.

Here, Chewie had replicated the polarizing orbs of a bowcaster, which created a magnetic field that launched the projectile with an initial kick.

My mind tumbled around a few estimates, calculating the possible initial velocity it would be able to give that much mass.

“Chewie, please tell me you’ve accounted for recoil.”

“Sorry, Ahsoka, not in the time we have. This is just the prototype and if I can spend another few days on it, then I’ll be able to make a compensator. As it is, the launcher will rip itself out of the user’s grip, and damage itself after every shot. I estimate you can use it for two shots, maybe three before it’s beyond repair.”

“Accuracy will be a problem too.”

“The aiming program in the datapad will work out and show where the user has to aim after designating a target. The repulsors we have are too imprecise to do much more than give a few degrees of offset steering, given how fast it would be going.”

“So no sniping the gunship from a safe distance.”

“To guarantee a hit, you need to shoot it as it’s travelling away from you, max range given the weight of the projectile is about 900 meters.”

“In an urban environment that’s good enough. Necessity is forcing our hand. Good work, Chewie, I know you did your utmost.”

“Thank me when we don’t have those shadow cursed dropships over our heads.”

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He stared at the so-called ‘weapons’ that were meant to take back the skies of Iziz.

“What are the men calling them?” Saw asked, trying his best not to look inappropriately at Ahsoka.

It was just so difficult when she was wearing a top that most Onderonian women would consider underwear. Yet apparently it was considered somewhat normal in some parts of the galaxy. The early morning heat had been somewhat onerous today, but it was clear that as an offworlder, she was not used to the persistent hot humidity and her light orange skin was glistening with sweat.

“Skybangers,” her mouth twitched with clearly suppressed amusement, even as her deep blue eyes looked seriously at the carefully selected volunteers who would make the attempt.

Ten of the largest soldiers that were in the combined Onderonian forces, who were training to wield it successfully. None of them were below 1.9 meters in height and the lightest of them weighed 83 kilos.

The wookiee who had built the things were right there next to them, answering questions and demonstrating functionalities and quirks of the cobbled together weapons.

Anyone in their right mind would take one look at the Skybangers and swiftly say, ‘No thanks,’ and run in the other direction. Only the desperate situation with the Separatist Hailfire gunships (yet another designation that had stuck in the minds of everyone) hovering over the city and gunning down anything and anyone that looked remotely like a ‘rebel’, would convince you otherwise.

They had been loitering and patrolling the skies above Iziz for nearly twelve hours before they finally landed for a refueling and maintenance cycle.

It was insanity that something had that good of a performance, but it had come at an observable cost. 

The gunship had never been seen going faster than 100kph and since there were only five of them at the moment, they couldn’t possibly cover the relatively vast area of the city fast enough. It had allowed some room for operations against the enemy to resume, but attacking any large droid formation was out of the question. It was also only a matter of time before the enemy pushed into the west and currently there was nothing they could do to stop them.

Sergeant Chewbacca growled a warning to everyone in the warehouse, as one of the volunteers hefted a training version of the Skybanger onto their shoulder. 

Saw hurriedly stuffed the hearing plugs into his ears.

The soldier aimed at a target point painted on one of the duracrete walls.

The projectile being fired was also a simulator, but it did nothing to prepare for what Saw experienced next.

One moment, the soldier was braced and aiming -

- the next the Skybanger tube was flying backward, the concussion rattled Saw’s lungs and he felt it down to his bones. The entire warehouse was filled with dust as it was shaken loose from the rafters.

He looked left to the target and there was only a slight scruff mark and blue paint to mark where the projectile had actually hit - just about a meter high from the center point.

A glance right showed Ahsoka was completely unaffected. No togruta or twi’lek had been chosen among the volunteers because of the violent concussion, as it was much easier for humans to shield their own hearing. Yet another advantage of being a Jedi, he supposed.

“Think this will work?”

“It has to only work once,” she said, her hands coming to rest on her hips and her eyes gaining that distant look. “Our opponent, despite being advanced, is still a droid. It will force him to recalculate his deployment and use of the gunships.”

“Hopefully buying time for Chewbacca and his team, to make better versions.”

She looked at him seriously, “You ready for this, Saw?”

His answer was direct and to the point, “Yes.”

“Force be with you all.”

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The air was heavy and the first drops of what promised to be another rain storm began falling on his coat.

In moments the dull hissing roar filled his ears.

Onderonians called this kind of rain Jovrup, where the individual droplets were bigger than a man’s thumb and the splash from the hard street surface sent smaller droplets upward to at least knee level.

Saw held up a fist to halt the strike team, and everyone kneeled in the lee of a tall building. He checked that each soldier had adequately protected their weapon from the downpour with the provided rain tarps.

The street lighting was still on and they were in a pool of darkness, not that it would help too much from being seen or scanned, but B1 targeting was so rubbish that it was at least an effective defense.

Satisfied, he gestured forward and they advanced down the street.

So far, so good, he thought as he jogged with his rifle shouldered and scanning for targets. Each man carrying a Skybanger had them slung over their backs, and were also carrying DC15 carbines for self defense. Their support partner carried the heavy projectiles in a backpack harness, who also had the job to actually load it into the launcher. Ten men, five launchers, each with two shots.

Their target - a droid convoy that was heading west through the southern routes.

It didn’t take a tactical droid or any genius to figure out at this point that the OLF HQ would be somewhere in the Slagworks and this Kalani was clearly making a play for it.

They were tracking two more armored droid offensives who were pushing through the city, also heading west.

The Onderonian forces had no choice but to stop them and there were only enough launchers for one strike team. 

He paused the team at the edge of the next intersection and carefully used his macrobinoc to take an image snapshot of what was potentially waiting for them.

The hand signal for clear was a visible relief for everyone.

They surged across the street as quickly as their legs could carry them, acutely aware of the potential for long range surveillance and commando droid snipers.

Saw and the rest of the team were breathing harshly, their trek to get into position covertly had taken them across three kilometers of flood water tunnels, sewage and it was only now that they had no choice but to risk street level travel.   

“Scout, 180,” whispered their rear guard harshly.

He didn’t hesitate and they dove for the darkness of an alleyway.

The scout in question was a single B1, used in the dual role of playing bait for any eager resistance member or ferreting out potential hotspots, whilst acting as eyes and ears for the main droid column.

The roaring rain was thankfully an impediment to the enemy in that respect.

The droid passed the alley, only pausing for the slightest moment to look into it.

It saw only darkness and the looming forms of trash barges.

Saw sighed in relief and patted the tiny little device on his waist that was scrambling their life signs.

The strike team emerged from behind the barge and resumed the journey.

“All right, we’re inside their outer perimeter, eyes in the sky, men,” he tapped the comlink stuck to his throat. Such a simple thing that solved so many problems with team communication in such a noisy environment.

It was just two streets later, with their hearts in their throats from anxious stress, that they made the first visual contact with the armored droid column.

Two companies of B2s, three AATs, with two Hellfires hovering protectively over them.

Only a single line of buildings separated them from certain death at the moment and their usual tactic of using ascension guns to the rooftops would be suicide.

The only line of fire they’d get would be the crossing intersection the column was passing through. That was another two hundred meters in the direction they had just come from.

Saw made the split second decision to retrace their steps.

They were sprinting now, but with the weight on the backs of the team, it was a jog at best.

He gestured to the approaching intersection, making the hand signals and pointing up at the sky.

The first soldier in the lead of their team unhitched his launcher even as they were still running.

Everyone hurriedly scattered to make as much room as possible as no one could be behind the Skybanger tube.

The loader hefted the projectile in and closed the breach, slapping his partner on the back.

“Hold,” Saw hissed, even as he aimed for the broad saucer shaped droid that loomed into view.

They had to wait for the diversionary attack to happen first.

He knew that Ahsoka was on overwatch and coordinating things, so why…

Even as he thought it, what seemed like a swarm of drones swooped out of the rainy sky and opened fire.

Blue blaster bolts began raining on the enemy, biting into B2 armor, occasionally scoring a kill shot.

The Hailfire droids frantically looked for an engageable target but found their sensors swarmed with life sign readings that irrationally indicated that it was surrounded with flying organics shooting down into the B2 column that it was supposed to protect. Their medium blasters spooled up and rapid fired through the air, hitting nothing.

The drones were too nimble, moving too erratically.

“Now!” Saw ordered.

The Skybanger roared.

The launcher ripped itself away from the soldier, the edge of the aiming datapad clipped him about the face, tearing skin and only the helmet he was wearing saved his ear from being sliced off.

Even at a safe distance, Saw felt like someone had punched him in the ribs from the residual concussion.

Yet the Hailfire droid remained in the air and in the far distance, a flash of an explosion in the low lying clouds.

A miss.

“Next, again!”

The soldier surged to his feet, rushing to retrieve the fallen launcher.

Another duo was already taking their place, the projectile already loaded.

Saw tried to brace, but the concussion was just too much. Even the falling rain around them was visibly disturbed by the launcher firing.

The poor visibility was not helping either.

A hit!

The Hailfire droid was tilted violently in the air, struggling to retain its orientation, a gout of fire rising into the air that was quickly snuffed out in the downpour. It was as if a large creature had bit out a section of the saucer.

The rainy night was suddenly lit with an eye searing flash as the Hailfire’s very exposed onboard ordnance detonated in a massive secondary explosion.

Only the building they were using as cover saved them from the worst of the overpressure, whilst their helmets saved their hearing.

Saw blinked fiercely, trying to regain his natural night vision. He thumbed the link on his neck, “Next, aim for the next, fire!”

He was barely aware of the strike team obeying and he regained his sight just as the first enemy shots came in their direction.

Thankfully, the angle meant that only the edge of the building they were using as cover in the intersection was hit.

The third duo of the strike team flung themselves back into cover, unable to get their shot.

Saw rolled right, plastering himself against the building, edging forward to take a peek.

He had just a few seconds of sight before he had to twitch his head back, narrowly avoiding a blaster bolt to the forehead.

The second Hailfire droid was hovering just twenty odd meters away, above roof level with all its regular blasters aiming at their position. The two eerie photoreceptors on its ‘face’ glowing a malevolent red in the night. A contingent of B2s were advancing on the ground, with their arms up and ready to fire.

Saw knew one thing at that moment, to stay there was death.

He frantically gestured for a retreat, not even bothering to shout over the cacophony of pouring rain and competing blaster fire from drones and droids.

Somehow, his men seemed to miraculously fall in line exactly as he had envisioned it, his hand signals barely needed.

They rushed down the street as fast as their legs could carry and formed a firing line from the sidewalk and into the street itself, each soldier spaced apart from each other and their respective loaders kneeling next to each.

The first B2 that came into view died just as it tried to fire.

Saw weathered the concussion from the Skybanger as the B2 was practically sliced in half from the grav shear of the projectile. The detonation only occurred when the round buried itself in an adjacent building, ripping a great hole out of it and sending a plume of fire into the dark sky.

The surging debris and shockwave bowled over a number of advancing B2s, but they crawled awkwardly back to their feet and continued to advance with machine-like inevitability.

The next B2 appeared and this time Saw lost sight of the street, as the round dug into the stone paving first and detonated at the feet of the enemy.

Stone, debris and street tiling shattered and a great gout of it was heaved upward into the air, quickly collapsing into a large crater.

It was getting even more difficult to see as any surrounding street lighting had long since been shattered.

Debris joined in the rain from the heavens, clattering around them.

It took a few extra seconds for the next singular B2 to appear and with a flash of realization, Saw understood what the enemy was doing.

By sending in only the single droid, which they had no choice but to engage with the Skybanger, the enemy was forcing them to use up their limited ordnance. Sacrificing B2s to protect the Hailfire.

The heavy roar of the Skybanger slammed into them and the B2 was reduced to scrap.

He looked behind them and knew that the only reason they hadn’t been flanked from behind by the enemy was the drone swarm.

What was the solution?

This Hailfire had to die.

Retreat? Not an option.

Flank left or right? There was no room for such maneuvering.

The only way was…

Saw grabbed the nearest soldier with a functioning Skybanger by the scruff of the neck, shoving him forward, “Charge! For the crater!”

He began running, not even doubting for a singular moment that they would be behind him.

The B2 that inevitably appeared out of the night gloom, walking around the crater in the street aimed…

Saw felt no desperation and no despair, even as he was staring down the triple barrel of a B2 blaster arm.

His carbine came up one handed as he ran and fired, squeezing the trigger as fast as he could.

The B2 didn’t fire.

It slumped forward dead, from a blaster shot that had, with sniper precision, perfectly gone down the sensor cluster in the left shoulder.

Saw couldn’t take the time to marvel at the luck it must have taken to achieve that shot with a simple DC15 carbine and jumped into the muddy crater, already quarter full with rainwater. The strike team jumped a moment later, some keeping their feet and others losing balance, spilling their launchers into the freezing cold water.

Saw looked up into the gloomy sky and his heart felt like it wanted to jump out of his chest.

The Hailfire was there, barely thirty meters ahead, its guns and flex launchers angling to fire directly on them.

At least it’ll be quick, was the tiny thought in his mind, but it was drowned out by the confidence and surety that this was the right play.

Resistance drones swooped out of the sky, a handful of them practically landed on the dorsal section of the Hailfire, flaring its shields into visibility briefly.

The droid was distracted, its targeting and firing sequence paused to yaw quickly to shrug off the drones it perceived erroneously as potentially a greater threat.

It was too late.

“FIRE! FIRE!”

Saw felt like a giant boot had just kicked him in the side.

Then there was a dull pain in his shoulder as he was flung against the crater edge.

Two Skybanger launchers had fired simultaneously.

The strike team had fired knowing that it would probably kill them.

The Hailfire droid was struck on the ventral side.

The light of the explosion seared his eyes even though he was looking away, he felt the heat briefly and…

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He blinked and for a brief moment, didn’t know where or even who he was. He had been fighting something? Then… light… then darkness…

It was a threadbare room, he was lying on a bed, a thin blanket covering his body. Then the pain hit and… Saw? Yes, that’s my name.

He lifted his arms, which were practically encased in bacta bandages. He tried to sit up but the pain convinced him otherwise. It was like someone was stabbing him in the back with a blunt knife.

The memory of the battle came screaming back like a meteor entry.

He grit his teeth, resisting the urge to scream, cry and whimper all at once.

“Easy Saw, you’re fine, you’re alive, you’re safe.”

A light orange hand on his shoulder, he looked to the side and… Ahsoka? was there. 

Her beautiful artfully patterned face smiled at him gently and it suddenly felt like his inner being was being submerged in the warmest, most luxurious bath imaginable. His turmoil vanished before her light like a mere mist encountering the early morning sun.

“W-what-” he coughed, his parched throat unable to form words.

She picked up a glass of water, pushing in a drinking straw and poked the other end gently into his mouth.

He drank greedily and his throat basked in the relief of the life giving moisture passing through it.

There was only one thing he wanted to know.

“Did we succeed?”

“You did, Saw,” she nodded seriously.

“How many of my team are still alive?”

“Seven, most of them died due to overpressure from the explosion. You were against the side of the crater, partially submerged in the rainwater, which saved you from the worst of it.” He blinked and for the first time noticed that Steela was there as well, seated in a chair near the foot of the bed, completely asleep. “She’s been by your side for most of the day, ever since the doctors allowed it.”

“How long has it been?”

“You’ve been unconscious for three days.”

Saw braced himself against the pain and pushed himself up urgently. Ashoka rushed forward to prop up his back with extra pillows. “The battle, tell me,” he demanded.

She shook her head, “I see you won’t take it easy. Very well, it finally ended about nine hours ago. Iziz has been liberated from Separatist control, we’re just mopping up individual droid stragglers at this point. With some preparation, we’ve managed to use tactical power grid shutdowns to effectively herd and starve them. Rash has been arrested and General Kalani has fled as well. Whether he will remain to continue the fight from another city or be smuggled offworld will depend on what Dooku decides.”

“So King Dendup is back on the throne properly, we have the keys to the orbital defense grid.”

Saw felt only a bone deep satisfaction.

After all the suffering and sacrifice, the day had finally come.

“The latter will take a while. Unfortunately, Rash and Kalani, as a last act of spite, encrypted the grid controls with a complex cipher. It’s currently targeting every ship not flying a Separatist transponder, so for the moment, we’re still limited in getting supplies through it with cloaked ships. I’m working on a plan to get it back under onderonian control but it will not be a fast fix.”

“Is he dead yet?”

“No, your King is wisely letting actual justice take its course. He’s establishing a new court and Rash will be tried and judged, though Dendup will still need to sign off on whatever punishment they decide.”

“It’s only a formality at this point,” Saw sneered.

“Correct, but it needs to happen, for the sake of your societal cohesion, future descendants and history. They need to see that even in the darkest night, that you held onto the candle of civilization. That you did not descend into mob justice and barbarism.”

He sighed, suddenly feeling exhausted, lacking the strength to argue, “I’m sure you’re right, Ahsoka, but… did he ever give a fair trial to those he persecuted?”

“No, but is that cause to imitate him? To do that, is to die another kind of death. No longer will you be the Saw that will move heaven and earth for your sister. That would sacrifice himself for fellow soldiers by his side. That would charge into a B2’s sightline, knowing its almost certain death, yet going anyway. The same can be said for Onderonian society as a whole.”

“Saw?!”

He winced with pain as he suddenly was surrounded by the warm hug of a little sister and her face was buried into his shoulder.

All thoughts of Rash and revenge fled like scalded dalgos as he carefully brought his injured arms around her and felt her tears on his neck.

“I’m here, Steela… I’m here.”

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A/N: The general Onderon arc will end here, but the war for the planet continues in the background. Hope you enjoyed, have a great weekend and stay awesome folks.