Star Wars: A Clone's Tale/Chapter Six

Lead was patrolling the hallways on his fifth guard duty in a row. The Prosecutor was an Acclamator-class Republic assault ship. These ships were capable of carrying numerous garrisons of troops and hundreds of vehicles and gunships. Gamma unit had been operating out of the Prosecutor as their first and thus far only home and baseop for about a year since Geonosis. Whatever the Prosecutor was called to, Gamma unit and the rest of the troops aboard were the ship garrison that handled the ground work. During that year, Lead had earned a scar across his right eye. It had served as an identifying mark everywhere he went, since everyone knew Gamma 19 as the LT with the scar. The Prosecutor's most recent assignment was a simple patrol in the Corellia sector, nothing fancy. The ship was supposed to be defending Republic trade routes against Separatist activity, but hadn't seen any combat in couple of weeks, and the Gammas were starting to get a little fidgety for some action.

Lead's patrol brought him by a communications console, so he took some time to dial up the ship resources officer. His face came on the screen and Lead again was taken aback that he wasn't looking at yet another carbon copy of himself. They'd been stationed on the Prosecutor for a little over a year now and Lead still hadn't gotten used to the fact that the command staff was natural-born. The officer had sandy colored hair, brown eyes, and a somewhat rounded face.

"Resources." Yet again, Lead was surprised by his lack of accent. Lead and all the other clone troopers were branded with the same Concord Dawn inflection as their DNA template.

"This is Gamma 319. You got a minute, sir?"

The officer nodded, "Sure. What is it?"

Lead leaned against the console, "I was just wondering why I've pulled patrol duty for the fifth time in a row this week. I put my minimum requirement of three in two days ago, and I have things to do other than stand in the halls and look threatening."

The man went to work on his consoles out of the monitor's view. He typed for a minute before speaking again.

"I don't really see a problem…" he trailed off while looking at a screen, "Hold on a sec. I have you down here for two patrols at opposite ends of the ship at the exact same time. Give me a second." He typed some more and looked at his monitor, "Ah. Here. The other one is supposed to be Tau 419. The system's only reading the last two numbers. I've got you down for patrols for a bunch of the wrong patrols. I'll remove the filters so the system will read the whole designator from now on." He looked back at Lead, "You want me to call your replacement or do you want to stay for the rest of the beat?"

Lead scoffed, "Call the other guy, if it's not too much trouble. I've got things to do today."

The officer looked to his monitor, "The summons is sent. Just wait where you are. He'll be there in a few minutes."

"Roger that. Gamma 319 out." Lead waited for about five minutes before Tau 19 showed up. He turned over the beat and started heading to the bridge. One of the things on Lead's "to do" list now that he had some time was to go and check up on Sensors. The bridge sensor officer openly admitted that 58 was better at working the sensor boards, so he had been pulling him from his patrol shifts to have him on bridge work. Over the last four days, 58 had been talking about some kind of strange reading on the sensors. He said sometimes it was there, sometimes it wasn't, just kind of fading in and out every now and then. What puzzled Sensors the most was the timing. It showed up at the same interval throughout the day, always at 1630 hours. 58 had run diagnostics on the sensor boards, but they all came up saying the sensors were in working order. It was 1615, and Lead wanted to go up to the bridge to see this anomaly for himself.

On the way to the bridge, Lead heard some commotion in the barracks along the way. As a lieutenant, he had a right to know what was going on in there. He looked in and found two off-duty troopers in a tussle. One of the troopers was Gamma 93, also known as "Snipes" because he was the unit's best marksman, the replacement for 28 a year ago. What made matters worse, the other soldiers in the barracks were cheering them on! Lead leaned his rifle against the wall and stormed up into the middle of the brawl. He grabbed each clone at the scruff of their uniforms and yanked them apart. The two had a tight grip on each other, but slid apart easily enough with added force. Both men stood apart from each other panting heavily with Lead between them.

Lead made sure to be to the point, "What is the trouble here?"

The guy in the blue jumpsuit spoke up first, "This Gamma boy here was mouthing off to me, saying the Kappas aren't as good."

Lead looked to his man, "Is that true?"

93 didn't look away, "Not true, sir. I stated the simple fact that our unit was one of the better ones with no intention of arrogance, and he jumped me."

Lead released 93 and pointed for him to stand by the door and wait. He then pulled the Kappa in close so he could hear.

Lead pulled in close enough so the trooper could see through his visor, "I'd be careful how you refer to a 'Gamma boy' when speaking to their LT, trooper. And by the way, Lama Su himself complimented us during our training and said we were one of the best in the program. I'd be showing some respect if I were you."

The Kappas's eyes widened when he saw the scar and recognized who he was, "Yes, sir."

Lead nodded, then looked to his men in the room, "Gammas, come with me." He barked out harshly. He led them to the door and removed his helmet to address them.

"What in the name of the Force did you bleedin' idiots think you were doing, cheering on a fight in the barracks? Anyone care to explain this?" The Gammas were silent at Lead's chiding, "From now on, if I catch any member of Gamma unit involved in a fight in any way, even if you're just watching it, I'll have you confined to barracks for a month. If you're going to be involved in fights, you'll be breaking them up. I know we all want to take some to the Seps, but don't take it to our brothers while you're waiting. Is that clear to everyone?" The whole group acknowledged him.

Lead nodded in return, "Good. Now clean up this mess and have it looking like it was never here. Get to it." Lead donned his helmet and grabbed his rifle as he resumed his course toward the bridge. He boarded the bridge lift and rode it to its destination. He stepped out onto the bridge of the Prosecutor, a widely expansive room with a high window all around the upper half with a wide catwalk to match. The ship's captain, Martz, was slowly pacing the walkway between the two crew pits. Lead walked up to the walkway and saluted to attention. The captain had his back turned at the time and took a moment to notice him. When Martz turned at the far end of the walkway, he noticed Lead and strode quickly over to him.

He returned the trooper's salute, "At ease, lieutenant. What can I do for you?"

19 took a parade rest stance, "Captain, requesting permission to check on one of my troopers on the bridge, sir."

The captain shook his head, "You must be Gamma unit lead. You don't need to ask permission if he's one of your troopers, lieutenant. Your boy is right over there at the sensor station. You can check up on him any time you want."

Lead nodded, "Thank you, sir." The captain nodded and resumed his pacing. Lead made his way over to 58. He leaned on the back of the chair and looked over Sensor's shoulder.

58 looked around with a start, "Didn't expect to see you up here."

"I wanted to see this anomalous sensor reading for myself. You seen it yet today?"

58 shook his head and lifted his helmet to scratch his face. While on duty, all clone personnel were required to be in full armor, not exactly comfortable when confined to a chair for hours on end.

"Haven't seen it yet. It's not due to start showing up for another two minutes. In the meantime, I have figured some things out about the reading itself."

Lead knelt down next to the station, "What've you got?"

Sensors pushed a few buttons on a nearby panel and a small screen displayed the data he referred to, "Well, the reading isn't really a contact. There's very little sensory information coming back, so whatever it is, the sensors can't see it. I've analyzed the oscillation of the reading and found it's not constant. It's something of a burst or pulse." The screen displayed an oscilloscope line that jittered every few seconds, "And it's the same strength each pulse, very consistent. The average strength is within eleven micro hertz every time."

Lead nodded, "So what're your conclusions with the data you have?"

58 shook his head again, "I'm not sure, sir, but the data is almost consistent with communications equipment. And whatever is communicating, it's going wherever we go. If I didn't know better, I'd say the Prosecutor is being followed." Just as the words were out of his mouth, the sensor screen showed a light blip flicker off away from the ship. 58's head snapped over and he stared at it, waiting for another.

"There." He pointed to the flicker, "There it is again. Same strength as before and the sensory return is so small it barely registers."

An idea came to 19's mind, "If you have the general bearing, why don't you try focusing a sensor band over in that area to see if you can't get some more return out of it?"

58 just stared straight ahead for a second, "Now why didn't I think of that?" Lead chuckled lightly as Sensors started working on several consoles and monitors. 58 had a tendency to get so carried away with one portion of a task that he sometimes forgot about other aspects of that task. He was so focused on figuring out the sensory return information he had that he forgot he could give it a detailed scan. He set some switches and buttons on various panels and studied the monitor again. The screen narrowed to that area and the flicker became a little more constant, but still barely there. 58 slowly twisted a knob to narrow the band and clear up the return. Slowly the reading began to take shape. It flickered again and shed a lot of light on what it was.

58 removed his helmet to see the image better, "Captain, I think you want to come see this."

Within moments, Martz was leaning over the chair, "What do you have, soldier?" Martz was loose enough with regs that he didn't mind Sensors removing his helmet to see the screen.

"I've got a better read on that contact I told you about. Just wait a sec… There." The flicker revealed what the source of the contact was. It was a smallish ship of alien design, hard to tell with the low rez.

Martz's face hardened, "That's a ship. It's been following us for the last four days. Well done, trooper." The captain stood straight, "Shields up. Sound general quarters. All personnel to battle stations. Target contact bearing…" he trailed off as he consulted the monitor, "one seven three mark four. Bring us about and make ready weapons."

With the captain's orders, the alert sounded off and the bridge was bathed in red siren light. As everyone went to their assignments, Lead realized that he was now stuck on the bridge. With sounding the alert, the bridge sealed automatically to keep intruders out.

Lead got Martz's attention, "Sir, my battle station is down below in the barracks."

The captain nodded grimly, "I understand, lieutenant, but you'll have to wait. We're all a little busy right now." The ship began a slow graceful turn to starboard.

As the ship turned, Sensors spoke up again, "Sir, communications activity is becoming constant. They're trying to pull in behind us to stay hidden. We'll have to shake them loose before we can engage."

Martz looked at the weapons station, "Weapons are online?" The officer in the pit gave him a stiff nod.

He looked to Sensors, "Narrow the sensor band on them and give it full power. Let them know we can see them."

Sensors did as he was bidden and suddenly the ship rocked lightly, "Done, sir. They've dropped their cover. I have full sensory return on the ship. Guess they think they don't need to hide now that their cover's blown. They've opening fire on our stern."

Martz looked to the gunners, "Aft batteries, open fire." There was a rumble through the deck as the aft turbolaser batteries opened fire simultaneously. Lead looked at the sensor feed and watched the ship fly out ahead of them to get away from the guns. He bolted up the ramp to a window on the upper level of the bridge. The ship flew past, and Lead still couldn't recognize it. It had almost a reptilian look to it. Lead ran back down to the main level and next to Sensors again.

He leaned heavily on the chair, "What kind of ship is that?"

Sensors was keeping a close eye on them, "Trandoshan dropship. Although what they're doing way out here following us, I have no idea." The sensor contact did something and 58 leaned closer, "Captain, you need to see this."

Martz leaned in next to Sensors, "What're they up to now?" The Trandoshan ship had changed configuration slightly and was now heading toward the Prosecutor.

Martz's brow furrowed, "They're trying to board us. Over my dead body, they'll take this ship." He looked over to the ship systems officer, "Unseal the bridge."

He then looked to Lead, "lieutenant, you're the best I've got. Get you and you're troops ready to deploy at a moment's notice. If we can't keep them out of the docking bays, I'll give you the number where they're landing. Deploy there and repel the intruders."

Lead nodded, "Consider it done, sir." He ran through the bridge door and entered the lift to get to his barracks, silently cursing it for being so slow. As he ran into the barracks, he saw all of his men in full battle armor, ready and rarin' for a fight.

He made sure to be brief, "Gammas, we've got potential boarders. If the captain can't keep them away from the ship, it'll be our job to clean house. Be ready." The Gammas acknowledged him with a simultaneous "Yes, sir." No sooner had the platoon received their crash course briefing did the PA system blare with the captain's voice.

"Attention, all combat personnel, we have intruders entering hangar A. Repeat: Intruders entering hangar A. Proceed to hangar and repel the invaders."

Lead looked to his men, "You heard the man. Let's move!" Deuce stood up from his bunk and started hollering for the men to get moving. The Gammas scrambled out of the barracks with Lead in front. They moved through the corridors down to hangar A, skipping the lifts and taking ramps and stairs because they could move faster as a group.

They were about halfway to the hanger when the sensor tech spoke up, "Sir, I just got a strange reading… from inside the wall."

Lead stopped in his tracks, stopping the whole unit, and looked back at the tech, "From where?"

He shrugged, "Just what I said, it's coming from inside the wall." That put Lead fully on alert. The last thing they needed while defending from a boarding operation was to have strange sensor readings throughout the ship misleading them from their objective.

Lead held up his fist, signaling the unit to hold position, "Rifles up." The whole unit shouldered their weapons. Lead had a bad feeling about this strange sensor reading.

The sensor tech spoke up again, "The reading's getting closer, sir." Lead started looking around the corridor. There were no doors for a good several meters, just some maintenance panels and vents.

"It's right on top of us." Lead looked all around the corridor. There wasn't anything in sight.

A vent cover popped off the shaft it covered above them. Everyone brought rifles to bear on whatever would come out. They were expecting a Trandoshan to slide out and attack and were taken very off guard when a little droid eye telescoped out of the shaft. It looked at the Gammas and retreated back into the shaft, quickly followed by the droid's main body coming out. The droid was shaped like a large bug, almost a meter long, somewhat flat and wider at the front coming to a point at the back end. The droid hovered in the air for several moments while the Gammas all looked at it in confusion. Suddenly the droid leaped into action, crossing the three meter distance between them in less than a second and grabbing hold of 86 with about a dozen armatures. The clone started to squirm and writhe and grab at the droid, but he couldn't reach it on his back.

"Get it off! Get it off! Ah!" the trooper screamed as he struggled. Lead grabbed at the droid and started to pull. It had a solid grip on 86 and wasn't too inclined to let go. As Lead and a few others pulled, there was a high pitched whirring sound from the droid. 86 screamed and they yanked it free. Lead swung the droid across the hall as 86 fell to the floor. The droid hit the wall and hovered for a second, then realigned itself with the Gammas. This time it was facing down the Gamma's blaster rifles. A dozen rifles blew the droid to a dozen pieces.

Lead lowered his rifle and looked to 86, "You all right?" The response was silence and the soldier wasn't moving. Lead knelt down next to him and rolled him onto his back. There was a drill hole through the center of his visor with blood leaking out of it. Lead pulled 86's helmet off to find the hole extended beyond into his head, right between his eyes. The frelling droid had drilled right into his brain. Anger boiled in Lead's chest to the point where he pulled his pistol from his hip and shot the droid's wreckage three more times.

He stood and opened his command channel, "Gamma Lead to bridge. Advise all combat teams to watch out for small attack droids. They can fit in the vents and maintenance shafts and attack by grabbing you and drilling through your face. Repeat: advise all combat teams to watch out. Please respond."

The bridge came back a little fuzzier than usual, "We've already received several similar reports. It seems the Trandoshans released these droids into the vents as soon as they landed. All teams will be advised. Proceed to the objective."

"Roger that. Gamma out." The platoon started on the move again toward hangar A, this time at a more cautious pace to watch out for more droids. They were still several sections away when they made hostile contact. The green-skinned, reptilian humanoids were not the prettiest sight to behold. As soon as they saw the Gammas, they opened fire, taking another trooper down with the opening volley. The Gammas all took cover along the sides of the hallway and waited for Lead's order. He held his hand in a fist and jabbed two fingers at the Trandos down the hall. When the incoming fire died down, all at once, the clones of Gamma unit came out of their cover and opened up with a long burst of full automatic fire. The resulting firestorm killed all six Trandoshans within seconds. Lead brought three of his men forward and assessed the situation. After peering down the corridor to make sure they were safe, he lowered his rifle and kicked over one of the Trando bodies. Lead looked up to Deuce and waved his XO over.

When he arrived, he pointed at the body, "What do you see here?"

76 looked the body over briefly, "The weapons aren't standard issue. Some kind of civilian operation. Slavers, maybe."

Lead nodded, "That's what I thought, but what clued me into that is how fat the bugger is. No military would ever allow that. That leaves the question of 'What do slavers want with a Republic assault ship?'."

"Hopefully, we'll find out after we get rid of them."

Lead nodded, "Agreed. Let's move out, Gammas." The platoon continued through the halls, dealing with the little resistance they faced from the under-trained slavers. When they reached the hanger, they walked into a mess of blaster fire and explosions. The Republic troops were all behind the cover of crates and battle shields at the back end of the hanger, firing at the Trandoshans defending their ship.

Lead quickly assessed the situation, then looked to his troops, "Find cover and get in there, boys. Don't stop until that ship is either gone or destroyed."

The Gammas spread themselves along the line wherever there were holes they could plug. The battle was going well at first. The slavers were using older weapons like old slug throwers and the occasional old-as-dirt blaster. They were losing ground very fast, solidly beaten back by the clones' onslaught. They had been pretty near beaten back into their ship, when the whole situation went to the incinerator. The last of the slavers ducked his ugly head back into the ship and the Republic troops began to advance toward the ship to try to take it. Just as they were coming to the doors, the ship rocked hard and the PA system blared with the captain's voice.

"Attention, combat teams. Intruders have breached the bridge deck. I say again, Intruders have breached the bridge deck. I want a platoon to report to the bridge immediately."

Lead opened his unit channel, "That platoon's going to be us, Gammas. Regroup at the door."

The unit regrouped at the exit and was about to move out when they heard a number of short, terse whistles, quickly followed by a series of explosions from behind them. Lead looked back and saw a number of clones getting blown clear of the blasts and the rest retreating as fast as they could. More Trandoshans were poring out of the ship. These guys had military grade weapons and armor and acted cohesively in squads. These Trandos were no slavers. One particularly large Trandoshan stepped off the ship carrying a very big gun. He leveled the gun and unleashed a hailstorm of fire that started picking off Republic troops very quickly. Lead looked at the morbid spectacle and idly wondered where he could get a gun like that. He came to when he remembered that they had to get to the bridge. He left his clone brothers behind to die at the hands of these lizards and moved through the door. On the way, the Gammas came across several of these military Trandos. They immediately ducked for cover used focused fire to bring down two more troopers. They were a whole lot harder to eliminate than the slavers. Lead looked at one of his troopers, held up one finger, and pointed it at the Trandos. The trooper nodded and followed the order by pulling a thermal detonator and tossing it at the targets. Lead's eyes followed to see if it worked. Most unexpectedly, when the detonator landed, one of the Trandos picked it up and threw it back. Lead's eyes bugged and he swung his rifle at the grenade, slapping it away with the stock. It flew into the wall and exploded, blasting some wall paneling off. Lead ducked behind his cover away from the blast, then looked back at the Trandos and cursed them under his breath. He pulled a flashbang detonator and armed it. He counted off three full seconds before throwing it to make sure it went off before they could throw it back.

"Eyes down, Gammas." Lead threw the grenade toward the Trandos. The flashbang detonator didn't do any damage to its surroundings when it exploded. Instead it had a flash ablative casing and a small, compacted explosive payload. The result when it went off was a blinding flash and a disorienting bang, hence the name "flashbang". The grenade exploded just before hitting the ground, right in the Trandos eyes, with all of Gamma unit managing to shield their eyes and ears before hand. The Trandos stopped firing when they went blind.

Lead waved his hand forward, "Let's go, Gammas. Nail 'em to the ground." The unit rose from cover and stormed the Trandos position. The Trandoshans, still dazed from the grenade, fell to the combined fire.

Lead looked at the Trandoshan bodies, then to his men, "We can't let them delay us like that again, Gammas. We've got to move." Just as they were about to get on the move again, Lead felt a slight lurch through the deck. He looked to Deuce.

"You feel that?"

Deuce nodded, "Yeah. We've jumped into hyperspace. Where the devil are we off to, though?"

Deuce finished his sentence and Lead's command channel opened, "Hostiles have breached the bridge! Repeat: hostiles have breached the bridge! All combat teams…" the line faded to static.

Lead's eyes bugged, "Not good. We gotta move!" The Gammas doubled their pace to get to the bridge, but were quickly intercepted by another squad of Trandos. Lead dove for some cover and pulled another flashbang. He armed the grenade and counted off two seconds for the timer. He wheeled around to throw it when he saw a number of enemy detonators flying toward them. He dropped the flashbang and dove back, away from a series of loud explosions from behind him. Lead rolled over to stand up when something struck him in the head. Everything went black.