An Idiot's Array/Chapter 1

Laserfire came from all sides as Eta-777 darted out in front of the enemy base and headed for cover. He reached a small, abandoned, but sturdy-looking building that offered him a clear vantage point of the battle taking place all around him. B-1 battle droids marched steadily outward from the heavily fortified building, thier synchonous marching resounding through the city, thier elongated heads reflecting the sunlight, atop thier scrawny, sceleton-like bodies, adding thier own firepower to the madness ensuing from the Republic assalt on their headquarters. Clone troopers, firmly entreched in strategic positions, returned fire in impressive amounts, mowing down battle droids nearly as quickly as they came. But, as Eta remembered hearing many times, nearly doesn't win battles. "Juan, Juan!" Eta nearly shouted into his wrist-comlink. "Where's that heavy firepower?" "You know I hate it when call me that, Eta." came the almost reluctant response. "Lambda, sorry," Lucky returned. "Where's my walker?" Eta could hear a short pause. Lambda sighing, most likely, probably mumbling to himself something about how Eta wasn't in command and couldn't really claim ownership over anything on the field. Nothing important. "It took a good beating the last clanker attack," was the eventual reply. "Theta's working on it but it'll take a while to get it to get around on it's own again." "How long?" Eta asked. "We'll be there in ten minutes." This time the speaker was Theta, his tones contrastingly cheerful to the hard-core soldier voice of Juan. "Good, very good." Eta responded, and it would be. The squad camped out in front of the enemy base would be sufficient to hold out against the enemy forces. Long enough, at least, for Juan and Theta to show up with the big guns and cause long enough of a distraction for a special weapons unit to sneak into the base and plant a small but deadly explosive. A simple enough plan, that would work. As long as nothing unexpected happened.

Two figures watched the battle procceed from a platform, safely above the madness ensuing under their feet. "The units perform well" one said to the other. "Yes," the other responded. "But let us see how they respond to the unexpected."

Eta saw them first. How they came in he could not tell, but they were headed straight towards his allies, straight towards thier exposed rear flank. Six spinning spheres of doom. They rolled directly behind the clone troopers, two to each if the three fortifications. The Colicoid Mark-1 Droidekas, known colloquially as destroyer droids for their devastating capabilities, unfolded into their tripedal stances, and, surrounded by blue translucent shields, unleashed torrents of blaster fire from each if thier arm-mounted double blaster cannons, aimed directly at the clusters of clone troopers. The two outer fortifications were fortified heavily towards the front facing the base, but had left their rear flanks nearly entirely open. The troopers inside were easily dealt with by the destroyers, but the fortifications in the center flank held out longer. The center fort had been set up as a kind of Command Post and was more defendable than the others. The six droidekas quickly converged on the center command post and began firing. From his vantage point Eta could tell the troopers would not be able to take out six shielded droideks before being taken out themselves. Suddenly the command post was engulfed in a ball of flame, vaporizing or otherwise destroying all those within the parameter. Eta knew what had happened. The special weapons unit must have somehow made his way to Command Post and detonated his small-radius but potent explosive. There goes the plan, Eta thought to himself. It was up to him now, he decided. Exactly what was up to him he wasn't quite sure of, but he couldn't just sit there and do nothing. Battle droids continued to pour out of the building, almost erie in their seemingly never-ending supply. Eta could now see Theta and Juan driving thier walker slowly towards the fray. Eta smiled. The six-legged, heavily-armored, top-of-the-line, AT-TE would be just what he needed. But suddenly, out of nowhere marched a squad of new droids. These looked like heavily armored versions of the B-1s, but had heavy blasters mounted on thier wrists. "Juan, Theta," Eta shouted. "What's your status!" "We're under attack!" Lambda shouted back, not even bothering to correct him. "We've begun evasi-" Juan's voice was suddenly cut off, leaving only static coming through Eta's comlink. No, Eta thought to himself. Still, if he could get to that walker, he might me able to think if some way to pull through. If the rail gun was still functioning... He knew what he had to do, he just wasn't sure he'd be able to do it. Oh well, he thought, no harm in trying. Yeah, right. Eta set his blaster rifle to auto-fire, then quickly charged out in front of the line of droids, his rifle streaming rounds of blasterfire towards the oncoming hordes of drones. He began a steady retreat backwards, holding off the droids with a steady stream of lasers, and made his way back towards the walker. This had to work, it just had to. Lasers flashing all around him, Eta made his way to the top of the walker, to the heavy-duty rail gun mounted there, and fired. The gun launched a missle from it's potent load and it flew straight and sure, right through a kink in the enemy base's armor and detonated inside the building, destroying the entire structure. Droids shut down and holograms disappeared even as white-clad Kaminoans appeared to clean up the messes and prep the combat simulation chamber for the next mock battle. The voice of the sim computer came over Eta's comlink. "Mission Objective Complete. All units report to mission summary station."