Star Wars

The Clone Wars

It is a dark time for the Old Republic, as the war between it and the Seperatists truely begins.

Millions of clone troopers are deployed by the Republic to the frontlines of hundereds of worlds.

But the first of many dark days to come, for both the Republic and the Jedi who fight and die

for peace and order, began on the red plains of Geonosis, where the first clone commando

squads are unleashed...

The gunship bucked underneith RC-1579 as he shifted power from the port gun turret to the engines, the gunner was in no position to complain, he had died two standard minutes ago. Tightening his allready white-knuckle grip on the flight controls, he thumbed the firing studs on the forward cannons, and a trio of sapphire beams reduced an oncoming wing of droid fighters to flaming bits.

"Can't you move this larty any faster Fitz? I could walk quicker with a fifty kilo pack!" His sergeant snapped from somewhere in the back, where he, and RC-1578 were performing some hasty triage on RC-1580, who had been wounded shortly before the gunship nearly crashed ontop of them.

He used the word crashed because when a gunship landed without a pilot, it was either that, or exploded.

"Sure, just let me pull over and ask that SBD if he has a set of hydro-spanners I could borrow." Flipping a pair of toggles, Fitz drew power from the mass driver missile launchers after firing the last salvo they had. On the HUD, a twin pair of lines pulled a hard right and slammed into the core of a Trade Federation battleship as it was attempting to take off. That must have been the gunship's target before the pilot had been slotted. Jerking a hard left, Fitz was barely able to keep the LAAT/i from slamming into the hull of the massive orb shaped ship.

Almost.

The starboard wing scraped along side the deceptively smooth hull before catching the ragged hole the missiles had torn into it's side, wrenching the wing into shape not designed by Rothana Heavy Engineering.

In short, it bent.

Badly.

"Chuuba! Fitz! What was that?" Sarge allways was a bit jumpy when his feet weren't firmly planted on the ground.

"Oh, just the core of a Trade Fed battleship, nothing to worry about." Now that he had a moment, Fitz eased back on the throttle, and flicked switches in rapid succession, drawing power back from the engines to balance the performance of both out.

"Fitz?" That was RC-1578, his squad name was 'Thumper', because of his love of trandoshan concussion rifles. Simple, but fitting.

"Yes thumper?" Cutting power to both engines, the gunship dropped like a stone, just barely edging below a pair of Geonosian fighters. A single Jedi starfighter tailed them, and Fitz took a moment to admire the sleek lines of the tiny fighter. An Aethersprite-class ship, shaped like an arrow, and red like Tatooine's second sunset.

Or so one of his trainers had told him. Fitz had never been anywhere but Kamino, and today, Geonosis. He was a clone commando, trained to be the best. Along with his three squad-brothers, he was sent out to perform the most dangerous duty the Republic's Grand army required.

"Why is our starboard wing scrunched up like a Nemodian's face?" Thumper was half laying over their wounded brother's legs, holding him in a stable position to prevent his wounds from tearing open even wider.

"It had a brief run in with that Trade Fed ship's hull." Fitz took a two second pause to buckle his crash webbing before feeding power back into the engines. "Hang on!" Fighting the bucking the LAAT/i's twisted wing was creating, he leveled the shuddering craft out and pointed towards an empty spot on the battle torn red plain.

"Oh is that all? You had me worried for a se- Woulf!" Pitching face first into the deck, Thumper focused his attention on holding Ryyk down.

"Fitz, would you please keep this bird steady? Ryyk is running out of blood." Sarge jabbed another sharp of blood loss control agent into Ryyk's arm, wondering if he could risk giving him another sharp of painkiller.

"Sorry Sarge, but I'm enjoying flying this crate so much, I thought I'd keep it from hitting the ground for awhile longer." The larty was shaking now, not the gentle tremble of powered flight, but the full on rattling of a ship with a dying engine. "It's not going to hold together for much longer!"

"Fitz, take a glance out to starboard and tell me you see what I think I see." Thumper had scrambled around Ryyk's legs to check out the condition of their damaged wing.

Fitz risked a glance. "Smoke, fire, and, oh yes, a war going on." The displays were going crazy, powerplant temp critical, engine power output down, weapons offline, stabilizers failing. The list went on and on and Fitz didn't have time to read it all. "Thank you dearly, Thumper, for reminding me of that. It was so nice in the air up here that I forgot why we were shipped to this dustball in the first place."

"Cut the chatter you two, Fitz see if you ca- Chuuba... Fitz, take another glance starboard." Sarge was staring along Thumper's pointing arm.

"What could be so imp-" Fitz trailed off as he saw.

Standing on the smoking starboard wing, as if it had merely paused while strolling along a street to window-shop, was a figure in a wind-whipped brown cloak. A shaft of bright purple light blazed in the humanoid's hand as it directed Fitz to bank to port with it's other arm.

It was a woman. It was a Jedi. It was both.

She was jedi master Adi-Gala, and she needed a lift.