Visions of darkness (Jedi X Clones)

Chapter 17. - Rescue party

Word Count: 4095

The sense of time was one of the first things a person lost when being subjected to a torture droid for some time. I knew that. Rationally, I also knew it couldn't really have been that long, but it felt like weeks had passed.

I knew somewhere in between Count Dooku visited the torture chamber to question me more, but as far as I remembered I haven't told him anything.

At some point I fell asleep, but the droid was monitoring my brain wavelengths and just as I was falling into a deeper dreamless sleep he turned on the electricity again. I didn't even try to hold the screams inside.

After what seemed like hours my voice was hoarse and it sounded like a wamp crow but I cried out loud with every wave of pain, hoping somehow it would make it easier.

The electricity didn't make me talk, so sometime later my guards returned and turned off both the force field and the torture droid and resumed to good old fashioned beating and kicking me, while I was lying on the ground.

Then they questioned me some more. I couldn't breathe properly anymore. I was sure at least two of my ribs were broken and they pulled me up by both of my hands that were still in shackles and tied me to the wall leaving me to hang there with a force restraining collar around my neck.

But even if I didn't have it I wasn't in a state where I would be able to try to escape. I wouldn't have been able to even crawl on the ground now. After a few minutes my arms stopped pulsing with the pain of holding my whole body tied to a wall and there was only dull numbness replacing the pain.

Everything else hurt badly and I felt something that must have been a bruise forming at my side. Except it hurt much more than just a bruise. This wasn't good at all, I thought right before I fell into something between sleep and unconsciousness.

----

The planet Faleen was a wast ball of green with occasional blue strikes where the large lakes were. As far as Blitz knew it wasn't very densely populated, most of the inhabitants were centered around the few factories that were built here mainly for the cheap outer rim labor the planet was able to provide.

In many ways, this was a backwater planet with no real tracking system and not more than a dozen ships floating around it, mostly freighters carrying the goods from and to the factories.

"Is the mask on?" Blitz asked the pilot sitting right in front of him by the ship's controls.

"You've already asked me that same question twice, commander," Kipper didn't turn to face him, but Blitz knew he - under other circumstances always joking - was now dead serious, "If it wasn't on, they would have already seen us."

"Alright," Blitz nodded, "Get us as close as you can to the base so they won't spot us, I'll go talk to generals."

"Copy that," Kipper nodded and pushed a few buttons on the control panel.

The two jedi were sitting in the ship's common area. General Kenobi had his legs up on the chair crossed and his eyes closed, obviously meditating. Skywalker seemed little more on the edge, playing with his lightsaber nervously. Blitz could understand that much better than the unnatural calm that was coming from the older jedi.

Next to them was Rex, going over the plans they had with Fives and Echo, two clones that Blitz recognized from the battle of Kamino. He knew there was also the 501st head medic Kix, who he's grown to consider a friend, aboard the ship, but he was momentarily occupied by checking everything in the ships infirmary.

It took them a whole painful day to come up with a strategy and equip the shuttle with a masking device that would shield them from being discovered right after entering the planet orbit.