Jedi Fugitive (The Bad Batch)

89:

Astera:

The clone assassin was just like the first one we'd encountered, standard military haircut, free of any identifiable markings, dressed in nondescript dark armour. He raised his head with a glare as we entered the room, eyes passing over all of us before finally settling on Crosshair. Shocked recognition lightened the baleful expression, a recognition mirrored by the sniper at the back of the room.

"We need to leave. Now."

"If you want answers so badly, why aren't you asking him?" Six pairs of eyes, including the clone on guard, turned on Crosshair when the operative spoke, his glare deepening at his next words. "Right, brother?"

"He's lying," Crosshair spat out, but he seemed visibly shaken by the clone's reaction to him. Something Howzer picked up on too - his hand drifted for the blaster at his hip, settling on it with a determined click.

"Enough." I exhaled and let my mind drift out with a raised hand, feeling for the clone's life force and tapping into the power that would suffuse my command and let me nudge his mind in the right direction. "You will tell us the location of the Tantiss Base."

The clone went rigid as soon as I passed my hand over his face, gritting his teeth and glaring at me defiantly. I frowned - even the best of clones weren't able to resist a mind trick. Maybe his conditioning had made him more resistant. I closed my eyes instead, holding my hand out and my mind pressing harder on his to force it to give way. "You will tell us the location of the Tantiss base."

The extra burst of power had my voice taking on that shadowy effect I remembered from Cad Bane's interrogation years ago, adding layers to it and the words echoing in the small room. A vein pulsed in the clone's neck and he grunted, almost in pain, but he still refused to speak,

"You will tell us the location of the Tantiss base!"

A choked gurgling sound erupted from his mouth, the clone's eyes rolling back in his head and his body thrashing against his restraints. Any longer and I'd probably cause irreparable damage to his brain - I dropped my hand and broke the connection, his muscles instantly relaxing and his body sagging against the chair. Thread immediately moved to check on him, light fingers pressing the pulse point at his wrist and retrieving a bacta injector from his medic's kit.

"I've never seen this before." Even Bane hadn't reacted so badly to three of the strongest Jedi I'd known using the mind trick on him. "Whatever they did to him must have made his mind stronger to that kind of pressure."

"I told you Hemlock was smarter than that," Crosshair hissed, already reaching for the door's controls. "There are safeguards so they won't talk! We need to leave."

"You're right about one thing." I had no idea how the clone recovered so quickly - the strain of resisting a mind trick like that should have incapacitated him for hours at least even with a bacta shot - but the operative raised his head, his attention fixed on Crosshair and I most of all. "They are coming. For all of you."

The distant sounds of explosions from outside obscured his dark chuckle, and we all turned for the closed doorway, my senses expanding outward automatically, just in time to feel the sparks of several more clone lives snuffed out by another detonation from outside. We were under attack.

Rex activated for his comm, only to hiss out a breath when he was met with nothing but static. "Comms are down." The operative laughed again from behind us, the look in his eyes cruel and all too knowing. He said they were coming. It had to be the Empire, and Rex seemed to realise that too. "We move out. Now!"

Howzer jabbed the door's controls, a blaster already in hand, only to immediately jerk back and dive for cover when the first of the red bolts sliced through the air right in front of him. I thought he'd gotten lucky with the shot missing him, until I glanced back and registered the clone operative slumped unmoving in his chair, smoke curling from the blaster wound in his torso. Howzer hadn't been the shooter's target at all. The operative was.