Star Wars Republic Commando: Knight of Honor ✓

Chapter 3

Author's Note: If you have any writing tips, please feel free to comment.  

As always, I continue to hope that I am doing justice to the spirit of Star Wars as well the respective authors and characters from which I borrow. Again, I gratefully accept constructive criticism as a means to help me develop my skills further as a writer.

Mandalorian (Mando'a) words

Beskar'gam (BES-kar-GAM): armor  

Ba'vodu (BAH-vod-oo): uncle (plural bavodu'e) or aunt (plural bavodu'e)

Ba'vodu Gan: Uncle Gan

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Chapter 3

Our clone soldiers are humans with the same basic needs and wants as any of us. Just because they live out of an armored shell, it doesn't diminish the character of the man beneath. Just as many of us are humans beneath our beskar'gam, they are the same. The Kaminoans had discovered, much to their disappointment, that they just couldn't remove the humanity from a human being, no matter how bio-genetically engineered that human is.

Rav Brahlor, clone training sergeant, overheard with the other training sergeants, in discussions regarding her squad

Infiltrating the Separatist base located on Tochin Moon II, 783 Days ABG

With the night as their cover, the gray-armored commandos made their way through the rocky surface of Tochin Moon II. Their landing had been textbook perfect. They sailed through the darkness of night, landing exactly where they needed on the open plain. 

Their spare weaponry and hear had landed half a mile or so from them, but it didn't take long to retrieve the necessary equipment and distribute it evenly amongst them. Using the night for cover, they discovered that Tochin Moon II had very few trees for them to hide within. 

However, there was more than enough shrubbery to bury beneath whenever they heard the metallic footsteps of "Tinnies," the slang term some of the squads used to describe Battle Droids.

Surveying their current position, they check the distance marker on their HUDs, and it advised them that the Separatist base was within twenty yards north of their location.

Enhancing the night vison and telescopic lenses, Gath was able to see ten battle droids holding sentry duty around the hangar entrance. He had no idea how many more there were on the other sides and in the back.

"Sniper droids on the top four corners of the hangar roof," Dusty said.

"I'll work the roof," Mouse offered. "I already found the perfect sniper location."

Gath nodded silently. He know Mouse preferred the silence of sniper work. He was better at being a lone commando than a team player. 

Even though they were all from the same batch, Mouse always stayed further apart from the others. Once the rest of the squad learned that if they left Mouse to do his own talking when he wanted. Instead of forcing a conversation out of him, he got along much better with them all.

 Mouse, also was not faultless, as he had to learn how to find his solace amongst his brothers as much as they did around him.

The Kaminoans considered purging Crimson Squad because of their squabbles and inability to bond at times. 

They even went as far as to single out Mouse specifically for elimination, but Ba'vodu Gan had refused to have Mouse terminated for his lack of social interaction when his marksmanship skills were superior to the rest of Crimson.

Gath knew that the four of them challenged Gan every day because they took forever to gel, and it was the reason they were dubbed the Reject Squad.

 Gan had outspokenly referred to Crimson as his juvenile delinquents, and he knew that every other training sergeant had at least one batch of clones who turned out to be more troublesome than the rest. 

However, Crimson came close to termination on more than one occasion, and they never could figure out how Gam managed to stop the Kaminoans each time.

For all their faults, though, Gath was grateful they were his team. No other squad would want any of them, not even the ones that had lost members and were awaiting reassignments. For as much as Dusty complained he always wanted "real action," Gath was silently appreciative that they kept getting assigned the low-level missions. He was selfish like that. 

He wanted to keep his brothers alive, and if it ever came down to it, he'd lay his life on the line for them. 

Of course, he couldn't tell them that because that would ensure them to stay behind and die with him. He didn't like that idea at all. 

They made him believe he was their older brother, and that was his role now. He had to protect them.

Watching the droids, Gath knew it was time to be the older brother and leader they nominated him to be. "Jas, Dusty, we need to find out what's awaiting is around the rest of the hanger."

"I got north," Dusty said quickly.

"I'll go west," Jas offered.

"That leaves me east for me," Gath confirmed. "Mouse, just watch the roof. No firing until we get a head count on those Tinnies."

"Understood," Mouse answered.

In the next few minutes, Crimson Squad made their way around the hanger. The north and south entrances were the most guarded with ten battle droids on each side. The east and west had five per side. 

Mouse's headcount of the roof only came back with the four holding guard duty, one guarding each corner. There were no additional reinforcements on the roof, and that was one advantage Crimson would be glad to take.

The Separatist base was not the kind of base they were expecting to have to infiltrate. It was nothing more than a storage hanger and had no one who would be considered an administrative staff.

 If not for the droids outside the hanger holding guard duty, the place could have been mistaken for a deserted hanger that was holding scrap parts for sale instead of a captive princess.

However, there was some concern as a small fleet of eight Vulture fighters was prepped inside the hanger. Eight meant an escort fleet, and either someone was going to be coming to Tochin Moon II or someone was going to need escorting out. Gath decided he would rather not find out which it was.

Continuing to watch their scanners, Crimson was provided with further intel,: a single non-Separatist ship was registered under the name Fatal Bliss to a man named Qotan Hazar. The most information they could get on Hazar was that he was the mercenary hired by Zech, and what concerned them even more was that Hazar rarely turned in a live prisoner.

The commandos regrouped about thirty minutes later to decide on how to execute an extraction plan. Having to rescue the princess without doing her any harm was not going to make taking out the Separatist base easy, especially when they couldn't find any evidence of her existence in the base itself. 

Unfortunately for them, the one person they were sent to extract wasn't on any of their sensors.

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