Chapter 98

Renn didn't use his thruster pack to gently bring his decent to a stop, instead he used it to reduce his momentum to a level that his armours would be able to redistribute the kinetic energy from the impact of the landing safely.

He was relying on the speed of his entrance to give him enough time to reach the ground and free the jedi before the geonosians and separatists realised what was happening and started shooting at him.

Renn rolled as he landed to bleed off the rest of his momentum. He exited his roll and came up in a crouch with his blaster rifle raised, a cloud of sand kicked up by his landing billowing around him and hiding him from view.

He sent a burst of blaster fire towards the Geonosian guards trying to force the huge acklay forwards.

The blaster bolts ripped into the guards escorting the acklay, killing them all and leaving the beast suddenly unsupervised and free to surge towards the nearby Reek and tear into its flank.

Renn let his hand drop from his blaster rifles trigger to draw his slug thrower and with practiced ease fired two slugs behinds him.

The high-density metal slugs shattered the chains holding Anakin, and Obi-wan, releasing the two jedi.

Renn didn't need to fire a third shot to free Padme however, as the senator had somehow managed to pick the locks on her shackles and had climbed the pilar she had been chained to get to a place of relative safety.

So, Renn returned his slug thrower to its magnetic clamps on his armour and flicked the switched on the side of his blaster rifle to activate its underslung grenade launcher.

A series of coughs sounded, and five grenades arced out to explode among the watching geonosians, spreading death and confusion amongst them before they could organise a counter assault against Renn's one man attack.

One of the grenades flew perilously close to the balcony where most of the separatist leadership were watching the interrupted execution expectantly but was batted out of the sky by a wave of count Dooku's hand to explode safely, for him, among the geonosian crowd nearby.

The acklay and the reek were still fighting near the edge of the arena and a swarm of geonosians had descended to try to regain control of the beasts.

Which left the nexu unattended and Renn trained his blasters sights on it as it stalked towards Padme.

The nexu leapt up onto the side of the pillar Padme had climbed to the top of, Renn fire two blaster bolts at the beast as it tried to take a swipe at the senator, and it fell lifelessly to the arena bellow.

Renn fell began pacing backwards, firing steadily towards the geonosians as he did, until he drew level with Anakin and Obi-wan.

"Sup," he said nodding towards Anakin, who grinned and shock his head.

"Nice to see you, but I had things handled," Anakin said as he gestured for Padme to jump down from the top of the pillar.

Padme jumped down and Anakin caught her in his arms, and Renn watched the two share a brief moment before Anakin lowered the senator to the ground.

"Sure, you did buddy," Renn said but focused back on the fight as droidekas began pouring into the arena from the arches surrounding it.

Renn immediately dropped to one knee with his blaster rifle raised and began firing on the rolling droidekas.

He reduced multiple droids to piles of useless scrap metal but the shear amount of the droidekas was too much and they were soon completely encircled by the droids.

Battle droids began marching out of the arena's arches to follow the droidekas into the fight and Renn considered activating his armours bubble shield but held off as the droids were holding their fire so far.

"The jedi strike force has entered the arena," Sapphire informed him, "they should be about to make themselves known but I think they're waiting to make a dramatic entrance."

And sure enough lights began appearing all around the arena as jedi began igniting their lightsabres.

Renn watched in distaste as the jedi began posing in the stands, not really attacking anyone, and completely ignoring whatever attempt at stealth they had been trying before that.

The geonosians in the stands began flapping their wings and fleeing the area as battle droids began streaming out of all sides of the arena and surrounding the jedi.

It didn't take long for the jedi to drop down into the arena and a desperate, disorganised melee erupted on the sands bellow between the jedi and the droids.

Chaos reined as jedi hacked away at the droids alone or in small groups all around the arena.

Renn fired his blaster rifle on full auto, cutting down multiple droids at once before tossing a pair of emp grenades into two dense clusters of battle droids.

The droids collapsed in a heap as the grenades detonated, the electrical discharge frying their circuits, and Renn turned to look for more enemies.

Only to come face to face with a panicking jedi knight who was looking around wildly at the explosions and blaster bolts murdering his fellow jedi.

The jedi's eyes went wide as he noticed Renn, and he swung his lightsabre towards Renn in either confusion, fear, or panic.

Renn snapped his arm forwards and slammed his rifle's butt into the jedi's unprotected chin, sending the man crumpling to the floor.

He was about to move past the unconscious jedi and resume fighting, not overly concerned about him and assuming that the jedi would probably take care of him, when he took a better look at the man's face.

The jedi looked familiar, and Renn realised that it was the padawan who had attacked him years ago on Ilum.

He'd obviously managed to get knighted at some point in the past few years, which surprised Renn a bit.

Renn shrugged as he walked away. He had figured the jedi would have gotten himself killed through his own stupidity before he ever managed to graduate from being a padawan, but it didn't really matter.

Maybe he'd get eaten by the acklay that was still rampaging around the arena, seeing as the other jedi seemed to have forgotten about him.

The fighting intensified and Renn noticed more and more jedi falling to the sandy floor as they were killed by the battle droids.

Renn looked around and began searching for a way out of the arena, as being stuck out in the open surrounded by high ground on all sides wasn't the safest place to be.

More droids were entering the arena and while the jedi were destroying them in high numbers they were barely putting a dent in the massive army that was all around them, and the jedi were taking heavy casualties.

Renn saw that one of the entrances to the arena was fairly devoid of droids and so he and the remaining jedi should be able to push through the defenders and retreat from the chaos of the arena.

"We need to head for that archway," He shouted over to Anakin and Obi-wan, who had been given spare lightsabres by the newly arrived jedi.

"NO!" Someone yelled out and Renn looked over to see Mace Windu leading the scattered jedi back towards them,

"We will fall back to the centre of the arena and make our stand there," Windu ordered and Renn cursed under his breath.

He knew that Anakin and Obi-wan wouldn't leave the other jedi behind and that the other jedi would follow Windu unquestioningly, and so began to seriously consider using his active camo to just quietly slip away.

The jedi fought backwards until they created a shrunken circle in the centre of the arena so that they could defend against attacks from all sides. But also, meant that they were trapped in the centre of the arena.

A lull in the fight occurred and Renn watched dispassionately as Windu and the leader of the separatists Count Dooku began arguing back and forth.

Dooku made a big show of offering the jedi the chance to surrender but Windu yelled back in disgust about how jedi would never surrender.

Renn rolled his eyes and activated his active camo, vanishing from sight.

Windu was clearly more concerned about his own pride than the lives of those around him and so Renn was considering knocking Anakin, Padme and maybe Obi-wan unconscious and just legging it when Sapphire interrupted his thoughts.

"The republic fleet has just entered orbit and the clones are being deployed to the planet's surface."

-

 Count Dooku sighed slightly, as if in defeat, when as predicted Windu refused to cooperate.

He had once considered Windu and a few of the other jedi down bellow him as friends, but that was a long time ago.

The jedi had become warped, twisted versions of what they should be. Too concerned with being lap dogs for the republic than being defenders of the galaxy and so Dooku had left them behind.

He had become powerful since leaving, his new master showing him the gifts that being a sith could bring, and he found himself appreciating the dark side more and more.

But he had still offered the jedi the chance to surrender out of respect for his past allegiances, he'd even tried to recruit his old padawan's apprentice Obi-wan to his side to save the man from the fate that would befall him.

Because soon his battle droids would exterminate the last of the jedi in the arena bellow him, which would leave the republic largely devoid of its protectors and easy prey for the separatists.

The republic had been scaling down its military for decades now, growing complacent in the extended years of peace, and without the jedi to mount a defence the coming war would be over before it even began.

He took a step back from the edge of the balcony and fought the urge to sneer in distaste as he looked stepped over the headless corpse of the bounty hunter Yin Eness.

The man had served his purpose, barely, but Dooku once again lamented the fact that Jango Fett had mysteriously stopped agreeing to join the separatists.

Fett at least would have been able to kill some of the jedi himself like that fool jedi master Coleman Trebor who had leapt onto the balcony intending to take Dooku on single handedly.

Trebor was a skilled warrior but had Fett been by Dooku's side that wouldn't have been a problem.

Dooku knew all about the strengths of the current jedi order, and apart from master Yoda, or Yaddle before she disappeared, he doubted anyone of them could defeat Fett in single combat.

Maybe Obi-wan could and Windu might have a chance, provided Fett wasn't at full strength like if he had been hit by a speeder or that rampaging reek in the arena bellow and Windu caught him off guard.

Certainly, a man like Trebor would have been luck to survive over a minute against Fett, but instead of Fett it had been Eness who face Trebor.

Eness had barely managed to fire a single blaster bolt before Trebor separated his head from his body.

Not that Trebor had done much damage after that as Dooku had cut the man down himself with barely any effort.

Dooku had then watched as his battle droids had torn the jedi ranks apart until all that was left was a small circle of jedi in the centre of the arena.

He was in the process of signalling for the final execution of the remaining jedi when a sudden explosion ripped through the arena bellow.

Dooku looked up in surprise as gunships painted in republic colours dropped into the arena and white armoured soldiers began reducing his battle droids to piles of scrap metal.

The sky was full of ships and blaster bolts as more of these new republic ships began engaging in vicious dogfights with droid and geonosian fighters.

Dooku grimaced as he saw the massive hulls of several capital ships hanging in low orbit above the arena.

He didn't know how the republic had managed to keep all these ships and soldiers hidden from the galaxy, but one thing was clear.

There would no longer be any chance of an easy victory for the separatists today. In fact, it might even turn into a defeat.

Dooku watched as the jedi began to escape onto the gunships before turning his back and striding out of the arena in disgust.

The other separatist leaders began to follow him, intending to evacuate before things to got too dangerous for them.

If this was going to end in defeat Dooku was determined that as much of the separatists' forces would survive it.