Chapter 99

Explosions erupted all around the arena as republic gunships carrying white armoured soldiers descended to the ground.

Anakin watched in awe as the ships decimated the droid army before landing in a protective circle around the surviving jedi.

The soldiers then pushed out of their transports increasing the defensive perimeter and began to escort the jedi to the waiting ships.

Anakin looked behind him to check on Padme and Obi-Wan and looked around trying to spot Renn.

Padme was still stood holding a blaster she had taken from a fallen battle droid while Anakin and his master stood protectively in front of her.

But Renn was nowhere in sight. Anakin could vaguely feel his friend's presence through the force however, and so concluded after a bit of searching that he must have used his armours fancy abilities to turn himself invisible.

Anakin noticed that Obi-wan was about to direct himself and Padme towards one of the waiting ships that were already filling with jedi, when another gunship slammed down onto the sand quite close to where the group stood.

Unlike the others this ship wasn't filled with the soldiers in their identical looking white armour.

Instead, a heavily armed soldier calmly hopped out of the troop bay, almost as soon as it had landed, and after a brief glance around the battlefield began striding towards Anakin and Obi-wan.

The new soldier was probably the same height as all the other white armoured troopers, who Anakin had just realised didn't just have identical armour but had the exact same heights and builds as well, but something about the way he held himself also made him look taller than all the others.

He had blue markings across his armour's arms and helmet, that seemed to be some form of badge of rank, and was wearing a pauldron as well as some form of skirt that looked similar to the kamas worn by some mandalorians.

Anakin was so absorbed with studying the mysterious soldier that he almost missed the four other men who filed out of the troop transport after him.

The four other soldiers were also wearing more unique armour than the rest of the army that had come to rescue the jedi in the arena.

While they still wore white armour it was a lot bulkier and seemed a bit more high tech, as did the blasters that they carried, and Anakin marvelled momentarily as one of the soldiers pulled out an attachment that seemed to turn his blaster into a sniper rifle and began blasting away at the geonosians who had been firing down on the arena from above.

Anakin focoused his attention back on the soldier with the blue markings on his armour and narrowed his eyes in confusion.

The man seemed to be bearing down on a spot a couple of metres to Anakins left. A spot devoid of anything but empty air and sand.

Until it wasn't, and Anakin yelped in surprise as Renn appeared right next to him, facing towards the mysterious soldier with his arms wide as if expecting a hug.

"Spoooney!" Renn shouted and the mysterious soldier mirrored his actions before shouting back, "Renney!"

Anakin recovered from being startled by Renn, but refused to look at Padme and Obi-wan in case he had to acknowledge it, and watched as Renn and the soldier strode towards each other before clasping hands and beginning to arm wrestle.

He knew how strong Renn was, especially while wearing his armour, and so Anakin was quite surprised when the soldier was able to hold his own in the contest of strength.

As Anakin was watching the what he assumed was a reunion between the two he felt a hand grab his shoulder and turned to see his master Obi-wan stood with a soldier wearing the white armour of what he gathered to be the standard infantry soldiers of this new army.

"If you'll come with me sir, we have a gunship waiting for us," The soldier said, gesturing towards a nearby ship with a ring of the white armoured soldiers around it firing blasters towards the remaining droids in the arena.

Anakin was about to protest about leaving when it looked like Renn was going to stay, his friend was still talking with the blue armoured soldier and neither seemed very concerned about the blaster bolts flying around them, when Obi-wan cut him off.

"We need to leave my padawan, your friend knows what he's doing, and the senator's safety must be our current priority," his master said, and Anakin nodded in reluctant agreement.

"Yeah, don't worry. You guys get yourselves to safety, I'm just going to hang back a bit and go bug hunting with Spoon and the guys. I'll see you later." Anakin jumped a bit when Renn slapped him on the back as he hadn't heard him approach.

He turned and gave his friend a quick smile before nodding, "Yeah, I'll see you later." Anakin then joined Obi-wan and Padme in jogging towards the waiting gunship.

As they began to lift off into the sky Anakin watched Renn, the soldier with the blue markings, and the four soldiers in the bulky armour, began to move towards one of the arches that led deeper into the arena.

Then the ship crested one of the sides of the arena and joined the mass of similar ships in racing away from the arena and towards the staging area for an entire army that was being ferried down from orbit, and Anakin lost sight of his friend but noticed something else.

"There! It's Dooku!" He said pointing towards where the separatist leader was fleeing the battlefield on a speeder bike, and seconds later their ship began chasing him down.

-

"We got word that a load of separatist big wigs were in the stands of the arena so command decided to send zombie squad here to try and capture any of them that didn't manage to escape." Renn listened as Spoon explain why he and the squad of commandos where in the arena.

"And you're here to what, micromanage them?" Renn asked the ARC trooper jokingly as they entered the tunnels that led deeper into the arena.

They had been talking over an open comm channel, that included Renn, Spoon, and the four republic commandos of zombie squad, and Renn heard two of the commandos' snicker quietly until their sergeant, a clone named Tex, turned to glare at them.

"Ha, nah," Spoon let out a slight laugh, "I just wanted to go where the action was, and figured here would be more interesting than calling down airstrikes from the top of some mountain."

Renn had a feeling that his friend wasn't being entirely trueful with his answer, and that was confirmed when he got a notification that Spoon was hailing him on a private comm channel.

He accepted and immediately got a bad feeling as the tone of Spoon's voice changed drastically.

"I'm really glad you're here mate," Spoon said gravely and Renn realised that Spoon's jokey tone before was mainly to try and put the squad of commandos at ease.

"Things that bad then?" Renn asked and Spoon sighed heavily.

"Shit's fucked mate." Spoon said immediately anger clear in his voice, "That little green asshole's committed almost the entire special operations brigade as frontline infantry across the battlefield.

Me and my brothers did a casualty prediction on the trip over from Kamino, and we're expecting the commandos to take heavy losses… not to mention the meat-cans that the jedi have dumped out in the middle of the desert to fight out in the open.

They're going to get torn to shreds and, while I'm sure they'll destroy just as many if not more of the separatists than they lose, I don't like the idea of my brothers being used as disposable organic droids."

"So that's why you're with zombie squad right now, right?" Renn said and Spoon sighed again.

"Yeah, me, Eggs, and a few of the guys from Alpha company managed to get ourselves reassigned to the same missions as some of the commando squads to try and keep some of our little brothers alive.

Jango managed to give ARC troopers a bit more autonomy in deciding what missions we're assigned to, although I don't know how long that's going to last now that the jedi have taken command of the army, so we can basically do what we want at the moment.

But from how this battle was 'planned' and the reports coming in over the battle-net, this whole battle's going to turn into a nightmare." Spoon said quietly.

Before Renn could respond he felt several life signs from the tunnels up ahead of them, and he signalled to Spoon and the commandos that they were about to have company.

The passage in front of them was bisected by another corridor and Renn could sense six geonosians heading towards them from the second corridor.

"So, how'd you want to split this?" Renn asked Spoon, as the commandos crouched by the sides of the corridor and aimed at the junction ahead.

"fifty-fifty?" Spoon said slinging his westar m-5 blaster rifle a cross his back and drawing one of his blaster pistols with his left hand.

"Sounds good." Renn nodded and crept forwards with his combat knife drawn.

The six geonosians rounded the corner and Renn and Spoon exploded into action.

Renn used the force to enhance his speed so that he rocketed forwards and slammed into one of the geonosians, his knife first.

Renn's knife punched through the geonosians chest to shred his organs and sever his spine, he then wrenched the knife sharply upwards, so that it cut its way out of the dying geonosian, before flicking it up and catching it by the tip of the blade.

He then threw the knife towards a second geonosian and watched as in lodged itself deep into the alien's eye socket.

Renn then pivoted and kicked the legs out from under a third geonosian. The geonosian fell flailing to the floor and Renn finished it off by slamming his boot down to crush its skull.

He then flicked his hand and used the force to send his knife rocketing back to into his hand.

At the same moment Spoon had engaged the remaining three geonosians. He slammed into the closest geonosian to the corner with his shoulder before tossing the startled bug-man to the floor.

Spoon then fired his blaster pistol directly into the face of the downed geonosian before switching his aim to the remaining two geonosians.

He fired rapid carefully aimed blaster bolts through the two geonosians heads and chests until they dropped lifelessly to the floor.

In total it took less than four seconds for Renn and Spoon to kill all six geonosians and begin moving past their corpses to check the next corridor.

"Woah… that was badass." Flow, one of the commandos in zombie squad, muttered over the comm channel.

"Definitely," the quiet voice of Mort, another member of zombie squad and the team's sniper, added.

"Eh, I could have done that too," said Slicer, the final member of zombie squad, muttered as he nudged one of dead geonosians with his boot.

"Ha, yeah right. You'd probably…."

"Quiet!" Tex snapped cutting off Flow mid-sentence, "maintain noise discipline."

A small chorus of apologies sounded form the commandos as they moved past the corpses of the geonosians and followed Renn and Spoon deeper into the labyrinth of tunnels under the arena.