Chapter 103

Spoon paced as he watched the frantic preparations of the survivors of the 50th battalion of the GAR.

The clones were filling the trenches with explosives in an effort to turn them into one giant mine, and Spoon wanted the work completed as soon as possible.

The smokescreen in front of their shield was already starting to dissipate and Spoon wanted to be finished and for his men to be safely on their way long before it vanished.

"All set sir," a sergeant said from nearby, "Explosives are in place. We're just waiting on the medics stabilising a few wounded who aren't able to walk now."

Spoon nodded before responding, "Good work, start leading the men up the valley towards the secondary defensive line. Organise stretcher teams as well, we're not leaving any of our brothers behind.

I'll stay here and follow with the rearguard once everyone has fallen back."

The sergeant nodded and rushed off to obey the order and soon troopers were rushing off in preparation for the retreat up the valley.

"Err…sir?" spoon looked down to see CT-1056, Spanners he thought he remembered correctly, looking at him curiously.

"What is it trooper?" Spoon asked the man.

"It's just… why was activating the shield so important if we're just going to abandon it?" Spanners asked him confused.

Spoon guessed he owed the man an explanation. Spanners had worked hard to get the broken shield generator working again, and Spoon could see the blackened scorches on the clone's armour from all the times he had been electrocuted by it.

"Spanners, right?" Spoon asked before continuing, not waiting for an answer. "What's the main problem with using a defensive shield?"

"Yes, sir. And uhm… it stops the enemy shooting us, but we can't really shoot back?" Spanners said slightly unsure of himself.

"Exactly," Spoon spanned his fingers, "The enemy are either going to have to wait for the shield to come down, which could take a long to so this is unlikely given how impatient their general has been so far, or they will have to send troops in to engage us at close range, and with them vastly outnumbering us we would quickly end up overrun."

"So why even bother activating the shield in the first-place sir?" Spanners asked still confused.

Spoon watched troopers carrying the last of the wounded out of the trench, their movements hidden by the smoke, and signalled for the few remaining troopers standing guard to follow him up and out of the trench after the rest of the 50th.

"Misdirection. We're outgunned and outnumbered. The enemy has thousands of battle droids, as well as tanks and other vehicles.

Their general thinks he has us at his mercy. And in a stand-up fight he would be right, we wouldn't last till the end of the day.

So, we aren't going to give him that. We're going to be unpredictable. React in ways the enemy would never expect.

Leave him so confused and frustrated that he will be so focused on trying to figure out our strategy that he'll never have noticed we've already mortally wounded his army." Spoon said grinning behind his helmet.

"I'm still not getting it sir." Spanners muttered and the smile behind Spoon's helmet grew wider.

"Well trooper if you saw the enemy activate a defensive shield what do you think their plan would be and how would you deal with it." Spoon asked.

"Err… that they had activated the shield for protection from artillery and would probably be hunkering down inside it…So, I'd send troops through the shield, probably either elite units with heavy armour and or weapons or enough general infantry to overwhelm the enemy."

"Exactly so when instead of a cowering defeated foe they find a trench full of high explosives, they'll be in for a nasty surprise."

"Oh…Ohhhh," Spoon could practically hear the realisation dawning on Spanners, "that's brilliant sir. The separatists are going to have the guts ripped out of their army right when they think they've achieved victory."

"And we'll be there waiting for them at the top of the valley to finish them off." Spoon told the trooper, "Now regroup with your sergeant, I've got to go check on some more surprises for our separatist friends."

"Yes sir!" Spanners shouted before jogging off to rejoin his unit.

Spoon smiled, he was starting to like the clones form the 50th. They weren't his brother ARC troopers, but they were his brothers nonetheless and he was going to do everything he could to get them off Tula alive.

Things weren't going well in the war so far, and Spoon and the other ARC troopers knew why.

Unlike the rest of the clone army the ARC troopers had been trained personally by their genetic doner Jango Fett, as well as Jango's sister Arla and occasionally a certain aspiring bounty hunter slash secretive warlord who was rapidly becoming famous across the galaxy. And so didn't have the same blind loyalty to the republic.

When Spoon and the rest of the Alpha ARC troopers had been young Jango had been a bit cold and distant but as they had grown up he had changed especially after his sister, or 'Auntie Arla' as she insisted on being called by the ARC troopers, started to join them in training.

That wasn't to say that Jango's sudden care for the troopers didn't make their training any easier. The opposite was the case, the ARC troopers were pushed harder than they had ever thought possible.

Spoon had thought that it was some kind of torture and Jango's sudden friendlier side was a sinister part of that to cause them more pain, until Renn had explained it to him.

Renn had told Spoon that Jango had started to see the ARCs as his sons, similarly to how he saw Boba, and so was pushing them to become the best possible soldiers they could be. So that they would have the best possible chance of surviving any conflict they were thrown into by the republic.

And Spoon had to admit it had been quite effective. He and his brothers were at the peak of how dangerous a non-force sensitive human could be, and so far, not a single ARC trooper had been killed in action.

Which wasn't for lack of trying on behalf of the republic. The jedi had dumped them into vastly unfair fights across the galaxy, like the one Spoon was currently fighting on Tula and privately he wasn't completely sure he was going to survive this fight.

He had told Spanners the truth. He would use every trick and underhanded strategy he had access to in an effort to save the clones he had found himself in charge of, but there was only so much he could do.

Spoon's small force of clones was currently made up of, eighty-one troopers from the 50th attack battalion and four ARF troopers detached from gamma squad of the 91st Mobile Reconnaissance Corps.

Which wasn't much when compared to the thousands of battle droids bearing down on them, especially as at least a quarter of the troopers had some degree of injury.

Spoon had already called the republic for backup, but he wasn't entirely convinced it would turn up in time or at all. Either way though he knew that they couldn't keep running forever and so the trench that his men had already started digging at the top of the steep hill at the end of the canyon he was planning to funnel the droid army into would be their last stand.

They had no where else to go, and so would hold the line until relief came, or they were all wiped out.

-

General Tip Hord grinned from his position atop his tank as he considered how best to crush the remaining slave soldiers that the republic had sent to test him.

General Hord felt he was at an elite level among the separatist army higher ups, he certainly felt he was better than that cybernetic monstrosity that followed Dooku around like a loyal puppy.

As a Muun Hord wasn't as physically gifted as other galactic species but he was much smarter, and even among other Muun Hord was revered for his intellectual prowess's.

So when the republic army had landed on Tula in their misguided attempt to destroy the factory he had been tasked with defending he had seen it as a chance to show off his greatness.

And when his droids had slaughtered those pathetic clones and vaporised their jedi generals, he knew he was right.

But then as he was leading his droids in hunting down the last of the ragged republic army, some cowered had destroyed his factory and since then whipping every single one of the remaining republic dogs of the surface of Tula had become a matter of honour.

And now he finally had the clones trapped. He imagined that they thought they were safe, cowering behind their little shield, but he would soon correct that thinking.

"Bring up the multi-troop transports, I want them loaded with as many super battle droids as possible.

And prepare the STAPs, they'll go through the shield first supported by a detachment of armoured assault tanks to soften the enemy up and then the transports will deploy the super battle droids to finish them off." General Hort ordered to no-one in particular and his men jumped to obey.

He smiled as he watched his troops rushing to obey his orders, he never felt more powerful than in moments like this.

Soon two lines of Single Trooper Aerial Platforms sored forwards towards the shield, a B-1 series battle droid perched precariously on each one.

Ten separatist AAT-1 hover tanks followed the speeder bikes forwards with the super battle droid laden transports close behind them.

Horts smile grew wider as the first STAPs breached the republic shield, the forces he had sent forward were more than enough to annihilate the remaining clones.

Some might have considered it overkill to send such a magnificent force against the feeble little clones, but Hort wanted the vermin dead.

"Errr, sir…" a high-pitched robotic voice sounded over general Hort's comm, snapping him out of his glorious daydreams.

"What is it?" Hort snapped as the holographic image of the droid commander in charge of the STAPs appeared in front of him.

"We're through the shield but there's, err… no one here" The droid commander said and Hort cursed.

The separatist battle droids might be the finest army that Hort had ever seen, but their intelligence did leave something to be desired.

"Commander Parvos, report," Hort snapped, and the hologram of the battle droid was replaced by the image of a scared corellian woman.

The separatist army still needed more sentient leadership and so like Hort, Parvos was one of the many organic officers that served in its ranks.

"The droids right, the clones seemed to have retreated." Parvos reported. She commanded the AAT-1s and had been in the lead tank to cross through the shield after the STAPs, which was why Hort was now seeking her report rather than the droid commanders.

"Cowards!" Hort hissed in frustration, how dare these republic dogs flee instead of facing their death like men.

"You must pursue them, they can't have gotten far." He ordered as he seethed in rage.

"Understood general, we'll hunt them down." Parvos said and gestured to some unseen person to get the vehicles moving again.

"I'll have the droids on the STAPs sweep the slope of the canyon ahead of us, they'll run the fleeing clones down then we'll mop up what's left." She continued nut then frowned at something in her eyeline that Hort couldn't see.

"Hey, droid!" Parvos shouted, "Leave that alo---" She was cut off as a blinding light filled the holo-comm and a split second later the republic shield disappeared, replaced by a giant eruption of earth, fire, noise, and death.

Hort stared in disbelief at the cloud of destruction that just torn apart some of his best troops. His mouth open and closed and he barely heard his officers shouting at him for his orders.

"C-charge…" Hort muttered in a barely audible whisper before he repeated himself loader trying to project an air of confidence into his voice.

"Charge! Everyone forwards! Kill those clones, now!"