Chapter 104

Spoon heard the explosion at the base of the valley and grinned behind his helmet.

"The Separatist forces are all moving into the canyon, just like you predicted sir." The calm voice of CT-5632, clone sergeant Shadow, sounded from Spoon's comm.

Sergeant Shadow was the leader of gamma squad of the 91st mobile reconnaissance corps and he along with three other ARF troopers had been placed under Spoon's command for the reconnaissance of the droid factories on Tula.

"Excellent, have you and your men prepared our surprises for the enemy?" Spoon asked as he stood atop the growing trench the survivors of the 50th attack battalion were digging at the top of the sloped valley and looked down towards advancing separatists.

"Yes sir, we're on our way back now." Sergeant Shadow reported, and sure enough Spoon noticed the four ARF troopers jogging towards him from the tops of the sheer cliff faces that bordered each side of the canyon that the separatists were about to have to fight their way up.

"Once you rejoin the defensive line take up sniper positions and wait for the enemy to get within range," Spoon ordered and the ARF sergeant sent back his acknowledgement.

ARF troopers were exceptionally skilled in both scouting and ambushing enemy forces and so having them adding their fire power to the few remaining clone sharpshooters and snipers of the 50th attack battalion.

Spoon looked back over the republics defensive line and tried to supress a grimace.

Despite all the surprises he had set for the separatists they were still vastly outnumbered and there defensive line looked precariously thin.

-

"Haha, did you see that explosion? That was amazing!" Glib shouted in excitement as Spanners and the rest of his squad prepared for the separatist assault.

"Yeah, that must have scrapped hundreds of those stupid clankers," Error said grinning.

"They've still got plenty more though" Magnet muttered darkly as he peered over the top of the trench and down the slope.

"We'll just have to scrap them too then," Spanners said but he didn't feel like that was really an option.

Thousands of battle droids were marching up the steep slope towards them, and they all knew that the separatists weren't very interested in taking prisoners, especially clone prisoners.

"Aww, bet you guys are scared, aren't you?" Glib laughed as he teased his squad mates over the comm.

"Of course I am, you saw how close I've come to getting blasted today," Magnet said his voice wavering slightly and Spanners looked over at his brother in concern.

Magnet had earned his name back during training simulations on kamino due to his uncanny ability to be extremely attractive to blaster bolts.

And that ability seemed to have translated to real combat as well, as no fewer than six blaster bolts had missed the trooper by less than a centimetre.

Spanners could tell that the stress of the battle, as well as the memories of all his simulated deaths, was getting to his brother and he was starting to worry about him.

"Don't worry Mags, just remember your training and you'll be fine," Spanners said reaching over to pat his brother on the back and Magnet nodded back.

"Soooo, what are you guy's three biggest fears," Glib asked completely undermining Spanners attempt at taking Magnets mind of his fears.

"Being forced to share a trench with you three times," Spanners muttered as he shot a glare towards Glib.

"Ohh, gasp," Glib said pretending to be shocked and clutching his chest theatrically, "you wound me brother. But that's a rubbish answer, you've already done that so that's like saying that today was the worst day of your life."

Spanners just grunted, thinking that was a fairly apt description of his day so far.

"Come on someone give me a real answer, Error? Chalky? Sarge?" Glib pleaded, and Spanners and the rest of his squad knew he was just going to keep asking till he got his answers.

"Running out of medical supplies and or being distracted while I'm busy," the strained voice of CT-1078, Chalky, came over the comm and Glib chuckled slightly before apologising to the annoyed medic.

Despite being forced to leave the clones defensive line to tend to their wounded brothers, Spanners had no doubt that Chalky, and the other medics were fighting just as hard as they were to keep the wounded alive.

"Err, Ghosts?" Error said, sounding like he was giving the answer a lot of thought, "I heard that the jedi come back as ghosts after they die so that they can torture the living, and that sounds terrifying."

Spanners had to admit that the idea of general Janro coming back from the dead was pretty scary. Even if the jedi didn't do anything overly spooky and just tried to give out some orders it would be terrifying.

"I'm scared that the troopers in my squad are too busy talking about stupid things that they mess up in the coming battle," Sergeant Blade growled out and Spanners and his squad instantly focused back on the approaching droids.

"Cool, thanks for that sarge," as unlike the rest of the squad he seemed unconcerned with the provoking the sergeant, "What do you guys think the lieutenant is afraid of?"

"You think ARC troopers like the lieutenant are afraid of anything, instead they are the things that people are afraid of." The sergeant muttered disapprovingly but Glib just laughed.

"Come on, ARCs aren't that tough. I bet the lieutenant is secretly afraid of something dumb like cats or something," Glib kept laughing to himself until someone cleared their throat behind him.

"Everything okay here troopers?" lieutenant Spoon said with a friendly tone as he stood directly behind Glib, who had gone completely still.

Spanners, like the rest of the squad, failed to supress their grins as they watched Glib finally fall silent.

"Did he hear what we were saying? We were talking on the private squad comm, even an ARC trooper couldn't listen in on that, right?" Error asked in a whisper.

"Nah, he couldn't, could he?" Magnet said, although he didn't sound sure, and Spanners had to agree with him.

"Fine sir, just waiting for the enemy to arrive," the sergeant spoke up for the quiet squad and the lieutenant nodded.

"Good, good. Remember to hold your fire until they get close, the snipers will hit them at range then the rest of us will rip them apart." The lieutenant said calmly as he looked over the squad and a chorus of 'yes sir's sounded from them.

"…Sir…" Spanners and the squad heard Glib begin to ask quietly but they were too late to stop him, "What are your three biggest fears?"

Spanners blood went cold as he waited for the lieutenant's response.

Sergeant Blade was right when he said that ARC troopers were terrifying, and even other clones thought about the secretive soldiers as boogeymen, monsters, things to haunt your nightmares.

Despite the fact that the lieutenant seemed a nice and reasonable man, Spanners couldn't shake the fear that the ARCs inspired in everyone they met, and he was currently imagining all the ways the lieutenant could rip Glib's spine out with his bare hands.

"Hmmm, my three biggest fears?" the lieutenant hummed thoughtfully before continuing, "I guess it'd be spiders and errr, women… spider-women?" the ARC trooper nodded sagely after he finished talking and everyone stared blankly at him.

"So, a female harch would be like your biggest fear then?" Glib said cheekily, no doubt emboldened by the fact the lieutenant hadn't killed him yet.

"Ugh," The ARC trooper shuddered theatrically which provoked a series of laughs from the nearby clones.

"On that note I'll head off, before you terrifying individuals give me nightmares," The lieutenant said to more laughs as he began to stride down the trench to check on the next squad.

As the rest of the squad laughed Spanners realised what the lieutenant probably wasn't quite as afraid as he was making out, he was and instead he was probably trying to raise moral before the coming battle.

Which also gave Spanners a second realisation. Even with all their legendary abilities the ARC lieutenant was a far superior leader to any of the jedi that Spanners had served under so far, and he would follow him to hell if necessary.

-

Spoon let out breath as he raised a DC-15x sniper rifle that he had borrowed from one of the 50th's snipers, after giving the man his westar-m5.

The clone sniper might have been a crack shot but Spoon knew that even without modesty he was better, and right now Spoon wanted the best person available to take the shot.

Spoon wanted his final trap to cause as much damage as possible and to do that he needed to provoke the separatists into moving their remaining tanks to the front of their advancing column.

Most of the separatist vehicles had been destroyed when they had detonated the explosives in the trench at the base of the valley but there were still some AAT-1 hover tanks lurking about that could pose a significant problem for the remaining republic forces.

The separatists had been holding their remaining tanks back, probably to save them for the final assault, and several lines of battle droids were marching ahead of the rest of the separatist troops.

Spoon settled his rifles sights on a rodian man in the uniform of a separatist officer that was just on the edge of his rifles effective range and steadied his breathing.

Without a droid control ship in orbit the separatists had to maintain order among its battle droids with both droid and organic officers relaying orders to them, and Spoon was hoping that by killing those officers he could force the tanks forward to act as a shield.

He gently squeezed the trigger of the DC-15x and watched as a blaster bolt punched through the separatist officer's chest, before shifting his aim and firing again catching another officer in the throat.

The other clone snipers soon started picking their own targets and more and more separatist officers began dying.

They were focusing their fire on the non-droid officers, thinking that they would have a stronger desire to live by calling the tanks forward, and soon they were rewarded as the separatists stopped their advance to send the tanks to the front.

The massive column of battle droids was now stalled, with chaos reining in its centre as the tanks tried to weave their way through the throngs of droids and the front few ranks of droids firing their blasters impotently at the distant republic snipers.

Spoon paused as he watched and waited for the perfect time to trigger the remaining explosives and after a few seconds he hit the detonator.

Huge mounds of earth and rock exploded outwards from tops of either side of the canyon as the charges that the ARF troopers had planted detonated.

Massive boulders smashed into the droid army, crushing tanks and battle droids as they rolled slowly down the valley.

The clones cheered as the falling earth and rocks ripped through the centre of the droid army, reducing hundreds of droids to flattened piles of scrap metal.

Spoon let himself smile briefly as he watched the destruction before his eyes narrowed in concern.

The separatists had taken heavy losses but there were still hundreds more battle droids reforming to resume the attack.