» Operation: Shadow Eye

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Dramatis Personae:

Shadow Squad, 2nd Platoon, SORC (Special Operations Reconnaissance Company):
- Sergeant RC-1591 "Ghost", Leader
- Corporal RC-1582 "Briik", Second-in-Command/Medic
- Private RC-1539 "Shrike", Weapons
- Private RC-1501 "Van", Communications


1202 Hours, Kamino System, Outer Rim

Zero Hour Minus Seven

The four commandos, each one wearing the same heavy, camouflaged armor, sat around in the briefing room aboard the RAS Defender, waiting for their CO, or commanding officer, to brief them on their first field mission. Each commando was almost exactly identical, because they were clones. Clones of one of the most dangerous men to live. Jango Fett.

The commandos stood rapidly to attention as another clone, this one wearing slightly different armor and the yellow markings of a clone commander, walked into the room. The officer returned the salute.

"At ease," said the commander.

"We've finally received our orders. The Jedi Knights have uncovered a Separatist stronghold on Geonosis, where the Seppies are constructing battle droids to apparently use against the Republic. Our main force," the commander said, "will be arriving on Geonosis within twelve standard hours, but we have a situation planetside." The commander paused, apparently to catch his breath. "The Geonosians are supposedly executing three hostages at 07:00 hours, and so the 1st Ranger regiment has been assigned to rescue them. The problem is that we do not know where the hostages are to be executed, and so you must pinpoint the coordinates of the arena by at least 05:00 hours. Also, the Separatists have a long-range sensors and communications, which will allow them to detect any but the smallest space vessels entering their system. So your mission is twofold: Pinpoint the location of the arena and transmit it to us, and disable the Seps' comm and sensor network. You have six standard hours to complete both of these objectives, and it's a 4-hour trip. You cannot trigger an alarm, and you have to maintain comm silence until the Geo's net is disabled. Is this understood?"

"Sir yes sir!" The commandos barked in unison.

"Excellent." The commander nodded, satisfied. "Get to your ship."


0453 Hours, Geonosis System, Outer Rim

Zero Hour Minus Four

Commando RC-1591, aka Ghost, checked his gear for the umpteenth time. They had been flying for something like two or two and half hours, and the rest of Shadow Squad was resting, rather uncomfortably, in the gunships small 12-man troop bay. The soldiers of Shadow Squad, 2nd Platoon, were an elite unit of clone commandos, trained in special reconnaissance. They were the eyes and ears of the Grand Army of the Republic, and would be the first GAR unit to touch down on Geonosis.

A decade–the commandos whole lives–they had been training for this fateful day when their skills would finally be put to their test. They were about to be dropped onto an enemy-held planet, stranded, without communications or backup, and a small chance of success, as well as having to remain undetected. This was the ultimate challenge.

Not that he thought that they wouldn't succeed, oh no. He just pitied the poor Seppies who were about to get a serious butt-whipping.

"ETA 5 minutes!" the pilot of their LAAT yelled to him, snapping Ghost out of his thoughts. He nodded to the pilot, and then he kicked one of the commandos in the stomach.

"Come on! Up and moving boys!" he barked.

The clones quickly awoke from their naps and began to check and double check all their gear.

"This should be fun," Shrike said as he cleaned out the magazine attachment on his DC-17m blaster rifle.

"That's what I had just been thinking," replied Ghost sarcastically. "But don't get to caught up in how ‘fun' it is. We've got a mission, and we're going to finish it."

"Aye, aye sir!" said Briik, the second-in-command of Shadow Squad. "The Seppies will always remember Geonosis!"

"Too bad command wouldn't allow us to bring something a little heavier," Van said, staring down at the meager ordinance of a blaster pistol, a small blaster rifle and a couple grenades. "It might prove helpful."

"I know, but we're not even supposed to be seen, so it's not like were going to have a lot of combat or anything," stated Shrike.

"Good point."

"We're in the atmosphere!" their pilot barked. "We are above the landing zone," he said a few seconds later. "You're free to go."

"Roger that," replied Ghost. He pressed a button on the side of the gunship's wall. "Lock and load brothers!" he said as the troop doors whooshed open and the dark night sky of Geonosis greeted them. "Go, Go, GO!" he yelled, motioning with his arm as each of his squad mates walked off the troop bay and free fell into the night. He turned toward the pilot, gave him a thumbs-up signal, and jumped out of the bay.

He was greeted by a gust of cold air that slammed into his body, but his armor absorbed enough of the blow to keep it from harming him. He let his arms go wide of his body, palms facing the ground far below, and continued to fall at lightning-fast speeds, the air rushing past his armored body. With a quick series of blinks he activated his visor's low-light vision mode, allowing him to see the small blips of his squad mates free-falling below him.

He fell for a several hundred more meters before he pressed the activation stud on his para-glider. The force of slowing down suddenly and jerked his body as he began to glide slowly – and even gracefully – down to the orange sand below him. When he hit the ground, he hit it very softly, making only a small thunk sound as his padded boots hit the ground. He rapidly pulled the release on his glider, letting it fall silently behind him, as he pulled loose his blaster rifle and dropped to one knee, scanning the area for hostiles. After a few seconds and no sign of hostiles, he calmly stood himself up and checked his mini holo-emitter on his wrist. The small holo map that appeared before him was old, made during the last geographical survey of the area, and therefore probably inaccurate, but it was still better then nothing. Using the map, he discovered that he had been dropped almost right on top of the LZ, and hopefully so had the rest of his squad. Slowly and silently he moved several yards ahead until he reached the landing zone. He checked his short-range sensors built-in to his helmet and saw that three life forms were approaching, one from the east twenty meters away, and two from the north, only about ten. He guessed that it probably and most likely was his recon squad, but just for safety's sake he took cover behind a meter-high pillar, staring down his electromagnetic scope down at the LZ. A minute later a single commando, barring the two-dot markings on his left breast, which meant that it was Briik, entered the clearing, rifle at the ready. The commando waited a few moments in a combat stance, scanning the area. Then Ghost heard the click of the commandos' short-range commlink.

"Eight-Two reporting. I'm at the LZ. No sign of hostile targets. Eight-Two out."

"Affirmative, Eight-Two. I'm coming down," Ghost said into his s-comm (as it was commonly called).

"Roger that, Nine-One."

Ghost quickly covered the distance to his second-in-command.

"Anything interesting to report, corporal?" he asked his fellow commando.

"The trip down was a little bumpy, and my armor rides up in the crotch when executing a HALO," he said jokingly.

"Anything else?" asked Ghost dryly.

"Nope."

I must be the only guy with a jokester as my second in command. Ghost thought.

"Here comes Oh-One and Three-Nine," reported Briik, a little more seriously.

The two other camouflaged commandos walked into the clearing a second later, each one in a ready stance, prepared for anything. They maintained their ready stance for a second or two, and then stood back up and walked back over to the other two commandos.

"Nothing to report, sir," Shrike said. "We touched down fairly close by. Really accurate fall."

"Affirmative," said Ghost. "All right, you boys you all know are mission." He pressed a button on his gauntlet and a blue-shimmering holo map appeared. "Are intel is fairly old," he said as the holo map rotated. "This spire here–" He pointed to a tall spike-like rock formation on the map. "Is only several kilometers away from where the Jedi Knight transmitted the message intercepted at Tatooine, so we are going to assume that this spire is an important building for the Separatists."

"What about the sensor net?" ssked Briik, serious now.

"Are ships picked up high pulses like that are used for sensor and comm waves transmitting from a bunker eight kilometers away from this central spire." The map shifted to show a blank area. "It would be better to disable their communications before locating the holding area. It's 5000 hours now, so we only have two standard hours to do this. So let's get moving!"



Ghost peered through his rifle's scope at the armored bunker. It was lightly protected, probably because the Seppies didn't think that the Republic was on to them quite yet.

"Okay, Briik, Van," he spoke quietly into his commlink. "Let's try to take out all the sentries at once. As soon as they're down, Shrike move in and start slicing the security console on the blast door, roger that?"

"Roger that, Point."

"Copy that."

"When you're ready."

Slowly yet calmly, Ghost acquired his target: a Geonosian warrior, unaware that his life was about to end abruptly, who was patrolling the area a yard or two ahead of the blast door.

"Acquire targets," he whispered into his commlink.

After a few seconds, the other two commandos each replied that they had their target in their sights.

Slowly, Ghost lightly placed his finger on the firing stud of his rifle.

"Fire."

All at once three blue plasma bolts lashed out of the rocks into the unaware Geonosians, and all three hit the ground in almost perfect unison, each one turned to a corpse with a perfect, smoking hole in its cranium.

Almost as soon as the bolts hit, Briik was up and running. As he neared the door he turned his run into a shoulder roll, landing at the door in a combat stance.

"Targets eliminated, sir," he spoke into his comm. "All clear."

"Roger that," Ghost replied, as he silently stood up from behind his cover–just in time to see a Geonosian start winging it back to the central spire.

"Take that bug out!!!" he barked into his commlink. He didn't have to, however, because the Geonosian was soon intercepted by two plasma rounds from Van and Shrike's rifles.

"Ok, Shrike, you cover us with some sniper fire, ok?" Ghost said. He then turned toward Van's position. "Van, you're with me and Briik."

"Affirmative," the two other commandos replied.

A moment later, the three commandos were each at the door, and Briik was examining the blast door.

"The good news is that the Geo's security system is rather primitive, so the UKC should be able to override it." He paused for a second. "The bad news is if the UKC doesn't work, we're stuck with a big problem and only two hours.

"Let's see if the UKC is worth the price the Kaminoans paid for it," said Van.

The UKC, or Universal Key Card, was a small electronic keycard, which (supposedly) was programmed with some of the most advanced slicer codes in the galaxy, which would (hopefully) overwhelm a door's computer lock and make it open the door. The field tests on Kamino worked well, but this lock could be different and feature a anti-slicer defense system or some other nasty software the Geos or Seppies had installed to keep out intruders.

Ghost dug through his pockets and picked up the UKC and silently slid it through the slit in the lock and held it there as a red light on the door's lock began to flash rapidly, and then suddenly turned green.

"Okay Van. Get some flash-bang dets ready. I have point, Van center, and Briik you have tail. Shrike, cover our six."

"Roger that, Lead," said Shrike from his hiding spot.

"S-Comm silence until hostiles are cleared from the bunker, understood?"

"Yes sir."

Ghost nodded, and with a few quick motions, ordered them through the now-unlocked door.

The door flew open and Ghost rushed in, visor set for low-light mode, searching for targets. He found himself looking into the ugly face of a Geonosian warrior, and rapidly fired a three-shot burst into it's ugly snout.

The Geonosian fell, a smoking corpse, and the commandos rushed into the communications bunker–and found themself in a control room, with armed four battle droids in red markings operating the controls.

One battle droid turned it's skeletal head towards the sound. "Intruders!" He heard the droid's programmed warning, though there were no more wets in the room to be warned. "Intr–" The droid's cry was cut off by a well-placed plasma bolt that caught in the neck, decapitating it's head from the rest of it's body, and putting the now smoking piece of junk out of action.

By now the other three droids had raised their blaster carbines, but were met by a hail of blaster fire from the commandos, which quickly dealt with the rest.

It was a good thing the droids were too stupid and too slow to raise an alarm, because the bunker had been the Separatists' only hope for winning Geonosis.

"Sensors and communications are now disabled sir!" Van said a few moments later, stepping back from the controls. "It's set up to look like a normal systems failure, and it will take them a long while to discover the alterations."

"Excellent, Oh-One," Ghost said. "Check the comm logs for anything interesting or important."

A few seconds later, Van turned back to his Sergeant. "I have something sir. Come here."

Ghost quickly crossed the distance to his comm specialist.

"I have here a map of the surrounding area – including where the hostages are being held. Which means," continued Van, "That all we have to do is use our DC22s to get the coordinates and transmit it back to the Defender."

Ghost silently looked over the holo map. "Download it to our database, understood trooper?"

"Yes sir."

A few minutes later, Van reported it was loaded and ready.

They commed Shrike in and he entered the bunker, and soon all for of them were gathered around the former-Separatist map reader, looking at the images of the Geonosian execution arena.

"So what next?" asked Shrike, as he jammed a full magazine into his blaster rifle.

"Our mission's only half over," said Ghost as he plugged his holo emitter into the bunker's map reader. After a few seconds, a luminescent blue map of the surrounding area–everything within ten klicks–appeared before the four commandos. "We have to get here." He said as he pointed small hand-held laser-pointer at a small crater-like area on the map. "This is supposedly the execution arena where the hostages are being held. This map does not give us the exact coordinates for the arena, however, so we'll have to get there and transmit the coordinates ourselves." He pressed a button on his holo emitter and the image above the map reader vanished. "We have to be careful. Since this is a public execution of 'criminals', I expect the arena to be heavily guarded." The commando leader glanced at the chrono in the corner of his HUD. It read as 6049 hours. "We're running out of time gentlemen, and we still have to get those coordinates before the strike force and the fleet is here, so we have to get those coordinates ASAP. Van," He looked at his comm specialist. "The Seppies are bound to send in a squad to investigate the loss of communications, so the fleet won't have much time. Can you set a little trap for our traitorous friends?"

"Sure thing lead."

"Excellent." He turned to the rest of the commandos. "I want to be high-tailing it to that arena within the next few minutes, so let's move it!"

Within two standard minutes the special recon commandos of Shadow Squad were several klicks away from the sensor bunker and were heading due north, nearing the execution arena. The commandos were moving in single file, with Ghost as point, Van second, Shrike third and Briik as tail end, and they were heading up a tall, twisting spire a klick away and overlooking the crater-shaped arena. After about five minutes of hiking, Ghost called a stop.

"Okay, boys. I'll get the coordinates, and Van will set up to transmit them as soon as I have them. Briik, Shrike, you two will cover us, understood?"

"Yes sir!" The commandos replied.

Quickly Ghost dropped to a prone position, along with Van, and pressed a button on his rifle. Instantly the blue transparent scope appeared. Quickly, Van put a small link-wire into Ghost's open hand, and Ghost plugged it in to a hook-up in his rifle. Ghost glanced at Van, who had just finished plugging in his end of the wire to the comm pack on his back, who gave him a thumbs-up.

Quickly Ghost flipped a switch on his rifle's pistol grip, and then peered through the scope.

The scope's magnification allowed him to see almost everything going on in the arena a klick away. He could see three people each tied to a pillar as three ferocious beasts–none of which were supposed to be indigenous to this system in the Outer Rim– were led into the arena by mounted picadors.

Slowly, Ghost aimed for the center of the arena and gently pulled the trigger. He held it there for a few seconds, until Van gave him another thumbs-up, and then he let it go.

With a few quick hand signals, Ghost motioned for Van to begin transmitting. He needn't have, for his skilled communications man had already begun to transmit the coordinates to the fleet, who would then transmit it then to the Jedi strike force.

After Van indicated that the transmission had been sent and received, Ghost deactivated the target-designator mode on his rifle and reenabled the "assault" mode, and then turned back to Briik and Shrike.

"All right boys. Mission accomplished. Take cover and keep an eye open."

The commandos nodded silently in recognition and followed their leader's orders, and continued to scan the other nearby cliffs, keeping an eye open for possible sentries.

After making sure his men had followed his orders, Ghost peered through the scope to check on the situation in the arena.

Two of the hostages – probably the Jedi, thought Ghost – had actually managed to get free from their pillars and one, a young human male of about twenty standard years, with a braid marking him as an apprentice, was actually attempting–with some success–to ride one of the beasts, while the other, another human male of about thirty, was actually holding his own against a weird spider-like predator.

The third, however, was not doing so well. A human twenty-four standard year-old female, the senator most likely, was on top of her pillar frantically trying to unlock one of her binders. A nexu – a cat-like predator that his second-in-command admired - was attempting to get on top of the pillar and get to the senator. It actually succeeded, somewhat, and raked the girl across the back, which would leave a nasty scar.

The commando leader continued to watch the futile efforts of the three prisoners, and was actually surprised when that the three were holding their own. By that time the nexu was dead, crushed by the younger male, who had been able–amazingly–to gain control of his mount and rescue the senator. The older Jedi had injured the beast he was fighting, but not taking it out of the fight. For half a second, Ghost considered opening fire into the arena. A couple rounds of plasma coming from an unseen foe would disorient and panic the Geonosians, as well as rescuing the Jedi. But he held back. He was an observer now, he'd done his job and now the rest of the army was on the way to do theirs. He silently shook the thought away.

By now all three hostages were mounted on the horned beast and surrounded by destroyer droids – fierfekin' machines, thought Ghost. It appeared the Separatists were tired of the hostages evading their destruction and were going to deal with them the old-fashioned way, when all of a sudden Geonosians began to swarm from their seats in the arena and flee into the sky.

At first Ghost thought that a patrol had discovered the bunker and that an alarm had been triggered, when he noticed figures in the arena he had not noticed before. Armed Jedi. Two hundred of them, all wielding their graceful laser-sword things that they called a lightsaber.

Ghost breathed a sigh of relief and finally took his eyes away from the scope.

"We did it," he said to his commandos.

"Yippee!" he heard Briik yell over their s-link.

"Can it Briik!" he yelled at his second. "Shut u–"

"Hostiles! Incoming on our two!" barked Shrike.

Ghost turned and jumped to his feet, whipping his rifle up to his shoulder, ready to fire. He saw maybe a hundred of the bugs, armed with pikes or nothing at all. Apparently one of the fleeing bugs had spotted them, despite their excellent position, and had alerted his nearby fellows. Good thing their not experienced combat troops, thought Ghost as he began to fire into the cloud of bugs. Real combat troops would have alerted a superior.

"Fire at will!" he barked at his troops, even though he knew he didn't have to tell them.

Hundreds of blue plasma bolts lanced into the swarming cloud of bugs, most of them hitting targets and sending Geonosian corpses flying to the orange ground below. The Geonosians were falling by the tens, almost every round that left the commandos' rifles found an insectoid target. But for every bug that fell from commando's round, another rose to take its place.

"Sarge! We need to fall back!" yelled Briik over the comm. "They just keep coming sir!"

Ghost dodged to the side as a Geonosian go to close and made jab at him with his pike. The pike jabbed into the ground and Ghost pinned it there with his foot and shoved his wrist blade into the Geonosian's neck, killing it instantly. The bug's grip on the pike loosened and the ugly Geonosian fell to the ground below. Ghost ripped the pike out of the ground and hurled it at a second Geonosian. The pike speared it in the center, splitting the Geonosian in half and went through and killed a second bug before falling.

"We need to wait for back-up!" he yelled back over the comm.

"Who says back-up is gonna be here in time, sir?" said Shrike calmly as he took his shots carefully, with each single plasma round killing a single winged Geonosian.

Just as the words left Shrike's mouth, the commandos heard the familiar sounds of the engine wash of a LAAT/i gunship. Ghost peeked out of the corner of his visor to see a four of the gunships descending into the arena, and after loading up the Jedi survivors, they ascended into the sky.

Ghost activated his long-range commlink. "This is Shadow Squad calling any nearby friendly vessel. We are under attack. Requesting extraction."

He waited a few seconds.

"I repeat: This is Shadow Squad. We are under attack. Request extraction. I repeat. Thi–"

He was interrupted by a Geonosian pike that slammed into his shoulder. The pike pierced his pauldron armor just barely, skinning the skin underneath. He ripped out the pike and hurled it into the cloud of Geonosians, impaling three on the spear. He quickly glanced down at the ammo count on his weapon: 005. Fierfek, he thought. He turned his head to check on the rest of his squad, only to see Van on the ground, with two Geonosians swarming on him, and he quickly picked of one with a well-placed round to he creature's abdomen. The creature screeched in pain and rolled off Van and off the spire– to meet it's death among the rocks. He was just about to pull the trigger a second time on the last Geonosian when another one threw itself at him. Ghost turned to face it and skillfully sidestepped the bug's charge and swung his left fist around, and pulled the trigger on his gauntlet that released his blade. The hapless Geonosian speared itself on Ghost's extended blade, the vibrating serrated edge entering the creature's cranium and killing it instantly. Ghost retracted the blade and the lifeless corpse of the Geonosian fell to his feet. He saw out of the corner of his eye Shrike disposing of two other Geonosians, cracking one's neck and then using it's body as a club to bludgeon the other one to death. He saw that there was almost no hope of surviving, now that Van was incapacitated and they were running low on ammunition. Eventually the bugs would win on pure force of numbers.

Suddenly a shadow loomed over the crest-fallen commandos as a LAAT/i flew overhead, it's anti-personnel blasters shredding the swarm of bugs. The few bugs who were not killed instantly in the gunship's barrage fled, only to be picked off by the commandos' last few rounds.

"Nice of you to drop by!" yelled Briik to the gunship's pilot as he ran up to attend to Van. One of the Geonosians had managed to slip past his defenses and smack him across the head, the force of which had knocked him out.

"Sure. Any time," The pilot replied. "Hop on. Some of us have places to be."

Ghost motioned for his men. "Move, move, MOVE!"

Briik went in first, the unconscious Van on his shoulders, followed by Shrike, his blaster still at the ready. Lastly Ghost jumped aboard, just as the LAAT/i lifted into the sky.

As Briik attended to Van, a tired Ghost sat staring on the edge of the troop bay, staring out at the battle raging below them. For the tired and bloodied commandos of Shadow Squad, 2nd Platoon, 1st Special Reconnaissance Company, the battle of Geonosis was over. For their infantry brethren, it was only just beginning.