40 In the thick of it

{10 months later}

It's been a hectic few months, the clone wars are in full swing, pirates are everywhere and big Sheev's breathing down the Jedi's necks. But right now, none of that matters.

Why?

Because before I can deal with Palps and his manic plans, I need to survive this battle first, which is proving to be an increasingly difficult endeavor.

Quell, is a planet in the outer rim territories, one with an especially good position for hyperspace jumps into the more central layers of the galaxy. A couple of weeks back, me and Aayla got new orders to relieve the planet of Separatist control and station troops to build an outpost there.

While no one expected it to be an easy battle, the council weren't particularly worried about us either. Since the clone wars started, Aayla and the 327th have had the best missions success rate while also sporting an extremely low clone mortality rate compared to the other Generals.

To be honest, me and Aayla didn't expect too much from this mission either, just another day in the field we thought.

Oh how wrong we were.

Making it to the planet was fine and all, but that's probably the only thing that went right. After piercing through the seperatist blockage, which was a good few ships bigger than what our intel said, the Acclamator that made it through began to unload its troops and supplies.

Being aboard the ships, we helped the soldiers establish a base camp for our planetary campaign. While this was happening, our naval forces managed to deal with the blockade, but even with better ships and pilots, they were outnumbered, causing many ships to retreat after sustaining too much damage.

This left us with a relatively small amount of cruisers left to defend against Separatist retaliation, which we shouldn't have had to worry about, since our intel suggested that the Sep's were too busy with other battlefields to send in reinforcements.

Sadly our intel couldn't have been more wrong.

In the middle of a chaotic ground battle, Aayla got the word that a second fleet came and were currently attacking our small blockade. They weren't going to be able to hold out for long, so in the midst of the battle, we made the dangerous choice to give up our defensive positions and retreat back to the ship. We were stuck between a rock and a hard place, either we stayed, which would result in us either being killed or captured. Or we retreat to the ship and suffer a varying amount of casualties.

Picking the lesser of two evils we fought our way back to the Acclamator, but during the retreat we had to pass under a cliff, during which the army was caught in a crossfire.

B2's with the rocket attachments fired down on us, while B1's and tanks struck us from the back, in an attempt to thin out our numbers.

While this was happening, I was at the front back of the platoon I was escorting. Everything was going fine, I was blocking shots, the clones were blasting back, and we were quickly moving towards the ship.

At least until a group of the B2's aimed their launches at us.

They weren't messing around, no staggered shots or anything, they just fully unloaded their rockets in an attempt to eliminate a jedi. Hearing the sound of a group of missiles, I quickly turned in their direction, using force I quickly began to crush them, starting from the ones closest to us.

That was when disaster hit, a stray crimson blaster bolt struck my shoulder, followed by another that scorched my side. Due to the sudden pain, my grasp on the force slipped allowing a few rockets to rapidly close in on me.

Doing my best to ignore the burning sensation that was eating away at my side, I did my best to disable the projectiles. The stragglers were imploded in swift succession, but by the time I was on the last one, it was already at arms length.

Summoning whatever strength I had left, I tried to contain the explosion. Luckily it worked, at least if you ignored the assumed collapse of one of my lungs, as well as most of the ribs on my left side breaking.

The last thing I could remember was myself trying to heal the critical wounds and Lucky -bacta injection in hand - as well as some of the other clones rushing towards me.

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My eyes burst open and I suddenly sat up in a seated position, but regretting it almost instantly as a terrible pain coursed through my entire left side.

Still I powered through the agony as I took in my surroundings, the first thing I saw was Lucky standing guard, hearing me waking up his helmet spun round to look at me.

I was in one of the on board medical facilities, thank fuck. At least it's better than being held captive, or even worse death.

"Commander, you're awake! You shouldn't move just yet, the general said you were lucky to come out of that alive". The clone trooper Lucky - my friend approached me with the intent to lie me down.

Gesturing with my hand to tell him to wait a moment, I sent pulses of the force through my body to see what the damage was. Looking at the injuries I sustained, I could help but feel bad for myself. Still I was looking better than before, I must've patched up the heavy damage in my lungs before passing out, and my rib cage was already on its way to recovery, due to the mix between my physique and the bacta.

The blaster shots were basically healed already, all that was left was a patch of burnt skin where the bolt made it entry.

The only real problem was the huge patch of blistered skin that crawled its way up from the top of my thigh to my left shoulder, even a few parts enroached its way onto my neck. Which made it a pain to move, but I can deal with it for now.

On the bright side, neither of my two hearts were damaged, which probably saved a shit ton of recovery time. With both of those bad boys pumping blood, I'm sure I'll be back to peak fitness soon enough.

"I'm alright Lucky" I responded, while removing the small needle in my arm and ignoring the slight pinch I got because of it.

Slowly bringing myself to my feel, with Lucky's help I ask "What's happening just now? Did we manage to escape?"

"Negative Commander, while we managed to take off, we're still within the planet's atmospshere. Currently our ship is being tailed by two of the Seppies frigates." Lucky's final words were accompanied by the ship rocking to from an explosion.

"Not out of the woods yet I see. Right, take me to the General, I can't be fucking around here doing nothing" I told Lucky.

"At your orders Commander" nodding his head I throw an arm over his shoulders and limp towards my Aayla.

After a relatively tedious walk, we both made it to the command bridge. As the large doors slid open, the first thing I took notice of was how hectic everything was. Officers were rushing around trying to do their tasks as quickly as possible, but slowing them down was the odd computer breakdown from overheated circuits.

The situation was worse than I expected.

Standing in the centre of the command bridge was the General, Aayla was dishing out order to her subordinates left right and centre, but she clearly couldn't keep up with all the current problems we're facing. She was so focused, she never even noticed me and Lucky till we we're right behind her.

Doing a double take, she performs a 180 before rushing over to me.

"Lycan what're you doing here!? You shouldn't even be moving with those injuries" She hurriedly said with worry evident in her gaze. I was just glad she's never got hit like I did, no doubt she'd be walking away from it like me.

"Don't worry, I'm practically fine, it's only difficult to walk and breathing's a little sore but otherwise I'm all good" I replied while she checked my injuries.

Lightly pressing my blistered skin and making me wince in the process, Aayla angrily states "Lycan you were blasted twice and hit with a rocket and you're saying that you're fine! Hurry up and get back to the medical ward before you're injuries get worse"

"I'm telling you I'm fine, all of the serious stuff's fixed, it's just the minor ones left. Might as well help you out here instead of sitting in the medical ward." I responded while removing her hand from my skin.

Taking a few deep breaths to calm herself down she says "Fine then, take a seat and help out with what you can. If I see you doing anything strenuous, I'm dragging you back to the ward myself" all the while rubbing her temples.

Once I took a seat near her side, Aayla quickly gave me a rundown of the current situation. All of the other ships took heavy damage and had to retreat, one of them was hit harder and they had to abandon ship. Our only saving grace is that there's apparently reinforcement on the way. At the moment the main priority is to hold out until they make it here.

With no more time to waste, I got to helping. Using a keypad I directed the troopers on board to the assigned areas, all the while redirecting others away from the damaged zones. This desperate struggle continued for the best part of an hour before we finally saw another republic ship firing on the Separatists.

By this point the ship was heavily damaged, barely able to stay in the air… and it wasn't going to stay that way for long.

Luckily we were comm'd into the Republic ships Admiral, who informed us that they'd be sending ships over to help with the evacuation. That was all the confirmation we needed to give the order to abandon ship.

Not long after we finished finalising the evacuation, and were about to leave the bridge, we seen both B2-RP's otherwise known as B2's with rockets strapped to their backs, along with Republic gunships heading our way.

With my superior eyesight I managed to catch someone doing something so crazy and idiotic, that I genuinely thought I was tripping.

At the sight I reactively blurted out "The absolute fuck is he doing?"