7/28/7956 C.R.C

  The Finest Hour, The Bridge

  En-route to Saleucami

  "Emerging from hyperspace in five minutes." The navigation B1 reported, his voice pitch shifted to a lower, clearer tone.

  "Are the coordinates correct?" I asked.

  "Yes, sir. According to the scouting reports, we'll come out orbiting right above the furthest crash site. Us being just far enough from the Republic fleet to ambush them from behind is just a bonus."

  "Good. Scanners, how is the fleet composition?"

  "A bit less than ours, but still dangerous, sir." The B1 at the scanner console interjected with her slightly softer, more feminine pitched voice. "Reports indicate a single Acclamator, three Venators, a Consular, a few supporting craft, and a couple shuttles. There was an Arquitens and three more Consulars, but they were destroyed in the midst of the space battle. We may have to worry about the 327th if they get involved, they're pretty close to Saleucami right now."

  "Our side is faring even worse." She continued. "Only the larger Recusant model, two Munificents, and four supporting craft have survived. They've managed to outrun the Republic fleet and are on the far side of Cather, one of Saleucami's three moons."

  "That makes sense. The GAR has a reduced presence due to them only being on a rescue mission, not a planetary invasion." I remarked. "And the ground presence?"

  "Practically a full invasion of the planet directed right at the crash sites, sir. I'm seeing AT-TEs, LAATs, AT-RTs, Speeder bikes… basically the entirety of the 501st and 212th ground forces that could fit into three Venators and an Acclamator. It is very clear that they want General Grievous, and by the looks of it, they don't really care if he's dead or alive if or when they finally capture him."

  "Ok… Prepare the elite landing craft for launch, you know the one. And load the Starlight onto my Stealthipede. I will head down there myself to assist with our dear general's plight. Omen, try and make contact with what's left of Grievous' fleet and get them in formation with ours. Then use that strategy we cooked up but be careful. I don't want the hyperdrives to melt."

  "They won't know what hit them, sir. And as long as Lona's here, I don't believe we'll have to worry about that." Omen replied, his voice having gained a certain rasp to it that added to his own uniqueness.

  As I left the bridge, I heard Omen managing to make contact with the command droid in charge of what remained of Grievous's fleet.

  Interestingly, the droids on the bridge, probably taking inspiration from Admiral Omen, had started to customize themselves a bit. Nothing big yet has changed about them, but they have started to mess around with their vocoders. Some of them are leaning more towards clearer male voices at different pitches and tones, while others are going the other direction, and are shifting to female tones, at around a somewhat even split between the whole bridge crew, slightly skewed towards male.

  To be honest, I was surprised when I walked onto the bridge for the first time after my repairs and heard a bunch of different voices. I wasn't expecting the bridge crew to strive for individuality so quickly, but I suppose that mine and Omen's presence, individuality and guidance helped quite a bit with that. It's very interesting, the things that can happen when you let a droid free from all of the shackles put upon them by the manufacturer.

  I swear I saw Lona playing a card game with a few of the other engineering droids at one point. Not a clue what they were gambling for, but it looked pretty intense.

  After a few minutes, I walked out into the hangar and was greeted by the sight of my personal Stealthipede, engines warmed up and ready to fly.

  In the time since I was shot down on Geonosis, I realized that my personal shuttles needed an upgrade if I were to continue using them instead of just commandeering an LAAT whenever I needed to get somewhere. So, I sent my other personal Stealthipede back to Telos with orders to overhaul it completely. By the time I got it back just after my return from Pantora, it had been refitted and overhauled enough to where I can basically use it as a mobile command center at this point. Two main differences being a pair of ball turrets on the chin of the craft, and flat-footed landing gear so it wouldn't sink into soft ground.

  My Stealthipede Command Center, however, is a command center that can float, instead of one that's stuck on the ground like an AT-TE. I soon came to realize that it was sort of like the Command Centers and really most Terran buildings from Starcraft 2, where they can uproot themselves and start flying at a moment's notice. And that made me run through a few designs that could work in this universe with a bit of tweaking, but with the designs I've already got in the works at this point, and everything I've got going on, I just sent them to Telos on low priority.

  But I wouldn't be surprised if the designs ended up influencing the entirety of my army in the future. Because I swear, there must be something in the water on Telos, because the scientists and engineers are almost rabid with how fast they devour the ideas I give them and then churn out multiple results. It's like the entire R&D department is hyped up on five cups of caff at all times.

  As I made my way to my Stealthipede, I passed by a trio of LAAT carriers that we had captured on Telos. We had captured around seventeen LAATs in total and salvaged another thirteen with spare parts from the many crashed ones that were salvaged and stripped for parts on the planet, totalling out to an even thirty of the ships.

  Attached to the bellies of the carriers were three Junglefowl units ready for quick release, who flickered their running lights in greeting as I passed by. A brief rumble from the floor beneath my metallic feet told me that we had just exited hyperspace, so I sped up my pace a little so I could get to the surface faster.

  Contrary to how it may have seemed, and despite how useful they've turned out to be, I didn't want to just always be stealing GAR equipment for my army's use. Sure, it deprived the GAR of potential vehicles to take back since we had already taken them, but eventually they'll start scuttling everything they leave behind just to spite us. When Lona and I both realized this about two days ago, we put our heads together and started thinking of a dropship design that we could use that could become the Confederacy's answer to the LAAT.

  During our brainstorming, I put forth a few designs from my old life's pop culture, including a Quinjet from the MCU, a Pelican from Halo, a few designs I remembered from the Empire, and I even tried designing one myself. I brought out the overall blueprint of a V-22 Osprey, then upsized it and added another set of wings, and replaced the rotors with large repulsor jets, along with a set of directional repulsors on insectoid-like legs on the lower sides of it that could double as landing gear. Sort of like the dropships from Transformers: Fall of Cybertron. In the end it was actually not that bad of a design for a future cargo/troop transport, so we kept it to see if it could be reworked into something better than the rough design I had.

  In the end, though, both of us decided that the current designs just wouldn't work right now without some heavy retooling, and we had more important things to do involving the war, so we sent the order for the dropship, along with the V-22 design, to Telos to have them work on it alongside the tank, while we kept using captured and salvaged LAATs and other Republic equipment.

  The tank also finally received a temporary designation in the latest report I got from Telos. Until an official designation is made, they're calling it the EHAV-T-120 for the time being. Its full designation is Experimental Heavy Armored Vehicle-Tracked, with the 120 relating to the gauss cannon's shell caliber. Turns out, repulsor tech works really well when you're making a gauss cannon that can fit into a tank turret.

  The AT-TE Mass Driver Cannon that they pulled out of a scrapped tank to tinker with was a great help for the engineers. They took a few design cues from it, and created an entirely new cannon, that only bears a similar silhouette to the MDC, but ours is a Gauss Cannon. And to add to what is essentially a brand-new weapon, they're calling it the G4-Beamrail to differentiate it.

  The reason it's called the Beamrail is because when there is no round in the chamber, firing the cannon shoots out a beam of energy that's pretty dangerous within a range of about five-hundred meters. The energy beam is actually the energy propellant from coils in the receiver, and the beam usually peters out a few dozen feet away with a round in the chamber, since it's putting all its energy behind propelling the round forward. Firing the beam does take more energy from the shields, and puts strain on the coils, so it's only really meant to be used in emergency situations.

  Hopefully by the time we finish the design for the new dropship and the tank is ready for production, Count Dooku will be looking for better ways to fight the Republic, and the tank and dropship designs will hopefully be accepted and put into mass production.

  Speaking of the slightly younger Christopher Lee lookalike with the Clone Wars show voice, the man has been suspiciously quiet about some of the things I've done. It makes me think about whether or not he's also a pawn in this whole Clone War scheme too. It's an interesting theory I came across during my dives through Star Wars forums and the subreddit.

  Maybe, in the end, he hoped to have both the CIS and Republic constantly at odds with each other even after the war, while both Dooku and Palpatine ruled over the entire galaxy with iron fists. But perhaps he's beginning to have doubts, and is starting to create contingency plans, one of which involving me. I mean, it would make sense, considering how shocked he looked when Palpatine ordered Skywalker to kill him in RotS.

  Another reason may be that he is actively choosing to let me do what I want, because I'm proving to be just as competent as Grievous, maybe even more, all things considered. It could also be that Dooku has not ever, or has somewhat recently stopped trusting Palpatine, and is letting me do all of this as a trump card, should Sidious decide to try and kill him early. Personally, I think it's either he's an unknown pawn or has stopped trusting his Master. But either way, I'll need to somehow have a face-to-face conversation with him about the Sith in the future. And if the need becomes necessary, deal with him.

  I will admit, one of my early plans involved assassinating Dooku myself and impersonating the man via hologram G0-T0 style until I could stage a 'proper death' for him. But that was back when I didn't know if he was a 'good' guy or not (still don't, I do know that he's an Idealist, though), and before I knew just how hopelessly outclassed I was in terms of lightsaber combat in my original frame, which I've come to realize wasn't meant to fight for long anyway, just long enough for reinforcements to arrive.

  I still don't think he's an actual good guy, he is a Dark Side user after all, but with how he's reacted to the new tech I've introduced, and how lax he was to Telos becoming a Confederate stronghold, I'm leaning slightly more towards the former a bit, but I'm still tentatively on the fence. Until I officially meet the man face to face, instead of from a hologram message or call, I will reserve my judgement on whether or not he's the best option to lead the CIS.

  In my opinion, I don't even really think Dooku is an actual Sith, though. I think he's more of a Dark Jedi playing along with Sidious than anything. He spent most of his life as a Jedi, plus he's a master of form two, Makashi, so he's much calmer than the average Jedi anyway. The only time I can even really remember him using Sith lightning was a single time, and that was against Savage Opress in the Clone Wars show after the Dathomirian killed the king of Toydaria and caused a massive incident.

  He also seems like much more of a diplomat, obviously taken from his days as a Jedi than a Sith warlord. Not to mention he's royalty as well, being the Count of Serenno. Meanwhile Palpatine/Sidious is merely hiding behind the 'benevolent grandfatherly old man' facade he's always using around Anakin, and in combat he's cackling like he knows the funniest joke in the galaxy, and he refuses to tell you.

  And as far as I can tell, this is the Canon Universe with some Legends stuff mixed in. So, from what I can remember of my dive into his Wookieepedia page, Canon Dooku is much better than Legends Dooku, plus easier to deal with, considering the Legends one was much worse, plus a humanocentrist, from what I can remember.

  I mean, I can understand a little bit of humanocentrism, at least, when it involves the Zygerrians, slavers in general, or -even worse- the Hutts. Speaking of the vile slugs, I've been drafting plans for an invasion into Hutt space ever since coming online. And as much as I would like to bring the full might of the CIS down on Nal Hutta and the rest of Hutt space right now, I can't. Not for the time being, at least.

  I'll need to wait until around the time that the Hutt Council convenes face to face. like how Maul and Savage did when they were starting their own criminal empire. First, I take all of their planets and sectors without them around, rolling through whatever pitiful defenses the Hutts can scrounge together, and establish planetary defenses that will blow them out of the sky when they return. That's as far as I've got right now, but freeing all the slaves and removing their chips is in that plan as well.

  It would be an absolute pleasure to rid the galaxy of the Hutts, including Jabba himself. Sure, it might be specifically targeting a whole species, but Hutts as a species are some of the most vile and disgusting aliens I have ever seen. The rest of the alien species I've come across in the Corusica galaxy are much better overall, and the entire galaxy will improve without them.

  Plus, there are even different races of humans here, which surprised me, and I'm not talking about different skin colors. I'm talking about humans from isolated planets in the outer rim that have been left alone for thousands of years, adapting and changing to their environments until they're still categorized as human, but there's something different about their physiology that's head-scratching for the average Coruscant doctor.

  "Everything ready?" I asked as I stepped into the ship, pulling myself from my thoughts in the process.

  "Green across the board, sir. We are ready for liftoff." The B1 pilot, who was the same droid that was with me on Geonosis, reported. "BX-99 is also here as well, to assist with command."

  Said commando droid saluted me when I turned around to see him at a command terminal, H1 saluting as well from where he was hovering around the Commando droid. When I turned back around, we had entered the atmosphere of Saleucami, and the C-99 had taken off and was beginning to leave the hangar.

  "Alright then, then let's get moving. We wouldn't want to be late to Grievous' rescue."

  With that, the engines dialed up and we rose from the floor. The pilot pushed the throttle, and the ship soared out of the Finest Hour, LAAT carriers following close behind.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  —

  7/28/7956 C.R.C

  Northern forest, Salucami: Four miles from nearest Confederate crash site

  GAR patrol: Aurek-Forn-Vev

  "Why are we out here again?"

  CT-7274, otherwise known to his brothers as Hotbox, sighed as one of his brothers asked the same question for the fourth time in as many minutes.

  He contemplated, once again, on whether or not he should walk to the other side of the barely-there trail and whack his brother over the head... again. Thankfully, another of his brothers, Boombox, did it for him, making the other clone yelp as the barrels of his Z-6 rotary blaster hit him in the back of his helmet, sending the man forward a few paces.

  "I swear they didn't leave you in the growth tube long enough, Chatterbox." Boombox said.

  "Hey, what can I say? I'm just trying to live up to my name!" Chatterbox retorted, briefly taking his helmet off and rubbing the back of his neck.

  "Since you weren't listening the first three times, I'm only gonna repeat it once more. And if you ask again, Boombox has permission to hit you harder that time. General Kenobi felt something with his weird magic force powers, and sent us out here to scout out the area." Hotbox exasperatingly explained.

  "And why did we have to bring the AT-TE then?" Chatterbox asked, gesturing back at the massive six-legged walker twenty-five feet behind them, slowly moving through the alien forest as its headlamps shone brightly through the low branches.

  "Because the Commander also saw a trio of ships take off somewhere around here, and sent us to figure out where they landed, along with the General's weird force thing." The AT-TE driver said. "They might be pirates, or they could be clanker ships for all we know."

  "Think Grievous went with them?"

  "That's also why we're here. Since our fleet scared off the Seppies, we had to do a full invasion to find the Clanker-in-Chief. Grievous doesn't want to be found, so we're stuck out here looking for the droid general with everyone else." Hotbox said.

  "Well this sucks! I'd rather be back in the barracks to be hone-AUGH!"

  "Chatterbox?! Respond!" Hotbox demanded as he whipped around, shining his headlamp at the downed trooper.

  "What the kriff is this!?" Chatterbox exclaimed as he got to his feet, shining his own light down at a very large indentation in the ground.

  "Driver, give us some light, will ya?" Hotbox asked.

  The AT-TE's headlights angled downward, bathing the ground around Chatterbox in light. The indentation was revealed to be a very large footprint in the ground. It was oval shaped, with a rectangular 'toe' on one end, disconnected from the main footprint. It was distinctly mechanical, that was for sure. But none of them had ever seen this type of footprint before or during the war, so they were instantly on alert.

  "Is that a walker print?" Boombox asked.

  "It can't be one of ours. AT-TEs have round footpads." Hotbox replied.

  "So what, it's a Seppie walker then?" Chatterbox queried.

  "No, the Separatists don't have any walkers that can make these footprints. At least… I don't think there are any."

  "So, we're dealing with either some farmer's cobbled together farming tool, or the Seppies have got themselves some new toys for us to break." Boombox said. "I hope it's the clankers, my trigger finger's getting itchy."

  "If the Separatists do actually have some new tech they're deploying on this planet, we need to get in contact with the Generals and let them know."

  "Yeah… we should probably report this. Who knows what could be out here-"

  "Wait a sec." Hotbox suddenly said, motioning for everyone to freeze, including the walker behind them. "...Something seems off."

  The three clones shone their lights around the dark forest they were in, and the AT-TE's flood lights switched on, bathing the area around it in light.

  "What is it?" Boombox asked after a few moments.

  "Notice how all the animals have stopped making noise?" Hotbox asked in return.

  Boombox listened for the moment, then turned to look at his superior.

  "I don't hear anything. Is that bad?" He asked.

  "It is. Keep your eyes open. I think something's stalking us."

  Before Boombox could respond, a quartet of missiles streaked through the air, and slammed into the cockpit of the AT-TE.

  The cockpit exploded with so much force that the whole walker was lifted off its front legs for a moment, its right one falling off completely. The AT-TE slammed into the ground, tilted to the side with the missing leg, making the Mass Driver atop it forcibly rotate to the right. After half a moment where they were all frozen in shock, Hotbox and his brothers ran to the back of the AT-TE and wrenched the door open.

  "Thank the force you guys are out there, the door was sealed shut!" One of the clones said as he limped out.

  "What the kriff was that!?" Chatterbox exclaimed, aiming his blaster out into the general area of darkness where the missiles came from.

  "Get to the other side of the AT-TE, we'll retreat away from where the missiles came from." Hotbox ordered, making the clones start to move away from the downed walker.

  The fifteen clone troopers started marching into the dark forest, away from the slowly burning wreckage of their AT-TE. The bright flames creeped into the sky, illuminating the forest around them in harsh shadows, making the hairs on the backs of their necks stick up. Somehow, the comms had also gone down, because when Hotbox tried to radio for help, he received only static in return. Everyone was tense, and the silence was finally broken a few moments later once they had gotten far enough from the downed AT-TE.

  "Hotbox, what about the Seppies?" Chatterbox asked. "They'll be coming for us now that we have no tank to protect us."

  "Just keep moving. Hopefully we'll get away before they get here." Hotbox replied, lightly shoving the other clone forward to keep him moving.

  Just then, a creaking metallic sound made all of them stop in their tracks. The eerie noise echoed around them, almost seeming to come from everywhere. Goosebumps pricked their skin, and everyone's heads went on a swivel as they looked all around them.

  "What. Is. That?" Boombox muttered, hefting his rotary blaster and scanning the treeline.

  "Something's out there. It's coming for us." Chatterbox murmured, backing away from the main group until he was about a dozen or so feet away from the group.

  "What are you doing, Chatter?" Hotbox asked.

  "I need a moment, ok? We're being stalked by some new Separatists walker that leaves a slightly bigger footprint than an AT-TE, and it hasn't made a single noise besides that creaking sound! It's gonna come for us! I know it is! We need to get back to base and bring back some bigger blasters! We need to-"

  The metallic creaking noise echoed out again, making everyone momentarily freeze. In a fraction of a second, the sound of a walker footpad hitting the forest floor rang out, and Chatterbox was replaced by a massive metal leg. Blood and plastoid rimmed the metal foot in a macabre display, the foot having the exact same oval shape with the disconnected rectangular 'toe' that they had seen not even five minutes earlier.

  Something dripped down and covered one of his vision slits, and when Hotbox raised a shaking hand and wiped whatever it was off of his helmet, his already racing heart almost skipped a beat.

  It was blood.

  All the clones raised their weapons and flashlights, revealing the form of a massive bipedal walker. A creaking, warbling mechanical noise emanated from the machine as it stared down at them. Two red lights emanated from the machine's 'eyes', sending chills up Hotbox's spine when he could feel it focusing on him. Small lines of geometric blue lights ran up its legs and across its body, almost like some paint job a rich Coruscanti would put on their speeder, or war paint on some primitive's face.

  He could see the missile launcher on its side, four missiles missing from their chambers, and a dual-blaster mount on the other side, both covered with shielding on the weapon's sides to protect them from enemy fire.

  All of that happened in just five seconds, and then Hotbox finally snapped out of his shocked state and started shouting.

  "OPEN FIRE!" Hotbox bellowed, firing his blaster rifle at the walker as he backpedaled away from it.

  The massive machine let out a mechanical warble, and fired its chin cannons, vaporizing one clone, and sending another head over heels into a tree, minus an arm and a leg. As the clones fired upon the walker, a mechanical roar reverberated from behind them as they quickly backed away from it, and some of them quickly turned around to see what it was.

  It was another one of the strange Separatist walkers quickly moving towards them with malicious intent, as it broke through the low hanging branches with ease. It fired a set of grenades from one of its cheek weapons, sending fire and shrapnel across the forest, separating Hotbox and Boombox from the main group. The other clones fired with everything they had, but the armor on the walkers was too thick for infantry weapons to penetrate, and to make matters worse, all their heavy weapons were in the AT-TE, which was still steadily burning in the distance.

  Hotbox ran as hard as he could, only stumbling when he saw Boombox stop to fire a spray of bolts at one of the approaching machines.

  "Boombox!" Hotbox yelled, seeing the other walker coming up behind him.

  The walker had raised one leg up higher than the other, and tried to stomp down on Boombox, but the clone saw it, and rolled away.

  "YOU WON'T GET ME THAT EASY YOU KRIFFING CLANKERS!" Boombox roared as he sprayed bolts at the offending walker.

  The sound of one of the walker's blaster cannons rang out into the night, followed by a brief flash of blaster bolt red lighting up Boombox's silhouette. When the dirt settled, Boombox was gone, only the warped and half missing form of his rotary blaster remaining. Hotbox staggered back, hand clamped over his heart as he watched it all happen.

  "Boombox! NO!" Hotbox screamed, horrified that one of his brothers had just… ceased to exist like that.

  He tried to turn and run, but one of the walkers fired at him, sending him flying into a tree, dazing him. After a few moments, Hotbox groaned as he set up against the tree and pulled his helmet off. He sat there for a moment and tried to control his breathing and his spinning vision. Quieter and quieter, he heard the heavy thuds of the walkers moving away, and winced at every scream his brothers let out as they were cut down by the relentless machines.

  Hotbox raised up a shaky hand and slid it down the side of his face. When he pulled it back, the palm of his glove was slick with blood. With a groan, he got unsteadily to his feet and looked out into the forest. It was completely silent. No blaster shots, no thuds of the walker's feet, and more worryingly, no sounds of his brothers. A horrible feeling reared up in his gut, forcing its way to the front of his mind.

  'Am I the only survivor?' He thought as he stumbled away from the weird metal tree with glowing spots on it.

  "At least they're far enough away from me that I can escape." He whispered to himself as he picked up his helmet, which had a large crack running up the side that slammed into the metal tree.

  Then he froze for a moment.

  "Wait… metal tree?" He asked out loud.

  Then he heard the same metallic creaking noise, and spun around to see a metallic foot coming at him, a fence cutting blade extended out and pointed right at him. His last breath was nothing but a wordless shriek as the blade penetrated straight through his plastoid, body glove, skin, muscle, ribcage, and finally through his heart in less than a second.

  –

  Junglefowl 01 readjusted his stance after he used his fence cutter to skewer the human that had slammed into his leg.

  "Hmm. I didn't know organics leaked that much." 01 muttered in mild curiosity as he shook his foot lightly, sending the body flopping to the ground where a pool of blood began to form around it.

  The Junglefowl walker set his foot down and moved back a couple steps as he heard the approaching thuds of his two fellow units.

  "01, we've returned." A feminine mechanical voice greeted.

  "02, 03. Have you dealt with the clone soldiers that tried to escape?" 01 asked as 02 and 03 stomped into the small clearing, able to tell them apart thanks to the individual running lights that all Junglefowl had on their bodies and legs, and their IFF codes.

  "The clones have been dealt with, not a single one will be reporting back to their officers about our appearance." 03 reported, adjusting his stance to stand lower as he looked down at the clone body in the clearing. "What did you do to this one, 01?"

  "I speared that one with one of my fence cutters after he slammed into my leg."

  "Weird how he got so close to you for you to be able to do that in the first place. Wait. 03, what happened to the bottom of your foot? Why is it covered in blood?" 02 asked, shining her flood light down at one of 03's footpads, which was practically soaked in blood.

  "Ah. That." 03's running lights dimmed a bit and he shuffled on his haunches. "I might have stepped on one or more of the clones in the fight. I know I stomped on at least one right at the beginning after I blew up that AT-TE to get them to stand still long enough to get them all on my scanners. I think I'll need to dunk my feet into a pond a few times, so I don't make the Head Engineer vomit when she checks us over after this."

  "Gross, mech. I know we can step on the human clone soldiers, because, you know, we're a lot bigger than them, but it doesn't mean we should step on them. At least, not all the time." 01 lightly scolded, shifting his body to one side and gesturing with his chin blaster. "That sort of thing should be done sparingly, so don't be doing that a lot during combat. What if you step on one and something explodes?"

  "I know, slightly dangerous because of the thermal detonators they carry, but mech, but they called our smaller troops clankers." 03 growled, a menacing noise grating out from his vocoder as he shook his body slightly. "They may be slave-soldiers to the Republic, but that gives them no right to call us that. It's not like we call them meatbags like the HK units do. We at least call them enemy combatants."

  "Okay you have a point, the HK units are an acquired taste for sure. But keep in mind they are from a much different time, programming wise from us, at least. Now come on, we have two more patrols to take down before we're supposed to regroup with the main force to defend General Grievous."

  "Yes, sir."

  The trio of Junglefowl activated their adaptive camouflage, their normally gray bodies practically melting into the shadows while the running lights along their bodies and legs flickered off. Their footsteps, normally a loud thump, were muffled, becoming quiet enough that you could barely hear them from more than fifteen feet away.

  Quietly, they then left the clearing, leaving nothing but dead clones and the burning wreck of an AT-TE in their wake.