Hyperspace Anomaly

Dust and Echoes

"That's odd." Cortana says intrigued. "Count Dooku called the Commander of this facility. Apparently the Commander denied his help. But why? He knows how important the information is to anyone who holds it and yet he's not accepting Dooku's offer."

"Let's keep an ear out for any other calls from any of them." Chief says.

Everyone walked through the caves. The threat of a surprise attack was on the clones' minds constantly. They continued on as Jedi Master Ahsoka and Anakin kept any threat far away from them. It didn't help that Tarkin was starting to enjoy looking at what they have to go through to escape the planet. "I am beginning to admire the design of this fortress." The Admiral said. "It's rather formidable to evade."

Ahsoka walked next to him and asked with slight concern, "How can you admire such a horrible place?"

Tarkin with his condensing attitude explained, "You reveal your shortsightedness. This ordeal only demonstrates how effective facilities like the Citadel are. Pity it ended up in Separatist hands and not ours."

Ahsoka stood there for a moment curious about the Admiral and everything that went through his head.

Chief walked next to her hearing Cortana add, "You should have seen some of ONI's facilities. Without even looking at the classified ones or the ones even I can't get into, they have a few that make this prison look like child's play."

Chief remembered the few that he learned about. How a few of them can break elite's resolve or make a brute cower. To him, he slightly shivered.

As they continued, Anakin stayed back to watch their flanks while Ahsoka lead everyone down the cave systems. The Spartan was behind her while Rex and Tarkin were behind him. Tarkin felt like questioning more around him saying, "I am concerned that the Jedi have elected this child to lead the group."

Rex quickly defender her saying, "I've served with her many times, and I trust her, Captain."

"She definitely is a surprisingly good leader." Cortana says looking over some notes she had. "Unlike how you were Chief, she was leading armies when she was a preteen. Which considering how these clones are also teens, they aren't as different as the Spartan II or III."

The soldier didn't know how to feel about that bit of knowledge. It felt wrong but he's been told something like this was necessary for humanity to survive. Perhaps that's what the Republic felt as well for the Clones. His thoughts were cutoff when he was mentioned by Tarkin, "What about him? From what I've read he's possibly far more experienced then her or really any of you."

"Negative. General Skywalker gave her the order to lead. Not for me to lead." Chief said coldly.

"And if he told you to lead?"

"Then I would no questions asked."

Tarkin smirked. "So you follow orders to the very letter. We could use more soldiers like you. And if even half of the reports about you are true, then maybe we should replace the clones with you."

Before anyone could rebuttal the Admiral, Ahsoka made a very audible, "Uh oh." Everyone turned the corner to see it was a dead-end.

"Hm." Cortana said looking at the old maps. "There's a path just on the otherside of this wall which leads to the tunnel that then goes to the extraction point."

"So we have to get through the wall." Chief says grabbing some explosives from his pack and going to the wall.
As he started to attach the explosives on the wall, blaster fire was heard. He looked back to see driods incoming with the clones returning fire. He rolled to cover before grabbing his rifle and returning fire. Then Anakin showed up joining up with everyone.