Mako accessed the processor hatch.  The hatch was really there for access to the computer system for maintenance, but it allowed enough access to the different systems to gain control to some major systems with minimal security.

Mako quickly rewired the box into his datapad, which he had midified only slightly with basic programs.  If they got into serious trouble, Mako did not have the resources here to crack a shut down system.

He dabbled in the base schematics and uploaded the new specs.  Then me marked on the specs where Gabriels den was.  He was a busy man, so his office, personal armory, and quarters, as well as his guard quarters were all in a clump.  Not strategically smart, considering gabriel was the strategic advisor, but who would infiltrate a base?  Especially one that had obviously fed bad intel to the outside world through its finches.

Mako sent the new specs to the rest of his squad and Eclipse through the datapads.  He looked briefly through the system files and transmitted the frequency of the enemies' coms to his squad. 

"That is the enemy frequency.  Keep silent on that one." he warned.

He then fumbled through the systems to kill all of the power.  The building hummed into midnight.  Background noises stoped, and the building was quiet except for faint footsteps.


"Tanus.  Permission to block the enemies route behind us."  Mako asked.

"Any other ways out?" Tanus asked.

We have an escape but it is on the far side." Mako replied

"Go ahead."


Mako went behind the great mass of Orobos and set a charge on the corridor wall. 

"When I set this, we have to move.  This is going to cave in the hallway so that they can't follow us.  We have an out on the other side of Gabriels quarters, but we will have to make it through.  No other way." Mako told the Whiphid.

Orobos nodded and gripped his Vibro-Axe tighter in his grasp.

Mako set the charge for 40 seconds and motioned to Orobos to move out.

The pair went down the hallway at a good clip.

When they were almost out of range when he heard Riq's garbled order for DD's extraction.  Mako grimaced as he heard the order, there was no way out if the charge blew.

Mako turned to kill the charge. 

"This is stupid" kept flashing over and over in his mind.

He got to the charge with about fifteen seconds left on it.

"This is srtupid.  This is stupid.  This is stupid."  It was a mantra now.

He clipped the wire to kill the bomb.

It stopped its' deadly countdown and Mako breathed a sigh of relief as he removed the charge.

As Mako pulled the charge from the wall, he looked up to sudden motion ahead. 

A group of soldiers were rounding the corner.  Mako went for his blaster as he saw the troopers aiming at him, then he saw the heavy axe fly through the air over his head, followed closely by shots from behind him.

Several of the soldiers fell ahead of Mako.  Orobos had just preserved Mako's life.  Mako pulled a flash bang and tossed it into the path of the soldiers.  It looked like only one enemy was wearing low light gear, and the rest were following him, somehow keeping up.

In the pitch black, Mako watched the charge ignite ahead of him.  The Imperial soldiers helmets were made to protect against sudden flashes, but the enemy soldiers' eyes must be dialated heavily to allow as much light in as possible.

At the instant after the charge went off, Mako watched the entire group of men suddenly halt in mid-path, guns falling and sliding on the ground ahead of them, and clutch at their eyes in pain. 

The man with the low light gear fell, grabbing at his face, blood running out from beneath the mask. 

Mako was enraged that the mission had gone so sour.  He had blown the lock on the door quietly, and DD went in smoothly.  All three guard killings had been made silently.  He had managed to sabotage the lights and the vehicles, and with Eclipse getting the security systems there should have been no way for the enemy to know that they had been penetrated, yet somehow they did.

Mako was blind with his rage.  He knew that their target, Gabriel, was a key player in his childhood sale into mob life.  Every scar that he had acquired since that sale would be paid back to someone, and it all started with this link to his past.

Mako stood and walked upright into the pool of blinded mice squirming on the floor.  As he walked he drew his vibro-knuckler from his belt and his DC-15s blaster pistol.  He walked into the sad group and decided to make their last few moments hell. 

None of them were armed.  The sudden power of the sun being ignited in the dead blackness of a pitch black corridor made their eyes burn like molten sand had been packed in them tightly.  All weopons were secondary to the pain that they felt now.

Mako randomly fired into the clump of soldiers.  He wanted to take his frustration out on the nearest target.  He thought about his first squad mission,

The misison went sour.  He fired a few times.

Knees and hands exploded.  People screamed.

He was now two steps behind his past again, instead of one step ahead.

He fired again.  Legs and arms separated at the site of point blank impact.

Gabriel was now onto the fact taht he was being sought after.

Mako fired again, this time ending a few of the pitiful cries.

Chests, heads, and necks burst with new openings. Breathing stopped. Cries died down or turned into sucking gasps. 

Mako holstered his pistol and pulled his bayonet.

He walked loosely through the agonized troops and stabbed at them angrily in short, jutting jerks of his rifle.

Scream stifled.  His rage was coming to a head.  He walked rapidly over to the man with the low light gear, ripping it from his head.  He saw the white and inflamed eyes of the man as he stared blankly above him, crying at the pain and the wonder of who had him so roughly by the hair.  Blood ran down from his eyes.

Mako started to pound him in the face repeatedly with the Vibro-Knucklers in place on his hand.

The man's face shredded a bit more each time as Mako beat him again and again.

The knuckle-blade hummed softly on Mako's hand, something he barely noticed as he worked the last of his sudden rage out upon the mans broken features.

Mako looked to see what he had done, dropped the man, and kicked his still shallowly breathing frame as hard as he could muster, one last time.

As Mako started to breathe again, he noticed the axe still planted in one mans severed chest.  He suddenly remembered Orobos and hoped that somehow the Whiphid had not seen this display.

He extracted the heavy axe, too concerned about seeing Orobos standing there to actually check the fact.  Trying to ever prolong the inevitable moment when there would be no doubt that Orobos had seen.

Mako walked toward where he knew that his big squad mate was standing, with his head down so as not to see the look on his face.

When Mako finally looked up, he saw the Whiphid standing there, a strange look on his face.  It was as if Orobos had never seen an outright display of rage before from a human.  Never witnessed outright murder.

Mako hoped that he would keep silent at his new knowledge.  Mako was a killer, but he tried to keep it in check.

He had not murdered unprovoked since he started his new life in the VE.  He had never murdered unprovoked, in cold blood, in front of someone who didn't know what was coming.

Mako knew that this particular instance was not "cold blooded," as he was in a fit of rage, but it was just as undeserved.

Mako realized as he handed the axe to his friend, that he had not even finished the job. The man with pulp for a face was still breathing, though in shock, and a few of the others were in their last throws as well.

Mako wanted to end the misery for them quickly, but was afraid to further the situation in front of his squadmate.

"Are you going to leave them like that?"  Orobos asked awkwardly.  "My people are hunters.  We don't normally maim, we only kill for a purpose." he said.

Mako could not read his friends face, but he knew what Orobos wanted from him.

Mako walked back into the pool of blood that he had caused, and planted a blaster bolt in the head of anyone still breathing.

He turned to look at Orobos again, who was moving on his way past Mako to the extraction point silently.

Mako was standing there as the whiphid moved past him, and saw the forward postion of DD, Tanus and Gates, return to come back the way they had come.  When Gates rounded the corner Mako looked up at him pausingly.  Gates stood there for a moment, then Mako turned to leave.

He knew that Tanus and Gates could not help but see what had happened, but he would leave the explanation to their own imaginations, as the truth was surely more gruesome than anything they could reason.

Mako heard Alater screaming through the Com...Saw Tanus running ahead now, responding to Alater's distressed tone.

Tanus moved and the 'Goons followed suit.

Ahead, Tanus slung a door open, ready for action, and saw Alater there, bloody blades in hand.

Mako got the hint.  They were in deeper than he thought, and needed an extraction team.  Hopefully the stories of the battle wouldn't include the two inch pool of blood that the squad had to run through on the way out.

Mako moved toward extraction, still boiling a bit inside at the fracture of their mission, and decided that the target, Gabriel, would be hit soon enough....one way or the other.

Mako, now less dizzy with rage, saw Orobos save his tail for the second time in a row, but this time it may have cost the great whiphid some fingers. 

Mako knew that he owed Orobos an explanation, and possibly the others.  For now Mako did his best to make sure they all stayed alive to recieve that explanation.

Mako fired bursts of fire at the enemies.  Some of these shots landed, others missed by a mile.

A few soldiers dropped, but for every one that fell three more seemed to crop up from nowhere.

Mako watched as Alater went seemingly berserk on the enemy.  His swords seeming to be cutting through cotton candy instead of live flesh.  Arms gell, heads separated, blood ran, and Alater seemed to smile eerily in the moonlight.

Mako decided that this highly trained Barabos was right to be quiet, as anyone who could obliterate a force as Alater had, with just blades to boot, was sure to have earned their respect. 

Mako never gave anyone too much respect until they earned it.

He decided that this warrior had earned it.

Mako would send a quiet note later that simply said "thanks" to Alater's datapad, and hopefully the seasoned warrior would understand that he wanted to give him his well earned peace through distance.

Mako fired into the swarm repeatedly.  DD was in it deeper than he had realized. 

No wonder the mission was compromised.

Gates, unlike almost everyone else, was sticking with his gun. He was crouched in the fork of a tree, blasting anyone coming close with semi-automatic precision. He saw his squadmates grappling with swords, knives, axes, fists, etc. He turned to full auto and blasted a couple of humans charging at him.

"When the hell are we going to get extracted?!" he yelled.

"Shut up and keep firing!" someone said. Gates kept shooting, trying to prevent his squadmates from being surrounded.

"Extraction team to Eclipse and Dark Dragoons squads." a voice suddenly came over their comlinks. "Extraction zone is too hot! Repeat, extraction zone is too hot!"

"Damn!" someone cursed. "We're in deep here!"

"Roger. We'll drop off our E-web to back you up."

A shuttle flew past, and a bundle dropped from its rear compartment. Gates abandoned his position, running to the dropped heavy weapons. He quickly cleared an area, and began to set it up. Halfway through, his radar showed contacts, and he whipped out his pistol to kill them. Crisis averted, he finished setting up the gun and cold-started the reactor.

As it finished warming up, he set the safety to 'off,' and opened fire.

Alater smiled with grim determination as he ripped Long Fang from the chest of another dead enemy. They were starting to come in an unending swarm, their numbers faultering only for a few minutes before a second wave followed suit with increased vigor. Doc had called for the retreat, and the Dark Dragoons had been pulled out of the base with mild discontent and a large amount of killing involved. If there was any green left in these troops it was about to be torn from them by the night.

Alater spun as he twisted the blade out, catching yet another enemy in the throat, time seeming to stop as he did and then accelerate, as if to catch up, when the second man came charging at him. He had no choice, and didn't flinch when the vibrobayonet peirced his gut. With a roar of fury the Krsst slammed both shoulders into the enemy and forced him down. His knee rose and caught the jaw of the now dead with a sickening crack that served only to heighten his sense of pleasure in the Hunt. Doc's voice brought him to attention.

"That's enough. Dragoons, retreat back towards the Hut, Beta you go with. Alpha will follow suit, and Gamma will cover our rear. Let's move!" He called, his voice mildly ragged. A second later his voice came over again, this time on a private line to Alater.

"I don't want a single one of them left alive. Consider that an order." He said, his voice no longer the thin line of strength he had shown before, but a grim determination to seek retribution for his fallen comrad.

Alater backed up with Black and Wicket, their cover fire letting him move about the few squads that had managed to escape before they had shut off the door. Thier numbers were much greater than Gamma's, but they were undertrained, underarmed, and more importantly unprepared for the fury of those with little to lose.

Wicket and Black soon were forced to resort to martial meens of combat, Black moving almost like a dancer amongst his enemies as his hands and feet struck like lightning bolts. Wicket's small size and dexterity proved the demise of quite a few unaware enemies. Alater's fury was the deciding factor. The path of squads that blocked them from the hut soon began to fall like flies. Their communications had been cut off, darkness had fallen, and Alater's form of darkness against the bleak night would call for many a tail if any were to survive. None did. Long Fang ripped through one, two, three enemies in rapid succesion, clawed blade shredding more than cutting and leaving screams through the night. His brute strength overwhelmed entire groups,  regular melee weapons proving no use, vibroweapon avoided or the wounds were ignored.  When Doc's call for Gamma to check in, Alater could barely bring himself to put Long Fang down,  the Krsst had nearly taken control.

"Gamma, report your location. We've reached EZ One, and we're going to have to hold up here for the next few hours until help arives. Get here ASAP, I want you here before dawn." Doc said, his voice a little stronger than before, obviously carring for Rike.

When Gamma finally trotted into the EZ,  the site was mixed of despair and paranoid jumpyness. A few had managed to pass out on the ground or against the hutt, the rest sat with their guns in their laps, expecting an attack from every corner and shadow. Alater sighed as he moved away from Wicket to go into the hutt, where he knew Doc was caring for Rike.

The hut was a site most shouldn't see. Blood, organs, tubes, and a massive stench of death filled the room. Rike, on the table in the center of the room was looking no better than when he had come in contact with that fateful grenade. The large shrapnel peices had been removed, and bacta patches applied, but despite these efforts his internal organs were barely even attached. Doc's mind had apparently been twisted at one point or another, because he had yet to attempt surgery. Maybe the logical part of his brain was telling him how futile it was, his vitals dropping every minute. Alater put a clawed hand on Doc's shoulder, turning him away from the body.

"Let him go Death Leader. Part of your job is to heal and save, however wrong that may be, but the best you can do for him now is let him go to the Beyond." Alater said, changing between Basic and Barabese.

"No! I won't! He's my trooper, I won't lose another! Never!" Doc half screamed, tears running down his face as he pounded a fist against Alater's chest, the force of the blow  taking him by suprise as he staggered a bit. Alater had seen men before break down, but Doc recovered almost instantly, his compsure returining like a breath of new air had entered his lungs.

"You  know what has to be done. If you can't do it, I will." Alater said, beams of the new day begining to stream into the window. Doc took one last look at Rike before turning and walking out of the hut, stopping only to turn around and mutter, "Do it." before leaving. Alater stepped towards Rike, a slight frown on his face as he placed his massive hands on both sides of Rike's head, and with two quick twists snapped his neck both ways, insuring a quick painless death that would not look bad for any funeral service that was provided. He had died in the line of duty, the ultimant honor for a soldier, a warrior, a stormtrooper. Alater took a look at his wounds, the slight limp he had, but decided to go join Doc and listen to whatever it was he was bound to have to say.

Orobos sat in the hut watching as Doc left the hut. He had seen what humans were capable of and how much they seemed to care for each other. It shocked him for some reason how alike they were deep down. They may have cultural differences but they were the same underneath it all. His respect for his squad-mates and fellow stormtroopers of Eclipse had rising considerably in the last few hours.

He leaned forward. He took a spoonful of the grey slop Mako had heated up for him. He hadn't realised how hungry he had been. The rations tasted better then ever, which was of nothing identifiable. Once he had finished he felt better if not a little sick.

Luckily he had only lost his E-11 if not one of his most important weapons he still had his Heavy Blaster and sufficient ammunition to keep him going for at least a week, unless they encountered another militia army like the one they just faced.

He made sure his vibro-axe was in reach and his rifle, which was reloaded with the safety on. He sat back on the chair the feeling of uselessness sinking in once again like it had during the combat but it wasn't as intense.

He looked at the trooper on the table knowing that could've easily been him. Orobos had got off extremely lucky. If the grenade had been at a different angle or if he had hesitated another second he could be on the table right now.

He shook the horrible thought from his mind and decided to focus on the present. He sat back in the wooden chair his armour still on. He had taken his helmet off to eat and decided to leave it off.

He looked at the other members of Eclipse each seemed to be thinking the same thing trying not to look at the body on the table. Even Wicket was not smiling and sat in the corner by himself.For the third time Orobos wondered how a cheerful little soul like his could've made it to become a Stormtrooper. He had seen in the fight today that Wicket was just as able as killing a man without a second thought as the rest of them were.

He started to drift off his chin continuous bumping of his breastplate as he tried to stay awake. He slumped slightly in his chair. Blackness enveloping him.

He was surrounded by snow. The outline of a large creature running towards him. He could hardly make it out through the blizzard around them.........