Crawler sat with her feet up on the bomber’s control panel, her gloved hands laced behind her head. Bob, his smooth and calculated hands on the flight controls, sat and hummed to the music on the ship’s CD player.
Her eyes were closed as she worked on regaining her center after the beating she had received at the hands of Rouddim. She would meet him again, that she knew. And on that day…
“Uh oh…”
Crawler opened a single eye. “What ‘oh’?”
Bob stared at the readouts on the sensors. “I think we were just pinged.”
“Pinged?” She quickly sat up and leaned over the sensor. Her fingers played over the controls as she studied the stream of data that flew across the screen.
“What is it, Mistress?” Bob asked. He still flew the bomber, both hands on the steering controls and he occasionally looked over his shoulder out the viewport before focusing back on Crawler.
Her face got hard as reality hit her. “Clawcraft.”
“Chiss?” Bob exclaimed. “Here?”
“Looks so, and seems like one is going to come and play tag.”
“But how did they find out -“
“I don’t know!” Crawler stated. She quickly buckled into her crash webbing and then grabbed the flight controls. “Transfer the flight controls to me, Bob.”
“You’re going to fight it?!”
Crawler turned to look at the droid. “Would you rather I let it shoot us down?”
“Sorry I asked,” Bob retorted. He pressed a few buttons and sat back. “All yours, Mistress.”
But Crawler didn’t hear him. She had pulled out a headset from a storage box and the soundtrack that now played in her ears died out any of the droid’s words. With the music as her focus, she guided her bomber in a graceful arc that brought her back to face the clawcraft.
The clawcraft, having not expected the bomber to turn hostile, sent a set of misguided laser blasts at her. Crawler easily avoided the blasts by swinging her ship from left to right. Her finger hovered over her own trigger button.
<Enemy or ally I do not know, but I can’t afford to blow my cover. Please forgive me and become one with the beauty of the Force>, Crawler muttered in a strange language as she pressed the trigger. Red laser bolts shot out and peppered along the sleek silver clawcraft.
The Chiss pilot knew now that Crawler wasn’t kidding. With knowledge that starfighter battles are fought better in the vacuum of space, the clawcraft pilot aimed for the darkening skies above.
“Good, it’s leaving,” Bob said, then clutched the arms of his flightchair as Crawler abruptly pulled the bomber into a steep ascent to follow.
“We can’t let it escape and inform its friends about us.”
“But the Luna Base! Your cover!”
Crawler reached over and flipped a switch up, then hit the button under it. “They won’t see us now.”
Bob shook his head. “Don’t you think you’re taking this a wee bit too far?”
Crawler kept her eyes on the clawcraft as the sky around them grew to a star speckled black. “Why do you think that?” she asked.
“Maybe the fact that you got your butt whooped and you’re looking for a little reVENGE!” Bob screamed the last word as the ship lurched to the side to avoid laser fire.
“I am not!” Crawler replied. She lined the clawcraft up for another pass.
“You are too! You built me to know you, and that’s how I know it!”
Crawler threw an angry look at the way-too-human droid and scowled. She took another shot at the clawcraft and hit one of its engines. With the silver craft now dead in space, she pulled the controls back around and aimed for the planet below.
Once her trajectory was set, Crawler pulled off her headset and tossed it back in its holder. She then looked at Bob, who had a big grin on his face.
“I knew you wouldn’t have killed a Chiss,” he said confidently. “You’re a warrior, but still have your loyalties.”
“You’re wrong there, Bob. I would have. My cover and life come over any loyalties I might have with the Chiss.”
Bob shook his head. “Not a chance. You can’t fool me, Mistress. I know you too well.”“Then maybe it’s time I arrange for a memory wipe.”
Bob looked at Crawler in horror. “Nah-uh.”
“Ya-huh.”
The droid saw the mischief behind the eyes of his maker and smiled. “Nah-uh,” he continued.
“Ya-huh.”
“No you won’t. You love me too much.”
Crawler broke her steadiness and laughed. “Of course I wouldn’t do that. Though sometimes I wonder if I put too much Corellian into your personality.”
“What, you’d rather me be like Threepio?”
Crawler made no comment. Instead, her eyes watched the readout with interest. Finally, she turned the bomber around without warning and flew back towards where they had left the clawcraft.
“Mistress?”
“It wasn’t damaged, Bob. Look.”
Bob looked out the viewport and squinted, then noticed that the clawcraft was indeed fleeing in the opposite direction. “And we’re going after it again. Why do I sense major déjà vu?
“I just wanna see where he’s going.”
“That’s what they all say.”
Crawler gave Bob another angry glare, then continued to follow the clawcraft. A few moments later, they zoomed along a canyon, having to bank left and right to avoid the canyon walls. Bob held onto his seat. “You know, this isn’t the death star trench!”
“I know!” Crawler said. “This is much more fun!”
“Humans,” the droid muttered. He then squealed as the bomber turned onto its side to get through a narrow chasm. “Where did you learn to fly like this?!”
“My dad,” she said, her eyes on her target. The canyon walls opened up to reveal a large area. A durasteel base was along the wall, a few troopers walking around the parimiter. “That doesn’t look good…”
Alarms sounded instantly as the base’s turbolaser locked onto the bomber. Crawler pulled up as red streaks of laser flashed beneath her. “I don’t like it when things shoot at me…” she muttered under her breath as she turned around to try and aim at the lasers.
The lasers fired again, and she twisted around to lift her wing just above the airspace the lasers tore through. She lined up a good shot, then fired her own red lines of death at them.
Suddenly there was a big explosion, complete with blue lightning bolts that flew straight up through the base, the destructive wave nothing in comparison to the explosion of the turbolaser. Slabs of canyon wall and durasteel exploded in all directions, and Crawler had to do some quick maneuvers and some fancy flying to avoid getting hit by any of it. She saw the clawcraft also work to avoid the shrapnel, but a steel beam penetrated the cockpit and the craft went down in a ball of flame.
“What was that?” Bob asked as he ran his fingers over the control panels in a quick status report. The bomber had taken a few minor hits, but nothing more than scraps and dents. They had luckily been far enough away because of the turbolaser.
“Don’t know, but I plan on finding out.” Crawler approached the area and set the bomber down a few feet away from the collapsed ruins of the base. “Come on, Bob. Let’s go look for survivors.”
Human and droid both exited the bomber and walked carefully towards the rubble pile. Crawler had left her rifle on the bomber, opting instead for her holdout and vibroblade if she got into trouble. They walked silently, hoping to hear any signs of life. Bob let his eyes perform a search pattern over the rubble, his sensors scanned to detect any life signs below.
“Wait!” Bob shouted at one instance. Crawler stopped and walked back to where the droid was kneeling. “I’m getting two life forms in this quadrant. One directly below me, and one a few feet to the west.”
“Let’s start here then and work quickly.” Crawler reached into the pile with her metallic, and stronger, left hand and started to dig while Bob, using his droid strength, lifted bigger and heavier parts of rubble.
After a few minutes of hard labor, they found their first body. Crawler sat back and growled. “Sithspit. It’s the clone.”
Bob looked at Crawler and raised an eyebrow. “Clone?”
She stood and wiped the dirt and dust from her hands. “Yeah. Davin Porsek. Cursed one. Somehow the Imperials had made a clone of Thrawn and he was able to procreate. This is his sithspawn. The Chiss don’t take well to clones of their kind, and especially their kin.”
“There’s still another body. We’ll just leave him here.”
“If he has a twin sister, I’m going to just bomb this place.” Crawler growled and followed Bob to the next spot. They once again dug in silence, until they came across the arm of another body. A few precious scoops later and the face was revealed. Crawler sat back onto the rubble, her face hard.
“Let me guess. You know this one too?”
Crawler just looked at Bob. “Grab him and bring him to the ship. We’ll drop him off at a hospital in Paris on our way back.”
“You sure?”
Crawler nodded and walked back to the bomber. She quickly flattened out Bob’s flightchair and lowered the bed down onto it. By the time Bob returned with the injured human over his shoulder, Crawler had the bed ready and restraints in position. They laid the body down and quickly secured him with the flight restraints. Bob then grabbed the first aid kit and went to work on applying bacta patches to the injuries.
“Hold on, Bob. We’re airborne.”
Brad didn't know where he was. The vibrations from under him let him know he was on a ship. But what kind of ship, and where it was going, was something his fogged brain didn't want to compute.
A cold hand touched his face, followed by the sting of an antiseptic. Brad winced at the medical sting, then tried to open his eyes. Only one would obey him, and his right eye opened into a slit.
The view was blurred, and blackness tainted the edges of his vision, threatening to send him back into unconsciousness. A human male with black hair, hazel eyes and unusually cold hands placed a bacta patch on a cut above his eye. He noticed that Brad was looking at him and smiled.
"Mistress, our patient is awake."
The pilot of the ship, Brad was convinced he had never seen one modified like this before, turned to look at him. Long black hair framed a female face, with two nasty scars that ran along both cheeks. Something inside him told him that this woman was important, but at that moment, the blackness filled his eyes and he was lost back into it.
Bob sighed. "Well, he was awake."
Crawler shrugged. "Let's just get him back to Paris and leave him on some doorstep. We're going to be late as it is."
"Yes Mistress."
With the Terran slung over her shoulder, Crawler waved the TIE Bomber, with Bob at the steering column, away. The ship took off into the sky; its cloaking device made the ship invisible before it passed the roofs of the abandoned lot.
"Well, my friend, you're a heavy load to bear, but I think we can get you better help in a few minutes, and then hopefully you can find your own way back to your team members."
She walked out of the abandoned lot, smiling at the clinic that was only three blocks away. She adjusted the human, then started to walk. Being in the seedier part of Paris, no one looked at Crawler and her load with anything more than a glance.
A wheelchair was parked outside the clinic. She deposited the Terran in it, then pushed it into the view of the glass doors. She hoped that someone inside would look out soon and see the unconscious human there and go to help him.
Her duty done, she left and started on her long walk to the Tower whose lights were starting to turn on in the darkening sky.