Wasskah didn't look like much from orbit. Just another bruised-green marble hanging off Trandosha's shoulder, wrapped in clouds that weren't sure if they wanted to be storms or fog. But as the stealth corvette knifed down, the sensors started to spit out the truth: terrain spikes, abrupt temperature gradients, electromagnetic chatter from hunting towers and dropships, and a biosphere that read as one long, continuous attempt at murder.
We hit upper atmo under full dampening, shields trim, drives whispering instead of yelling. The ship hummed the way people do when they're trying not to swear in religious temples.
"Entering Wasskah atmosphere," the pilot murmured over the internal. "Stealth profile holding. EM signature looks like a rock that's having a bad day. That's the good news. Bad news: she's a little bumpy."
The hull started to shudder, not from stress, but from the air itself—thick, wet, determined to stand its ground, the pressure some levels higher than most habitable planets. Outside, lightning flickered like someone was taking lazy pictures of us without permission.
I stood in the deployment bay with Bad Company, armor plates snug, shoto-pike clipped crosswise over my back like a low-profile glow stick. The modest weight of the clone forearm and thigh pieces was familiar now, the shoulder plates, with its old scuffs and tallies, sat where it belonged. The robe beneath had been cut down and tied off—less ceremonial swoop, more field jacket.
Rift checked his squad one more time. He ran a gloved hand down Brick's shield edge, tapped Frost's scope adjustments, snapped a strap flat on Burner's pack, nudged Spark's datapad so it wouldn't jangle, flicked a mud-seal on Doc's medkit, and caught Jackal's harness to tighten a loose clip.
"Try not to shed pieces on the way down," he said. "Hard enough to keep track of your ugly faces."
"We have the same faces, sir," Burner said.
Beeper, my loyal—war crime maker—probe, floated overhead with lights dimmed to angry ember. It burbled something obscene in trade cant. Spark thumped it lightly. "You swear like a Besalisk broadcaster. Tone it down."
I palmed my mask on. I'd swapped the simple AR visor of the mask for a clone T-visor that Bad Company had customized: multi-spectrum, low-light, filtered audio, and integrated with our whisper-net. When it sealed, the world did that helmet thing—cut out the useless sound, amplify the important, but mine's basically showed my hair and had green marks, making very customized for myself, but without loosing the clone identity.
"General?" Rift asked over the squad channel. "You ready to get chewed on by the local ecosystem?"
"I am deeply committed to disappointing every hungry thing on this rock," I said.
"Roger that," Doc drawled. "Let's make these lizards cry."
The corvette's belly hatch iris'd open with a sigh. Heat and wet slapped us in the face—air that tasted like rotting leaves, wet stone, and something metallic underneath. Below, through the partial opening, I caught flashes of canopy: vast trees tangled together, leaves big enough to park a speeder on, vines like hanging nooses.
Two modified LAAT/is were mag-clamped under the ship, painted in matte greens and blacks, engines tuned down to low-frequency whisper. No screaming turbines. No big bright running lights. Just black shapes with teeth.
We dropped into our bird: Rift, Brick, Doc, Jackal, and me in One; Burner, Spark, Frost, and the rest of the squad in Two. Seats were stripped, padding replaced with grip webbing. Everything that could rattle had been welded, tied, or bullied into silence.
"LZ is a blind spot in their sensor net," Spark said in my ear. "Dead zone where three towers' fields overlap wrong. Either sloppy or arrogant. We'll take it."
"Trandoshans are hunters," Jackal muttered. "They like prey that runs where they can see it. They don't spend points on places they ignore."
"Then we'll walk where they think nobody goes," I said.
The clamps released with a tooth-rattling thunk. Our LAAT fell, then caught itself on whispering repulsors. We skimmed beneath the corvette's belly and then the sky was all green-grey boiling cloud.
"Dropping below deck-zero," the pilot murmured. "Switching to nap-of-canopy. Keep your arms inside the screaming metal box at all times."
The jungle rose up to meet us like a wall. The canopy was a continuous mat of leaves and branches, mottled: dark where it was thick, lighter where gaps showed quicksilver flashes of storm-lit sky. Spires of older growth punched through like broken ribs. In some places, the canopy dipped into ravines full of fog you could stand a walker in.
We knifed into the gaps, hugging the treetops, skimming leaves that slapped the hull like wet hands. Every time a branch brushed the underside, my heart kicked. The pilot threaded us through with the kind of focus that breeds religion.
"EM scan," Spark's voice crackled over the net. "Picking up at least four Trandoshan towers within thirty klicks. Elevated platforms, power signatures, light-spectrum sweeps. Some scattered repulsor hits—likely dropships. There's a pocket about five klicks east of their dens where traffic thins. That's where we'll land."
"Any sign of Ahsoka's beacon?" I asked.
"Her Temple tag is dark," Spark said. "But we pulled a residual signature from the fleet logs—how her saber sound and look, ambient Force echo in the coils. I can't track the Force, but I can track the weird. There are faint matches in the eastern jungle. Nothing solid, but… smudges. Like someone waved her blade around out there in the last few rotations."
That was something. I reached into the Force as far as I dared without grabbing too hard. Wasskah pushed back like a living thing—humid, crowded, full of teeth and fear and past killing. The jungle sang in minor keys, dissonant. Somewhere in that mess, a bright, stubborn spark glimmered and then ducked like it didn't want to be seen, even by me.
Ahsoka. She was alive. Bruised, scared, angry, but alive.
"Got you," I whispered.
"Say again, General?" Rift asked.
"Nothing," I said. "Just talking to ghosts."
We came in over a ravine choked with mist. The canopy broke there into strange stone outcrops speared up like teeth, with twisted roots clutching them. The pilot dipped the nose, feathered the repulsors. The other LAAT slid into position behind us, ghost-quiet.
"LZ in three," the pilot murmured. "Two. One."
We settled onto slick stone with a soft thud, repulsors cycling down to a low whine. No big dust cloud, no roaring engines. Just the ambient roar of the jungle: insects, distant animal calls, the constant drip of condensation from leaf to leaf to ground.
"Bad Company, dismount," Rift said.
The ramp dropped. Heat hit us like a physical thing. The air smelled green and rotten, full of sap and old blood. The ground was a mess of slick stone, moss, and roots that wanted to break ankles.
My boots sank a little into the muck as I stepped off. The clone armor plates shifted, then settled, like they were testing the gravity. I could feel the world under me: humid, unsteady, alive.
"Welcome to Wasskah," Doc said, stepping down beside me. "Try not to die; it's unsanitary."
We fanned out. Brick took point, shield collapsed but ready, testing each foothold before committing his weight. Jackal drifted ahead, nostrils flaring, eyes half-lidded as he let scent lead. Frost took a perch on an outcrop to set up his overwatch, rifle cradled. Burner and Spark did a quick sweep around the birds, checking for obvious sensor trip-lines or nasty surprises. Doc moved through the middle, already mapping likely triage spots. Rift hovered where he could see everyone.
I prepared my blaster in my holster for a quick draw if necessary, and then, configured my shoto-pike saber to minimum power it could have without being useless, and placed it back at my lower back.
"General," Spark said softly, pointing his scanner at the jungle. "I'm piggybacking off local EM noise. Trandoshans are lazy with their scramblers. I can get a rough picture of where their towers are pinging from."
A holo bloomed in the air between us—small, dim, filtered through encryption: a rough topology of this quadrant. Red spikes marked towers. Smaller flares, like fireflies, marked dropship Transponder bleed. Our position was a blue dot in a messy bowl.
"There," Spark said, pointing to a cluster of fainter pings. "Light pattern of small power sources: likely portable lamps, short-range comms, maybe electric traps. No big towers. That's a ground camp. If I were a Trandoshan running a hunt, I'd drop warm bodies here, then drive them toward the towers for the show."
Jackal sniffed the air in that direction. His lips peeled back slightly. "Smoke. Sweat. Fear. Old blood, not fresh. It's been a day, maybe two, since a big fight. But something still moves there."
"Ahsoka," I said. "Or the younglings. Or both."
"Or predator," Frost called softly from above. "Movement in the canopy. Small. Fast. Probably not our quarry."
"Stay away from its mouth?" Burner suggested.
"Solid advice," Doc said. "Applicable to many things, including this moon and most politicians."
Rift's gauntlet touched my arm. "You lead," he said. "We're your shadow."
I nodded. "We move on the camp. No gunfire unless we have to. If we see Trandoshans on the way, we mark, bypass, or quietly remove. The kids and Ahsoka come first. Wookiee too."
"Don't worry," Spark muttered. "He'll be hard to miss."
We slipped into the jungle. The canopy swallowed us in three steps.
Wasskah's forest was a vertical maze. Trees rose in columns so wide you could have carved apartments inside them. Vines hung in veils, some harmless, some with tiny barbs. The ground was a clutter of roots, fallen branches, and ferns big enough to hide a walker leg under. Every surface sweated. The air wrapped around you and refused to let go.
We moved in a loose wedge: Brick at point, Rift behind and offset, Jackal sliding ahead and to the side, Frost somewhere above or gone entirely, Burner and Spark in the middle with Doc, and me shifting wherever the formation needed another blade, blaster or pair of eyes. Boots squelched, but quietly. We'd tuned the armor to disperse sound, added mesh socks over soles to muffle tread. Even so, the jungle heard us. It hears everything.
"Eyes up," Rift murmured. "Trandoshan hunters like high seats. Ladders, climbing spikes, any vantage that lets them shoot down at tired prey."
"No bright lights," Frost added. "They use search lamps on towers, but out here, they're happy with low-vision optics and claws."
I kept the shoto-pike low, the blade angled inward, at my left hand, and in the other, I left my blaster ready to shoot. I felt every cut of root under my boots, every drip of condensate down the back of my neck. The Force curled around us like a reluctant guide, full of animal fear, old despair, and fresh anger.
Ahsoka's presence flickered again: a sharp, defiant flare, then a controlled dimming. Someone had taught her to hide in the Force when she had to. Good. She was using it. I followed that echo, not as a line—more like following heat in a cold room.
We passed a clearing where the jungle opened into a bowl. At the center was a half-burned tree stump and a ring of scorched earth. Bits of broken droid and armor lay scattered around. Some pieces were Republic—old Phase I plates, scorched white with faded paint. Others were Trandoshan: metal plates, broken gun stocks, a shattered optic. The air smelled of old plasma and cooked meat.
Brick toed a charred piece of plastoid. "This was a stand," he said.
"Blood patterns agree," Doc murmured, scanning. "Multiple small bodies, a few larger. Drag marks. Some left alive. Some not."
On the far side of the clearing, carved into the trunk of a tree, were scratches—deep gouges, overlapping. Too deliberate to be random animal behavior. They formed no letters, not in Basic, not in Mando'a, not in anything I recognized at first glance.
Jackal crouched, touching one with gloved fingers. "Jagganath marks," he said. "Trandoshan scorekeeping. They count kills. The more marks, the more the hunter thinks he's hot shit."
"Wonderful people," Burner muttered. "Let me guess: enough points and they get a new scope for their rifle and a pat on the head."
"Or a slave, if they're traditional," Jackal said, voice flat. He gestured to a set of smaller, finer scratches at knee height. "These are other. Not Trandoshan. Claw marks, yes, but different arc. Wider spread. That's Wookiee."
"So Chewbacca was here," I said.
"Angry," Jackal added. "Claws dug deep. A pissed-off Wookiee makes a different sound in the wood."
Spark's scanner pinged softly. He pointed to the center of the scorched ground. "There's a residue here—unique energy signature. Not blaster. Not det charge. More… focused. Blade-arc. I've seen this pattern in your training room at Resolute Dawn, General."
"Ahsoka's saber," I said. "Or one of the kids' sabers."
"Ahsoka, I'm sure of it," Spark said. "The coil signature matches the 'Soka profile we pulled."
The Force agreed: the whole clearing smelled of her courage and fear and refusal. She'd stood here, once. She'd dug in. She'd lost ground, but not herself. Good.
"She fought them," I murmured. "She held them off as long as she could, then pulled out when she had to."
"Smart girl," Rift said.
Frost's voice crackled softly. "Movement ahead. Two hundred meters. Heat signatures: four small, one large, three mid-size. Pattern irregular. Looks like four untrained movers, one heavy, being herded by three practiced shooters."
"Trandoshans and captives," Jackal said. His nostrils flared again. "Smell matches. Fear. Sweat. Wet fur."
"Chewbacca," I said.
Rift's tone sharpened. "We have eyes?"
"Partial," Frost replied. "Canopy's thick. I'd need to move closer and higher to get full visual, but that risks shadow crossing their line of sight."
"We can't afford to spook the hunters into just… opening up," Doc said. "Kids don't do well in crossfire."
"Can you tag positions?" I asked Frost.
"Yes," Spark said. "Marking now."
My HUD lit up with ghost silhouettes: four blue blurs (the captives), one larger blue mass (Wookiee, most likely), and three red triangles at staggered heights—Trandoshans, using trees like sniper roosts.
"They're pushing them toward one of the lift platforms," Spark said, overlaying a map. "Elevated base, probably with more hunters and heavier guns. They like the spectacle. Make them run the gauntlet first, then take them up for the long show."
"Not today," I said.
Rift looked at me. "Plan?"
We hunkered in behind one of the massive roots while we whispered murder.
"Frost, you're overwatch," I said. "Priority is Trandoshan shooters. No collateral. Brick, you're with me on intercept. We go for the closest hunter and take his attention off the captives. Jackal, flank wide. I want those bastards thinking their prey suddenly learned how to bite back."
Burner grinned. "Where do you want your friendly galaxy showman?"
"Burner and Spark stay with Rift and Doc," I said. "You're backstop. If it goes loud, you cut off any reinforcements headed from the platform. Spark, I want you ready to jam comms on my mark. If they scream for help, I want it to sound like static and bad life choices."
"Copy that," Spark said. "I have a nasty filter with their name on it."
"Doc," I added, "your priority's the kids and Chewbacca. Especially Chewbacca. We're going to need him pissed, not bleeding out."
Doc snorted. "I love it when I get the easy jobs."
Rift nodded. "You heard him. Quiet until there's no quiet left. General, you kick it off."
I slipped ahead with Brick and Jackal. The jungle closed around us like a secret. Frost's breath in my ear counted the distance.
"Hunters at ninety meters," he murmured. "Seventy-five. Sixty. General, your target's at your eleven o'clock, three trees up, on a branch with a clear lane toward the captives. He has a long rifle. He is… very proud of it."
"Yeah?" I said. "Let's see how he feels about it when it stops working."
We crept uphill, using the terrain: gullies, roots, fallen trunks. I felt the vibration of the Trandoshan's movements in the bark through my gloves—claws digging in, tail shifting for balance, the slight sway of weight on a branch. The air carried the sour smell of reptilian musk and gun oil, and beneath it, the sharp tang of Ahsoka's fear wrapped around something else: stubborn, incandescent defiance.
At the edge of a low ridge, I peeked.
Through a lattice of leaves, I saw them.
Four young shapes stumbled through the underbrush. One was small and lithe, orange-and-cream lekku trailing, wearing shredded tunics and a determined set to her shoulders—Ahsoka. She carried no saber, just a makeshift spear fashioned from a sharpened metal rod lashed to a branch. Next to her ran a Mirialan girl, tattoos incomplete on her cheeks, clutching a broken staff with knuckles white. A Twi'lek boy, thinner, eyes wide but jaw clenched, staggered under the weight of a crude metal shield too big for him. The Cerean boy brought up the rear, taller, robes in tatters, holding a scavenged blaster set to stun, expression a mix of fear and furious concentration.
Behind them—and occasionally ahead, circling—loped a Wookiee. Chewbacca was a wall of fur, matted with leaves and blood, brown eyes blazing. He wielded a length of twisted metal beam like it was a training stick, smashing aside low branches, occasionally turning to roar at the treeline when a shot came too close.
And above them, in the trees, three Trandoshans moved like smug shadows. One with a scoped rifle, another with a light repeater strapped to his chest, the third with a bandolier of shock-nets, each one humming faintly.
The rifle Trandoshan barked something in Dosh: "Run, little Jedi! Make it fun! The more you bleed, the more Jagganath points for me!"
The Twi'lek boy flinched but kept moving. Ahsoka shouted back, voice hoarse but steady, "Keep your head down! Zig-zag! Don't give him a clean shot!"
Chewbacca answered the hunter with a roar that translated easily into go kriff yourself, then hurled a rock the size of his head up into the branches. It missed, but not by much. The hunter hissed, annoyed.
Frost's voice in my ear: "General. Ready on your mark."
I breathed in the jungle stink, the gun oil, the fear. I thumbed the shoto-pike to life, keeping the blade tight and low, hidden behind the ridge, and prepared the blaster. I looked at Brick. He flexed his shield arm. Jackal had vanished, which meant he was exactly where he wanted to be.
"Spark," I whispered. "On my mark, jam their comms. Burner, be ready to cut a path between us and that platform if they try to drag the kids uphill. Brick, you and me are about to introduce that rifleman to disappointment. Frost, you take repeater-boy the moment I move."
"Copy," Spark said. "Comm line loaded."
"Copy," Frost said. "I have his throat."
Brick rolled his shoulders. "Ready when you are, sir."
I closed my eyes for half a heartbeat, reached for the harmonic—that place where timing and intent lined up like slots in a lock. The jungle's noise fell away until all I heard was the beat of boots on dirt, the rhythm of claws on bark, the click of a rifle breathing in my scope.
The Trandoshan sniper chittered into his wrist comm, smug. "Prey making for the hill, pack-leader. Ready for the final run. Save a spot on the trophy rack for me."
"Mark," I whispered.
Spark's code hit their comm net like a thrown drink. The Trandoshan's next word dissolved into static that sounded like someone laughing at him. He snarled in confusion, tapping his earpiece.
Frost's shot took the repeater-gunner in the throat. The blast was suppressed—no loud crack, just a flat thud and a flash as the hunter pitched backward, repeater clattering from his claws, body slamming through branches.
The sniper jerked, swinging his rifle to look for the threat.
I moved.
I came over the ridge in a low sprint, Brick's shield just ahead of me, the shoto's blue blade a tight line hugging my forearm. The Force lined up the world into one long yes.
The sniper caught a glimpse of me—clone plates, T-visor, weird short saber—eyes widening in confusion. He hissed and snapped the rifle up, but Brick was already there, shield taking the bolt with a bright flare. The impact rattled my teeth. I slid past, ducking under a branch, and drove the shoto's blade into the rifle's receiver instead of the hunter's chest.
The weapon screamed, metal and energy disagreeing violently. Sparks fountained. The Trandoshan let go with a yelp, clutching his burned hands. He opened his mouth to call for help that wouldn't come.
I planted a boot on the branch and kicked off, shoulder-checking him in the sternum. He went sideways, claws scrabbling for purchase, then dropped out of the tree in an ugly tumble.
Below, the third hunter—net-slinger—spun, shock-net in hand. "What—?"
Jackal came out of the shadows behind him. His vibroblade whispered once under the hunter's arm, into the joint. The Trandoshan gasped, reflexively flinched, and the net flew wide, tangling in a tree instead of the captives.
Ahsoka skidded to a stop at the edge of the clearing, eyes wide as she saw me land on the branch above.
"Will?" she shouted. "About time!"
"Hi, 'Soka," I called down, already turning to check the sniper's position. "Nice moon you picked for a vacation."
Chewbacca roared, the sound equal parts relief and fresh rage. The younglings huddled behind him, eyes snapping between me, the clones they could see in the foliage, and the falling hunters.
The repeater gunner was down. Net-slinger was bleeding from the arm, snarling, trying to re-arm. The sniper lay at the base of the tree, stunned but moving. More shapes shifted higher up the slope—reinforcements, stirred by the disturbance.
Rift's voice cut in, sharp and clean. "We're in it, people. Bad Company, pivot to exfil pattern Gamma. Protect the package. Burner, Spark, cut off that platform. Doc, move to the kids. Frost—"
"Already on it," Frost said calmly, as another Trandoshan head snapped back in my peripheral vision.
I crouched on the branch, shoto-pike humming quietly in my hand, clone armor plates warm against my skin, Bad Company's breath in my ears, Ahsoka Tano and three terrified younglings staring up at me from the kill-zone of a murder moon.
We had found them. That was the good news.
The bad news was the roaring chorus of Trandoshan horns blaring from the hills, the rising buzz of repulsors as hidden dropships powered up, and the sudden floodlights snapping on from the platform above, bathing the jungle in hard, white glare.
The hunters had just realized their prey wasn't playing by the rules anymore.
Wasskah woke up angry.
"General," Rift said, as the first volley of return fire lit up the trees. "Welcome to the main event."
I looked down at Ahsoka, at the Mirialan girl clutching her staff, the Twi'lek boy trying not to shake behind his shield, the Cerean kid holding his blaster like it was the only thing tethering him to reality, at Chewbacca squaring his massive shoulders.
"Bad Company," I said, feeling the harmonic tighten in my chest. "Time to show these lizards what happens when the game fights back."
I dropped from the branch into the chaos, shoto blade flaring, as the jungle exploded into light and gunfire and roaring voices—and the rescue of Ahsoka Tano and her ragtag pack finally began.