Chapter Six: Trace
Jack was the first of the group to wake up the following morning. Well, at least what she thought was morning. She searched around for a brief moment, ensuring that the rest of her team was still around. She noticed something odd about the nature of the forest that they were in, it was utterly silent. Nothing made a sound, not a creature nor a gust of wind. It was wholly still. She looked over in the direction where she saw Ace, still sitting in the same position she saw him in before she slept.
"Did you sleep at all?" She asked.
Rehnar perked up at her question, blinking his eyes rapidly beneath the helmet visor. "Yeah, for a little while."
"Ace, we said that we'd sleep in shifts, why didn't you wake any of us up?"
Rehnar didn't reply, he just stood up and picked up his DC-17s. R6 beeped slightly at Rehnar before the rest of the group woke up from their slumber. Joker stood up with his grenade launcher in hand and walked up behind Rehnar. "Boss, what's our next move?" He asked Rehnar as the two others stood up.
"Next move? We go back to the base; they captured the Jedi, I want to know why." Rehnar replied.
"You want to go back toward the Leviathan we saw?" King questioned as he stood behind the two of them.
"It's bound to be gone by now," Joker replied. "So, what are we waiting for? Let's get moving." Joker replied heading off into the woods. The others in the group followed behind him with Jack and R6 were at the back for the time being. She waited for a little while for the rest of the group to move ahead of them before she looked at the droid who was slowly rolling beside her.
"R6, did he sleep at all?" She whispered. R6 beeped with a sigh-like tone. "No?" She sighed after her last comment, "What did he do with all that time?" She asked him. R6 chirped and whirred for a few moments. "He just...stared at the fire?" The droid beeped in affirmation. Jack moved forward up toward the front of the group with the others. "Hearts, get up here." She called to the droid.
"Hearts?" Joker asked her as she got up to the front.
"Yeah, Hearts. That's what I'm gonna call him from now on." She smirked back at the droid. R6 didn't seem to mind the name he was given. Using his jump jets on the side of his legs thrust himself behind Jack as they continued through the forest back toward the Rebel outpost.
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A few hours after they started walking, Black Jack Squadron arrived at the outpost again. With their now team of six, the group approached the door to the facility and began looking for clues as to where the Jedi could have gone. Rehnar and Joker chose to analyze their armory, Hearts, as the droid now wanted to be called, told them that it was only a few meters away from the radar station.
Rehnar walked in step with Joker on the way there, though, Rehnar noticed that Joker was being uncharacteristically quiet. Something about this wasn't sitting well with him, and Rehnar could feel it. "Joker?" Rehnar asked.
"Yeah, Ace?" He replied genuinely.
"You're being kinda quiet, are you alright?" Rehnar asked him.
"Oh...yeah...I'm fine."
"Joker....you're not okay, are you?" He replied looking over to his right.
"What makes you say that?"
"You're not acting like yourself; quiet isn't exactly your way of acting." He replied opening the door to the armory. He could feel Joker's eyes light up with excitement, as the door thrust upward.
"OOOOOOOOHh!" He said running inside. "Wow, look at this! they've got so much stuff in here!" He shouted heading over toward what looked like a wall of rocket launchers. The room appeared to be about ten square meters, with each wall covered in weapons of all kinds, from the DH-17 blaster pistol to the much larger and bulkier RPS-6 rocket launcher. An entire corner of the room was full about halfway up to the ceiling in non activated thermal detonators. What astonished Rehnar the most was how much stuff was still here. Nothing even seemed out of place or moved. With the only exception being the blasters that were in the hands of the troopers dead throughout the installation.
Rehnar looked at Joker as he started staring closely at the weapons on the walls. "Hey, some of this stuff is old,"
"What do you mean?" Rehnar asked him. Joker took a rifle off the wall and showed it to him; it was blocky almost. Far too short for it to be used by an organic being. In fact, it probably wasn't meant to be used by them at all. It was so crudely made it seemed almost toy-like.
"You see this right?" Joker asked Rehnar gesturing to the blaster.
"How can I not?"
"Do you not know what this is?"
"It's a blaster, obviously."
"Not just a blaster, an E-5," Joker replied.
"And that's significant...why?"
"It was not made to be used by an organic being; you see how you grip it." He said wrapping his left hand around the barrel.
"Yeah, what's wrong with that?"
"The blaster tends to have an increase in heat around this area when it's fired, and when it heats up, it can burn a person's hand. Also, it's wicked small. These were used by the B-1 droids during the Clone Wars." Joker noted tossing the weapon to the side like it was a piece of trash.
"So what does that mean?" Rehnar asked.
"Oh, well, the whole point was that the weapon is cheaply made and that it's an easy to come by tool. So, the Alliance doesn't exactly have the capability to properly arm its soldiers."
"Something kinda odd that I thought about was that these weapons were still here." Rehnarsaid aloud.
"What does that tell you?" Joker asked.
"It means that our Sith friends have a lot more toys than we thought. They aren't some fledgling group of pirates out here." Rehnar replied looking over at the wall of armaments. "So, Joker, how much of this stuff do you think you can carry?"
"Well...considering there's a backpack over there, a strap for a rocket launcher, a couple of bandoliers for the grenades...I can carry a few things." Joker replied taking inventory of all the thing's he'd be able to hold.
"Good, take what you can, I'll meet up with the others," Rehnar said as he walked over toward the exit.
"Hey, Ace?" Joker asked.
"Yeah, Joker?"
"How do you feel about R6 being called "Hearts"?"
Rehnar thought about it for a moment, considering how they would have to alter their team dynamic. However, it didn't seem to bother him all that much. None of them were truly experts in splicing or data access like this droid could prove to be. "I'm okay with it for now, though, he may need to get some upgrades when we get back to the Intruder." He said before walking off into the depths of the base to find the others.
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"Hearts, you got anything yet?" Queen asked the droid as he started moving the data access port from the left to the right. Hearts beeped to negate her statement, as he was still searching through the footage that the security cameras offered them. Jack paid close attention to the footage of the double-bladed lightsaber as the footage moved backward and forward. If this was going the same way that everyone was thinking, then it would only be a matter of time before they had to fight the Chiss woman themselves.
Hearts then beeped excitedly as they kept looking.
"What is it?" Jack asked the droid. He then displayed the holographic footage, two of the Sith troopers were holding the Jedi by the arms as they dragged him outside through the corridors of the base. Hearts then cycled the footage to the outside of the base as they left; heading outside and toward the northwest. "Okay, so we've got a general direction now, it's nothing concrete, but it's a start." She said as Rehnar walked into the room. "Hey, where's Joker?"
"He's in the middle of loading up. Apparently, the people who captured the Jedi didn't have a use for their weapons."
"And you think we will?" King replied.
"Obviously, we can't just go in there without enough heat, we can take them with sabers, but we don't know how many of them are in there," Rehnar replied looking at Jack. "Jack, what's the status of the Jedi?"
"Hearts over here tracked him and the Sith we saw on screen earlier," Jack replied pointing to the droid. "They were heading northwest."
"Good, now we have a place to start," Rehnar concluded. The group then turned around to face the door when they heard a loud clang of metal against the wall. A slight scraping against the durasteel facades that surrounded the entirety of the compound. Instinctively the four Black Jacks went for their weapons as the doppler of the clanging grew closer. Soon the thing that was making the noise arrived in the front of the doorway. To much of their surprise or amazement for the lack of a better word, was Joker; standing head to toe covered in explosive ordinance.
Rehnar broke out laughing, putting his blaster pistols into their holsters. "Geric, I told you to carry everything you could, not everything in the room."
"Hey, this is everything I could carry."
Jack broke out laughing with Rehnar. "You look like you're about to take on the Empire itself with that much firepower Joker."
Joker smiled in response under his helmet. Geric was his real name. It was rare for them to speak with their real names, but when they did it was always a treat for them more than anything else. Clubs...she always called him Geric. Joker's smile then faded away for a moment when he thought about Clubs again. "So are we all set now?" Joker asked them.
"Yeah, we should be," Rehnar replied. "Good work everyone, move out!" He said with the group of them moving out and into the hallway, Jack and Joker remained at the back with Hearts.
"Hey, Joker?" Jack asked him.
"Yeah?" He asked looking at his teammate.
"You okay?" She asked. Joker looked at her for a moment then went back to looking forward, it wasn't something he could talk about. Not to her. Not to anyone. It was his biggest and most important secret.
He loved Clubs.
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