Dorn: A Star Wars Story

9. Ghost

I hadn't particularly missed Mimban. If anything, touching down on that planet made me want to blow it sky high. There was little that I had ever done that made me think I'd ever find myself back down on that planet, but when our boots finally hit the ground following our landing in an abandoned Imperial outpost it all came back to me like a smack to the face. 

I knew the place, and I knew where every single outpost was for several kilometers around. I had been a navigator when I first dropped in beside Kando, and one of my very first assignments was learning every single nook and cranny on that planet to be sure that we covered every strategic location possible. In shorter terms, Venn had nowhere to hide on the planet that made me. As we walked through the swamps and mire, I could vaguely hear balster fire in the distant edges of my memory.

The rockets. The blasters. The walkers. The screaming...

"Vengeant," Nyra's voice snapped me from my stupor and she gestured to Rook with her helmet.

"If Venn was setting up camp here," I began as I looked down at the holomap that Rook was holding, "then our best bet is the base about a kilometer to our West. It has an underground compartment attached that led to a bunker where our strategists and commanders would hole up when the Mimbanese would launch bombing campaigns. It has a generator that, so long as no one blew a hole in it, should be working."

"Were you stationed at this base, sir?" Nyra asked me as she looked up from the map. 

"I was. That base is more than a little familiar to me. We spent more nights than one down there with our Walkers. It's the best place for us to start."

We trudged through the mud and rain, weaving in and out of the forest trees and underbrush as I fought back the growing desire to drop every time I heard one of my men snap a twig under foot. The last time I was here, I watched my entire class disappear in volleys of blaster fire and into their own minds. Being back wasn't easy. Peek chirped nervously at me from my backpack, and I reached behind me and gave his chassis a reassuring pat. There wouldn't be anyone shooting at us this time... I hoped.

It didn't take us long to come up on the old base, heralded y nothing more than a large metal door in the ground. I passed Horran and the other to walk up to a small weather-worn stump nearby and knelt down to give it a hard press, and before long it popped up to reveal a small keypad that should have been keyed with all Imperial signatures. I pulled off one glove and pressed my thumb into it, and before long there was a great shrieking of old metal as the doors slowly parted to reveal the massive personnel lift. You could have easily a whole battalion if you had them close ranks, or maybe a company and a walker. I remember watching a whole battalion of green-clad trooper lowered down into that massive hole once.

Now, it was just me and my squad, packed in a tight group, as we descended down into the dark.

---

The red emergency lights had come on as the lift groaned and lowered us further down into the bowels of the old base. Bastion turned and looked anxiously at me, "Major... are we sure that this thing won't just drop?"

"It always could," I heard Carmine reply with a shrug as she turned back to Bastion, "but you never know."

Bastion let out a long groan as he shifted, making Rook pitch an exasperated hroan of his own before Horran turned to look at them with a shake of his head. However, the lift hit the floor of the base with no problems and we stepped out to find that most of the lower level had power, but once again the base had been eerily silent.

Peek performed a quick scan. "Go-gonk."

"Nothing?" The fact he hadn't found any life signs was troubling, and even still we all pulled blasters out.