Shattered Stars (TCW)

Chapter 35 -- Whole Again (Salvation and Doom Pt. III)

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"Execute Order 66."

"A'den?" Taska asked as she stepped into the room, looking calmer but suddenly overwhelmed once more. "Chrome? Lark?"

When they didn't respond, she did the one thing she thought she had been doing too much of recently—she ran.

There are only three blasters in this kriffing place, she reminded herself. And two of them belong to Captain Rex.

"Rex!" She yelled as she ran, hoping that A'den was not first in line to be chasing her. She risked a glance over her shoulder to see that the medic, his blaster hopefully still set to stun, had broken off from the group to deal with the Captain.

A grab at her robe had her instinctively whirling, her elbow catching Chrome at the jaw. Where did Lark go?

She didn't have time to ponder the question, trying to get herself out of Chrome's grasp without permanently disabling him.

He swung her into the wall, and she winced at the dull pain in her right shoulder. He released her robe to swing a fist at her head, and she took the opportunity to duck, latching onto his fist. She pulled—hard—and knocked him into the wall, onto the floor. She locked his arms under her legs, and he tried futilely to buck her off.

"Sleep!" She commanded, the suggestion flowing out of her with such force, Chrome stopped struggling instantly.

Taska barely had time for a ragged breath as an arm wrapped around her, pinning her arms to her sides as another arm locked around her neck. Her eyes widened in panic. "Lark, Lark!" she screamed against the plastic at her throat, which had no effect. He only tightened his hold, closing off her air supply entirely.

Her legs lifted off the ground by his superior height, she pushed them both backwards with the Force instead, slamming Lark into the wall.

She thought that it wasn't until this moment that she had truly appreciated how spectacularly engineered clones really were, as he shook the blow off and continued to focus on his task.

Just as she felt blackness begin to creep into the corners of her vision, she heard a stun bolt fizz through the air, and Lark finally fell to the floor. She fought out of his slackened hold, gasping for air once more.

"You alright?" Rex asked.

Taska gave a hoarse cough, raising a hand to her neck. There were a few scrapes from Lark's armor, but there was no blood.

"I think so," she said, and cleared her throat as the words came out gravelly. "What about you?"

"Uninjured, sir. A'den is okay, too," he added without being asked. "I just had to stun him, was all."

"Okay, okay, good," she panted. The fight, as terrifying and wrong as it had felt, had helped to put her in the mindset she often used during the war. "I better get to work, then."

* * *

Once she had figured out how to program the surgery module, Ace was the first to go through the procedure. It took the computer no time at all to find the anomaly in question. "It's been hiding there this whole time," she whispered in vague horror.