EAST OF EDEN ( anakin s. ) ✔️

012 | A Blizzard's Sting..

━━━━━━ ༻ 🌄 ༺ ━━━━━━
" a blizzard's sting "
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━━━ ༻ CHAPTER TWELVE ༺ ━━━

          "GIVE ME THE GOOD NEWS, CAPTAIN," Anakin demanded right before his irritated puff got buried in his quick determination of biting off his left hand's oversized glove. He stopped beside Captain Rex, behind their third barricade built on the western side of the fortress turned prison. 

Damned be the cold, he thought, his sight climbing to the far end of the corridor ahead, where past heavy doors cold slithered through. Then he looked up to the tall, but worryingly fragile ceiling, peppered with projectile holes. They weren't going to make it through another attack and through his glare at their condition it was rather clear Anakin was aware they were unlikely to make it even through that very night if it decided to snow again.

There was no winning against the chilled environment of Mion and though the Separatist army was mindless at best, their generals have planned this trap well enough that victory had been hard to achieve from the start: they couldn't wait the siege out, even if the fortress went on for many levels, the next sturdier than the last. Anakin and his clone detachment reached the fortress on interdiction grounds, travelling as light as possible to cut off supplies for the supposed base. The intelligence has been obviously corrupted beforehand. It was all a trap and they fell right into it with an alarmingly low military prowess.  

"I wish there were any good news at this point," Rex sighed, looking up at his General, but not engaging in the conversation to the point that he'd consider breaking his sniper stance. At any point now, he was certain the Separatists would break through the first defense, or at least loudly make their first real attempt to. They've been going at it with psychological warfare for two weeks and since General Kenobi and his Attack Legion have just dropped as back up, the true battle was imminent to start. "Our supplies are not going to last us another week, the transport ships General Kenobi brought are still not operational and now the cold has started freezing over their engines. We've also had our fourth loss to the cold."

"We should be attacking already," Anakin mumbled, his annoyance at the situation only growing, because though he wanted to take matters into his own hands, he knew climbing out of the valley was futile. If the cold didn't kill them by the time they reached any surrounding peak, the Separatists would. The only way in or out of valley without taking on the challenge of altitude would be the corridor of the frozen river or the collapsed underground tunnel through which they came. The blockade the Separatists built on the river was taken out by Obi-Wan on his way towards the fortress, but Anakin could put his hand through the fire that it was already back up and functional.

"We may outgun them now, but their terrain spread is far better than ours," Captain Rex reminded him, calling back to Anakin's hopes to use General Kenobi's artillery and troops for a shootout towards victory and escape. "Our numbers would mean nothing out there without a good plan."

There was no such thing as the cover of night to justify an advantageous approach to attack either, because nights on Mion were anything but dark. Green lights brazed the whole sky in undulating fashion.

"Did General Kenobi decide on a plan yet?" Captain Rex inquired. The question itself held hope, but his tone was as flat as it could get, especially since now, his attention was fixed on the door.

Anakin crossed his arms over his chest, "He's looking at underground structure with Ahsoka. He agrees with her that we might be able to reuse the collapsed tunnel as our way out." He was unhappy with the mere idea of running away, because the second they get back on the Star Destroyer and report on the Mion issue and the Separatist power there, the mission itself will be out of their hands. Anakin, regardless of how out of place it might sound to admit it as a Jedi, wanted to end these enemies who bested him with a trap himself.