EAST OF EDEN ( anakin s. ) ✔️

022 | The Man Holding The Scythe..

━━━━━━ ༻ 🌄 ༺ ━━━━━━
" the man holding the scythe "
...
━━━ ༻ CHAPTER TWENTY TWO ༺ ━━━

          "DON'T WE JUST HAVE THE MOST amazing job in the whole galaxy?" A scrawny, rusted grey B1 battle droid spoke, holding tightly onto its E-5 blaster rifle and looking across the narrow corridor at another one of the many other droids from the same series scattered across the Animus Post as the disposable guards on station and patrol. "We're not just any droids," it boasted on with not a single coherent thought behind the mechanically gleeful words it so generously claimed to be of conscious birth. "General Raylum doesn't just send us on battlefronts as a metal shield for the big guns. No, no. We are important to him. Such a nice guy he is. Right guys?" 

Turning its head to the side, several nods creaked down the corridor. About twenty units have been brought on orders from General Raylum to defend each hangar entrance as a Republic attack had mobilized half their Byetin station fleet into action, up between the planets, for Homi to witness under its cold blue rays. 

"Haven't you heard the Republic is attacking us?" Another B1 droid inquired, standing the furthest from the entrance to the hangar. 

"But they will never make it to us," the first B1 droid insisted happily. "We really won ourselves an amazing boss, haven't we-?!" 

An unseen grasp smashed the B1 droid into the door of the hangar before it could finish its boasting. The doors bent open with a screeching creak and the glowing blue of a lightsaber decapitated that first B1 guard. A red blaster shot exited through the thick clouds of sand that burst through the forced opening in the hangar doors and with trained accuracy, knocked down the second closest droid. 

"We're under attack!" The droids' panicked shouts were a mere echo in the now deafening sounds colliding on that narrow corridor: ship engines rising sand in the hangar, the storm's roar outside whistling its way down with mounting cutting sand rolling in behind those invading the base, blaster fires rushing through behind the Jedi whose lightsaber, with dulled out noise of its own, deflected and redirected the blasts of the droids back at them.

It was a massacre, slowly advanced, but scarcely set back. With one hand swinging the lightsaber and the other pushing back the enemy through the Force, the Jedi led down the long corridor about just three other clones which overall weighted far more in battle than the piles of scarps that they rendered the droids into and then had to carefully step over towards the end of the corridor, stopping into the next security door. 

"Stop!" A final B1 droid shivered, lowering its rifle uncertain. "We are not battle droids. We are guards of-!"

The lightsaber cut through the thing and finally switched off. "Annoying is what you are," Anakin sighed from behind several layers of the same scarf wrapped around his head and tied such that it blocked the sand's access from his nose and mouth; a pair of industrial glasses acted as the shield to his eyes. Yet now that they were inside, the absolute zeal with which Anakin tugged on the scarf made it absolutely clear that sand had already slithered past its folds, irritating its way right onto his skin and most likely in his mouth too. 

"Get on with it, Dott," he commanded while the respective clone behind him disengaged from defensive position and rushed instead to the door standing in their way. 

It's been a long journey, getting to Byetin, and Anakin had no desire for them to overstay their welcome this far into the enemy lines. Their path was bumpy and something told him the way back will be twice as hard to traverse, even if the burden of separation would lift the fear off of his soul and make him just a little lighter; that still meant very little against the base they'd have to traverse in one piece, the sandstorm outside that almost destroyed their stolen ship on the way there and the dogfight waiting for them off planet that would not be so easily defeated for a regrouping and a jump to lightspeed.