Mom Omega

Part 14 - Tipping Point

Echo lost his first squad. He left his second in the hope of finding a way to take out the Emperor. He knew his efforts were probably futile. But that won't stop him from trying.

He misses them. He made a promise to Omega once. That everything they did, they'd do it together. He meant to keep that promise, but then the Empire happened, and Echo's life as he knew it was falling apart at its seams. The Empire did all of that.

Fives is dead. He's gone. His entire old squad is, and Echo will never stop thinking about them. They're a part of him in death as they were alive, but for as long as he's alive, he won't let their deaths be in vain.

Not as though everything his life wasn't. Because it was. There's no denying That anymore.

When he saw what the Empire was doing, about to discard every single one of his brothers, he had to do something to pull out as many as he could before it was too late. And he's not in this fight alone. There are others.

His general and Senator Chuchi, for two.

And many other of his brothers among the Empire's ranks, who are nice enough to tip them off to prisoners and others who need their help. Which is how, finally, they tracked down Howzer after his sacrifice on Ryloth, what he did to keep Echo and his squad safe. Their plan there was, straight up, bad from the start.

Here they are, aboard an Imperial transport with Howzer and the rest of his squad – hopefully.

"Where was this ship headed? Where were you taking those clones?" Nemec snarls at the Imperial, who says nothing despite his visible terror. "Got anything?" his brother asks, where Echo has plugged himself into the panel.

They definitely got the jump on the Imperials, but they were still too slow to stop them from doing a system shutdown, which isn't good. "They were erasing the data banks. Not sure how much I can recover."

"Well, I guess we'll have to get that intel out of you," Nemec tells the officer formerly in command of the ship, only for him to electrocute himself. Echo wishes the Imperials would stop doing that. They're good at that, though – making things hard. They're meant to make it hard to pull info. Echo wishes they weren't so good at it. They're even more thorough than the Separatists.

These missions are often deadlier, too. People top droids, no matter how sloppy the people are. Battle droids were never designed to be lethal. They were designed to overwhelm and exhaust, and they did. Bu the time the war was over, everyone – except a few – are too tired to remember why they need to keep fighting.

To realize that the real battle is just beginning.

His scomp whirrs in the port, trying to download every information he can from the rapidly wiping files.

The others send a message through, telling them to fall back – they've gotten the prisoners safely to the transport.

"Not yet," Echo answers shortly, "I'm still pulling what's left of their files."

"Well, make it fast," Nemec tells him. They don't have long.

The ship shudders with a series of incoming laser bolts, and the alarms go off.

"Their reinforcements are here. We have to go."

"I need more time," Echo argues, the datastick still working. Tech, even at six, is faster at this than him. He wishes they could be here, but Omega was right to keep her brothers safe. She's a sergeant, but she's also a sister, and just as much a mom, and she'll always choose to protect her little brothers ahead of anything else in the galaxy. Echo admires her ability to do so, but he can't share it.