Survival: A Star Wars The Clone Wars Story

Chapter 15

Barriss could hardly believe she was still moving. The vitals booster was no doubt keeping her on her feet, but what it hadn't helped was the desperate pains in her stomach. She hadn't anything edible since they were captured; she supposed the droids thought their Jedi prisoners wouldnt have been around long enough to need feeding.

If she was honest, her body was currently stampeding down endless corridors towards the power generator with the others, but her mind was still way back in the prison cell before they had been rescued.

The turn of events since they had crashed on this dismal excuse for a planet made her head ache the more she thought about it. The only thing for it was to just not think at all. To just keep following Ahsoka and the clones, and maybe they would get out of here somehow.

They had guessed the power generator would be somewhere on the lower levels, deep in the cliff side, and the path they had taken passed through the detention levels again. Suspiciously they had not seen a single droid yet, not that Barriss was complaining. She was far from being in the fighting mood.

Barriss wandering thoughts caused her to almost crash into Ahsoka, who had suddenly halted their dash to the generator. Following Ahsokas gaze, she saw that one of the cell door lights was flashing a cool green, rather than the usual red that swamped the detention corridors. There is someone in one of those cells, thought Barriss.

Snapping out of her momentary daze, Ahsoka began to stride towards the occupied cell door until an interruption from Barriss stopped her in her tracks.

"Ahsoka, we can't just open that cell! What if whoevers in the cell is hostile? What if it attacks us?" She said. Barriss felt that you could never be too careful, especially nowadays.

Without looking back, Ahsoka continued to the cell door. "Whatevers in there is an enemy of the Separatists, making them a friend of ours. We need to help them."

"Do we even have time to stop?"

"I'll be quick." Ahsoka said through her teeth, already working on the lock while the clones kept watch.

It took longer than Obi-Wan, but eventually Ahsoka cracked it. It was still only minutes, but Barriss found it agonising to just stand there and wait, the constant feeling dread weighing her down. Not that she couldve done much more than stand there.

The cell door opened and the sight before Barriss knocked the breath out of her. It was a face she had seen a thousand times. A face she had seen smile and laugh and cry and break and scream.

The face of a clone.

He lay still as death on a raised platform in the centre of the room, which was slightly longer than the standard cell. Ring lights above their heads illuminated his pale, tense features. The cybernetic implants around his head gleamed under the light. The clone's right arm and legs were also unnatural, and seemed to have been entirely replaced by robotic limbs. Around where his wrist would have been sprouted multiple transparent tubes transferring fluids either to and from a control panel attached to the wall, Barriss couldn't tell.

Beside her, Ahsoka appeared to have frozen, her brow creased with regret, her mouth curved downwards in a frown, and was that a recognition in her eyes?

Only Kai and Boxer moved, removing their helmets as they went. They rushed to the side of their fallen brother, and Kai gently lifted up his head as Boxer immediately started scanning him with a medical device.

"Ahsoka, who is he." Barriss demanded rather than questioned. That was enough to break the trance.

"Echo." She replied, her voice barely a whisper. "I- we all thought he was dead!" She slipped to his side and put a hand to his forehead which caused his eyes to flutter open. "When that explosion... All we saw was his helmet..." Ahsoka wasn't making sense and Barriss wanted more explanation than that but she would let them have their moment.