Blue squad on patrolAs an Infantry Captain, Xeedie used to have a whole company under her command. ‘used to’ because there was a small and insignificant problem years ago and she used to be left with only one platoon. ‘used to’ because there was another small and insignificant problem years ago and she was left with two squads.
For an easy understanding the two squads were named after colours not after some horrid creatures. And for an even better understanding each soldier of each squad had some of the colour on his clone armour. For example, K’zeep of Blue Squad was wearing a Phase I Clone Trooper armour chest plate being decorated with a spurt of blue painting.
On the opposite, Nifer was wearing four Phase II bracers painted in black but he was in the Shadow Squad… not in the Black Squad which, by the way, never ever existed. But… well… Shadow squad is something different! As for the four bracers, there is nothing weird in that, Nifer simply had four arms. As for the four arms, there is nothing weird in that, Nifer simply was a Xexto.
So basically, there was Blue Squad and Red Squad
1, each of them being identified by the colour on their armour, blue for Blue Squad and red for Red Squad. So right now some guys of Blue Squad were patrolling at some distance of the HQ. Patrolling was in that case a very formal and polite way of saying they were just scavenging things here and there.
Some times patrolling meant they were just wandering around looking at Raxus with the sun, slowly going down in the sky. It was very moving, touching and affecting. Nobody could, while standing here in the middle of nowhere, watch this Raxus-set
2 without being moved, touched or affected. That is nobody but Sikoziks who is a heartless bad guy.
Kooplo was not heartless enough not to take some of his guys in a patrol mission, at least not when there was some good scavenging to do. It’s a shame but we’ll have to admit Kooplo was not the smartest guy around though he was already a sergeant within the Freedom Fighters. There was, is and will always be no secret that he was Blue Squad’s leader only because of his cousin who was General Ratapa herself. The small Jawa was not smart but he had a knack to find nice scavenging spots. So he took Bifgo and Kaaplo to some remote place he was the only one to know about.
Since he was not willing to share his precious spot with either his General or his cousin1, he wrote down on his mission order that he was going on patrol duty. This could be considered as one, if not the only proof, he could be smart but only when it came to protect his precious scavenging spots.
Kooplo was accompanied by his twin brother Kaaplo who was as smart as his brother and their loyal friend Bifgo, the Toong. Though there was no one really smart in this bunch, Kooplo was the smartest one. Bifgo was nothing but a muscled idiot and his role was mostly to carry whatever had been scavenged back to the base.
Toongs were an astonishing species. They were looking alike… alike… alike a big head, with two small eyes, small nose, two skinny legs and two skinny arms. They were bearing a very strong resemblance with a caricature of a human being.
Toong’I, the Toong’s homeworld had been destroyed about ten years before the Clone Wars by an accidental collision between the planet and a random comet which happened to pass by. People used to say the comet actually landed on Bifgo’s head and that was THE explanation to his stupidity.
So the twin Jawas and the Toong did leave the camp to go to their hidden scavenging spot and bring back some shiny valuable items. The camp was five hours walk from the base, not because it was very far but because Bifgo was walking very slowly and the two Jawas were often stopping to look at this or that.
Within no time the basket Bifgo was carrying in his back was full and they needed more time to sort out what was to be kept or not than they needed to reach their excavation camp.
Both Jawas ran the last fifty meters yelling the very famous ‘Utinni’ rally cry. They were making some very strange and very loud noise. This constant noise would have given headache to anyone around. Bifgo arrived two minutes later to realise Kaaplo and Kooplo had already started to pill up the most valuable things around. Within no time Bifgo realised the pill was already huger than his small basket.
“We will not be able to bring all this back at the base.”
Bifgo was speaking in a very low tone and a very slow way. By slow we mean REAL slow. He’s the kind of person whose phrases you can finish before he even started it or the kind of person you’d like to shake until he would spit out his phrase. All those details to say by the time he finishes his comment, the twobrothers had pilled up much more scavenged parts.
Slowly the Toong started to sort out the pill that was still growing yet he was alone and slow paced sorting out what was pilled up by two over-excited Jawas. In the pile of useless broken things he found a very strange item.
1: Which is the exact and same person.
It was three inches large with a glowing blue aura. A closer inspection revealed it looked alike a glass sphere with plenty of holed metal spheres inside and somewhere deep inside there was some light that was, as we said already, glowing out in a smooth blue aura.
“What is that?” Did Bifgo ask slowly.
Kaaplo and Kooplo almost jumped on him to grab the glowing thing yet the Toong wouldn’t let them take it not before they promised not to steal it or even take it. Though Jawa are not to be trusted scavenged, shiny or glowing items none of them would try to upset Bifgo. Once they had promised, the big-headed Toong slowly opened his skinny hands to reveal the glowing treasure.
There came some “Ooooooh!” and some “Aaaaaah!” that tend to prove the Jawas had pilled up anything and everything without really looking at whatever it was. A minute or two after the shock of discovering such a lovely thing, the Jawa made their first ‘intelligent’ comments.
“This is glowing.”
“And shiny.”
Those comments were not really smart nor interesting yet that was the smartest and most interesting the twin could have made. The three of them remained like that, hypnotised and mesmerized by the glowing thing until a couple authoritarian, metallic voice came in.
“Thieves! Grab them!”
“Roger! Roger!”
There is a special chapter in Doctor Bolibili’s thesis reserved to Trade Federation B1 battle droids and the remnants of those droids that were nowadays on Raxus Prime under Sikoziks orders. It is unsure that the Chadra Fan Doctor who was not a medic had even witnessed the Clone Wars and the droids in action.
He anyway managed to make a very interesting analysis based on fragmentary data, corrupted surveillance holovid or simply any and every hint of information he could find. The thesis had been a huge amount of work simply regarding the information to work on.
He, for example, had found a very rare recording of the events occurring in an arena on Geonosis, during a certain battle. The recording was shot by one of the security cameras. There you could see three of those B1 droids. Those were the skinny ones looking too fragile to sustain a fresh breeze on Naboo
3. They could be seen gathering around an EMP grenade just a second before it exploded.
What is fun with EMP grenades is that it was hundred percent frying any electronic device within a three meter radius. Knowing that droids were nothing but a giant electronic device
4, you could imagine how fun and efficient it was.
For those of you who want to look and sound smart in posh parties, EMP stands for Electro Magnetic Pulse. We have no clue or hint about how it worked but it’s not important as long as it worked.
So this simple grenade accident is itself relevant of B1’s complete and total dumbness. It was described with much more details in Biliboli’s thesis. What was interesting was the droid psychologist explanation and analysis of that scene. He was saying something like that…
“As could be seen on the record, the three droids looked at the grenade just before it exploded. Technically speaking the supracomputer acting as the droid’s brain needed between five to ten nanoseconds to recognize the EMP grenade for what it was: an EMP grenade.
“Deciding to run away and running away would have required about a millisecond. All those information and some basic mathematic knowledge let you realise there were plenty of time left for the droid to chuckle behind his cover: nine hundred ninety eight thousand nine hundred and fifty nanoseconds to be precise.
“So the droid had plenty of time to react yet he didn’t. Isn’t that stupid enough for you to realise droids’ fate is to be stupidly dumb.”
Though it looks like a conclusion, the chapter about B1 battle droids goes on for about hundred fifty pages with more and more details about B1 acting stupidly and uselessly.
Right now…
At that precise moment, six of the B1 droids were surrounding Kooplo, Kaaplo and Bifgo. Those weren’t real Trade Federation B1 battle droids because of many reasons. First one and not the worst because Trade Federation had been dismantled at the end of the Clone Wars. Second and definitely not the worst one because those droids were scrap built with parts of B1 and whatever was found here and there. If you’d ever saw one of the Trade Federation B1 during the Clone Wars, if you’d ever felt your heart stopping in terror by simply seeing one of those killing machines… then you probably wouldn’t feel much impressed by those scrap built versions.
“Sergeant! We have them surrounded!” said one with that silly and mechanic droid voice the droid have.
“Roger! Roger!” said another one in an attempt to confirm whatever had been said.
“I said grab them not surround them!” mumble the sergeant.
“We surrender without any condition!” said Bifgo with his hands up.
The story may be very fascinating because it’s the first real exciting thing to happen since the beginning but much more things are to happen. So we’ll take a brake to add a few more details about Bifgo and Toongs in general.
It’s maybe genetic or maybe cultural but Toongs are usually afraid of people, of confrontation with people. This made them look alike cowards yet they are not, they’re just afraid. Some people are afraid of Ewoks
5, for example, but those persons wouldn’t be afraid of Wookies and should therefore not be considered as cowards. On the other side some people are afraid of Wookies and not of Ewoks, those persons too may not be considered as cowards.
But Bifgo’s really a coward not afraid of interaction or confrontation but afraid of being hurt or killed therefore he promptly surrender. The sergeant droid found that really surprising.
“You have not be asked to surrender and may not surrender now!”
“Please! No!” Bifgo was completely scarred. “Ask us to surrender so we can surrender!”
Kaaplo had his face buried in his left hand with a deep annoyed sigh while Kooplo had his face buried in his right hand with an amused smirked in the shadows of his Jawa hood. The droid sergeant was really surprised of the Toong’s reaction since he was not used to scare anyone or anything so he turned around to face his fellow droids. Those could do nothing but shrug their shoulders, none of them being used to see their sergeant scare anyone or anything.
“Well… Erm... Surrender, scavenger scum!”
Bifgo tried to raise his hands higher up standing on the tip of his toes.
“We surrender! We surrender!”
“Ooookay! What now?”
“How about you die, huh?”
There is no need to be afraid for any of those scavengers’ life since those last words weren’t from a droid trying to threaten them or even from a droid trying to joke.
As already depicted, the scene was taking place under the Raxus-set, which is an equivalent of a sunset as can be seen on Raxus Prime. So on top of a pile of droids’ parts, starships’ elements and broken micro-waves there were two shadowy shapes standing. Though it was neither tall nor very impressive, there was Raxus, the huge star around which the planet was orbiting, just behind them and two long shadows were crawling on the ground making whoever they were look very impressive.
None of the droid blinked but they exploded under a sudden yet heavy amount of laser shots. It was over before Bifgo started to run around yelling and shouting. The two shapes climbed down the large pile of things they were standing on, along them were six blasters whose ends were smoking. One may think that six blasters for two people would require three arms per subject, or two arms per subject and holding a blaster in the mouth yet the answer was much simpler: one of the subject had four arms and the second one was holding a blaster in each foot and was walking on his hands.
“You’re fine, guys?”
There were no answer: Bifgo was still yelling and running around and the two Jawas were shouting “Utinni!” and running back at their scavenging. Sepoko glanced at his teammate who could only shrug his four shoulders.
“Ungrateful idiots!”
Sepoko, the Dug, was the one walking on his hands and using his blasters with his feet. Of course he did so without contently being upside down. He was a Dug and every Dug walked on their hands and used their feet as hands. It was a tradition for the Dugs to be rude and impolite even when they were not grumpy or upset, they always pretended to be therefore being able to be rude and impolite.
“What is this?”
Nifer knelt down on the ground taking the small glowing orb that Bifgo had let fall on the ground earlier. He summoned his Dug friend with one hand, holding the orb in another. As we already explained and since he had a total of four arms.
“What’s the matter, Xexto?”
That was one of the impolite and rude ways of Sepoko he couldn’t name people but only their species. There came no spoken answer from the four-armed creature but he pointed the glowing and shiny object with a finger from each of his three available hands.
The strange-looking Dug was caressing the strange-looking barbell on each side of his snout. That was not a sign of deep thinking but rather a sign of pleasure.
“Isn’t that what we’re looking for, Xexto?”
“Almost disappointing how easy it was…”
The Dug nodded with a chuckle. He faced the Jawas, busy scavenging and pilling up pieces of no use and the Toong, busy sorting out what was really useless from what was slightly useful. Nifer holstered the glowing thing and cheerfully asked.
“How about we go home for dinner, kids?”
“Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah”
And they all started to walk back to the base but not after taking as much loot as possible.
Later in the evening, after a long and joyful dinner all together in the mess room, Ratapa and Xeedie organised a firework with parts of droids. There were music, dancing, silly games and to sum up the evening there were load of fun.
Shadow Squad was standing at a respectful distance. That is far enough not to be dragged into the fun but not far enough to let people wonder why they weren’t here.
The sergeant and leader of Shadow Squad was a Patrolian named Spiluno. Patrolians were a strange species of walking fish alike the Mon Calamari yet there were no physical resemblance. Patrolians were much smaller, had a more colourful skin.
“Sepoko told me you found something!”
“Yes, sergeant. Look!”
Very discreetly Nifer handed the glowing object they found earlier to the sergeant. The two other member of the small commando unit were glancing around making sure they were not spied upon.
“Nice catch! It will do fine. I’ll comm our contact as soon as possible. Be extra careful, the lizard may want it back.”
Now would be a good time to tell you a short story which probably seem to be not related at all to our current story yet it’s in fact important to understand the important story hidden beneath the stupid silly things that Raxus Prime Freedom Fighters usually do.
This bonus
6 short story
7, starts long time ago during the Clone Wars. At that time, real Jedi Padawans, Knights or even Masters were leading hundreds of Clone Troopers in battle against thousands of battle droids. This is what we tried to explain in chapter one: the infamous war between the Galactic Republic and the Confederacy of Independent Systems. Almost all and every Jedi were, at a moment or another during the war, sent on the front lines. That happened also to a small and somewhat strange Jedi Knight, named Kazdan Paratus. The lavender-skinned small Jedi was sent on the front lines twice.
First time he took the lead of a Clone Army but it was a disaster and most of his clones were killed in the process. Second time, Paratus was leading an army of droids he had constructed himself. The ratio of killed droids was very important but nobody really cared about that except for Paratus himself.
He was sent back in Coruscant just after that second campaign. A couple weeks later, Clone troopers of the 501st Legion lead by Darth Vader came in to sack the Temple and kill anybody living in there. Paratus ran away in an astonishing act of cowardice.
Hidden on Raxus Prime he slowly fall into insanity. Blaming himself for his cowardice, he built a Jedi Temple and Droids to act as a Jedis. He lived like that for fifteen years falling deeper in insanity and building more droids.
He was later killed by an assassin sent there by Darth Vader
8. What is interesting and important for us is that Paratus did not fly away with his hands empty. He took some very important items named holocrons.
An holocron is basically a computer that only force-users may use. A Jedi, for example, would use the force bring the holocron to life.
‘Bringing the holocron to life’ may sound too much it was a very close to the reality. It required a very complicated process to create an holocron and its builder would let an imprint of himself in it and this imprint was used to emulate an interface. A very simple interface because it was an holographic avatar with whom you could discuss and who would share the knowledge hidden in the holocron.
Grand Jedi Master Satele Shan alike many other Jedi Masters had crafted an holocron. Millenniums ago she crafted one with all her knowledge and wisdom in it and so did many other Jedi Masters. During the sack of Coruscant’s Jedi Temple many holocrons disappeared. It’s said that Vader destroyed some, some were stolen and a few Jedi took some of those away. It’s well known that Paratus took Satele Shan’s Holocron and a couple others.
This glowing orb that was found was nothing else but a Jedi Holocron. Telling whose would be complicated since none of the Freedom Fighters either was a Jedi or had the knowledge of Jedi Holocron. As already stated, Shadow Squad was something different. They were not simple scavengers but professional treasure hunters and Jedi relics were their speciality.
-----------------
1: And shadow squad but that’s something else…
2: Yes, that’s not a sunset since it’s not the Sun.
3: Don’t be fooled it’s just an expression. Trade Federation droid army managed to swarm all over Naboo and take control of the planet about ten years before the Battle of Geonosis.
4: With a blaster but that’s a detail.
5:Ewok-phobia is very strong within the surviving stormtroopers of Endor’s battle
6: Bonus is here to let you know we won’t charge you an extra credit even if we should marketing-wise.
7: That’s not really a short story just a certain amount of information that may or might be useful for a better understanding.
8: You definitely should read the Force Unleashed novel, if you already haven’t already 
Tue May 24, 2011 5:56 am by 
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