The Warden’s alarms blare as Havok Squad rush out of their bunks, quickly getting ready for a fight. The sounds of war are deafening outside, blaster fire coming from an opposing ship. Rat goes to a terminal seeking further instructions. Their current orders are to remain hunkered down in the barracks but make sure Rat gets to the Stargazer to provide support. The party assigns Hal and Trip to escort him there. He arrives without trouble and is able to take off with the rest of the ships. Rat’s aim is to cover the blind spots of the Y-Wings attacking the Separatist ship. He sees some vulture droids and aims to bait them away from the main group. Eventually, the rest of Avalanche Company are given orders to go to deck 9, the med bay.

They are met with several closed blast doors. 28’s able to manually override it and the company advances to the med bay cargo hold, where several B1s are standing around. Clone and non-clone crew members are engaging in battle. They begin shooting, joining the crew in a fight. Meanwhile Rat is dogfighting the vulture droids, performing complex maneuvers to narrowly avoid them. He’s fully gotten them to follow him, some of them crashing into their own ship in a cascading shower of fire and debris falling off its hull.

The droids are aware of the new clone threat and fire enough suppress fire to keep Avalanche Company pinned down. Tower tosses an ion grenade, greatly lessening the suppression. Cook sneaks to another area behind cover, flanking a B1 commando. Rat only has one surviving vulture droid following him, one that seems far smarter than the rest and isn’t falling for the traps he lays for it. Its getting several lucky shots on him, taking out most of the Stargazer’s shields and its gun begins malfunctioning. There are several droids with gas canisters and the group begins targeting them specifically. 28 is able to dispatch them until reinforcements arrive. Rat realizes the vulture droid he’s engaging with has special blue decals on the side with an insectoid pattern. He is able to pull off an impressive maneuver, and deals a good amount of damage in its hull. Eventually, the large Separatist ship begins retreating, the vulture droid and B1s with it. Rat swears that the one vulture droid is now his sworn enemy and he names it Blue Jay.

While cleaning up the droid debris from the fight, 28 notices a corpse of a clone floating in space. He’s not wearing armor and was clearly shot in several places, specifically in weak points in the armor where the white plate doesn’t fully cover. In fact, there’s several clones floating in space in the same condition. 28 sees 4 in total. He reports this in immediately to Captain Frost who sends it further up the chain of command. Other search teams report several other clones stripped of their armor and floating in space. Havok Squad agree to commit to a buddy system, suddenly suspicious of everyone outside of their squad. Upon returning to the barracks for the night they’re able to verify everyone is in fact clones, but are unsure of anyone outside them.

While getting ready for bed, 28, Tower, and Rat notice that there’s a specific clone walking past the barracks on patrol. There’s something odd about him, he’s doing a very dramatic impression of the parade walk. He’s also alone, which is pretty unusual for patrol. Rat looks at 00’s schedule and find the clone meant to be on patrol is CT-0647, nicknamed Rinn. 28 sneaks out behind him and Tower walks out obviously. Tower walks up to him and says “Hey, what’s up, Grant! Didn’t know you were out on patrol tonight.”

“Rinn” responds with “Uh, I’m not Grant, I’m Bitter.”

Tower quickly apologizes and returns back to the barracks with 28. We’ve got imposters! Rat double checks the list of dead clones and finds a Bitter on the list of people that were pulled out from space. They wake up Cook who agrees they need to call this in and deal with the threat immediately. He walks out into the hallway, setting his rifle to stun, and opens fire on “Bitter.” He nails several shots, dealing more than enough stun damage to knock most people unconscious. Still standing, “Bitter” raises his gun to shoot back, but Tower shoots the gun out of his hand. 28 uses his grapple to pull “Bitter” closer into melee range. He thrashes wildly at Tower, punching him in the stomach, Tower returning the favor with a swift strike to the head with his Doberman. Sparks fly, and “Bitter” falls dead. Tower removes his helmet, revealing a BX-series droid. Rat’s attempts to communicate with the bridge have gone unanswered. He reaches out to 00 and explains the situation, and he has no contact with the bridge or engineers. They realize they need to target those two places specifically. Cook and Rat figure out what the droids are planning, they’re going to use the ship as a suicide bomb, as the ship suddenly shifts out of hyperspace: they’re nearly to their destination.

Avalanche company decide they’re going to target the bridge while 00 takes the reactor. Worst case scenario, they hope they’ll be able to at least pilot the ship away from the planet to blow up harmlessly in space. Best case, they might be able to shut off the engine. As they get closer to the bridge, they find remnants of battle and dead clones in the hallways. After Rat opens up the blast door to the bridge, Avalanche Company is immediately shot by a rotary canon on the other side, several of them falling. 28 shoots the rotary gun, causing a large explosion, dispatching the gun and the droid. Cook and Tower throw ion grenades, killing a pair of droids while Rat sneaks in and looks at the flight path.

Several BX droids charge the group with vibro swords, downing Cook and nearly dispatching Tower by impaling them. Tower brings Cook back up with shared recovery, which Cook returns the favor with another shared recovery. Tower is pinned against the wall by the droid, which gets shot in the head point blank by Sarge. Rat is able to alter the flight path away from the planet, slowing the ship down and turning it away. The droid captain is opposing this, until Tower shoots it directly in the head, distracting it. Cook is able to scramble back away from the droid that stabbed him, shooting it one last time as it goes down in a sparky mess.

They’re halfway done.

The elevator doors open behind them, filling the hallway with green light as Tycho wielding his saber approaches the droids with 00 and his team in tow. The captain droid, still operational, begins to drive Rat out of the computer. The space station sends warning signals to the Warden, to which Rat responds with a brief description of the current situation. They agree they’ll do what they have to stop them from destroying the planet. Tower and Cook focus fire on the captain while Tycho dispatches the other droids. Rat is just barely able to steer the ship away from the station just in time.

Frost communicates over comms, coughing blood and wheezing, “Mission failed… Glory to you, brothers…”

The entire ship ripples in an explosion, destroying most of the ship and knocking the clones to the floor. Havok Squad survives to see another day, but most of Avalanche Company died in the battle. 7 of the 12 members of Avalanche are from Havok. The Stargazer is still in tact, as well as most of the hanger, but the entire back half of the ship is destroyed. 65% of the clone forces abroad the Warden survived. The medical facilities of Alakine bring the clones down planetside to some of the best hospitals they can provide. After two weeks, the squad are mostly okay. Physically, at least. Watching their brothers get destroyed in desperate sieges over and over again has not done any good for morale. A success has never felt more like a failure.

Rat brings them protein effigies to make them feel better. Cook is suffering from survivor’s guilt and has thoughts of defecting. He doesn’t really see the point in cooking anymore, not when he can get shipped out at any point and die. 28 is dealing with depression, feeling beaten down from the endless losses. Tower is angry, thinking about how the siege never should’ve happened to begin with. How they never should’ve been ambushed, how the droids should’ve never been able to pretend to be clones. Hal is exhausted. He hasn’t been able to sleep well due to night terrors. Sarge has withdrawn even more from the group. Sarge seeks Cook out and says that he knows what he’s dealing with. It isn’t easy watching your family that you’re in charge of and responsible for die in one battle, just for the survivors to die in the next battle.

Cook shrugs, “that’s our lot in life, isn’t it?”

“Well, it doesn’t have to be. Tycho says we’re all part of something more. It doesn’t have to be all our life is.” He squeezes Cook’s shoulder, and heads out of his room.

Just before he leaves, Cook turns. “How’s Waffle-Dogs sound for dinner tonight?”

Sarge smiles and gives a thumbs up.

END OF ARC 1