Chapter 2: Into The Rain, Up The Rocks

In the cold, pouring rain of Mimban, Wolf attached a grappling hook to the handguard of his DC-17m, aimed the gun towards the top of the ridge (about 50 m upwards at a steep incline), and fired. A small tethered metal cartridge whistled through the air, unfolding into a 3-pronged clawlike hook. The hook left Wolf's visor-sights as it landed on top of the ridge.

Wolf moved his thumb onto a yellow button on the hook attachment and clicked it. As he did so, the line started reeling until it tightened. Wolf tugged on the line to make sure it was stable.

He then looked to his left at the other three commandos who were beginning to load their grappling hook attachments.

He moved the attachment off the gun, letting the line release a bit, and hooked it to his utility belt, once again checking that the line was still stable.

Wolf put his right foot onto the slippery rock face, applying pressure. He then slightly pulled himself upwards but his foot lost traction and he landed back onto the muddy terrain.

"As I thought, all this rain is making the cliff face nearly impossible to scale," said Wolf through the comm channels to the other clones.

The other clones acknowledged Wolf and pressed a button on each of their right gauntlets. Wolf did the same and went to scale the face again. This time when he pressed onto the rock, a heavy whirring was followed by click. Wolf pulled himself onto the hook's line and this time didn't slip back towards the bottom.

Arm after arm, leg after leg, clicking after clicking, Wolf and his squad started climbing the rain-soaked ridge. Rain patterned against the armor, like drums in a hurricane. Wolf looked to the others but only saw the faint blue glows of their utility. Lightning flashed and thunder roared as the clones moved farther up the ridge.

Bear was bout to move his foot onto a section of the cliff face but stopped shortly before doing so. Instead, he kicked it, causing a few chunks of rock to fall off towards the muddy floor below.

Bear looked towards the other members of his squad. Through his visor, he could read their outlines and realized he was a bit behind. He let his right hand go of the rope and punched it into the rock, letting the 2-inch claws on his gauntlets gouge through the solid texture. He then proceeded to do the same with his left hand. Chuckling to himself, Bear started moving upwards at double the pace, slamming into the wall as he went.

Hare was the first to reach the top of the ridge, shuffling onto the mixture of mud and rock that was the top. He lifted himself then reached down to help Hawk.

The two clones got their bearings as Bear bumbled onto the surface as well.

The last one to the top was Wolf who pulled himself up with ease.

"Reminds me of that time we had to track the whereabouts of that senator back on Mustafar," Hare said jokingly to the rest of the squad.

"Except that time we had to hurry so our gear wouldn't melt," Hawk responded.

Hawk moved to the eyepiece on his helmet and pressed a switch at the end of the attachment. A holographic blue circle formed around the stalk with a few smaller circles inside of it.

"There's that communications tower we're after," Hawk announced to the group.

Wolf held a pair of macrobinoculars to his visor, adjusting the greater and fine knobs to get as clear of a picture of the tower as he could in all the rain.

A tall building with two antennae, one large, one small with a dish, came into sight. The tower has about 7 stories starting with a large base and a circular balcony around the 6th floor. Wolf cranked the fine adjustment knobs inward on the base.

"I count 30 muddy B-2 battle droids and 5 super battle droids," said Wolf into his comms to the others.

"34, sir. There is a squad of commando droids," Hawk responded to his commander. "Look at the balcony level"

Wolf moved his macrobinoculars to the balcony level where sure enough, there were 4 commando droids, distinct by their darker figures and headpieces. These droids are more advanced than the average bucket of bolts and could take a few more hits before they went down. However, there was something else.

"They have an E-WeB-12 up there," Wolf relayed to the squad.

An E-WeB-12 or emplacement weapon blaster is a heavy repeating mounted turret capable of whipping out entire platoons of troops. The blaster is capable of a very high rate of fire while maintaining an average range and accuracy. The only downside to this weapon is that overheating is common and it cannot turn past 210 degrees of motion.

"Hawk, I'm leaving the four droids up top for you. I don't want that E-WeB to be active if we end up in a gunfight," Wolf said firmly to Hawk who nodded his head in agreement.

Wolf looked a bit more around the area of the tower which was mostly flat areas of mud with a few metal pipes leading towards the comm center.

"If we want to get close without being spotted we're gonna have to crawl once we get about 40 meters out."

The squad nodded their heads, loaded their grappling hooks back into their utility packs, and started walking towards the comm center under the growing darkness of the night and deafening rain.