We plummeted towards the surface of the planet, first disappearing into a small cloud, only to punch through the other side of it rather quickly. Beneath us was another thick cloud layer, this time stretching as far as we could see. We hurtled toward it, all of us spread out as we fell. According to the estimates we had done during our hyperspace journey, our current jump would last somewhere between three and a half to four minutes. Nearly four minutes of complete and utter free fall.

  I glanced around carefully, instinctively nervous about sending myself off course. I could feel the wind buffeting me, pushing against my body and limbs, but my armor protected me from the worst of it. It was actually a bit of a weird sensation, knowing that the wind was pulling and tearing at us, only to not feel almost any of it.

  As I came out through the other side of our first cloud layer, I could see Ahsoka and Tatnia to my left, with Julus below me and Vaz beside him. To my right, further away than the others, was Nal. Racer was still tethered to Tatnia, the droid's head spinning near constantly, no doubt making plenty of noise.

  "Ahsoka, pull us closer so we don't get separated," I said, resisting the urge to shout, since our helmets isolated the noise of the blustering wind, and our comms linked us directly together. "Not too close, though, just so that we land near each other."

  Her comms clicked in confirmation, and after a moment, everyone started to pull in closer. I could feel her tugging at me with the Force, pulling at us to guide us in, setting us in a loose circle. She had just finished pulling in Racer when we punched through another cloud, this one considerably thicker than the first. It didn't take long for our armor to become damp and then wet as we plunged through the thick water vapor of the cloud.

  A look at my suit's internal timer and sensors showed that we were nearly a fourth of the way through our drop. Before I could report that to the rest of the group as a countdown, Julus cut in.

  "This is a lot more boring than I thought falling from the sky would be," Julus commented, getting a round of chuckles from everyone, even though I knew all of our hearts were pounding and our adrenaline was pumping. "Anyone up for a game of I Spy?"

  "Julus…" Tatnia said, a warning cut in her voice.

  "Shutting up!"

  We punched through the other side of the thick cloud layer, and suddenly, the amount of light tripled. Our helmets compensated for the glare a split second after we emerged, but we still had to blink away from the effects. Then, as we recovered, we could finally see the city and the Imperial base below us.

  The base itself was large, almost two miles across, and shaped like a lopsided octagon, with high duracrete walls around the entire complex and three large spires that reached up over the tallest buildings in the city. A decent-sized active starport took up one of the corners, while several dozen large buildings took up almost the rest, with a small yard for what was probably the on-base troopers not far from the starport.

  "That's a lot of space to cover," Tatnia commented, even as we passed the halfway mark, the base getting closer and closer.

  "I know…" I said. "This is going to be rough, but I have faith we can make it out."

  She was silent, and I turned my head to consider the city. It was decently sized, with several towering buildings and hundreds of other smaller ones. In total, the whole city was maybe three or four times the size of the base. The corner of it was growing around the base itself, sort of like an ooze encroaching its prey. There was a clear perimeter around it, a shooting gallery for the weapons stationed on the wall, but from this height, it looked too small to matter.

  "Getting closer, everyone, let's angle to the heart of the buildings," I suggested, shifting my arms to guide our freefall. "We need to pick up speed."

  Once again, we pulled our arms in, like we had just after escaping our ship, hopefully escaping notice as we did. We were too small to pick up on any wide sensor scan, and with our speed, we would appear to be too fast to be people to the naked eye. At least, that was what we were hoping.

  Faster and faster, we fell, guiding ourselves to another corner of the base, not too close to the wall. Our target was one of the larger buildings in the base, separated by the wall by two other smaller buildings.

  I warned everyone at two thousand meters from impact, then again at one thousand five hundred, and again at one thousand. Then I began counting down, everyone tensing as I started.

  "Five… four… three…two… one… Activate!"

  The ground was hurtling towards us, all of us struggling to hold ourselves back from activating too early. Thankfully, we had practiced this part several dozen times already, leaping from the Brick over the Vercopa starport over and over, until we could all resist the instinctual urge to pull out before the optimal time. We had been given new, potent equipment, and I would be damned if we didn't know how to use it perfectly before using it in the field.

  The moment I called out, all of us activated the that Pola and his team painstakingly built into our armors. It had taken him a long time to get around to adding them to our armor from when he first brought the idea up, but considering he ended up almost redesigning the packs completely, making them custom additions to our armor, streamlining and improving on the market models considerably, I was glad he took the time.

  Repulsor packs were slower than the jetpacks that Clone Troopers and Mandalorians use, but what they lost in speed, they made up for in precision and ease of use. I was happy to make the trade, and Pola and his team were even able to make up the speed gap slightly with some tinkering. They even made a special repulsor ring that temporarily affixed to an astromech, allowing them the same capabilities as us, since we frequently performed missions that required our now rather infamous slicer droids.

  Once we activated our repulsors, the pack kicked on and immediately started slowing our descent. It was far from gentle, a symptom of our HALO-style rapid deployment method, rather than a problem with the tech. They were perfectly capable of landing much more gently, we just didn't want to slow down until absolutely necessary.

  We hit the roof of the building safely, though a bit roughly, most of us stumbling forward before catching ourselves. Rather than waiting for everyone to recover from the rather disorienting deceleration, I quickly cast healing spells on everyone, snapping them back to full strength.

  "Alright, first off is finding someone to interrogate," I said, looking around the rooftop. I spotted a door nearby, which seemed to go downward. "Racer, Nal, get that door open."

  Nal and Racer quickly moved towards the door, the latter still wearing his repulsor pack, using it to move quickly. The pack would run out of energy relatively soon, but for now, it would let him keep up with us as we ran through the halls. If it did run out, one of us could trade out our own energy packs from our repulsor pack, but it would leave one of us grounded.

  We didn't have to wait long, no more than a minute, for Nal to pop open a control panel and for Racer to reach out with a cuter and slice a few wires. The door powered down, and with a little prying, it opened cleanly. On the other side was a stairwell, which we quickly piled down into. Knowing that at any moment, internal security could spot us on the security cameras that no doubt dotted the entire military base, we rushed down to the top floor, the first one we arrived at. Racer and Nal performed the same quick and dirty cut, and we pried the door open. I stuck my head inside once they did, looking up and down the long hall.

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  The halls were built with the classic, with metal paneling on every surface and those weird pill-shaped lights that ran along the roof and other surfaces. Unlike their ship interiors, however, not every panel or surface had consoles, buttons, or control interfaces. Sure, there was still way more than was probably necessary, but it was a lot less than an Imperial ship interior.

  Suddenly, I heard footsteps, and I quickly pulled my head back in, staying out just long enough to see someone in an Imperial uniform. They were turning down the corridor just as I was pulling my head back, heading in our direction.

  I quickly signed for everyone to pull back slightly, up the stairs and out of view. While they moved, I hid around the corner, quickly starting the Paralyze spell, the green glow just barely visibly against my armor. We all waited silently until, finally, the man walked by the doorway. I heard him mutter about the door being stuck open and calling maintenance when I finally popped out from around the corner and cast the spell into him. The green spell hit him in the chest, and he immediately locked up, his body covered in a green sheen as the magic kept him from moving. I quickly reached forward and grabbed him by his uniform, dragging him into the stairwell.

  "Shut the door," I ordered, pushing the man into the corner I had been hiding in while Vaz and Nal pushed the door closed behind us.

  The man's eyes were wide with fear, looking around at all of us frantically, his body still completely locked up. Rather than wait for the spell to wear off, I immediately cast Pacify on him, the magic expanding and swirling around him. The second the higher level Calm spell activated, the panic in his eyes dimmed and was replaced instead with confusion.

  "I'm sorry about that, buddy, you caught me off guard," I explained, placing my hand on his shoulder. "You alright? The effects should be fading pretty soon."

  Just as I said, the green glow faded, and the Imperial leaned back against the corner of the wall. Confusion was still the dominant expression on his face, but he nodded.

  "It's… it's fine…" He responded slowly. "I-"

  "That's great. Hey, listen, do you think you could help me? I'm afraid we are a bit lost," I said, cutting him off before he could get distracted. "My friends and I here have an appointment with a few high-priority prisoners. They just got brought in by the Storm Commandos maybe a half day ago. You wouldn't happen to have any idea where they would be, would you?"

  "The prisoners that the Storm Commandos brought in?" The officer asked, repeating my question, frowning as he looked us up and down. "What do you need them for?"

  "We are… the enhanced interrogation specialists," I explained, frowning inside my helmet. "We got called in to worm out any information we can. We suspect they may be lying about how much they know."

  For a long moment, the officer seemed to consider my words, and for a moment, I prepared to default to a more standard interrogation strategy, namely threats and violence, when he nodded with a smile.

  "That makes sense. They are likely being held at the detention center, located in building B-34X, four buildings to the North. It's in the sub-levels, but you should have the clearance for that, right?"

  "I most certainly do. Do you have clearance for that area?" I asked, keenly aware that my timer was quickly running out.

  "Me? Of course not. I don't have anything to do with prisoners or security," He said, his expression slowly shifting from confusion back into wide-eyed fear as my spell faded. "What is going on? What-"

  The muffled sound of a blaster firing a stunner echoed through the stairwell as I raised my blaster and fired it up into his armpit. He slumped immediately and dropped to the floor, while I turned back to everyone.

  "Alright, everyone, time to get a move on."

  With me leading the charge, we made our way down the stairs, continuing down and around until we hit the first floor. I was hoping that there would be some sort of emergency exit waiting for us, but other than the fact that there were no more stairs left to climb down, it looked exactly the same as all the other floors had.

  Nal and Racer once again opened the door, and once again, I peeked out. The first floor was considerably busier than the top one, with several more officers and a pair of technicians. Down at the very far end of the corridor, a pair of Stormtroopers were on guard, standing on either side of the hallway. I quickly pulled my head back in, cursing to myself before opening my comms.

  "Okay, too many people around to stealth at this point," I said, shaking my head. "Unless anyone has any bright ideas?"

  "Well… We could surprise them, take them all down before they have a chance to report anything," Julus suggested. "They clearly aren't paying attention at the security station, they might not notice-"

  Before he could finish his suggestion, several red lights activated, flashing brightly, a loud siren echoing through the base.

  "Intruder located!" An intercom blared. "Building B-56D, first floor, west emergency stairwell! Repeat, intruder detected!"

  "Well, so much for stealth," I said, giving Julus a conciliatory pat on his shoulder before leading the charge into the hallway. "Must have spotted us on a security feed."

  I had to hand it to them, while plenty of aspects of the Empire were bloated and slow, their security response was not. Even in just the few seconds that the alarm had been playing, all of the people I had seen had pulled out their blasters and aimed them down the hallway toward us. Before we could do anything, they opened fire, blaster bolts slamming into us and either being absorbed or ricocheting off our armor.

  "Take them down before they can report on our armor!" I called out, lashing out with a dual blast of chain lighting, taking down the nearest three officers.

  The rest of my team opened fire, blaster bolts racing in both directions. With my team's general immunity to blaster bolts, we quickly and efficiently took down the seven or eight Imperials in only a few seconds, which was good news. While they knew someone was here, they hopefully didn't know who yet. Fancy armor may pass under the radar, but fancy blaster-proof armor would fill them in pretty quickly, and those defending the base would stop with the blasters and start bringing out the big guns.

  Basically, the longer they didn't realize who we were, the longer they would keep trying to kill us with their useless blasters.

  "Nal, Julu, Ahsoka, keep a lookout," I ordered. "Everyone else, as we move, keep an eye open for security passes, grab any that look useful."

  My team nodded, and we moved, heading down the hall and over the various corpses we had just made. We had pilots to rescue, and our presence here was bound to put them in danger if we didn't hurry.