"Right," Roshton shouted back as Tories ignited his lightsaber.

"All units: cover fire left!"

The rain of fire from the clone trooper blasters abruptly changed focus, concentrating all their fury on the left flank of the advancing forces and blowing the droids on that side into a chaos of shards and rubble and smoke.

Gathering his feet beneath him, Tories ducked under the friendly fire and dodged around the end of the disintegrating enemy line.

The droids in the AATs saw him coming, of course. Even as their primary laser cannon began chewing up the landscape along the right flank of the Republic forces, the short-range defensive blasters on either side of the main air-cooling intake began firing at him. Tories' lightsaber flashed in answer, deflecting the bolts away or bouncing them into the backs of the advancing droids whenever he could manage it.

He reached the nearest AAT and jumped up onto the front. Positioning himself in front of the air intake where he was out of reach of both defensive blasters, he stabbed his lightsaber downward through the heavy armor into the forward repulsor disk. The vehicle pitched forward, its nose slamming into the ground like a quadruped that had had both front legs kicked out from under it.

Tories leaped straight up as it dug itself half a meter into the dirt, landing just in front of the top hatch, and with three quick slashes sliced off the primary laser cannon and the two side-mounted secondary laser guns.

The second AAT had abandoned its attack on the clone troopers and had swung to this new threat. For a moment Tories stayed where he was, balancing on the now badly sloped top of the grounded battle tank as he deflected a couple of shots from the second tank's defensive blasters. One of the bolts went straight back down the blaster's muzzle, eliciting a burping sort of explosion from the weapon. Taking advantage of the momentary chaos inside the tank, Tories stretched out to the Force and made a giant leap across to the second tank, dealing with its primary and secondary lasers as he had with the first. Leaning over the hatch, he swung his lightsaber one more time, cutting off the vehicle's command receiver antennas.