Chapter Text
Sometime between 7949–7950 C.R.C.
#7567 [Chrono year: 4–5]; [Growth cycle: 8–10]
Fett, Jango [Age: 38-39]
Planet: Kamino, Tipoca City, Military Education Complex, Training Sector #713 (assigned to Project #713).
Adaptive to the extreme, the arenas whose domes covered the training grounds functioned as one of the most utilized spaces in Tipoca City’s Military Education Complex for the purpose of preparing the Clone Cadets’ future as soldiers of the Galactic Republic.
The first training grounds Clone Cadet #7567 had set foot in, as a clumsy Little just out of the nursery, had been under the curved ceiling of Arena #2. It was where trainers worked to condition the growing bodies of Little Clones through the use of holograms, floating observational platforms, and buzzing surveillance droids. After Jango Fett saw fit to remove him from the 412th Cadet Company, he had since trained alongside the sheb’ike, wherever the ori’shebse had taken them.
Now, Sixty-seven had a third place of training, ominously referred to as Training Sector #713, though only in whispers by those who were either permitted to know of its existence or needed to claim ignorance about the rumored cadet program.
Unlike the cavernous chambers of the Arenas, the training grounds assigned to the don’t-ask-about-it-and-don’t-talk-about-it Project #713 were small and did not have the same capacity to train tens of thousands at a time. Despite being only a fraction of the size, the grounds did have a similarly diverse capability as the mega arenas.
The Cadets who did report to the #713’s grounds received training focusing on the refinement of physical development, until all the lost gracelessness of a Little had been lost. Equipment was strategically placed throughout and used at the Trainers’ behest to push the Cadets’ bodies even further. Despite its scaled-down layout and operation, sound easily echoed across the grounds’ shorter expanse, and the dim light created more shadows that crept along the floors.
It was no wonder the Cadets were known as the prud’ike, despite being eerily quiet. Dressed uniformly with his enigmatic peers, the sounds of Sixty-seven’s soft-sole boots were just as muffled as he drilled with them. It reminded him of the silence awaiting him back at the 1st Alpha Platoon’s barracks.
The sheb’ike still had not returned; he missed them and their constant noise.
Waiting for his turn on the balance beam while watching the current Cadet perform several acrobatic drills, he heard a sharp whistle come from across the practice mat. Dozens of identical pairs of eyes were immediately locked in the source’s direction; the only one to stand out was a pair that gleamed through the dark, focusing on a familiar face.
Even through the low light, the reflective surface of Jango Fett’s armor was a simple but effective beacon against the omnipresent shadows. Barely contained joy and excitement split open Sixty-seven’s heart; he hoped that this meant the sheb’ike had returned.
Rather than dart in the direction of his summons, he waited until he saw Fett’s hands signal his designation numbers: Six Tens [plus] Seven. After that, he obediently trotted over.
Prime stood next to a figure Sixty-seven recognized as one of their supervising senior trainers who had introduced themselves as Mockinstar in the softest voice Sixty-seven had ever heard. It was a voice that had as much elegance as the individual, whether in motion or standing as still as a statue.
Similar to the all-black attire Mockingstar wore, Sixty-seven’s new jumpsuit was made from a nearly weightless, flowy fabric loosely fitting around his body, tapering at his elbows and knees. By the time the sleeves were halfway down his forearm, the narrowed fit provided magnetic latches for ease, though Sixty-seven’s hands were still small enough that he could just slip through them. The soft-sole boots reached under his knees, where the pant legs came together, the uniform’s material compressing around his calves.
Mockingstar shared a similar silhouette with the Cadets, the only difference being the hood worn over the trainer’s head. Made from a thinner version of the material used in their attire, an unusually delicate veil was draped over the lower half of the man’s face, its translucent effect framing their dark eyes.
Wordlessly, Fett crooked a finger, beckoning Sixty-seven closer, which was promptly obeyed. Once he was within easy arm’s reach, he was maneuvered to face forward, his back to Fett. The weight of the hands on his shoulders could have buckled the child’s knees.
“How is he doing?” Fett asked and pulled Sixty-seven closer with only a few centimeters between them.
“How old did you say he was?”
Fett hummed thoughtfully, then recited the recognizable numbers of Sixty-seven’s pool, batch, and cluster.
Curious, Sixty-seven tried to look over his shoulder at Fett’s bare face, but a gesture by the man’s chin told him to keep his eyes forward.
“Hm. A little small for that age… isn’t he? Are you sure he isn’t younger?”
“Answer the question, Mockingstar.”
After a sigh, an answer came, admitting, “He is… Hm. Doing well. Honestly, Jango, he is remarkable. He’s only been training alongside his current group of trainees since his transfer, and he’s already begun consistently outperforming them.”
Forcefully, Fett pressed his thumbs between Sixty-seven’s shoulder blades and vertebrae, tightened his fingers, and pulled back his shoulders, opening up his chest. He hummed a noise of—was it pride?
Sounded like it. At least, it did to Sixty-seven, who wasn’t certain if he understood it correctly, even though it was similar to the sound his brothers might have made when daring pridefulness showed itself in the Clone.
“If you want him to continue training here, it won’t be long before I’m going to have to move him to an older cycle of Cadets.”
This was the first that Sixty-seven had ever heard. He never heard anything about how well his performance was, other than the silent encouragement to push the boundaries of his body.
“How’re his reflexes and speed?”
“As I said, remarkable.”
“He’ll be able to keep up with a Jetii in the field?” Fett asked reservedly.
Mockingstar laughed dryly. “If he keeps performing and taking to the training like he is, he may even outperform some of them, Fett.” There was a breathed pause.
And another of the same hum from Fett, the one so close to pleasantly soothed pride.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he has to be on the edge…” There was a significance to Mockingstar’s words that was beyond Sixty-seven’s comprehension.
‘On the edge of… what?’ he wondered to himself.
Snorting dismissively, Fett made clear that he thought Mockingstar was a fool to stray towards such a claim.
Another long silence between Mockingstar and Fett. In that time, Sixty-seven watched across the grounds and observed several squads being drilled through their paces. He assumed the adults were watching the same, too.
“Fett, to be honest, he’s too good.” Mockingstar’s soft voice broke the silence. “Was his mid—”
“No,” Fett’s voice, a sharpened edge, sliced through the rest of Mockingstar’s words, not liking where his conversation companion was going. For the most part, Fett also spoke with a softened voice, even if stern and stoic. He didn’t have to raise his voice often because most of the time, it was enough to target-lock the attention of the Clones, Kaminoans, and Off-worlders alike.
“Fett, he would go far in this program. However, you know the policy: the Client wants all those on the border to be here, training for this program. But those over the border are to go with—”
“He doesn’t need to be tested.” Rather than return, Fett’s patience sounded driven further away.
The tone was one that Sixty-seven would never have the gett’se to challenge. But he was also not a highly trained warrior like Mockingstar, who obviously had the gett’se to do just what the Alphas would swear was a death sentence.
“Actually, Fett, he does have to be. With any of my other cadets, I would have already evaluated him, and if my preliminary assessment proved true, he’d probably already be on his way to the Client by now.” Mockingstar sounded conflicted, though convinced.
Neither man gave away who this mysterious Client was.
“Kynomi—”
“Mockingstar,” cutting off Fett with a correction, Sixty-seven’s trainer was otherwise unbothered. “Fett, I am not like your Cuy’val Dar. I am not one of your mercenaries and bounty hunters hired for the other programs. I am more like you than not; I answer to the client—”
“He cannot be tested; he cannot even officially be in this program.”
Sixty-seven assumed that he was still the ‘he’ who could not be here, even though he was obviously here.
“Then why is he here?” Mockingstar asked.
Stealing a glance over his shoulder, Sixty-seven saw that Mockingstar had turned to fully face Fett, who stubbornly looked away. Once the older man’s eyes looked down and caught his Clone trying to watch them, Sixty-seven swiftly turned his head back around and watched his fellow Cadets as they were repeatedly drilled.
When Mockingstar got no answer, they said, “Fett, I think he will become one of the most effective and skilled dar’kyramud to come out of this project.”
The sheb’ike knew far more Mando’a than Sixty-seven, even now, after they had taken it upon themselves to help build a bridge since he had become part of their unit, following the example set by the ori’shebse. Slowly, the mystery of the Mandalorian language began to unravel as they shared their broken familiarity with Jango Fett’s native tongue.
He recognized that ‘dar’ indicated something was dark or shrouded in darkness, as Ninety-nine had worded it. But ‘kyramud’ was not a part of his current vocabulary; it wasn’t even something he heard anyone mutter when they thought there weren’t any little ears listening.
Taking the excuse of a Cadet working on the far side of the training circle, Sixty-seven put Fett in his periphery and watched the clenched jaw muscles visibly strain where they connected below the man’s ears, bulging.
“Categorically, he got classed among the main production Clones,” Fett again cut through whatever else Mockingstar was going to say. “But genetically, he is Alpha-grade.” He pushed his thumbs deeper, surprising Sixty-seven with a painful pressure at the base of his neck, forcing him to look forward again.
“That is not what his file says…”
Fett interrupted Mockingstar with a snort. “Yeah, well, I think you’ll find that there are a lot of things left out of our records. Everyone has secrets here, Mockingstar.”
“You’re talking to an expert in secrets.”
“Not secrets of this kind.”
“And what kind is that, Fett?”
Mockingstar continued to get no answer for a long while, long enough for a squad of Cadets to loop a quarter around the grounds’ edge.
“He is staying with the Alpha-class cadets,” Fett added, repeating the earlier gesture when he pulled back Sixty-seven’s shoulders and stretched his upper pectoral muscles.
Bit by bit, Sixty-seven wondered if that was somehow a strange way that Jango Fett tried to comfort him. However, he couldn’t think of why he would need comfort from the man.
“In the end, I’m the one who decides who is operationally an Alpha and who isn’t. He’s been transferred to the Alpha Corps and its program, which means he cannot officially be… here.”
“You can’t do that, Fett.”
“Yes, I can. My contract is better than yours. I can pull from anywhere for any program. I have more discretionary power than even you possess, Mockingstar.”
“Believe it or not, Jango, this project is important, too. The Alpha Program does not take priority over this one. That program was your personal concept, but this one was mandated by the Client, and his contract is better than any of us—yes, even you. There is no evidence that your Alpha-class Cadets will be any better than Nulls—or—any Clone from the gen-pop—and—certainly none of these dar’kyr—”
“They are, and they will be,” Fett insisted, his voice was fire and ice.
“You cannot guarantee that. None of those Cadets are old enough to even be your Advanced Recon Commandos—What a mouthful, Fett, for a man with so few words—”
“That’s why they will be ARCs.”
Mockingstar let the silence linger enough, possibly to cool the fire and thaw the ice. “You still think that your ARCs are going to be more impressive than my dar’kyramu, don’t you?”
“They are, and they will be,” Fett mirrored his previous statement, though this time without the same temper as earlier.
“Do you want to take that bet?”
Fett’s tight squeeze on Sixty-seven’s shoulders implied he wasn’t very appeased. “It will take a while before we can call it.” However, he did sound a little softened.
“It’ll give the pool time to accrue investment.”
Chuffing wryly, Fett sounded amused. His hands fell away from Sixty-seven’s shoulders, freeing the small Cadet to squirm around.
Clones weren’t known for being very good at keeping still for very long. Instinctively, Sixty-seven opened up a forward gap, which he compulsively used to stretch his back forward, side to side, and finally in a deep arch that let him bend far enough to catch eyes with his genetic source upside down.
Briefly, the linear division of time was bent and fractured. A crack in the surface went through a mirror that was a window all along, showing a moment in the future converged at the present when Fett arched an eyebrow in barely contained amusement as he observed Sixty-seven’s flexible antics. Fett widened his footing further than the length of his shoulders, crossed his arms across his cuirass, pressed his lips together to pinch off a smile that tried to drag across his face, and half-heartedly tried to look either annoyed or unimpressed. However, when he bent forward at his waist and peered down at Sixty-seven, a twinkle in his eyes betrayed him, showing that he was amused, perhaps even pleased.
Sixty-seven almost stumbled out of his contorted bend in shock. Eyes forward again, he blinked through his blurred vision and wondered: was he why Fett appeared to struggle against an unbidden smile?
Unwilling to relent but more than willing to break through the moment shared between Prime and his yellow-haired Clone, Mockingstar accused, “Fett! What are you trying to do? Create a class of royal Clones that will rule over them all?” The accusation turned into a declaration, “You cannot be so stubborn simply because you’re sentimental for the little—” Breathing audibly through their nose, Mockingstar’s uniform rustled from the noise of a vague gesture. “What is it you call those pet Little Alpha Cadets of yours?”
“I am not sentimental,” Fett denied, loudly breathing through his nose. “They call themselves the sheb’ike—I didn’t give them that name…”
The contradictory claim came before Sixty-seven made a quarter turn to face both adults. He got to see Mockingstar’s matching skepticism, crossing their arms over their chest, and the hardened, expectant eyes staring at Fett.
“Well, once. And then the older ones just picked it up on their own.”
Sixty-seven frowned at Fett with confusion. Since he had been around Fett and the Alpha-class Clones, he had heard Prime refer to the little Alphas as the sheb’ike on plenty of occasions. The next brow arched down onto Sixty-seven silently conveyed that the Clone was expected to be complicit in Fett’s dishonesty. Pressing his lips together, he willfully confirmed his cooperation, figuring it better to keep Fett happy, even if over such a little thing.
Not that the wounded pride of a Fett, original or cloned, was ever so little.
When Fett realized that Mockingstar wasn’t simply accepting the answer, he looked at the dark-clad trainer and frowned enough to downturn his whole mouth. “You know how kids are.”
“Yeah, I know. Believe it or not, these are not the first kids I’ve raised. I used to work in the crèches, you—dodgy, cranky, tin-can—”
Whatever other creative invectives Mockingstar was going to hurl next at Fett, the trainer simply received a dismissive, shrugged shoulder. “Now the sheb’ike call the older ones ori’shebse,” Fett growled, and fought in vain against the edges of his mouth, likely to keep them from being upturned; was he really so amused by them?
“By the Force, I love kids, even your Clones.”
Fett shrugged. “Eh, they’re okay.” He played off dispassion unconvincingly. Bit by bit, the longer it seemed that Mockingstar had been successfully distracted enough to drop the subject, the more Fett’s armored shoulders seemed to ease away from his tension.
“Don’t give me that—‘I’m a heartless bounty hunter routine’—Jango Fett. If that were truly the case, then we wouldn’t be having this disagreement.”
Sixty-seven could have warned Prime that Mockingstar was relentless. He had never seen his trainer not pursue whatever held their focus, even if they pulled back long enough to let a Cadet take a breath.
“I don’t care. They are just cannon fodder.”
Had Fett asked his small Clone, he could have warned his genetic source that it was wrong to assume Mockingstar would leave anything alone until it was to their satisfaction.
“Fett, he could be the most effective dha jetiise kyramud—”
Of course, Sixty-seven could have also warned Mockingstar that Jango Fett’s temper was always close to the surface, beneath his armor, like a heated filament that had been left on its lowest setting. His stoicism was a thick layer of condensation that could barely withstand the oppressive heat beneath the polished façade.
“I don’t care.” Now, molten heat poured into the deep wound sliced through the air by Fett. “He cannot even be here, Mockingstar,” he emphasized with words as hard as his eyes, “Not officially.”
To Sixty-seven’s surprise, Mockingstar took a step back from the sheer force of Fett’s tone, and the Cadet might’ve done the same, except that his boots must have melted into the flooring.
Slowly, with contained reserves of self-restraint, Fett slowly dragged his eyes forward and watched out across the training subsection, occupied by a small contingency of Cadets going through their drill forms. “It isn’t safe,” he added, his voice too soft and too quiet to fit with the previous declaration, or even to fit with the man. Yet, it was said and was obviously meant to be paired together.
“Since when have you cared about their safety?” Mockingstar breathlessly questioned. “Aren’t they just units you sold to be cannon fodder? Your words, not mine.”
Immediately, Fett’s eyes darted onto Sixty-seven with an unreadable flicker in his equally unreadable eyes. By the time Sixty-seven felt freed of the gaze, Fett began to rock back onto his heel, then forth onto the balls of his feet. However, he didn’t answer.
“Why… not?” pressed Mockingstar, their hard stare parting the veil before their eyes; the voice was sharpened. “Why can’t—”—a gloved hand worked roughly into Sixty-seven’s hair—“—he be here?” Caught in the constant of curls, the fingers roughly jerked his head back, but no effort was made to look at the manhandled Cadet. “What is he to you? Some kind of alor’ika for you, Jango?” Receiving no answer, Mockingstar removed their hand, caressing it down the back of Sixty-seven’s skull, silently apologizing for the treatment’s roughness. Despite having withdrawn the physical contact, Mockingstar exhibited the same relentlessness they had begun to impart on the Cadets dressed in black and moved like shadows. “Fett, I think he is at least on the border. If I’m correct, if he were anywhere else, a Seeker would have already been sent here.” Still, no answer. “I don’t know how he was missed, but I think he needs his—”
“M-count,” Fett paused and pursed his lips together, an unhappy frown turned deep. His unblinking gaze tracked Mockingstar’s gentle action with Sixty-seven, following it as it was pulled in retreat. He hissed, “No. No testing. If he is tested, and—if—you’re correct, the system will flag him.”
“If he is over the edge and the Client finds out—protocols make it clear that—”
“He—can—not—have—him.”
Through the thin veil covering most of the man’s face, Morningstar flashed sharp, pointed teeth, biting into the words with a predator’s bite, “Why—not?” They were willing to challenge, as few would ever dare to pose to Jango Fett, showing an inexplicable ferocity that Sixty-seven couldn’t account for.
Under the pressure of evidently being the subject, Sixty-seven bowed his head and tried to look away. He tried to act as though he were invisible or at least unaware that somehow, he had something to do with the polar adamancy pushing between the two grown figures, both of whom held enormous power over the fates of the Clones. He couldn’t comprehend what he was a witness to. Yet, he felt a comprehension on a base level he couldn’t understand. It was like the small lettered notes were written all over everyone; letters that weren’t visible to his eyes, but raised under his internal touch, like the raised texture on the Alpha’s ID badges.
To Sixty-seven’s back, the two men, one his genetic Prime, the other his senior-most trainer, radiated their stubborn and opposing forces because of their force of will, poisoning the silence.
Jango Fett struggled just then to chew on his words, bite his tongue, and swallow the emotions within. He had made this decision and gone through with it; half the financial payment had exchanged hands, and a child had been handed over.
These Clones were instruments, tools—millions of them, and all were him. Pieces of him had been bought and stored in vials, altered in laboratories, then grown in tanks—small, little glass coffins. Each wore his face, the face of his past, even little 7567, who was trying not to look up and watch the adults as they postured themselves the way two predators in a stand-off would.
If Fett looked on the edge of concern, it was because he was. He shouldn’t, but he was. He knew his Clones were essentially him; their lives and fates were done only to him, no one else, just him.
However.
Though he was a bounty hunter of infamy and renown, Jango had not fully carved out the testaments written into his stone-cold heart: do not hurt children, do not hurt the innocent.
However, he was no man of innocence. His Clones—pieces, parts, fragments, fractured reflections—came from his DNA; they were no children of innocence. He told himself that they were not owed the creed’s protection because any harm done to them was harm done to him, by himself.
That was how it was supposed to be; that was how he had ensured he would be able to live with himself, with an overflowing chest of credits and a child to be his legacy.
Jango looked at Sixty-seven and watched the small boy, the Clone with the pale blonde hair and the eyes too bright; he wielded his silence like a sword and shield.
Alpha-67 may have been unlocked from his DNA, but the child was not wholly Jango Fett. He was a gilded reflection of something lost. Something that had been stolen from Jango, something ripped out and caged and—
Fett snapped his head and stared over his shoulder with hardened eyes softened only by the heat within. His resolve told him that he was fine—this was fine, it fit within his contract. He was allowed to be selfish. He had to because his blood—his iron heart—wouldn’t allow him to do otherwise. When he had finally looked at Clone #7567, he knew he had to do something to shape the kid’s life, to give him a chance to survive, perhaps, even…
…to thrive.
Because the stolen thing ripped out of him? It hadn’t survived; it hadn’t had a chance to thrive.
Because that which Sixty-seven reflected never had that chance. Jango had failed to protect it, just like he failed to protect all the parts of him that Jaster Mereel had ever seen as worthy of being his apprentice. Instead, those parts of worth… those parts of worth and value greater than all the galaxy’s gold, platinum, or beskar had been fragmented into millions of scattered shards.
If it couldn’t be worth its weight in credit, Jango had decided he would only hope that some of these precious fragments would manifest and rise up to shine as they achieve Fett’s final, forgotten goal: vengeance.
They were him, and vengeance would be his, which made the vengeance theirs.
“Why?” he repeated, squeezing his fingers around the boy’s shoulders. “For the same reason, he is no longer where I found him.”
“Fett…”
Slowly, he nudged the child several steps forward, trying to put some distance between them. Then cautiously, he leaned his head in a subtle cue, correctly understood by Mockingstar; their heads were bowed together, and his lips moved against the veil’s soft fabric…
Words were whispered—words Sixty-seven couldn’t dare catch—he knew they were forbidden to him. Snapping his head forward, he looked away and pretended he wasn’t there at all, out of fear of what could happen if it was suspected he had listened or even just caught a few stray words.
When the whispered words had been expended, Mockingstar straightened their body upright; vicious, disbelieving incredulity consumed the man’s body. “What?!” The serpentine hiss—spat out like a startled tide viper caught in a net—had venom in it.
Having shared and confessed the secret, Fett looked forward and resumed watching the small squad of Clones working on balance beams, practicing with their training bastinades, honing their dexterity, strength, and flexibility. He caught Sixty-seven by his shoulders again.
“How… is that possible?”
Sixty-seven could hear the sound of Fett blithely shrugging. “Something about human genetics being simple but complicated…” He looked around conspiratorially, though no one had followed the light towards them or come from the shadows; it was still just them and the dedicated Cadets in the distance.
“I’m not a biologist; I can’t explain it, either.” Fett removed his hands from Sixty-seven’s shoulders and gripped his forearms. “I just know that it has happened.” Again, he began to rock back on his heels before shifting his weight onto the balls of his feet. Dully, he could be heard drumming his fingers against the metal.
By now, Sixty-seven knew the sound Prime’s armor made when he turned his head to face Mockingstar. “And that is why the Client cannot have him,” Fett bared through his teeth.
Whatever the confession, it had cost Mockingstar some of the conviction that had made them so determined to challenge Jango’s insistence that Sixty-seven not be…
Again, he wondered who this Client was. Why would Fett not want him sent to the Client?
The silent questions raised Sixty-seven’s head and landed his eyes on the adults behind him. He watched Mockingstar’s eyes stare at Fett before resettling onto Sixty-seven.
In the time between two blinks of Mockingstar’s eerie eyes, they were back to where their footing was, and back to where he could simply see Sixty-seven standing there in his eternal silence, his openness just out of everyone’s reach.
“I hate talking in front of a child like they aren’t even here,” Mockingstar’s voice sounded so unusually remorseful at that moment, as if an unaccountable lament for someone disappeared.
Perhaps it was too much, for Fett quickly interrupted and reminded them, “He isn’t here—” Whereas Mockingstar’s had spoken with softness, Fett’s was gruff, a clawing hand scraping across stone, desperate to find purchase. “Not technically, not officially. Don’t forget that Mockingstar—He—Isn’t—Here.”
Hardened once more, Mockingstar boldly rounded on Prime. “Then why is—” Something vulnerable interrupted their question. A thought magnetically drew their eyes to Sixty-seven, the very child spoken about.
Sixty-seven tilted his head to the side and tried to see the trainer the same way the Off-worlder tried with him. As usual, it unnerved whoever held Sixty-seven’s pale gold focus.
“Why is he here… with me, then?” Mockingstar had held back until they could detangle carefully chosen words. “Why is he with them?”
“I want him to be able to protect himself. Surely you can understand that, Mockingstar,” Fett said with significance, his eyes already back to the Cadets, larger and older than Sixty-seven, moving in an enviable smooth synchrony.
Following Fett’s eyes, Mockingstar looked out and observed the squad that moved as though their limbs were tethered together by an invisible string made from the same web that interconnected their minds. “He’s one of your Clones; he isn’t going to be helpless—”
“No, of course, he isn’t.” Audibly, Fett inhaled, marking the brief silence with the simple sound of his lungs pulling in the recycled air. “I want him to be able to protect himself more than the others; I want him to be able to protect himself—from—the others.”
“Do you really think he… will be in danger?” Mockingstar reluctantly asked. This time, it was the trainer’s breath that marked the pause. “More than… any other… Clone?”
A snort huffed out of Fett’s nose. “Not going to risk it. We… we have no idea how the Clones—” Something bit into Fett’s tongue.
“What makes your Alphas any different?”
Again, he rapped his fingers against the beskar plate curved around his forearm. “So… you’ll train him and not report him?” he gruffly asked with more vulnerability than his pride usually let slip. “You won’t… get him counted?”
“Yeah…” Resigned, Mockingstar expelled a wary sigh. “Our discretionary powers and all that.” After another long stretch of contemplative silence, they asked, “When are you going to explain to him—”
“I am not.”
Calmly, smoothly, Jango dropped his eyes to Sixty-seven. “Keep your eyes forward, Clone. Don’t miss what the others are doing.” Waiting until he had been obeyed, Jango rotated his head to face Mockingstar’s offended, dismayed fury. “And neither are you.”
“Jango, you have to tell him. He has a right to understand—”
“He has no rights, Mockingstar. He is a Clone,” insisted Jango.
“The best defense starts with understanding himself.”
“I don’t want him to feel like he isn’t one of them…” He jerked his head to the wall behind him and the door he knew Sixty-seven always entered through to train here, back the way that would lead to the central facility.
“And how do you intend to keep him from feeling like he isn’t one of them? By isolating him further? And what about when he gets older?” Referencing the small boy, Mockingstar gestured with a sweeping arm. “How are you going to explain things then, Fett?” The trainer withdrew their arms and recrossed them over their chest. “If he is… with me, I can help him—I can help him understand better than you can—”
“No.”
“Jango, you’re asking me to help protect him. But you’re also tying my hands behind my back. Neither of us will always be around to protect him.”
“The sol’yc’shebse will protect him.”
“They have to train, too. They’ve got their own training to do. They can’t be around him all the time.”
“Part of the program’s mandate is that the Alphas become teachers.”
“Fett…” Mockingstar’s skepticism had not lost its edge, even if it had lost its words.
Holding out and looking forward for a while, eventually, Jango’s eyes looked down at Sixty-seven, and found those eyes catching the sparse light. In his gilded shades of iridescent gold, the light was refracted and multiplied until he shone and pierced through Jango’s beskar armor. The kid was indeed… unnerving. He had to break the stare, so he risked Mockingstar’s malformed expression. But shortly, he was back to looking out over the crowd of training Cadets.
“I’ll take care of it. Just train him.”
⛭
Sometime between 7956–7957 C.R.C.
#7567 [Chrono year: 11–12]; [Growth cycle: 22–24]
501st-attached Carrier Group Flagship, Venator-class capital starcruiser, the Resolute, Adjunct GAR Medbay #M-2B.
Really, Rex was trying not to laugh. Honestly, he was doing his best, but he ultimately failed. At least he had the courtesy to muffle his laughter behind a hand held over his mouth, just under his nose. Barely constrained delight shook his shoulders as he watched Kix try to fumble his way around the new terminal.
“Kriff!”
Typically a mild-mannered, polite Clone, Kix didn’t often raise his voice, and he rarely used it with strong language. Though their working relationship was as strong as their friendship, Kix was respectful and even gentle about Rex’s station as the senior Clone Officer, as his captain.
Not that Rex minded, particularly when it was just the two of them and an awkward droid who couldn’t understand why the medic would be so frustrated.
A fond smile wrapped across Rex’s face, just enough to curl the edges of his mouth and crease his eyes, bringing lines only seen on his face whenever warmth had truly penetrated his determined focus. It wasn’t that Rex rarely showed gaiety. In fact, he had been told on more than one occasion that he was a rather charming, friendly Trooper who could often win over just about anyone. Several natborn Naval officers, who were typically tepid with Clones, had defrosted in regard to Rex. He was notorious for being someone who swayed them to laugh and even relax in his company.
On occasion, Rex had even managed to get a chortle out of Admiral Yularen, who consistently deadpanned at General Skywalker’s attempts to get the same out of the lifelong star sailor.
Caught in his failures, Rex prepared to take his time reinstating his array of uniform accouterments. “I thought M-2B’s new system had been cleared for service? That was why you wanted to conduct the examination here, and not in the main medbay.”
“I…” Kix bit into his already maltreated bottom lip. Like most Clones, even Rex, Kix was prone to picking at the small tabs of skin on dry lips, particularly if he was focused on a source of stress with no solution to his frustration in sight.
Whereas Kix would have gently scolded Rex for picking at his lips, he watched the medic do the same, but wisely chose not to bring attention to the hypocrisy.
It was better that Rex kept himself busy with double-checking that his armor was in his very specific, preferred order. Eager to resolve how soft and exposed he felt in just his undersuit, he was ready to start kitting up the second Kix would give him the all-clear, albeit with a high likelihood of being a distracted one.
“What… were you saying, Captain?”
“Just about how some of the retrofit’s work crews hadn’t expected the medbay to be so difficult…” Rex’s voice trailed off, though his focus on Kix had not; in fact, it sharpened like the honed edge of a scalpel.
Caught staring into the screen’s glow for too long, Kix’s eyes had seemingly glazed over, lost in the terminal’s puzzle.
“Kix?” gently, Rex prodded, hoping to find any signs of cognizance.
“Why won’t it pull up the scans?” Kix’s question wasn’t directed at Rex. It hadn’t been for anyone but the new medical system that refused to give up the secrets of its mysteries to the very frustrated medic, though it did succinctly convey his genuine aggravation. “You just had these scans done! Not even fifteen minutes ago, right here in this lab,” he hissed. “How could the new system already archive them incorrectly? I hadn’t even read the exam, so it shouldn’t be archived…”
Even though Kix actually wasn’t speaking to him, Rex listened anyway and watched with softened eyes.
Of course, no one told the new meddroid that Kix was talking out loud to himself so he could think through the problem, and that he didn’t really expect the technology to explain itself simply. It stood by at the ready to offer assistance with far too much patience for the impatient to endure. “Please refer to the user guidance database—”
“Blast it—(you shiny bucket of bolts)—I have! Deactivate your speech synthesizers—(and shut up)—before I refer your databases to the—”
The droid calmly turned its glowing focus on Kix and began to inform the silly organic something about the silly idea of ‘shutting up’. (“Safety protocols forbid that my—”) But by some miracle, it recognized that now might be the time to humor the whims and wills of its organic colleague.
So, it did just as Kix demanded, just when he abruptly stopped himself from completing the rest of his string of threats and glanced at Rex with an expression caught in the act of his crime; he looked guilty. “Sorry, sir…”
Recognizing that the poor medical droid was about to be the target of Kix’s resentment, Rex wryly raised an eyebrow. “Don’t apologize to me; I’m not the one you snapped at.”
Kix shook his head, trying to dispel a fog that had settled over his wits. “I…”
“…was trying to earn the ire of yet another group of droids?” teased Rex, as patient and as kind as he was known to be. The instant Kix’s eyes popped back to his face, Rex snapped his gaze to Kix’s infamous styling.
“Why do I apologize to you about my tattoo more than I have to Artoo? He understands that it isn’t personal or about him.”
“Because I think it’s really funny that our first mission—immediately after you got that abomination—an astromech saved our entire platoon.”
“Astromech, not droid.”
“Same difference.” Rex shrugged.
Grateful for that bit of fun, Kix’s frown inverted itself, though the smile was short-lived. “I was trying to think of a solution.” He snapped his attention back to the meddroid. “Unless you’ve pulled up those diagnostic scans, I don’t want to hear a word from you. This is the Captain, and we’re wasting his time. Go dock yourself!” Pointing a sharp finger, Kix directed the droid to tuck itself into its charging station and get away from him.
The droid obeyed without complaint, only proving the newness of its personality protocols. Watching it slip into its docking station, begin its stand-by mode, its eyes dimming, Rex felt a tad disconcerted by the experience; the old droids would have complied, but not without a lot of complaining.
“Like I said, you’re okay, Kix. It is a whole new system—new droids,” Rex gave another attempt to soothe.
—*CHIPcheep*-*CHIPcheep*—
The intrusive alert reflexively had Rex looking at his comms—nothing.
—*CHIPcheep*-*CHIPcheep*—
And repeated, it reminded Kix that the text communique might be for him, and not just the Captain. Though Rex’s curiosity was piqued, he could only stare at the red symbol on the back of Kix’s datapad, identical to the one on the medic’s left shoulder, while watching the tension between Kix’s brows become increasingly pronounced.
“Everything okay, Kix?”
“Uhm… yes, Captain…” Finally, Kix’s shoulders dropped as though the weight of his medkit, fully stocked, had fallen unexpectedly on him; the sigh he let out may have been just as heavy. It was rather impressive that Kix’s shoulders managed to find more room to slump in his armor, but he did, practically wilting. “No… Sorry… sir,” Kix confessed, “Coric seems to have some issues…”
“Have you had a chance to ask General Skywalker for help? You know, he overhauled the Resolute’s operating system when he got the fleet.” If anyone knew how to wrangle the old whale into a more cooperative spirit, it was his General.
“Yessir. General Skywalker is with Coric right now in Army Medical #1; he is why Medbay #3 came online yesterday.”
Rex narrowed his eyes, but he didn’t put to voice his errant question why Skywalker had not kept him more abreast regarding the apparent extent of these issues. He hoped this wasn’t another case of Skywalker not wanting to worry him. “That bad, hm?” Gingerly, Rex leaned the back of his thighs against one of the bay beds and crossed his arms over his chest, all but exposed save for the fitted top.
“Yessir. We’re operating at asynchronous capacities, and are down fully to only…” Midway through Kix’s statement, he stopped himself and looked back at the console, staring with unfocused eyes, blinded by frustrated horror. Resigned, he dropped his head and sighed. “Sir, when we were told the Resolute would finally get upgrades to the ship’s medical systems, and we Clones were informed what the new Army system would be like, we were excited.”
“Not so much anymore?”
In a display of dramatics Kix rarely afforded to himself, he ran his fingers over his meticulously over-detailed scalp, despite having less hair than even Rex did. A sigh later, he exhaustively dropped his hand. “No, sir… no. Not for the time being.”
“But this is entirely temporary; after the retrofit is complete, we’ll be fully operational, correct?”
Another flurry of noise sprang out of the datapad and successfully stole Kix’s attention long enough for a cursory glance.
Trapped. Trapped. The suggestion that the 501st could be called into combat, always a possibility, when the Resolute’s medical systems were down to a few auxiliary first-aid stations, made Rex feel more than cornered. He felt trapped. Needing to prove he could be thrown into action, Rex began to take on restoring his armor, not even receiving that longed-for ‘all-clear’ from Kix.
A symptom of how Rex wasn’t alone in the daunting pressures, Kix just watched Rex start with his boots.
“I… I hope so.”
Rex looked up, letting his fingers finish the second boot. “Kix.”
“Yes… sir, Captain.” Kix continued to watch Rex prove he was not exempt from the standards he held his men to as Captain, waiting all the way until Rex’s leg pieces were on and he was standing on his feet again. “Admittedly, I will feel better after this medsystem overhaul is complete, and knowing that General Skywalker will be overseeing the merging of our old database with the new one…”
“And it should be worth it, right?” Rex only waited a half-dozen heartbeats, each stronger than the last. “The Resolute’s medical systems hadn’t been properly overhauled for decades. Took a lot of finagling to pull this off; Seps hadn’t cooperated with our scheduling secretaries.”
Really, it was rather rude of the enemy.
“Yes, sir. The datacore has been having intermittent crashes with increasing frequency; after that encounter with the EM pulse weapon, it got worse. Even before that became a problem, it was already struggling to keep up with our medical needs, and in war, it isn’t something lives can afford. This new GAR system will be better optimized for our bio-engineered idiosyncrasies.”
Rex took in a long, long inhale.
“But you can understand why I look forward to our medical systems being fully operational, especially our droids—(sorry if it had bad manners, sir, worse than usual)—and it won’t take long before I’ll get tired of losing diagnostic results.
Exhaustion was worrisome for any Clone, notably one always at the ready for battlefield conditions. However, Rex couldn’t afford to let Kix get bogged down when they were facing a long-term campaign somewhere on the horizon. Dread pinched at the back of Rex’s neck.
“The previous system may have had its issues, but at least it didn’t misplace files.”
However, Rex knew better than to immediately voice his concern over the well-being of Torrent’s field medic, especially to the Trooper himself. He knew Kix enough to know that the medic would immediately become offended and remind Rex that it was his job to be worried about the welfare of others.
Needing to deflect from his concern, Rex disguised his worry. “Kix… am I going to have to go through that physical all over again?” he asked with a lopsided grin. “You’re not wrong, I don’t care too much for the new meddroid either… Talk about lousy bedside manners; Coric has more charm, and we keep him locked in his crate when the house guests stop by.”
“Don’t worry, Captain, you’ll keep your field clearance. I have more reason than most to ensure the 501st doesn’t go back into battle without you, sir.” Kix may have spoken clearly, but he was also sufficiently distracted that his voice sounded practiced in that way medics always did while their thoughts were pulled in untold, diverging directions. His concentration meandered back to his digital archeology quest to find the lost diagnostic results; hopefully, it lingered less on the larger issues. He was split between his body and his thoughts; between here, whatever the datapad had shown him, and his hunt through the computer system.
Driven by a need to continue putting his energies to use, Rex went back to his armor and reached for his belt, prepared to put it on.
“After that, sir, I’m going to need you to keep the rest of your kit off.” Evidence of Kix’s efforts danced over his face with every shifting color as he passed through several interface levels, trying to sort through the issue. “How much had you lost since your last quarterly physical?” his medic absently asked him.
“Just short of five-and-a-half,” Rex answered, a man of some precision. He gently shook his spats straight.
“Gained all but one-and-three-quarters since you performed your surprise inspection with a bioscanner.” Rex’s sour grumbles were perception, not reality, and were contradicted by the broad, flat smile he greeted Kix’s raised eyes. “And then promptly threatened to put me in the stockade until I fatten up.”
Wrapping his belt around his waist, Rex latched it closed and settled it into place. To his pleasure, Kix looked back just in time to see it latch on its usual notch, the one he used before the GAR’s débâcle. Though it was a small thing, it proved how much weight he had regained, and was as much a health marker Kix kept an eye out for as the preliminary scans that showed that his body mass had started to return to normal.
“Respectfully, sir, everyone got new biometric scans when we were calibrating our Phase 2 kits.”
“Hmf,” Rex snorted skeptically, though he didn’t really hold any genuine bitterness.
Loathsome as it was to admit, Rex was self-conscious about the sensitive wounds inflicted on his pride left by the reality that he had been more affected by the brief cultural shake-up to their culinary provisions than other Clones had. Nor had it helped that he took longer to recover since the standard diet’s reinstatement; he didn’t like being burdensome or finicky, and he didn’t like being the one to place exacting demands not required by others. It made Rex feel delicate, and no…
No Clone wanted to feel delicate; Clones were meant to be adaptable and hardy, living by the joke that Tiny Clonelings bounced when dropped; Clones were everything indelicate. He already received enough special treatment as it was, such as his private officer’s quarters, his specially requisitioned blacks, the degree of kit customization he was permitted, and even how his combat-clearance physical was conducted.
He deflected. “Maybe Hardcase vampired my squish. He gained about as much as I lost; probably the only Clone disappointed by the reversal. I understand Commander Cody is a Clone worthy of imitation, but trying to burn off his taste buds is going a tad far.”
Kix let out a single chuckle and shook his head. “It was growing on Jesse.”
“No accounting for taste.”
“Hm… how long ago was that?” asked Kix, despite knowing varpin’ well how long it had been. Giving another once-over, he took in Rex’s current build. “It looks like more muscle. Still less than your usual or where I’d like your mass to be.” His smirk may have been at Rex’s expense, but it was shared at the console’s glow, allowing him to see it reflected in Kix’s eyes.
Another snort flared Rex’s nostrils. Playfully, he shook his head and fell back on feigned irritability. “Stop holding me to such high standards.”
Without hesitation, Kix shot back, “Then stop setting such high standards, Captain. It isn’t our fault you set such a high bar. You’re the one who left behind boot prints too big for most Clones to fill.”
Voice knotted just under his windpipe, Rex swallowed hard, trying to eat up the emotions that had been about ready to burst out of his belly on what felt like the wings of some kind of insect. He had been replaced on the pedestal his men put him on, with no ladder left behind—and forget a jetpack, because it wouldn’t be much use, either. If he wanted to put his boots back where they belonged—on the ground, with the rest of his brothers—it would be a long, dangerous fall that he wasn’t sure he’d end up being able to walk away from.
Spirited after the name of their ship, Rex forcibly yanked those wretched insects back down in his buried depths, awkwardly clearing away the emotional debris clogging his throat. “I’m just any ole Clone, Kix,” he disagreed in the same voice he used to soothe anxious shinies and war-thinned veterans. True, it might cost him the confidence he always tried to inspire in his men, but the plunge was worth it if it meant he was on a more even level.
“Oh, come on, Cap’n, we all know that isn’t true. Not just any Clone could be XO of the 501st, or keep up with our favorite three Jedi.”
“Two,” Rex corrected.
“Three, when General Kenobi returns to his guest starring role—or—Commander Cody decides…”
Tight-lipped, but sure-minded, Rex just slowly nodded along. “Mhm,” he rumbled deeply, and decided to concede a crooked, warm, boyish smile, and accepted that it was pointless to argue that inarguable truth, even if the rest hadn’t been explicitly given.
Once, twice, Kix glanced to and fro between the lower terminal’s screen and up over its framing. On the third time, he broke the pattern to search for something illusory in Rex’s face. Until Kix told him, “Good to see your humor will never eschew me,” Rex didn’t know if that something had been found or not. “Rex.”
Aw, Kix, you know I’d never forsake you,” Rex murmured, appreciating the discreet, intimate deference added on before Kix turned back to his work.
“How’s the headaches, sir?” asked Kix with his usual standard of discussing Rex’s standard health.
Rex made a self-deprecating noise. “Fine,” he claimed reflexively, and not remotely very self-reflective; it was like muscle memory.
That transferred Kix’s attention away from his attempts to sort out the problems with the new medbay system and its shiny new equipment. “For the past 43 days, the Resolute has been running daylight levels 15% brighter compared to previous,” Kix cited, challengingly.
Rather than meet it, Rex countered by playing dumb. “15%? Is that all?” Honestly, he should have known better than to be surprised that Kix knew the exact percentage the ship’s brightness had increased. Why? Because Kix knew that Rex would downplay it. “I hardly noticed,” Rex daringly claimed.
Kix wasn’t impressed, nor was he a fool, and he knew that Rex never thought him to be either one. “Headaches, Captain,” Kix insisted, solidifying his determination to get an answer.
“Eh, manageable,” Rex compliantly confessed, shrugging a shoulder. Without his pauldron, he felt uncharacteristically small, unnerving to even Kix.
It was a disarming truth about the Clones: they were both larger than life and smaller than the lives they lived, with boots too big for anyone else to fill.
Whether it was that he was unwilling or unable to meet Kix’s eyes, Rex instead found some offensive scuffs on his armor that needed to be removed, even if he only had his thumbnail to do it.
“How’s your new bucket’s calibrations?” Kix asked from a mental checklist of redundant points he needed to go through, searching for something he could pin Rex with.
“Well… things certainly haven’t gotten worse…”
—*CHIPcheep*-*CHIPcheep*—
Again came the intrusive alert. This time, Rex didn’t look at his comms.
—*CHIPcheep*-*CHIPcheep*—
He stood by and watched Kix pivot his attention to the same pad from earlier, probably expecting it to be another list of officially phrased complaints from Coric. The tension on Kix’s brows instantly returned, exceeded the last instance, and appeared to infect the rest of him, starting with his face.
There was already an expanding crevasse fissuring through Rex’s belly by the time Kix touched his vambrace, instantly filtering a flurry of indistinct, furious activity through the comm’s comm unit.
Alarm slowly crept into Kix’s body and showed on his face enough that the medic’s tense shoulders were mirrored by the Captain, who unconsciously began to reach with one hand for his kit’s commlink still lying on the medbed, the other dragging his helmet closer towards him.
“Everything okay?” Rex consciously mimicked his earlier question, feeling his face ache from the deepening downturn reflection of Kix’s expression.
“No, sir… there’s been an accident.” Nothing else Kix could have said would have been able to send a plummeting chill down Rex’s spine than those simple words. It set Rex’s mind off into a race of possibilities; he prepared to act with as much haste, and would have gotten further than slapping his left vambrace on if Kix hadn’t raised his head, looked him eye-to-eye the way he did, and raised a placating hand. “Captain… it isn’t severe, and it is none of our men. It is some of the workmen out on the hull. Coric is calling all the medics to respond.”
“Kix, I should—”
“No, Captain.” It was Kix’s ‘Respectfully, don’t argue with me; I don’t have the patience’ voice. “There will be enough chaos as it is; Coric will boom if you’re underfoot, sir.”
Rex’s fingers twitched, his raw nails scratched over the plastoid plate’s imperfect surface; he fought the instinct to act, to charge into a brink, fueled by a surge of adrenaline.
“Sir, you’re not done here, anyway. Commander Cody made a point of personally informing me that my priority is making sure you are cleared for field duty. So…” Kix actively backed towards the door, gesturing an open hand—in the opposite direction he stepped—towards the stern-faced Rex.
Deeply unsettled and frowning harder and harder, Rex could feel the muscles surrounding his mouth ache from his contrite conflict. Starting to act on his compulsion to speak, he stretched his face’s spasming muscles, but got no further than a swift inhale before Kix continued, “I am going to need you to stay here and finish. You still have other tests that should be—”
There was a flicker of light in the corner. “Shall we proceed to the next part of the exam?” interrupted the medical droid, proving that it had paid more attention than intended. Eagerly, it bobbed its head the same way avians had been observed doing on several worlds. “Clone-6116, what are your instructions?” it dutifully asked Kix, who was now standing in the triggered doorway. Even with all the experience with the bridge between droids and organics, the synthesized vocoder sounded odd, as grating as plastoid dragged across roughened tarmac.
It was enough to halt Kix’s urgent, energized bug-out. “MEC-B12D-3, finish the full physical exam on Captain Rex,” Kix crisply ordered of his mechanical subordinate. He was still frenetic with frustration, eager to get out of the medbay and respond to the emergency with all the urgency that had been conditioned into him.
“Yes, Clone-6116.”
There was an invisible line caught on Kix’s belt, dragging him on. As his first boot fully crossed the threshold, he managed to add sarcastically, “And if you could get those internal scans you did on Clone 7567—that would be great…”
“Do not worry, Clone-6116, I will find where you misplaced the scans,” vowed the little droid. “If not, I will repeat the test; I will not lose the results.”
Both Clones frowned at the medical droid, though for different reasons; Rex didn’t like the prospect of having to go through the anatomical scan a second time, and Kix didn’t care for the insinuation that the files had been lost due to his error. However, the latter decided a defense of his technological proficiency wasn’t worth it and darted out the door. It wasn’t long before the doors were drawn together, and the slivered glimpse of the outer passage was pinched out of existence, leaving behind a silence that pressed in on Rex.
The new meddroid, with its polished, silvery-blue finish and matte-white marks, bobbed its head again—so much like a bird. The effect became only more striking when it flared the symmetrical crest of antenna affixed to the side of its head and turned its attention on him, the variegated lights of yellow to purple illuminating in outward directions at variable speeds. Lidless, the droid blinked its optical lights at Rex and peered at him. Then it leaned towards him.
Instinctively apprehensive of the hovering meddroid, Rex leaned back away from the oppressive invasion of his space. Arching an offended brow at the medical attendant, he stretched his back away from the transgressive machine. He was close enough that he could hear a flurry of beeps and whirls just under its housing; he could only envision the ignition of c-boards and conductors as the processors worked through a series of logical steps, many of which existed solely to mimic sentience for the sake of so-called bedside manners.
Hovering leglessly, MEC-B12D-3 pivoted the air and glided to the terminal console that Kix had occupied just moments ago. Its focus felt as powerful as the ship’s gravity plating; even Rex was compelled to follow along the heated trail left behind the droid as it moved along its invisible path.
Gangly, six-segmented, spindly phalanges split from three digits into five, pressed against the smooth surface. It began to work around the console board in an intricate movement that resembled a musician’s performance.
—*Tap*—*clack*–*tip-tap*–*tip-tap*–*tip-tap*–*tip-tap*—faster and faster it worked the computer terminal, the droid’s mechanical digits reaching inhuman speeds so fast that Rex had serious doubts even Skywalker could keep up—*tip-tap*–*tip-tap*–*tip-tap*—*clack*–*tip-tap*—*clack*–*tip-tap*—*tap*—
It stopped; the computer beeped.
“I have located the incorrectly archived diagnostic scan,” announced the meddroid.
Conjoined panels came alive with a burst of technicolor grids, crosstree structures, and an entire array of wireframes that burst out of the digital darkness.
Aside from being formed in the familiar structure of a basic human body, it was devoid of features and uniqueness; it was only a primordial representation of the most basic edifice of an adult human.
Identification came later, at a slower rate, in complete contrast to what B12D-3 had initially summoned. Instead of bursting on the screen like a digitized pyrotechnic display, it trickled into form with the laziness of a fog creeping across the Tipocan platforms. Eventually, it resolved beyond the featureless mannequin until, at last, it began to resemble something like a crude reflection left unpolished and unrefined.
Detailed features morphed the bland figure into something far too—too much. Bit by bit, the uniqueness he knew too well emerged.
Rex first watched the carved musculature become more defined and refined, the groupings divided by sharp lines and harder curves. Out of the primary specific anatomies came the reflection of his life, his training, and his engineering. He could see how his early years had left his muscles long and lean, and the later years had broadened his shoulders, left his thighs thickened from the strength training he had done as an older Cadet.
On the surface of his skin rose finer details. Each time the image was rotated 360 degrees, he could see the speckled spread of freckles emerge from the one bland expanse of inaccurately unblemished skin. Along his left calf, there was the jagged line of scar tissue, proof of what happened if an injury went ignored after a fight. A split-strike lightning scar on his right arm bled pale lines that spread down his biceps from an electrical surge during a mission on Chyssa-4; he might have suffered burns, but at least the mission had been successful. At the center of his chest, right over his sternum, spread a woven web of pale details, originating from a single spot too close to his heart for his comfort. By memory alone, his left arm tingled with numbness that began in his shoulder and went down into his fingertips; compulsively, he rotated his shoulder and was relieved by the warm sensation of feeling something, and the reassurance that he didn’t have a dead weight of uselessness by his side. Over the course of his twelve years, the phalanges of several fingers had suffered uneven breaks, and the knuckles thickened from hard training and even harder work.
Alphanumeric labels trickled out of emptiness and began to eerily expose the raw details of his body in ways Rex had never wanted to see or hear again, not that anyone asked him. Stunned, he watched his naked form idly rotate on the massive display panel and groaned loudly from the back of his throat.
A flush of color painted its way across his body from an epicenter right between his shoulder blades, burning his skin at his nape before it spread over his scalp, until the tips of his ears felt feverish in the room’s chilly air. He could feel the heat in his skin when he wiped a broad-palmed hand down his face; the groan became a gurgly growl.
It comforted him to press his twisted hand into the bottom of his mouth, the base of his fifth finger just under his nose. Deeply, he breathed, his nostrils flaring, dropped his arm, and gathered himself to ask, “Could you please cover me up?”
The droid peered at him and blinked its simulated optics in shades of peacock blue to white-green. “Why?” Though it was just a droid, it radiated perplexity and looked at Rex as though he, a man of flesh and blood, was the inhuman oddity to be studied for its curiosity.
“Because… I’m—”—gestured hands tried to say what his mouth struggled to work through his throat, off his tongue, and out his mouth—“—naked.”
“But… this is your body.” Clearly, the droid didn’t appreciate the work it took for Rex to say that. “You see it naked often, right?”
Rex really craved an impromptu target practice. It was either that or pull a Cody and practice his round-house kicks. Hoping to keep his hands from reaching for his blasters, he placed them on his belt and stubbornly, defiantly ignored his cravings. “Yes… I see my body naked,” he started to agree. Feeling he might lose the fight, he instead tightened his arms over his chest and scratched the corner of his left eye with his right forefinger to rub out an irritant he didn’t have. “But I don’t want to be put on display like that for everyone to see.”
As soon as the sentence finished out of his mouth, Rex wished he could use some Force-osik and go back in time, swallow up his answer, and try again without leaving open a prop door for what he knew the meddroid would say even before it said it.
Just as he had expected, the droid looked around the medbay…
…whose sole occupants were Rex… and MEC-B12D-3.
“There is no one here but us.” It swiveled its head and looked back at the display. Nevertheless, it entered an easy command, its servos already condensed back to its original configuration of three.
A simple covering of simulated blacks morphed over Rex’s depicted body; he sighed, feeling his chest lighter.
Possessed by some reasoning that only a droid could comprehend, B12D-3 flitted up to the master wall display left of the control console. “My programming contains the summary details generated from the records of thousands of Fett Clones, including a range of variations and mutations…” Oddly enough, the droid’s voice trailed off like it had experienced a glitch in its system. However, the source of its hypnosis became evident in the way it tilted its head and focused on Rex’s read-out with the keen interest of a freshly-fed osprey trying to decide if it should take advantage of an easily available prey or not. “Though… I do not have the files for any that match your mutation, Clone-7567.”
An icy trickle traveled down Rex’s spine, spreading to every extremity; he realized that he was the glitch in the meddroid’s system. “Yeah,” Rex breathed through his teeth, “I can tell.” A pulse behind his eyes became repetitive and thready, searing him with aggrieved pain he wanted to take out on B12D-3 or use to fuel a rapid completion of his half-finished re-kit and a quick debug out of the medbay—kriff the physical.
“Notes from Clone-6116—”
“Kix,” corrected Rex with the force of a discharged bolt. Although it stopped the meddroid’s words short, it also rounded those optics and their falsetto blinks on him. Aware that his mood had gone beyond foul, he stared back, his impatience pressing his lips into a thin, grim line.
Silently prompted to explain, Rex breathed from behind the fingers curled over his mouth. “His name is Kix.” His pinky twitched. “But you can call him Sergeant.”
It was also odd to be able to hear when the processors and c-boards were fired up, surging with power while the droid contemplated this new dataset.
Emboldened, he growled, “My name is Rex, but you can call me Captain… or Sir.” Memories surfaced, flashing like lightning in a distant sky, setting off dark and bright memories filled with young brothers, heartbreaking bravery, lost potential, and insurmountable pride. They were enough to cool him when he breathed several cycles and lowered his arm, letting it hang from its unmoved elbow.
This time, he made sure his instructions would come with a kinder tone. “You’re supposed to be a droid for us Clones, so you need to learn a few things, starting with: don’t call us Clones by our numbers except to confirm our identities. After that, you need to learn our ranks and names.”
“But why?” The question had no intended cruelty, just gaps in its comprehension, more than the usual range. It talked like a Little when it reached the stages where heads were filled with endless questions.
“Because it makes us more comfortable to work with you,” Rex patiently explained. “If we are more comfortable, we will be compliant. And considering how many battledroids we scrap, you’ll want your patient’s compliance, trust me.” Seeing the dullness still in the droid’s optics, Rex decided to attempt a rear tactic. “Our superiors had us take names, and we have to use them because the Jedi gave us orders.”
If nothing else worked, simply blaming the boss might do the trick.
Briefly, the dimness in B12D-3’s optics flared as the logic boards began to connect the crude dots Rex shot through it. “Yes… Sir…” It hesitated, and Rex could imagine the binary stream running with a torrential force through the circuitry, just in time for its vocoder to experiment, saying, “Captain Rex.”
Immediately, Rex thought of Bats and fought the urge to smile; though he knew the droid wasn’t motivated by any empathy, he appreciated its programming’s due diligence, trying to reason its way through another layer of mimicry, all in a logical effort to better comport with its patients.
He felt the knot behind his sternum loosen up. It was true that Rex wasn’t particularly fond of three types of droids: the kind that tried to kill him, the kind that nagged him, and the kind that poked and prodded him in the name of medicine or science.
So, his aversion to B12D-3 wasn’t just because it was a droid, but because it was a medical droid, and one he didn’t know. Rex had memories lingering in his mind that felt like barnacles affixed to his skin; he wanted to scratch at his forearms, cloy down the solid line of his neck…
“Clone-7567—” Refined metallic finials twitched and fluttered the same way the crested feathers on the heads of a decorative bird would, though the meddroid was far quieter, its beauty less rewarding for its company. It digitally mimicked a near-human’s blinking eyes and turned to Rex as though it was aware of its misstep, though not disturbed by its faux pas.
Long breaths pulled patience from out of the ether, from depths so far down that Rex could not see beyond the event horizon. Unlike his more stoic and reserved brothers, Rex matched his jovial proclivities with a patient temperament that many Clones struggled to wrangle and wield.
Once more, the droid pushed the boundaries of its logic boards. “Captain…” On the edge of the droid’s digital tone, he could hear the odd catch caught after his rank. Then, without the trepidation of an insecure Cadet, B12D-3 used its cold stubbornness to manage, “…Rex.”
Straightening his spine, Rex reminded himself that the droid acted not out of pity or condescending good humor, but a common protocol that beta-tested each new behavioral input it integrated into its programming. Nevertheless, he slowly nodded his head, sanctioning the droid’s efforts, even though those efforts had been belayed and clumsy. Again, he watched the illuminated dot-matrix imitate the cognizance indicative of organic sentience. Rex often wondered just how much was truly imitative and how much was simply primitive, like a child.
Rotating its head at its cervical juncture, the meddroid looked back to the effigy formed out of enmeshed pixels and wrapped wireframes. “Notes from…” Again, it hesitated, referencing its logic matrices to compare the new data against its previous protocols, ensuring that it said, “Combat Medic Kix—”
Pleased, Rex’s eyebrows went up, and he flicked the dulled edge of his covered middle finger’s nail over the dry tabs of skin still adhering to his lips out of sheer stubbornness; it was a compromise with his urge to pick at it. Well, at least B12D-3 was making an attempt to learn from what it had imprinted, which was more than others might.
However, the little droid didn’t notice his subtle approval, not that it would matter to it. “—indicate that you, Captain Rex, suffer from a history of food sensitivities at a higher-than-average rate, primarily triggered by sudden changes in diet, primarily the quality.”
Rex grunted, but he didn’t argue; B12D-3 had it right, much to his chagrin. Surprisingly, it correctly took his crude response as corroboration of its accuracy.
“There are also notes that recently, you have displayed increased signs of digestive discomfort.”
Long-winded, Rex sighed through his curled fingers, wishing that this was over. Anxiety coiled around his spine, knotted between his shoulder blades; under the scrutiny, he tensed. After a whistled inhale through his nose, Rex began to say, “There were some sudden changes to our food—”
“I believe I have located a possible cause.”
Stunned by the meddroid’s hubris, Rex’s words had already fallen from his lips but were left suspended in the air to be held in quiet stasis while he stared at the clanker. Patient though Rex could be, he had never been quite tolerant of interruptions, aside from his brothers, within reason, though he had come to be at peace with his General’s, which were frequent but without induration. Sigh. “As I was trying to say, B12D—”
“—dash three.”
Dumbfounded by the absolute temerity of a floating tin can, Rex gritted his teeth. “—there were changes to our army grub, and that’s why I—”
“I do not believe dietary changes were the cause.”
Now, Rex edged closer to the kind of confusion he had when he walked right into a very solid object and was left standing with a resonating echo trapped in his helmet. “It was just some indigestion.”
“Based on Clone-6116’s notes and my findings, it is highly improbable that this is just some dyspepsia, Clone-7567,” the meddroid synthesized coolly. Its spindled digits tapped across the console’s smooth control surface with the same swiftness of a spider in a hasty bid for survival. The movements were just enough to distract Rex’s eyes, stunning him from being able to counter any implications that Kix or he severely underestimated his reactions… or to rebuke for the brazen use of both their numbers.
‘Guess we’re back to numbers,’ Rex thought irritably.
“What are you—”
Hypnotic light danced, hooking his attention. The perspective on his biometric model swooped closer, focusing on the center of his lower torso. Digitally woven fabric, skin, and muscle were all peeled back, revealing a mess of organs packed away in a compartment that should be too small for so much organic ingenuity.
Admittedly, Rex wasn’t a Medical Clone; he knew enough to appreciate and marvel at the complex simplicity that was the human body. Fundamentally an organic machine, the product of evolutionary happenstance as much as optimal precision, every part had its place, fit, and slotted together to make the most of its compact compartments.
Though not a Medical Clone, Rex knew enough to know when things were just… not quite right.
When all three moons of Kamino were full and bright over the same hemisphere, an occurrence that didn’t happen often, the combined gravitational forces generated considerable tidal changes and even strained the tectonic plates submerged at the deepest depths of the singular, world-consuming ocean.
It was one of the few actual threats to the Kaminoan ingenuity that was Tipoca City. Threats of that magnitude were one of the reasons why Rex and his brothers endured the terrible drop drills; as cruelly terrifying as the drills were, they were more of a mercy than what the vengeful waters could inflict.
Though human, Jango Fett’s Clones were still children of the ocean, and the ocean would take whatever it wanted.
As powerful as the ocean was, even the waters were still the subject of any merciless apoplexies of what dwelt under the furious waves, no matter the size.
According to ancient Kaminoan mythologies and what remained of their tenuous spiritual dogma, the three highest forces over existence included the sun and the twelve oceans. The three moons were lesser deities, whose power could only compare when combined. Reigning as a benevolent council, the sisters Korasa, Kemnol, and Kiol were mirrors that shone and softened the sun’s great power so it would not boil away the water. When the twelve bickering oceans could not come to an agreement and refused to listen to the sisters, then the third of the highest deities, the one responsible for carving the ocean’s twelve basins, would forcibly give its opinion, usually with catastrophic, but necessary results.
And who was that third, terrible force? The one with the power to threaten the all-powerful oceans?
The planet itself—the solid, terrestrial form.
It was an imperfect balance, but one that worked. Until it didn’t; until it was destroyed.
When the Cataclysm struck, the ice melted, the surface land was flooded, and the twelve oceans were once more unified. The ocean’s benevolence became malevolence, and the Kaminoans knew that they were on borrowed time and believed that they existed in a perpetual state of purgatory. All their science and all their power, it was only a delay until finally, the furious ocean would get its retribution, unless by some miracle the wrongs of their ancestors were undone. In the meantime, the omniocean and the three moons would struggle to reach an accord. Under those conditions, if there was nothing that counter their forces…
Except for the powerful bedrock. Nothing else rivaled its power or could quell its wrath, except for the combined, coordinated force of the ocean and the moons.
Tectonic quakes were rarely felt beyond the ocean’s surface, but the effects were immense.
It always began… with a low, dull, distant rumble.
An approaching megawave never sounded like thunder, and there was nothing to compare to the leviathan’s roar forewarning of its arrival for no other reason than to incite terror in the helpless. To know what was in the distance, to be aware of what would come, was to know an unimaginable fear.
It was something so terrible that Tipoca City itself made use of its voice…
…and screamed at the ocean; a noise deafeningly loud, unnerving, ear-splitting, even bone-shattering, long before the first wave even reached it.
Rex hadn’t forgotten the city-wide klaxon; he had not forgotten how it could be heard through durasteel, ferrocrete, transparisteel, and even saltwater. The alarm warned of the eldritch fury approaching; it drowned his senses until all he could hear, think, and breathe was that hollow, bellowed crescendo just before it announced: time’s up.
It was never just the one wave, and the second was worse than the first, even from under the safety of the water’s surface.
That great, deep, terrible noise roared in Rex’s head, all but deafening to him against B12D-3’s synthetic words that described a very organic experience.
“—mass approximately—” All Rex could hear was the fury of his blood against his eardrums. “—in length, surrounded by an estimated—” He felt but a small boy in the refuge of an evacuation drop-pod. “—milliliters of ascites, an indication of advanced malignancy—” Low, bellowing fury came from the horizon, barely the start of devastation left behind in its wake. “—organs have shifted in the abdominal cavity as a result—” It roared, but he was mute.
Disbelieving eyes recognized the colors, saw the shapes, but it was as though he was seeing a terrible myth become real—a nightmare made of flesh.
“—vascularization has forced an estimated increase of blood volume by—”
Always a strong and sturdy man, Rex now swayed on his feet, though he kept his boots anchored. Eyes transfixed on the scan’s display, with all its colors, he saw right through it and beyond, to where the darkened void consumed all light.
He felt seasick without a sea; he never felt seasick; he was like all Clones… he was born with sea legs. Now he was adrift, lost…
He felt sick.
“This is impossible.” Rex thought what came from his throat was nothing more than a rasp, if for no other reason than he was confident his constricted chest couldn’t expand to take in enough air to even keep from suffocating.
However, it seems he had been heard by the very thing that had shown no signs of acknowledging the state Rex was in. That is, until it registered his muttered words of disbelief and mercilessly swiveled its head, leveling its matrixed eyes on him. “Oh, this is very possible—just unlikely.” B12D-3’s dull intonations might as well have been talking about an ingrown toenail oozing pus. “Jango Fett’s genetics have been screened and filtered to minimize the likelihood of cancerous growths, though it is still possible, as made evident by my findings. At this acute growth rate, I would have expected to find that it has already metastasized elsewhere. But it would not be for long—”
“Shut up,” Rex ordered, his voice that of a man possessed.
B12D-3 didn’t heed his command. “I would recommend immediate surgery. Though at this time, I will not be able to perform it. Until my databases are fully restored, I do not have the advanced skill for an operation of this—”
“I said: Shut. Up,” Rex shushed, menacingly. Perhaps the meddroid had never been the recipient of viciousness because it didn’t seem to know how to respond; it didn’t know the threat laced under the sharp, hissed command.
Though, of course, B12D-3 wouldn’t have any reason to know what it meant to be under threat, any more than it really knew Rex. It didn’t know his reputation among even the natborn officers for his affable, charming, and rather disarming character. And those who did know Rex wouldn’t have recognized the way he had spoken to the meddroid. No one would believe it possible that one of the most beloved Clones in the Grand Army could ever speak like that, not to anyone, except the enemy. Even his men, whose intimidation of and respect for Captain Rex were in constant conflict, would have called it impossible.
“I will submit this medical analysis to Tipoca immediately.”
They would have been unprepared for what he did next; they would not have seen it coming.
But neither did MEC-B12D-3.