Chapter Text
It was a kriffed up mission from the start, if you’ll pardon Rex’s language. Rinndio II is not the worst place he has ever run a mission by any standard—not by a long shot—but it’s not his favorite, either. He has seen more hostile environments, more unfriendly wildlife and locals, heavier enemy occupation, more dangerous mission parameters, and gods, worse officers to serve under. Still, something about this place seems off from the beginning.
First, there is the poisonous gas. ARC trooper suits come with built-in air filtration systems, but the standard-issue armor for regular troops does not. This mission required special requisitions for the entire 501st and 212th, which was a pain. It also makes him nervous to be so dependent. Troopers aren’t supposed to take off their buckets while on-mission anyway, but the added danger leaves even less room for mistakes than usual. It bothers General Skywalker, too, he can tell.
General Kenobi seems less concerned, which in turn drives Cody wild. Rex can see all the scenarios for how this could go wrong running through Cody’s mind. He imagines that often enough with his own jetii to recognize it in the glazed, slightly horrified look in Cody’s eyes. It is not that General Kenobi doesn’t care about the brothers—he does, more than many generals—but Kenobi has so little self-preservation at times. He seems more focused on the objective than worried about what could happen, unlike General Skywalker. On a good day, the Generals’s roles would be reversed, but no one around here has had a good day in some time now, aside from when the Commander showed up.
That brings Rex to the second reason the mission gives him a bad feeling. General Skywalker has gone through some—changes—since the Commander left. Rex had hoped some time on Coruscant would smooth him out—if anything does, it’s usually time with the Commander or the Senator. This time, though, he got back on the transport looking worse than when he got off.
It’s not that Rex doesn’t trust his jetii. The thing about General Skywalker is that he is reckless, but his recklessness is usually for a crazy plan, and his crazy ideas are usually right. He sees things no one else does. And he never puts the men in more danger than he puts himself. But lately, there is an edge to his recklessness that Rex doesn’t like. He keeps pushing the limit, almost like he wants to—well, this war is making a lot of people lose hope. It’s just that the General is supposed to give people hope—give Rex hope—not keep throwing himself into dangerous situations like he has a death wish.
The third reason this mission makes Rex uneasy is that they don’t really have a plan. Sure, they never complete a mission with Plan Aurek. Sometimes the plan is just a simple ‘go in, and if someone shoots at you, shoot back’, but they always have something. Not in an olan sim’olan would Rex expect the mission to go off without a hitch, but he would like something a little more concrete than ‘find the bases that are probably here somewhere and destroy them, but we don’t know what type or how many or how heavily armed’.
Rex likes to know how concerned he should be so he can worry the appropriate amount. Cody is an ori’vod to Rex in many ways, a mentor in others. Rex knows him better than the inside of his bucket. He’s learned a lot from Cody, including which mistakes to avoid. Worrying too much is one of them, so Rex does his best to evade that. It’s just hard when he has no idea what they’re getting into and they’ve already been down one and a half COs for months.
The point is, Rex has a bad feeling about Rinndio II. Some days, he loves being right. There is a rule among the brothers that he is not to be allowed into any more betting pools because they’re all convinced he has insider information—sometimes that is true, but he also has wicked intuition on his side—so Rex always has to convince some shiny to make the bet in his stead for a cut of the profits. Other days—like the day General Skywalker almost dies on some backwater moon from a combination of asphyxiation, air poisoning, malnutrition, stim overdose, and Force exhaustion—Rex really, really hates being right. Asayi’ada an bal rangir, he hates being right sometimes.