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Trillian had to confess: when his mother sent him off to Coruscant for university, she likely did not envision him working as an analyst, ensconced in the Appropriations Office of the Senate. She likely had loftier ambitions for him.
Yet here he was.
Should have let me pursue music composition, Mother.
Instead, he wrought symphonies of funding from budgetary spreadsheets, points of data strung across a sheet like the notes of the sweetest, most heartless song one could ever imagine. Lives and futures, reduced to credits and timelines. Opportunities created and erased, with the shift of a decimal to the right or the left.
Every day, a fight to maintain some semblance of compassion for his fellow sentient.
Trillian had been at it in the Senate Appropriations Office for five years when an army of 200,000 living, breathing combatants dropped out of the sky and into Coruscant, all needing food, supplies, arms and transportation, with a million more well on the way. Trillian sighed, scratching out a few relief funds and community-building line items, and pulling out the contingency plans. The whole office had known, as soon as the first whisper of a Military Creation Act bill hit the intern caf break-room, that his team needed to prepare for battle, with funding plans, and backup plans, and backup plans for the backup plans.
Too bad for those Lower Levels, though. He’d just assigned funding for a revitalization plan down there, too. Always something Topside going on, to suck it away.
Somehow, the Senate Appropriations Office had also been saddled with the responsibility of approving supply requisitions, a hoop in the bureaucratic process through which the fighters on the warfront had to jump in order to get anything out of Kamino, Kuat, or anywhere else. Because, of course, there was a credit tag attached to it all. And the Republic couldn’t be seen wasting money.
No, sir.
And so—
“Have you looked at this request?” Trillian frowned, tossing the data pad to Jaz. The Pantoran snatched it out of the air, glancing at it once, then again with a frown. Trillian waited, blowing the steam off his caf before taking a sip, glancing out the floor-to-ceiling sound-proof window into the mid-morning traffic cluttering the skyline near the Senate building. Even in the silence, he imagined the cacophony of sound, notes of emotion articulated in bright horns and passionate shouts of indignation above the constant roar of speeder engines. The imagined din of discordant noise melted away at the first taste of his caf; some things truly were worth the funds, and good caf was one of them. It was not an abuse of his privilege to ensure funding for good caf for Senate staffers. Not at all.
Finally, Jaz looked up.
“So?” Trillian prompted.
“So, it’s the 501st, what of it?” Early into her third year on the job, Jaz was already showing signs of burnout. Poor girl. At least she’d do well when she headed back to Pantora, land a cushy job in their government budget office. Better than what Trillian’s homeworld had to offer.
“Exactly, it’s the 501st, again. They want more troop replacements.”
“So?”
Stars, it was too early for this argument. “So, we just approved a troop replacement for them like a month ago! How fast are they burning through their resources?” Those troopers cost money.
“There is a war going on,” Jaz reminded him, tone desert-dry.
“Thank you for that,” he snipped back, running a hand down the front of his deep navy jacket to smooth out the imaginary wrinkles. Dignity, his mother reminded him. Always dignity. “A war that costs funding. The 501st has the second highest turnover rate.”
“It’s led by the Golden Boy,” Jaz noted, her opinion on that exceedingly clear. “You’ll never get anywhere with what you’re planning.”
“Who says I’m planning anything?” Jaz’s expression said enough, and Trillian rolled his eyes. “Well, someone should. Money isn’t infinite.”
“Neither are people,” Jaz mumbled, almost too quiet to hear. Trillian didn’t reply to that. There had already been some warnings floating around about getting too cozy with the clone troopers. They were Republic resources first and foremost.
And when one looked at a spreadsheet, seeing numbers and dots on a chart, it was easy to keep it that way.
Dots and numbers and credits and graphs and charts, spreadsheets and ledgers, rising and falling in a symphony of fiscal movement that fed some, deprived others, nourished by the labor of the Republic’s people and distributed by his hand, at the whim of the Senate. A symphony that sounded wrong, now, discordant notes standing out from the rest in a way that set Trillian’s teeth on edge. War was ugly, but it was predictable, a song played over and over through the ages, a dirge of violence and loss and cost. This… this was different.
And there was still the matter of that account with the disappearing funds that he had quietly been investigating before the crisis broke out. Another discordant note.
“I’m requesting the after action reports associated with the requisition,” Trillian announced, returning to his desk. “And then I’m calling the Jedi Council.”
“Your funeral,” Jaz replied cheerily.
It was surprisingly easy to get the reports.
Tracking down the writers for follow-up questions proved significantly harder.
“That stupid kriffer is blowing me off again,” Trillian huffed, dropping into his seat. Jaz looked over, her silvery white eyebrows raised.
“Which one?”
Trillian shot her a flat look. “Golden Boy. Ignores my requests for a meeting, then asks where I’m at with approving his requisition request. I can play this game all day, man. I will shut down resupply for his entire battalion if he keeps this up.”
“Careful,” Jaz jabbed a breadstick from her lunch in his general direction. “The Chancellor likes him. You won’t get away with that for long.”
“You have to read these reports, Jaz. These reports are being nice, but I can read between the lines. The guy disregards orders constantly, gets a bunch of his resources lost, then gets a pat on the back for clinching the W in the end. Victory at any cost, huh? Some Jedi philosophy right there. And there’s something not adding up in his Skytop Station report. This captain, CT-7567, writes a thorough report, that Golden Boy just signs, but there’s something missing here.”
War was ugly, messy, Trillian was no novice to its nastiness, but this— this felt like the rumble of drums that had nothing to do with the general business of war and everything to do with something more sinister, a staccato pattern of concerning behavior, beating away below the notice of everyone else.
“People lost, he’s getting people killed,” Jaz grumbled. Trillian pulled a deep breath. Let it out. His comm pinged and he glanced at the update.
“501st is coming to Coruscant in two days,” Trillian smiled, just on the respectable side of maniacal. “Now they’ll have to talk to me.” Jaz merely shook her head, her headdress swaying gently in the movement.
“You’re nuts. By the way, that loan came through from the Banking Clan, so we’ve been authorized to approve all requisition requests.”
Trillian frowned. “That’s not how ‘approval’ is supposed to work. Who said that?”
“The Chancellor, in the budget obligation meeting this morning that you missed while fretting over the 501st,” she shot him a look. Trillian turned back to his spreadsheets, adding the data. Another loan, already, with no immediate plan for generating revenue to repay it. The discordant notes grew louder on the spreadsheet.
“Something’s—” a movement caught his eye, and he looked over at Jaz, who was shaking her head, eyes wide. Trillian scoffed, rolling his eyes.
“Too many holo-dramas, Jaz. You’re paranoid.”
“And you’re an idiot.” She stood up and grabbed her jacket. “Caf?”
A firm knock announced the arrival of the trooper, escorted by the familiar white-red Coruscant Guard. Trillian frowned slightly as the trooper in blue shied away slightly from his escort before stepping smartly over the threshold, saluting promptly. The door closed behind him.
“CT-6147?”
“Sir,” the trooper confirmed, a clipped, martial tone. Trillian sighed.
“Um, at ease, trooper. Please come in and have a seat,” Trillian gestured to the chair at the table in their cramped office space. He glanced around, as though expecting Jaz to magically appear. He’d really wanted Jaz here for this; she was much better at talking to the resources.
Troopers. Troopers. He ran a finger around the rim of his high collar, then smoothed down the front of his jacket before attempting to approximate a smile at the trooper.
“Thank you for coming over. I understand your captain is indisposed with a concussion, and as you are the only other trooper remaining from the incident at Skytop Station, I am hoping you can answer some of my questions.”
“Of course, sir.”
A bland, inauspicious response, but Trillian persevered, pulling up his questions on the data pad.
“You served in the mission at Skytop Station, correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you and Captain Rex were the only res— troopers who returned from that mission, correct?”
The trooper didn’t even blink. “Yes, sir.”
“Is that a normal mission, for you? Such high casualty rates?”
“It’s war, sir. And we get the job done.”
Trillian tried not to frown. That was a non-answer, but not one easily prodded for more details. The trooper was loyal, and clever. And not helpful.
“And you were part of the team that infiltrated and blew up Skytop Station?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Even though the orders were to wait for reinforcements to complete a strike?”
There was a flicker, then the inscrutable expression slammed back into place on the trooper’s face. “The orders I received were to prepare for an infil. We retrieved the sensitive information and destroyed the listening post, completing our objective.”
Trillian glanced down at the data pad, pulling up the after action report, then looking back up at the trooper. He seemed… on edge, anxious to get out of there. Still ramrod straight in his seat, but deeply uncomfortable.
“You're not in trouble, trooper. I’m just trying to understand why your casualty rates are so high, and this Skytop incident is… irregular.”
There was a pause, before the trooper offered an almost offensively bland, “As you say, sir.”
The office door slid open again, to reveal Jaz in her customary burgundy tunic and underdress, clutching a fresh cup of caf for dear life. Ah, finally back from the accounts receivable meeting. Her eyes slid over the pair sitting at the table, widening slightly at the sight of the trooper, then she continued on to her own desk in the far corner. Trillian sighed.
“If you’ll wait just a moment, trooper, I need to confer with my colleague.”
“Yes, sir.” Trillian hurried away, reflecting for a moment on the interaction so far. It had been painfully bland and useless, to the point of irritation. How could the Jedi work with them on a regular basis? Trillian was annoyed after five minutes! It would explain the non-clone officers’ poor opinion of the clones; they’d made that very clear in their own after-action reports. He pushed the thought away and bent over Jaz’s desk. She shot him an unamused scowl.
“What.”
“I can’t get anything useful from the trooper,” Trillian sighed irritably in a whisper. Jaz looked around him to the trooper, who practically vibrated in his armor as he sat on the edge of his chair, desperately awaiting the order to flee.
“What’s the trooper’s name?”
“His… name?”
“You karking idiot,” Jaz whisper-snapped, glaring at him with deep disappointment. Trillian blinked in shock as she stood up and moved towards the trooper, her face tattoos crinkling under the strain of an uncharacteristic smile.
“I am so sorry for my colleague here, he’s a moron,” Jaz offered lightly, shooting a dirty look at Trillian as he sputtered behind her. “He’s spent so long looking at numbers and spreadsheets, he’s forgotten how to interact with real people. What’s your name?”
“I’m CT—”
“No, no, please, if you’re willing— your name.”
The trooper stared at her for a long moment, expression inscrutable. “It’s Denal.”
Jaz smiled softly, and Denal relaxed minutely. Trillian watched in wonder; she was a natural at this. Maybe he really was incapable of interacting with real people.
“Thank you, Denal. I’m Jaz, it’s nice to meet you. We just have a few questions about your latest mission, but you know, I’m starving and haven’t had lunch. There’s a cafe around the corner, would you like to come? My treat, I insist, but it’s your choice.”
“Why me?”
Trillian blinked. It was the first time Denal had asked a question, or volunteered anything beyond the minimal responses he had felt compelled to give.
“Your captain’s not available at the moment, and I think you might be able to help us clarify some questions we have about the brothers you lost at Skytop.” A shadow fell over the trooper’s face, and Trillian felt his stomach tighten in unpleasant anticipation. A key change was about to take place in this mess of a symphony.
“All right, ma’am.”
“I will have to bring my idiot coworker, but I promise to keep him in line. Is that all right?”
She was really enjoying this.
“That’s all right ma’am.”
“You can call me Jaz, if you’d like. Whatever is more comfortable for you.”
“I think I prefer ma’am, if that’s okay.”
“Sure thing.” She turned to Trillian, triumph glittering in her eyes. “All right, idiot, lead the way. We’re getting spicy noodles!”
Trillian regretted everything.
Because there was no coming back from this.
Denal told horror story after horror story, with no apparent awareness that it was not normal to regularly wipe out entire squads and risk children’s lives for a mission. And not just Skytop; the pattern of behavior Trillian had suspected was indeed a theme, each mission just a variation on that theme. Losses, near-misses, piled higher higher, each planet a chord change but still the same song of carnage and waste. Trillian held it together fairly well; he suspected that Jaz’s sudden disappearance to the bathroom was to vomit. He didn’t blame her in the slightest. The symphony Trillian heard in his mind had gained a darker tone; a stain, that colored every data point for the 501st. One that he’d be unable to ever forget, even if this was resolved.
“So the droid was never wiped? Even now?”
“You’d have to ask the General, sir, but I’m pretty sure it’s still got its full memory intact,” Denal wiped the bowl of his noodles clean with a slab of bread. The trooper had polished off two whole bowls of noodles and finished Jaz’s at her insistence that she wasn’t hungry. Trillian made a mental note to look into the food budget, certain now that it was wildly underfunded for an army of high metabolism.
“And he sent the padawan and the team off to set charges for destruction while he retrieved the droid instead of destroying it?”
“The droid has been dead useful,” Denal insisted, once he’d swallowed the bread. “Saved our lives a few times. But—” he faltered.
“Please, go on,” Jaz urged softly. Her yellow eyes looked raw.
“It’s just hard, ma’am,” Denal finished softly. “Losing my whole squad, for a droid. I know R2’s not like the clankers, but— I grew up with those men, ma’am. They were good men. They barely got a chance to make a difference, and Grievous just destroyed them like it was nothing. The Captain got concussed ten ways to Zhell-day, and the little Commander nearly died at Grievous’ hand. It was a rough mission— and it was for a droid. We’re just clones, we’re meant to die in this war—” Trillian suddenly aspirated on air and began choking silently— “—but they died to rescue a pet droid that had intel it shouldn’t have had. It’s—” Denal’s eyes suddenly went wide in panic. “I shouldn’t have said that. You’re— you’re not going to tell anyone I said that, are you?”
“Denal,” Trillian had gotten his breathing under control, “nothing you’ve told us is anything we didn’t already infer from the reports.” Not completely true, but close enough. “We are not going to share anything you’ve told us in confidence. It will inform the questions we ask, to ensure we’re getting the appropriate answers, but it will not get back to anyone that you discussed this with us at length. The 501st is burning through men at an unconscionable rate—” Jaz raised her eyebrows at him, a glimmer of a smile at her lips, “—and this may give us a way to fix that. We can’t end a war, but maybe we can force some changes that keep your comrades a little safer.”
Denal’s panic subsided a little, helped along by a timely subject change by Jaz.
“You know what we didn’t have? Dessert. Have you ever had meiloorun pie?” She darted off for slices before they could respond. Trillian sat in awkward silence as Denal sent a guarded glance around the cafe. He watched as the trooper checked his exits again, then considered his next interview question, discarding the first three iterations before starting.
“So, Denal, you said you grew up with the men who died at Skytop, did you lose anyone especially close?” Trillian grimaced at his own question, he was so horrible at this. Gently probing painful events for critical information was not his speciality. It seemed to be Jaz’s— when she wasn’t vomiting in the bathroom.
Denal was fairly stoic about it though, evidently used to natborn insensitivity. “Yes, sir, my last two batchers,” he replied softly, his expression falling only slightly, then smoothing at Trillian’s look of confusion. “We were decanted— born— in batches, they kept us in groups of five. Scopes and Speed died at Skytop, we lost Mounty at Geonosis, and Clips got decommissioned.”
Jaz had returned with the pie slices, and began handing them out.
Trillian frowned. “So what does Clips do now that he’s decommissioned? Administrative work?”
Denal stared at him. “He doesn’t do anything. He’s dead. The Kaminoans decommissioned him for being defective.”
Trillian stared back, the deafening silence filled by the light clatter of the cafe around them. Jaz looked less like a Pantoran and more like a Sarkhai, a hand held over her mouth. “Defective. How.”
Denal ducked his head away from the question and shrugged, starting in on his pie. “Speech impediment. It’s why we called him Clips. You get decommed for anything that makes you less than perfect. Bad training scores, defects like speech, blond hair—”
Jaz’s chair toppled over as she bolted for the bathroom once more.
A haunted-looking Jaz trudged ahead of Trillian into the office. “I don’t think I can ever eat at that cafe again,” she said softly, dropping into her chair. Trillian raised an eyebrow as he smiled grimly down at her, finally looking up from his data pad.
“Agreed. You were brilliant. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Moron.”
“I forgive you,” he retorted primly, accepting her snort with grace. The smile fell as he checked his messages.
“The Chancellor sent a message. He wants me to approve the 501st requisitions immediately.” He looked up to Jaz, whose pale blue face blanched. “Grab yourself some caf. We’re not done yet. I’m calling the Temple right now for a meeting.”
“Wait!” The Pantoran practically launched herself across her desk, snatching the comm line away. “Are you nuts? You can’t just call on an office line!” She dropped her voice to a whisper, her headdress swinging in agitation. “You’ve involved yourself in some shady shit that goes all the way to the top. You can’t use regular lines. We go in person, right now. Take all your documents, and I’ll hail a speeder. I’m sure they have caf at the Temple we can steal.”
Trillian narrowed his eyes at her. “I think you watch too many holo-dramas,” he whispered back. “But just this once, we’ll do it your way.”
“Good, because if we don’t and I die, I’m haunting you forever.”
As it happened, gaining a meeting with the Jedi Council was not as difficult as Trillian would have imagined, once the awkwardness of arriving through the general visitor entrance was handled.
Explaining to them their many failures in oversight, on the other hand—
“So you’re saying none of you knew about the droid retaining intel except for General Kenobi, General Skywalker’s former master?”
Although Trillian and Jaz currently stood in the center of the brightly illuminated High Council’s meeting room, with a sprawling view of Coruscant behind them, Trillian distinctly felt that it was the Council on trial at the moment. Their reactions reflected the shared sentiment.
“Correct,” General Windu appeared to be battling a migraine, and Trillian honestly couldn’t blame him.
“And that’s… not odd to you?”
“We will certainly be discussing it at a later date,” Windu shot a look at General Kenobi’s holo, who flinched back.
“The data shows that General Skywalker’s resource use— the way he burns through troops,” he amended, feeling Jaz’s glare on the side of his head, “combined with the lack of oversight occurring here, I’m sure because you’re all stretched thin and adapting to a responsibility not normally yours,” he added magnanimously, “aided and abetted by the Chancellor’s personal interest in rubber-stamping requisitions for the 501st and general preference for amply funding the war effort above and beyond what is requested by the troops is… concerning. Skywalker's beyond the burn rates of other battalions, with the exception of General Krell, and I’ve got concerns there, too. If I had him on a strict budget, he’d be out of troopers by now. And ships. And the Chancellor’s personal interference in GAR supply logistics and repeated interference in the affairs of the 501st is outside the normal chain of command.”
In the deafening silence after that comment, Trillian could hear the squeak in Jaz’s shoes as she shifted in place beside him.
“Don’t you… feel the deaths?” Jaz asked into the gaping maw. “Aren’t they like lights winking out in the dark, the unnaturalness of their passing jarring and raw to the senses?” Trillian turned in astonishment, but Jaz had eyes only for the Council. “Forgive me, but Skywalker’s lack of concern for the lives under his authority does not seem in keeping with the morals of the Jedi Order, as I understand them. Don’t the deaths… bother him?”
The Generals exchanged loaded glances.
“I will approve the requisition for the 501st right now, because to do anything less would raise undue interest, more so than I likely have already done, but I need to know that this will be addressed internally,” Trillian declared, with far more confidence than he felt any right to have.
He was a budget analyst, for kriff’s sakes.
Trillian ran a hand down the front of his jacket, approximating some semblance of dignity with his unruffled appearance. “I also need you to ensure, personally, that the wasteful practice of decommissioning stops, no midnight snatches anymore either.” That conversation had been a real test of these Jedi’s supposed stoicism.
“And I want a copy of the contract that the Jedi Order allegedly signed with the Kaminoans, because I can’t figure out where your funding came from, and divert it to wartime resource procurement. I cannot be bankrupting the Republic to fund an army that no one actually ordered, and support your escalations at the Chancellor’s direc…” Trillion trailed off, eyes falling into a middle distance. A swell of data points connected in a crescendo through Trillian’s mind, leading to an inevitable climax.
“Tril?” ventured Jaz into the thick silence. The Council members stared at him, General Windu’s piercing gaze nearly burning a hole through him in the suspense.
“Little gods, it’s on purpose,” Trillian breathed. “He’s trying to bankrupt the Republic. But why?”
In the end, Trillian remained a guest of the Jedi Order he had so primly threatened, for nearly a week. All day, he and Jaz pretended to be working from their Senate office while pulling information and funding reports for the Jedi, covering the duration of the war and the last ten years. At night, Jaz bored him stupid with her holo-dramas.
“Our drama is better,” she said, half the words nearly lost as she talked around a cookie, somehow managing to take up two thirds of the bed despite her petite stature.
“Please don’t remind me,” Trillian refused to even look at her, staring at the ceiling of their drab quarters. He wondered how many Jedi had laid in this very bed, meditating on the state of the galaxy and the encroaching danger as he did now.
And without even decent caf to pull them through. The horror.
And then suddenly, it was over. Palpatine, the Republic’s beloved Chancellor, was dead of a heart attack (Trillian and Jaz had taken one look at that headline and made immediately for the nearest bar for shots). Anakin Skywalker, the war effort’s Golden Boy, had quietly disappeared (and judging by Master Kenobi’s red-rimmed eyes, it was not nice). The Separatists abruptly sued for armistice after General Windu brought down Count Dooku and General Grievous. None of Trillian’s backup plans had accounted for such an abrupt ending to the war, but it was certainly preferable to a deliberate draining of the coffers.
Trillian felt, as he sat soaking in the late morning sun streaming through the floor-to-ceiling window of his office high above the Coruscant skyline, that finally things were returning to some semblance of normalcy. Cancelling ship-building contracts of eye-watering value, shifting funding for the Order, reconciling accounts. The symphony of war had ended abruptly, but the soothing melody of peacetime eased the harsh edges of reconstruction and reconciliation, discordant notes of funding needs resolved in the harmony of a peacetime galaxy that had averted catastrophe.
Normal work again.
Until—
Trillian sprayed caf all over his screens, choking as Jaz threw a towel at him and slunk around his desk to read the latest message.
“Senate’s requesting funding to support three million adult, youth, and infant clones repatriated from Kamino, to establish their own home world,” Jaz read over his shoulder, humming thoughtfully as Trillian spluttered and swore, mopping up caf from every impermeable surface.
“Your funeral! I’m gonna go have lunch with Denal.” She ducked the flying wet towel and waved as she left, as Trillian continued to stare in dismay at the spreadsheets.
“Kark.”