Chapter Text
Hunter tsked as he examined the tear right down the palm of his left glove. He had already had to replace his gloves once since the war ended and his squad defected from the new Empire. And that wasn’t all he’d had to replace. After almost a year of running mercenary jobs and with no Republic to restock their worn or ruined gear, he and every one of his brothers had been forced to scavenge pieces of armor to take the place of those that became damaged beyond repair. Hunter had lifted a new pair of pauldrons off a negligent Separatist freedom fighter. He had to ditch his right leg plates when they got deep gashes in them and instead plucked a new set off the body of a dead clone reg. His bracers cracked during a particularly hairy mission, and he hadn’t found any replacements yet. He was currently keeping his knife sheath strapped to his arm with a tightly wound band.
“What’s the matter?” Omega asked.
She sat in one of the back chairs of the Marauder’s cockpit, swinging her legs. They were currently halfway through a long hyperspace trip to the location of their next mission. This one was not actually a job for Cid. This had been a favor requested by Rex.
Hunter spun the co-pilot’s chair to face her. “Ah, my glove’s torn. It’s not a big deal. I’ll just have to be on the lookout for a new one.”
“Do you have to have gloves?” Omega asked. She glanced down at her own hands. “I noticed you all wear them during missions. But I don’t have any. Should I get some too?”
“Well, they come in handy,” Hunter said. “They allow us to keep a firm grip on our weapons even if our hands become slick with sweat.” Or with blood, but he didn’t add that part out loud. “And they’re useful in case we find ourselves in rough terrain where climbing might be required.”
“Not to mention they are especially essential for Hunter,” Tech added. He didn’t look up from the gadget he was poking at with a screwdriver. “His heightened senses include the sense of touch, and he can sometimes experience an overload if exposed to certain stimuli.”
Hunter shot Tech a look that his brother, still not raising his eyes from his work, completely missed. He didn’t like admitting or displaying any weaknesses in front of Omega. She deserved to feel completely safe, and the only way she could achieve that with their current lifestyle was to have her sergeant be an unshakable pillar she could rely on.
“Really?” Omega asked. “What kind of things cause that?”
“I got it under control years ago,” Hunter said. “But when I was younger, textures that were especially rough bothered me. Or the feel of machinery coming online. I could already feel that with my extra sense, but if I happened to be touching a droid or a console when it booted up too, it sent an extra surge of energy into my hand that could be a lot. But like I said, that hasn’t happened in years.”
“Not to mention the extra stimulation he experiences with skin-to-skin contact with another sentient,” Tech added.
Hunter glared at him again. Tech remained oblivious.
“What do you mean?” Omega asked curiously. “What happens when you touch people?”
“It’s nothing much,” Hunter assured her. “Living things have subtle lines of energy woven throughout their bodies. It can usually only be detected with special instruments, but sometimes I can feel them. Kind of like the energy in my body connects with theirs. But it’s not painful, and it hasn’t really bothered me since I was a child. A fact Tech is fully aware of.”
Tech finally looked up. “Hm? I was merely stating a fact.”
“That’s so cool,” Omega said, undeterred. “And it kind of explains something I always wondered.”
Hunter returned his attention to her. “Oh? What’s that?”
“When you were a baby in Nala Se’s lab, you would always cry after your scans or when the lab equipment was left on near you. You would only stop if I put my hand on your face.” She hopped out of her chair and came to stand before Hunter. “Like this.”
She pressed her hand to his cheek. At once, Hunter felt the faint pulse of energy hum from each of her fingertips and knuckle joints. It was like a vibration on his skin he could only just feel. And it wasn’t exactly unpleasant. It was never that it was an unpleasant thing to experience. It was that it was intimate. The mingling of his energy with another person’s, even if he were the only one who could feel it, somehow seemed like the sharing of a secret. And Hunter wasn’t comfortable experiencing that with just anyone. But Omega was different. She had always been different. Her touch wasn’t unwelcome. It was warm and inviting and innocent.
Tech lowered his gadget. “You have memories of that time?” he asked softly.
“Only a few,” Omega said. “I was really young when you were all there. All that really remains are snippets of memories. But they left an impression. I never forgot you, and I never stopped trying to find you again.”
It was still bizarre to think that, as a clone created without age acceleration, Omega was technically older than her brothers. Hunter had known this fact for months now, but he still had a hard time wrapping his head around it. Most days he just didn’t try. But it did help explain why there was something he found inexplicably familiar about Omega when they first met her on Kamino. Did some deep recess of his brain remember her? He could almost swear the feeling of her hand buzzing against his cheek wasn’t new.
She dropped her hand from his face and instead lifted his hand with the torn glove to consider it. “I could fix this for you, I think. As Nala Se’s medical assistant, I watched a lot of wounds be stitched up. Fabric wouldn’t be that different, right?”
“It is essentially the same,” Tech said. “We do have a sewing kit with sturdy thread for instances such as this. You will find it in the storage locker beside Wrecker’s rack.”
Omega pulled Hunter’s glove off before he could protest. “Got it!”
After she scampered away, Hunter ran light fingers over his cheek. Her touch left a warmth there he wasn’t used to. It wasn’t that he never touched anyone. But he usually kept his gloves on. Skin-to-skin contact was rare. He sometimes forgot the brief tingle it left behind. And there was something particular about Omega’s touch. Maybe some part of him really did remember her from way back then. The fact that she had been a part of his life from the very beginning, even if he wasn’t aware of it until much later, made his chest warm with fondness.
He shook his head with a smile. He was so glad they found Omega in time to get her off Kamino before they had to flee the Empire. He only wished they knew about her sooner. If he had known he had a little-big sister waiting to reunite with him, nothing would have stopped him from finding her.
* * *
Omega’s needlework wasn’t terrible. It wasn’t as clean as Tech’s neat stitches when he patched up their blacks, but it was better than Hunter could have done himself. And Tech had been too busy with his own work to spare any time doing minor mending, so they let her have at it. Hunter could feel the bunched up line of fabric against his palm as he held his blaster and double checked its ammunition power pack. It wouldn’t get in the way, he decided. More than anything, he was grateful for Omega’s willingness to help.
“Alright,” he said as the Marauder came out of hyperspace. “Remember why we’re here. Five clone deserters made it here to Ferros and signaled Rex for a pick up, indicating they’d found a safe place to hide out. But then he lost all contact with them. He was too far away to get to them quickly, so we’re going to scope out the place and see if we can find out what happened.”
“Where do you think they went?” Omega asked.
“Any number of things could have befallen them,” Tech said. “Though Ferros is an Outer Rim world, the Empire may have set up a base there we are not aware of and discovered the deserters. The planet is also home to a variety of fearsome fauna, particularly in the remote area of the planet from which the clones’ beacon was last activated. They may have been bested by natural adversaries.”
“Or their equipment may have failed, leaving them without long range comms,” Hunter said. “Whatever the case, we’ll find out and let Rex know.”
Echo crossed his arms. “This sounds a lot like what happened with Greggor. Someone better not be holding those clones against their will like on Daro.”
“Yeah,” Wrecker grunted. “That didn’t end well.”
“If we’re that outnumbered, we’ll fall back and wait for Rex to bring reinforcements,” Hunter said. He looked at Echo. “No going in without backup this time. Especially if Imperials are involved. The Empire thinks we’re dead, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
The similarities to Daro only grew as the mission proceeded. Tech brought the ship down in a clearing amid a heavily wooded area. They had to hike to the clone’s last known location. The type of vegetation here was different than on Daro; the trees and ferns were more tropical with enormous green and purple leaves, and air was sticky and humid. But just like on Daro, Hunter was able to track the missing clones’ movements in the area. He quickly found their camp. The firepit was cold. Most of the gear they must have had, including their locator beacon, was missing, but a few odds and ends had been left behind. A belt clip for a datapad. An empty water canteen. A single tent spike. Either the clones had left in too much of a hurry to grab every last item or someone had come back and picked the camp clean later.
Hunter soon found a discouraging sign: drag marks in the mud and leaf litter that carpeted the forest floor. He counted the trails of five grown men that had been dragged away from the camp by their arms, leaving a body-sized trail in their wake. There was no sign of blood. And there were many footprints mixed in with the trails. At least ten different pairs of boots.
“Animals didn’t do this,” Hunter said. “The clones were captured.”
“Captured by who?” Wrecker asked.
“I’m not sure. About ten sentients. The footprints are different sizes and from different shoe designs. Some might not be human. I don’t think TK troopers were here. Nothing is uniform.”
“We need to find out where the clones were taken,” Echo said. “They might still be alive. If whoever did this wanted them dead, why not just leave the bodies here? Why take them to a new location?”
Hunter nodded. “I can follow the trail. Everyone stay within earshot. We’ll do this covertly. We don’t know how many people we’re dealing with, or what they want. Let’s see what we’re up against before making a plan.”
Later, Hunter would infinitely regret that he didn’t send Omega back to the ship right then and there. He should have told her to stay back, just as he had on Daro. He should have taken her himself. He should have locked her up tight in the Marauder and not let her out until they were back on Ord Mantell. Instead, all he did was meet her eyes through his helmet and say, “Stay close.”
She nodded seriously, her energy bow grasped in her hands and ready to be drawn at a moment’s notice.
Hunter led them forward through the brush, following the trail of disturbed ground. After a good ten minutes, he felt a surge of electromagnetic energy humming somewhere up ahead. He spotted the source through the trees and motioned for everyone to squat down. The jungle gave way to a compound of many duracrete buildings. The space directly before them was wide open and filled with bundles of crates in a variety of sizes. There was a hangar with one wide open bay door where a dozen or more star ships sat parked. Mostly freighters, but they all had added artillery mounted to their hulls. Hunter clocked four men walking around between the buildings or inside the hangar. There was no telling how many more might be inside. He was too far away from this vantage point to pick out individual heartbeats.
“Imperial?” Echo whispered.
Hunter brought out his macrobinoculars. “No, I don’t think so.” None of the people he saw were dressed in TK or clone trooper armor. Most of them wore long-sleeved jackets with a strange symbol sewn on the breast pocket. It looked like a snake wrapped around a thorn bush. And the men weren’t all human. Of the four men in sight, one was nikto and one was twi’lek. “More likely a smuggling ring.”
“What do smugglers want with clone deserters?” Omega asked.
Hunter trailed over the scene with his macrobinoculars. He landed on a terminal just outside the hangar. “Maybe we can find out without giving ourselves away. Do you think you can slice into their records from there?” he asked Tech.
Tech flipped down the visor of his helmet and surveyed the terminal. “Possibly. A terminal like that would not normally connect to the mainframe of a facility such as this, but it might with a little coaxing.”
“I can help with that,” Echo said.
Hunter nodded. “You two get over there without being spotted and see how much information you can download. Let’s find out where the clones are being kept, if they’re even still here. Then we can make a plan of action. Wrecker, Omega, and I will stay here to keep a lookout.”
Echo and Tech nodded. Hunter watched the smugglers’ movements for a moment more. Two of them were no longer in his line of sight. The remaining two were walking toward the nearest building, their backs to Hunter’s position. He signaled to his brothers, and they moved off on quick, quiet feet. They ducked behind crates as they made their way to the terminal. Echo grabbed one of the boxes, activated its mag-lev, and pushed it along with them. He parked it right beside the terminal so that when they got there they could crouch behind it while they worked. Echo knelt and scomped into the port while Tech plugged in his datapad and typed away.
“The organization operating here is called Thorn Acquisitions, according to what I see here,” Tech reported over the comms after a minute. “Their manifest includes a host of questionable goods on their shipping schedule including spice, contraband weapons, and humanoids.”
Hunter frowned as he kept an eye on the two smugglers who had stopped short of going into the building and appeared to be chatting. So, they were human traffickers. “Any humanoid cargo on site currently?”
“Searching now.”
New movement caught Hunter’s attention. It was close enough to his position that he lowered his macrobinoculars. He motioned to Wrecker and Omega to get lower. They all squatted further behind the wide fronds of a giant fern. Someone drove a hovering trolley out of one of the buildings on which were stacked three big crates. The machine turned heavily and headed towards the hangar.
“You’re about to have company,” Hunter said into his helmet comm.
But then the trolley driver pulled up short. A staticky voice that Hunter couldn’t quite make out came through a comm device on his wrist. “What?” the man said. “I thought you said they were ready to be loaded.” The other voice said something else. “Alright, alright, have it your way. I’ll come get those first. Just give me a minute.” He maneuvered the controls, and the flat bed of the trolley lowered to the ground. He drove backwards until the three crates were no longer on board. Then, leaving them there in the open, he drove back toward what Hunter assumed was a warehouse.
Hunter eyed the crates. Something about them felt wrong. They were each the approximate size and shape to hold a human body.
“Stay here,” he whispered to Wrecker and Omega. “Keep a lookout.”
After he made sure no one was looking his way, he darted out of hiding toward the crates. Once he was crouched beside them, he noticed a strange thing. There were small holes along the side near the top. He took one more glance around and then stood up just enough that he could release the latch on the lid of the top crate.
He sucked in a sharp breath. A clone with plain white armor lay inside. His eyes were closed, his face was slack, and his chest did not rise or fall. Hunter couldn’t hear the man’s heart beating. Odd that he didn’t smell of decay. He must be newly dead. Otherwise, Hunter would have smelled him immediately. The body was unblemished. No visible blood or blaster wounds. There was only the vague scent of something acrid that Hunter was sure no one but him would be able to pick up. That, and a small red dot like a needle prick on the man’s neck just above the collar of his blacks.
It wasn’t hard to guess what was in the two identical boxes beside this one. What were the smugglers doing with dead clones? Was there some twisted scientist out there that wanted clone bodies for experimentation? Or maybe the Empire had placed a bounty on clone deserters and was willing to pay for them dead or alive. Hunter glanced over the rest of the crates sitting around the lot. None of them were coffin-shaped like these were, but that didn’t mean there weren’t more inside the warehouse.
“I found three of the deserters,” Hunter said into his comm. “They’re dead.”
Echo swore softly. “We’ll keep looking. The other two might still be alive.”
“I am accessing the list of intended buyers and their corresponding itemized cargo,” Tech said. “Stand by.”
Just then, something nearly silent trilled against Hunter’s senses. His eyes snapped to the source: a tiny device was planted inside the open lid of the crate. It blinked out a rapid pulse. Kriff. He pulled out his blaster. “This thing has a tampering detector on it.”
The words had hardly left his mouth before an alarm blared from speakers mounted along the walls of the compound. Doors whooshed open. Smugglers poured out of the buildings like ants swarming out of a dirt mound, their blasters all trained on him.
“Time’s up,” Hunter said as he ducked down. “Download what you can, and we’ll take it with us. If there’s any troopers here left alive, Rex can plan a rescue mission with the intel.”
Blaster fire began hitting the crates Hunter was taking refuge behind within seconds. That brought return fire from each of his family members in their respective positions, which surprised the smugglers enough that they divided their attention. Hunter took out three in a row. There was no time for stun blasts, nor was he particularly motivated to show mercy to smugglers trafficking in dead clones. Shooting two more bought him the opening he needed to make a dash back toward Wrecker and Omega.
Wrecker had Omega sheltered between himself and a wide tree trunk. He laid down rapid fire with his blaster rifle while she took shots from her bow around his side. Hunter slid into place in front of her. Before long, the smugglers nearest to them all lay motionless or moaning on the ground. Those remaining converged around Tech and Echo, who were still trying to simultaneously work and defend themselves.
“Got any smoke grenades?” Hunter asked Wrecker.
“‘Course I do!” he said.
“Go back them up. We’ll hold position here and try to pick off reinforcements as they arrive.”
“You got it boss.”
Wrecker dug a smoke grenade from his pack as he jogged off. Hunter kept one eye on the smugglers already on the field and the other on the compound doors. He was certain there were more people inside. He expected a second wave of defense to materialize at any moment. He felt Omega peek around him to watch their brothers. Wrecker made it to the crates holding the dead clones and stopped there for shelter. He waited for an opening and then hurled the smoke bomb.
Hunter was so focused on the ensuing chaos—the smugglers shouting in surprise, the blaster bolts going wild, Wrecker hollering and shooting, Echo providing cover fire while Tech finished up at the terminal—that he didn’t process the new presence nearby until he heard the squish of a boot stepping on moist ground.
He whipped around. Somehow, one smuggler had broken away from the group and made it to the treeline without his notice. The man was only a few meters away from Hunter and Omega. His weapon was already raised as he leaned around a tree trunk to fire at them. Hunter dove for Omega. He dragged them both to the ground, his hand covering her head, as the blaster bolt flew over them.
“Stay down!” he cried as he popped back up in front of her. He took a shot at their assailant just as the man ducked behind the tree.
Hunter took one step forward. Then he stopped. Now that he focused his senses in the immediate area, he could tell there were three heartbeats beside his own nearby. One was Omega’s, light and fast. Another belonged to the man behind the tree. So where was the third one coming from? It was somewhere to his left. The smuggler behind the tree took another shot at Hunter, and he had to abandon his search to dodge.
The next few things that happened took place in a handful of seconds. The smuggler took another shot that grazed Hunter’s pauldron, but to do so he exposed himself from cover just enough that Hunter could shoot him in the neck. The man went down, but at the same moment, Omega cried, “Look out!” Her energy bow flared to life just as a loud and sharp popping noise came from the vegetation to Hunter’s left. Omega yelped.
Hunter snapped his blaster to the left. He saw the second smuggler crouched among the ferns. The weapon he held was strange. It looked more like a dart gun than a blaster. He was scrambling to load something into the barrel. Hunter shot him between the eyes before he could finish.
“H-Hunter.” Omega’s voice was choked, and all of his attention immediately shifted to her.
His heart stuttered. She was on her hands and knees, her bow discarded. With a shaking hand, she groped weakly at something on her neck. A dart with a tip like a needle had pierced her skin and stayed there. Hunter dropped to his knees in front of her. He grabbed the dart and tugged it free. There was no time to decide whether or not that was the right thing to do; the need to remove the threat overrode any consideration of the potential downsides. A drop of blood beaded up at the affected spot on her neck.
Just like the red dot on the neck of the dead clone. That should have been Hunter’s first clue. But his brain refused to jump to that conclusion. He grasped Omega by her upper arm with his free hand. “Are you okay?”
She choked. She didn’t seem to be able to bring air into her lungs. Her eyes blew wide with terror. When a breath did finally come, it was a strangled gasp. Then she slumped.
“Omega!” Hunter dropped his blaster and caught her. He flipped her over so that he could cradle her upper body in his arm and her head against his shoulder. He lightly tapped her cheek. “Omega.”
She blinked up at him. A puff of air that might have been the start of his name escaped her lips. She didn’t pull in another breath. Her eyelids drooped to half-mast. She went still.
And her heart stopped beating. Hunter heard the moment when it suddenly slowed and gave its last, weak thump.
Dread more powerful than any he’d ever known dropped from his head down to his feet. “Omega?” She shook her. Her head rolled limply against his shoulder with the motion.
Hunter felt too hot and too cold all at once. With a trembling hand, he took off his helmet and let it roll on the grass beside him. He lowered his ear to Omega’s chest. Maybe his senses were wrong. His enhanced hearing wasn’t working. If he got close enough to her heart, he would hear it beating like normal. He tuned out the now distant-sounding cacophony of blaster fire coming from the compound and focused all his hearing on her chest cavity.
Nothing. No heartbeat. No breath. Only a cavernous silence.
“Tech,” Hunter rasped, forgetting for a moment that Tech was not close enough to hear him.
Then something snapped inside. The shock stepped back, and Hunter’s training kicked in. “Tech!” he shouted into his wrist comm. “Get to my position now!”
“The data transfer is nearly complete,” Tech replied. “I will be there shortly.”
“Leave it! Omega’s down!”
He didn’t answer the chorus of questions that followed over the comm. He laid Omega down on the damp forest floor. He positioned himself over her and brought his hands together at the base of her chest. He began compressions, carefully counting to thirty. Tech would be better at this. He had more experience in field medicine. But until he got here… Hunter delivered two rescue breaths. He bent his ear over Omega’s ribcage again. Still nothing. He could hear the silence without having to get so close, but he didn’t trust it. It just didn’t make sense. What could take her out so quickly? She’d been fine. Just a minute ago she was fine.
He kept up the compressions. “C’mon, kid, c’mon…” Did they have the defibrillator with them? There was one in the med kit on the ship. But surely Tech had his portable one in his pack. He always brought it along when they went on missions. It had never been needed before, but Tech was the master of carrying things that might be needed, just in case.
Two more breaths. Thirty more compressions. Two more breaths. What was taking the others so long? Thirty more compressions. Omega’s sternum was going to be bruised after this. Two more breaths. No heartbeat. Hunter’s arms shook. He kept going.
In the back of his mind, he registered that the compound eventually went quiet. The blasterfire stopped. Three pairs of familiar footsteps thundered his way.
Wrecker reached them first. “What happened?” he cried. “Who got her?”
Hunter sat up from delivering the latest two breaths as Echo and Tech reached them too. He quickly moved so that Tech could take his place. “Two guys ambushed us here. One of them shot her in the neck with this.” He snatched the dart off the ground and held it up for his brothers to see.
Tech squatted beside Omega. He did not take up the position Hunter had just vacated. He narrowed his eyes at the dart. “She was pierced with that—and collapsed? How long did it take for her heart to stop?”
“Just a few seconds.”
Tech was quiet. Most of his expression was hidden by his helmet, but behind his goggles his eyebrows pulled down low over his eyes.
“What are you doing?” Hunter snapped. “Hurry! You know how to do the compressions better than I do.”
“There is no point trying to get her heart to beat.”
The dread hit Hunter full force again.
“What do you mean?” Wrecker demanded. “Why?”
“If Omega was injected with a substance powerful enough to stop her heart in seconds, it must have been a lethal neurotoxin. By now it has paralyzed her nervous system and caused respiratory failure and cardiac arrest. Her circulatory system would have delivered it throughout her body instantaneously. There is no removing it.”
Silence rang loud between them. No one moved.
“You mean… She’s just—gone?” Wrecker said.
Tech didn’t respond. He sat back in the grass as though he’d suddenly lost the strength to remain squatting without toppling over. For once in his life, his hands didn’t seem to know what to do. He let them rest idly in his lap as he stared at Omega’s lax face.
No. No, no, no. Hunter’s head felt light. Whiteness creeped into his vision.
“That—that can’t be right,” Echo said. “She’s just a kid.” He sat on the ground by Omega’s head and put a hand on her chest as though checking for her heartbeat himself. “She’s just a kid…”
A powerful tremble travelled down the length of Hunter’s body. He grabbed Omega by her shoulders. “Omega, you need to wake up now.” He shook her, and Echo withdrew his hand. “Wake up.” Hunter shook her harder. She made no response to the jostling. Panic crept up Hunter’s throat. He shook her so hard that her head thumped against the ground. “Wake up, wake up!”
“Hunter.” Echo took off his helmet. He rested a hand on Hunter’s shoulder to stay him. His face was grim.
Hunter let Omega go, and she plopped heavily back onto the forest floor. He was shaking all over now. He leaned forward on his hands and knees and pressed his forehead into the ground. He was going to faint. He was going to throw up. This couldn’t be real. Omega wasn’t dead just like that. She was supposed to outlive him by decades. She was supposed to grow up and be happy and live a long, full life. That wasn’t cut short because Hunter wasn’t fast enough to stop someone from shooting her veins full of venom. She wasn’t dead because Hunter brought her to a dangerous place and then failed to protect her. This was some kind of terrible nightmare.
Static filled his ears. He dug his fingers into the earth, squishing it into his palms. He heaved in breaths of damp air through constricting lungs.
“Why would they even have a weapon like this?” Echo asked. “Why not just use a normal blaster if their goal was to kill her?” He was apparently talking to Tech, but their brother made no response. He didn’t even give a sign that he heard the question.
Hunter thought of the clone bodies in the crates. How the smugglers must have wanted them for something. Maybe their sick buyer wanted a body free of wounds. They must have been trying to add Omega to their collection.
The whiteness behind Hunter’s eyes faded into red. Those bastards. Who would do this to a little girl? To his little girl?
Suddenly, Hunter was on his feet. He didn’t remember standing up. He also didn’t remember scooping up his helmet, but now it was back on his head. He strode toward the compound, blaster in one hand and knife in the other. A heavy weight tugged at him, threatening to pull him under. But for the moment, it was kept at bay by a raging fire in his bones. Hunter broke into a run. He heard Echo calling after him. He didn’t stop.
Someone ran behind him. Wrecker, his senses told him. Wrecker, who gave off a battle cry the likes of which Hunter hadn’t heard from him before.
The second round of smugglers finally made their appearance. They poured out of the building, already shooting. A blast hit Hunter’s calf armor. He didn’t even feel it. He let Wrecker mow down the first wave. Then, when they reached the door, Hunter went in with his knife. He slashed a nikto’s throat. Even as that man fell, Hunter stabbed a human in the gut. He was deaf to the gurgling scream the man gave off. He pulled his knife out and let the blood flow as he yanked the man onto the floor and stepped over his back. These heartless monsters didn’t deserve to live. They took Omega from him. That was a price that would cost every single one of their lives.
Hunter moved into the hallway. Even in the midst of hundreds of heated battles, he had never entered this hazy, bloodthirsty state before. In the close quarters of the hallway, he maneuvered around men as they shot at him. He stabbed one smuggler in the stomach and then used that man’s body as a shield to press forward and take out the others down the hall with his blaster. Wrecker took care of the other side of the corridor. When his blaster rifle wasn’t firing, Hunter heard bones crack and men scream.
They didn’t have to go far. Every smuggler in the place that was dumb enough to fight came to them, entering the chokepoint of the hallway one after the other. Hunter stabbed. He fired. He sliced. He kicked. He twisted one man’s neck and felt the bones snap beneath his biceps.
Finally, the smugglers that remained must have wizened up. They stopped coming. Hunter could hear footsteps and shouting moving away from him. They wouldn’t get away. He ran further into the compound. Though he had no idea of the layout of the place, he followed his senses to a room where three men were arguing frantically. One of them, a blue twi’lek, spotted Hunter in the doorway and took a shot. Hunter vaguely registered that it hit his arm. But he didn’t let that stop him. He surged forward. He had already taken out two by the time Wrecker arrived and took care of the third one. They left the bodies and went in search of more.
Stopping never occurred to Hunter. He wanted to drag every rat out of its hiding place and eviscerate it. He and Wrecker cleared three more rooms before they came to one where Hunter could tell, from the pounding of a human heart, that someone was hiding under a desk. When Hunter pointed to it, Wrecker flipped the whole thing over with a yell.
A young human man cowered on the floor. He threw up his hands. “Wait!” he cried. “Don’t kill me, please! I have a daughter! She’s just a baby!”
Hunter’s grip on his weapons tightened. “Then you shouldn’t have killed mine.”
“I didn’t kill anyone, honest! I don’t even know what’s in most of these boxes we move around. I just joined last week to make some money for my family. I swear!”
Hunter aimed his blaster at the man’s head. But the heaviness began to chip away at the fire in his mind. He hesitated.
“Hunter.”
Hunter looked over his shoulder.
Echo stood in the doorway. He was frowning, but sadness was heavy in his eyes. “That’s enough.”
Between Echo’s intense gaze and the young man’s blubbering, Hunter’s resolve cracked. He dropped his arms as if they suddenly weighed a metric ton each. Pain slowly seeped into multiple places across his limbs and torso. He looked down at himself and discovered all the smoking spots dotting his armor. He hadn’t realized how many times he’d been hit until now. The spots were peppered in between the curtain of red liquid coating his chestplate.
He wobbled as he turned toward the door. Echo was there in an instant. He draped Hunter’s arm across his shoulders and pulled him into the hall. Wrecker followed behind them, sniffling.
Echo took them back through the halls of dead bodies. Hunter tried not to look at any of their faces. Instead he noted small things. A brown insect crawling up one wall. A bit of paper trash on the floor. A pack of death sticks someone had dropped. His rage cooled into a puddle of numbness. He leaned into it. Grief crouched at the door, ready to consume him. But he could stave it off as long as he embraced the numbness.
“What about the other two clones?” Wrecker asked in a gravelly voice.
“I found their crates,” Echo said. “They’re dead too.”
So, this entire trip was a waste of time. Omega had been killed, and it didn’t even have to happen. If only they’d told Rex to handle his own dirty work. If only they’d kept to themselves, minded their own business, she would still be here. If only Hunter had told her to stay on the ship. Then the dart would have been shot at him instead.
Hunter’s footing faltered. He could feel the adrenaline crash coming. Echo grasped the back of his belt to help keep him upright. They made it outside with some effort.
Tech and Omega were not where Hunter had left them at the tree line. Tech must have carried her back to the ship. Hunter dragged his feet. He didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to board the Marauder where she should be laughing or playing or sleeping. But he didn’t want to stay here with the evidence of his rampage either.
He wasn’t sure how he made it all the way to the ship. He sunk into the numbness and didn’t process most of the walk. All of a sudden, the Marauder loomed dark and silent before them. Echo tried to lead him inside. Hunter’s feet wouldn’t cooperate. They planted themselves firmly on the ground. Because the sound of Omega’s heartbeat was missing inside there, but her scent was still present. And that struck every chord in his body as wrong. He couldn’t walk into that wrongness.
“Come on, soldier,” Echo said softly. “The first step is the hardest, but it gets easier.”
Hunter glanced back at Wrecker. His brother’s helmet turned toward him, waiting for him to take the lead. Hunter swallowed, and his throat felt like it was made of shards of glass. He took the step.
Echo helped him up the ramp. As soon as Hunter was inside, his legs gave out. Echo eased him down against the wall. Hunter’s head spun. He dropped his blaster and bloody knife, took off his helmet, and tossed it aside too. He leaned back against the wall as his stomach roiled. He didn’t have the courage to look up into the gunner’s mount.
“Where is she?” Wrecker asked softly after he came aboard.
Hunter frowned a little at that. Was she not in the gunner’s mount? He risked a glance at Omega’s room. He didn’t see her motionless head of blonde hair lying there as he was afraid he would, but he did see Lula sitting all alone, and even that was enough to make his breath get caught in his chest.
The door to the barracks was open. Echo glanced inside. “She’s in here. Tech put her on the bottom rack.”
Wrecker removed his helmet and went into the barracks. Hunter didn’t know where he found the strength. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t see her like that. He couldn’t begin to wrap his head around the enormity of it all.
He had always been prepared for the possibility of losing a brother. At least, he thought he was. They were soldiers. They charged into deadly situations every day. No matter the expertise of his squad, they all knew that one of them might not make it home someday. That was the reality of being a clone bred to fight. It kept Hunter up at night sometimes, thinking about the very real possibility that not all his brothers would survive the war. That was why they came up with the plans. That was why they trained so hard. It wasn’t just about achieving objectives successfully. It was about keeping each other alive. They made every effort to defy the odds. Still, they always knew it could happen.
But that possibility didn’t extend to Omega. Despite their current lifestyle, she was supposed to be safe with four seasoned soldiers to protect her. This was never, ever supposed to happen. There should never have been a reality that saw Omega lying dead in the barracks while Hunter sat out here still breathing. Hunter was supposed to die before he let that happen.
His next breath escaped as a whine. He struggled to pull another one in. It’s not true, his heart screamed. It’s not, it’s not, it’s not.
Something crashed in the cockpit. From his spot on the floor, Hunter could see Tech brushing tools carelessly off his worktable. He next picked up the gadget he’d been working on during their trip to Ferros and tossed it onto the floor too. A few pieces of it broke off He plopped down at his work bench with only his datapad, his microscope, and the dart that killed Omega.
Echo went to the cockpit. “We should get out of here,” he said. “There’s no telling if this organization has other branches that might arrive for reinforcement soon.”
“You fly us, then,” Tech said. “I am going to analyze the properties of the neurotoxin remaining in this casing.”
“Is that really necessary?” Echo asked carefully. “It won’t change anything.”
“I have to know.”
“Maybe it should wait until your head’s a little clearer…”
“I have to know!”
Echo closed his mouth. After a moment, he went to the pilot’s chair and began the Marauder’s start up sequence.
Hunter shut his eyes and tuned his brothers out. It was all he could do to focus on breathing. His lungs didn’t want to function. If Omega wasn’t breathing, he shouldn’t be either. He should go curl up on the bunk with her and die. It was only fair.
Regardless, his traitorous heart kept beating as Echo brought the ship through the atmosphere and out into space.
Hunter drifted. He remained slumped against the wall, half sprawled on the floor with his legs stretched out, and no one told him to move. He let the numbness consume him. He wanted to disconnect from all his senses. He didn’t want to hear three heartbeats instead of four. He didn’t want to smell the faint acrid scent identical to the one hanging over the dead clone in the crate wafting out of the barracks. He didn’t want to wait for the sound of Omega’s voice, which some part of his brain still expected to hear.
After getting them into hyperspace, Echo sat in the pilot’s chair with his elbows resting on his knees and stared out the viewport. Wrecker remained in the barracks for a long time. Through Hunter’s haze, he could hear him crying. Wrecker didn’t bother to hide it. He didn’t even close the barracks door. He wore his heart on his sleeve, as he always had, and openly mourned. Tech, meanwhile, didn’t stop moving. He bounced his leg as he peered at samples through his microscope and consulted something on his datapad. Even when he paused for long periods to read, he got up to pace and run his fingers through his hair while he did it. Sometimes he sorted through his tools on the floor and selected one only to decide he didn’t need it after all and let it drop again with a clatter.
Time was a nebulous thing. Hunter couldn’t tell how much passed. He slid further and further down the wall until he lay fully on the floor peering up at the Marauder’s roof. The pain from his many blaster wounds screamed somewhere beneath the surface. He made no move to do anything about it. He deserved this pain for not protecting his kid. And he deserved more. It should be his body lying in the barracks, not hers.
A shadow fell over him. Echo stood looking down at him with the med kit in his hand. “Let’s get you patched up,” he said.
Hunter rolled onto his side, putting his back to him. “Leave me alone.”
“Let me just have a look. You got hit multiple times.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Echo knelt behind him. He reached for the armor piece clipped around Hunter’s bicep and unhooked the magnetic clasp.
Hunter yanked his arm away. “I said leave it.”
“She wouldn’t want you to go untreated.”
Hunter curled in on himself as anguish lanced through his middle. “It doesn’t matter,” he said again. Nothing mattered anymore.
“I know it feels that way now. But it will get better. I know. I’ve been here before. Too many times. I know what it’s like.”
No he didn’t. Echo had lost brothers. Many of them. His own batchmates, even. But that would always and forever be different. Echo had to be reeling too, but there was no way he could understand the depths of Hunter’s devastation. The brothers Echo lost weren’t children. They weren’t kids he had practically adopted. They weren’t daughters who had become, without his even realizing it until this moment, his main reason for living.
Hunter’s hands trembled again. That’s who Omega was. His kid. And as much as Echo undoubtedly cared for Omega, that wasn’t who she was to him. She was a part of Hunter he hadn’t known was missing until he met her. No, not met. Until they’d reunited. She knew him long before he knew her. Though his brain had forgotten, his soul had not. It wasn’t complete until they were together again. And now it had been ripped in two. Omega took half of his soul with her into the grave. He would never be whole again. He was doomed to a life of bereavement without his child. That was something no loss of a brother could ever replicate.
A wave of grief washed over him, pushing away some of the numbness. His eyes burned. He’d never even told her how much she meant to him. It had never occurred to him to put it into words before. Now it was too late.
He squeezed his shaking hands into fists. As he did, he felt a line of something on his left glove press into his palm. He brought his hand up before his face to look at it.
He was met with the sight of the bunched up fabric caught inside Omega’s imperfect stitches. The glove and the thread alike were stained red with mercenary blood.
Hunter scrambled to his feet so fast his head spun. Echo leaned back out of his way as Hunter shot for the refresher. Once inside, he turned on the faucet in the tiny sink full blast. He stuck his hand, glove and all, into the stream of water and scrubbed his palm frantically with his other hand. He didn’t care how much water it used. He didn’t care that they only had so much to make use of in the Marauder’s water tank. He had to get the blood off. He couldn’t let the last thing Omega ever did for him be tainted like this.
He suddenly became aware of the stench of blood all over himself. The smell was finally breaking through the haze. He was covered in it. His stomach lurched. He wasn’t exactly sorry for taking revenge on Omega’s killers, but after a period of suppression, his senses roared back to life with a vengeance, and the smell was overwhelming.
With hands dripping wet, he began ripping off his armor piece by piece. He tossed aside his greaves, his arm guards, his pauldrons. He unclipped the chestplate and threw it on top of the pile. It all sat in a heap just outside the ‘fresher door. Then he went back to scrubbing his hand. He peeled off the drenched glove and wrung it out under the water.
As the last bits of red swirled down the drain, Hunter’s burst of energy deserted him. He collapsed to the floor. He put his back to the wall and sat with his legs drawn up. There wasn’t space in the ‘fresher to stretch out. He crossed his arms across his knees and leaned his forehead into them. He gripped the dripping glove in one hand, focusing on the feel of the bunched up fabric and stitches.
Hunter’s armor scraped across the floor as someone pushed it aside. Without a word, the same person leaned into the ‘fresher and turned off the water. He lifted the edge of Hunter’s shirt and spread cold bacta gel on one of his blaster burns. Hunter didn’t raise his head. He just sat there and let Echo treat him. Normally, he would never have let someone else do for him what he could be doing himself. But he didn’t care anymore. He ran his thumb up and down the line on his glove. He counted the four stitches again and again.
Echo peeled his shirt back wherever necessary and spread the bacta in multiple places. When that was finally done, he left Hunter alone and went into the barracks. Hunter didn’t listen to whatever he said to Wrecker. But a minute later, Wrecker came out into the cabin.
“She’s so tiny, Echo,” he said with a wobbly tone. “I don’t know if I ever really thought about how tiny she is.”
Hunter gripped his glove harder, letting the cold water dribble down his hand. Echo must have treated Wrecker’s blaster wounds next. The ship went quiet except for the squishing sound of gel being squeezed from a tube, Wrecker’s soft crying, and Tech’s tapping on his datapad. Then, after a while, Wrecker must have remained in the cabin while Echo went into the barracks. Hunter never raised his head. And he intentionally did not focus on the quiet words Echo apparently had for Omega. Hunter turned his senses toward the hum of hyperspace. The buzzing rattle of the Marauder as it shot through space was comforting. Familiar. He listened to that and only that. He let the sound wrap him up and hold him together. The minute he let it go, he was going to fall into a million pieces.
He did not know how long it was before a hand came to rest on his shoulder.
“You should go see her,” Echo said gently.
Every muscle in Hunter’s body tensed. He shook his head without raising it from his arms.
“If you don’t take this opportunity to say goodbye, you’re going to regret it for the rest of your life. Trust me. We aren’t always given this chance before parting with someone. Don’t waste it.”
Hunter didn’t move. He wasn’t sure he was able to anymore.
Echo gave him a pat. “You still have a little while. But not forever. We’re going to have to make a plan. We’ll need to find a good place to…lay her to rest.”
Hunter choked on his own saliva. Echo was talking about burying her. He was talking about putting Hunter’s kid in the ground somewhere and leaving her there.
“I’m going to go update Rex. He might know a good place. For both Omega and the clones we found today. If he does, I’ll drop us from hyperspace and reroute us there.”
Hunter’s insides thrashed like a caged animal. No! he wanted to scream. You can’t have her! No sound made it out of his throat. He pressed his head harder into his arms. Echo left him alone.
Hunter remained motionless until Echo connected with Rex over the holo in the cockpit. As soon as he heard the captain’s voice ask for an update, Hunter pulled himself to his feet. He didn’t want to listen to Echo relay the message. And he couldn’t handle the sound of Rex’s voice right now. This was all his fault. His stupid mission. Even if they did owe him for his help with the inhibitor chips, this should not have been the favor Hunter agreed to. He should have told Rex they’d help with something else.
There was nowhere to go to escape Echo and Rex’s conversation. Except one place. Hunter staggered to the barracks’ door. His feet had fallen asleep after remaining in one position for so long. He grit his teeth against the pins and needles sensation that pricked his legs. He stopped in the doorway, curling his numb toes inside his boots. The main light in the barracks was off, but one of their lanterns sat on the ground glowing like a nightlight.
Of course. Omega hated the dark. She always slept with a small light on. It only felt natural for her to be resting this way.
His stomach rolled again. The barracks was a tiny area of the ship with four bunks attached to the walls. There was an upper and lower bunk on either side. The two across from Hunter were empty. And the one at eye level beside him was also empty. The lower bunk on the wall at his side was the one he couldn’t bring himself to look at.
He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Not a moment too soon. Over the comm, he heard Rex exclaim, “No! Echo, I’m sorry—”
Hunter withdrew his senses so he didn’t have to hear anymore. He stood in the narrow space between the bunks, his back to the only occupied one. He took a deep breath. It wavered on the way out.
“Omega,” he said. His voice scratched against his raw throat. “Omega, please don’t do this. I know I made mistakes. I know I didn’t deserve you. I know I didn’t—didn’t protect you. But you don’t have to leave. Please. Please don’t make me go without you.”
Something cracked inside him. He felt it as acutely as if his heart were made of a ceramic dish that had been dropped. He fell to his knees. He still didn’t turn around. His hands gripped the edge of the empty bunk in front of him. Water soaked into the bed sheets from the wet glove on his right hand and the other one he still held bunched up in his left.
“Please.” He bowed his head. “Please.”
Of course, there was no answer. He knew there wouldn’t be, and yet his head still waited for one.
“Please, please.”
He sat like that for a while, begging the silence to answer him. Then, steeling himself, he turned around. Omega lay on the bottom bunk with her hands resting on top of one another over her stomach. A peaceful posture. Tech must have arranged her like that. He had also removed her cap and closed her eyes. By all rights, she looked like she was sleeping. She didn’t even look pale in the dim lighting. If her chest had been rising and falling, Hunter would have thought she were napping.
A soft sob pushed its way out of his mouth. It was so wrong. All of this was wrong.
“Ner cyar’ika,” Hunter said around another gasp. “I loved you so much. And I’m sorry I—I never told you that.” The cracks inside him gave way to a dark pit. He crumpled. He pressed his forehead into the edge of the bunk as the tears came. He kept them quiet. The tears were only for his kid. Not for his brothers or Rex or anyone else. “I never told you…”
After the Republic fell, after Crosshair attacked them, after Kamino was destroyed, after Crosshair chose again to stay behind, Omega was the one thing that gave him purpose. Her wellbeing, her happiness, was the reason he kept fighting. Every decision he had made since taking her on had been made with her in mind. She became the thing that mattered most.
“What am I supposed to do now?” he asked. “What do I do without you?”
He peered at her still, youthful face. Though she had grown since he first met her, her cheeks were still round. He had been expecting her to become more lean as she grew, like most clones did. She would have been tall. She probably would have grown out her hair. He wondered if the blonde would have darkened as she reached adulthood. She was going to do amazing things. She was amazing in every way. Smart, agile, funny, kindhearted. She was going to grow into a woman all the boys took notice of. Hunter was going to have to chase them away because none of them would ever be good enough for his girl.
Hunter reached a hand toward her cheek, but paused. He peeled off his damp glove. Even now, he didn’t want to get her wet. He set his gloves in his lap and cupped her face with both of his bare hands.
“I love you,” he whispered. It was too little too late, but he said it anyway. He said what he should have said months ago. Back when he woke up on Bracca to find that a bounty hunter had bested him and snatched his kid away. Back when he first realized that if anything happened to her, he would want to die. He should have told her he loved her after they got her back and she came to him for comfort. And he should have said it every day after that. He wasn’t sure now why he didn’t. It was always shown but never said, and for some reason he had been content with that. Like an idiot, he’d assumed they had the rest of his life to be together.
He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I love you.” He cradled her face against his cheek and shut his eyes.
A second later, his eyes flew open again. He sucked in a breath.
He could feel her. Those faint lines of energy that existed in all living beings—all living beings—pulsed against his skin. Everywhere he touched her—his hands, his cheek—buzzed with energy. He pulled back quickly and looked at her, keeping a hold of her face. He pushed away every other input on his senses. He focused only on the feel of her skin against his.
There. It was there. He felt every point where an energy line ended along her face. Dead things didn’t have that. Hunter would know. He had handled plenty of dead things, people and otherwise, in his life. Even, on occasion, with his bare hands. And they didn’t feel like this. The energy stopped immediately upon death. He’d been unfortunate enough to have his hands on things that died before. He knew what it felt like. Only someone who was alive would still have energy coursing through their body.
Though Omega wasn’t breathing and her heart wasn’t beating, Hunter’s senses told him one thing very clearly: she was alive.