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‘En route,’ the brief, encrypted message from Captain Rex had read. ‘Torrent 3A. Pull file: CT-1409.’
Torrent 3A was one the 501st’s internal, unofficial codes. It meant to ‘Stick to the mission, but keep the details as far off of the official books as possible given other standing regulations and orders.’
Kix distinctly remembered being shocked to his shiny core the first time the Captain explained the necessity for such an unorthodox rule in the 501st. Anymore, it just made him sigh and grab a few extra medical supplies on his way to clean up whatever mess his brothers had gotten into this time.
And of course, the CT-1409 part of the message was as self-explanatory as it was shocking.
Kix had pulled Echo’s retired medical file, trying to shove aside stunned disbelief and excited agitation both. It wasn’t every day they got to move a brother’s file out of the ‘Killed in Action’ archives and return it to ‘Active Duty.’
Of course, doing that just yet would be a little premature, and not just because Captain Rex had requested Kix keep a lid on the situation. Echo was going to be in bad shape when he arrived. Clones who spent any appreciable amount of time in Separatist hands always were.
Kix had pulled some of those files too, dry reports on the aftereffects of long-term torture and confinement. He’d thought he’d had some idea of what to expect.
He’d thought he’d successfully braced himself against the worst possible eventualities.
That was before Echo walked off Clone Force 99’s attack shuttle looking unnaturally pale, dangerously emaciated, and barely held together with what looked like salvaged droid parts.
~*~*~*~*~
Venn was staring as Kix guided Echo towards one of the recovery rooms off of the medics’ central office. It seemed like a better idea than the main med bay, partially because it didn’t take a detailed interview to see that some of the things the Seps had done to Echo had been surgical in nature, but also to avoid precisely the kind of gawking Venn was currently doing.
Kix discretely kicked the other medic in the ankle as they passed, which had the desired, quelling effect.
At least Echo hadn’t seemed to notice. He was walking almost… well, Kix had almost thought mechanically, but that had some unfortunate connotations at the moment. More like he was beyond exhausted and tuned out to his surroundings.
Unsurprising, really. Captain Rex had pulled Kix aside to tell him they’d had to fight their way out of a Techno Union base. He’d also said something about a stasis pod and having to unplug Echo from some kind of networked machinery. He’d promised to debrief Kix on the entire mission once he’d reported in with the other Generals on site.
Kix was frankly shocked their brother was able to walk, much less shoot a blaster.
“In here,” he said, gesturing towards the small recovery room.
Echo looked around the space, which mostly consisted of a small cot and an empty footlocker in a room barely larger than a storage closet, and reflexively pulled the thin blanket which was wrapped around his shoulders a little tighter.
“Are you cold?” Kix asked, because given a visual rundown of Echo’s condition, he’d be surprised if his metabolism wasn’t completely karked right now.
“A little,” Echo admitted, looking up with pale amber eyes that didn’t match Kix’s memory of more clone-standard brown.
“Changing into reds won’t help that much, but I’ll get some extra blankets,” Kix said with what he hoped was an encouraging smile. “And a field scanner.”
Echo didn’t quite manage to hide his flinch.
“Nothing more invasive than a couple of adhesive sensors,” Kix promised, stepping forward and putting a hand on Echo’s arm in what was supposed to be a comforting gesture. Physical contact, and all that.
Echo just looked down at Kix’s hand, expression blank, but he did nod after a long moment.
“Okay,” he said.
Kix gave Echo’s arm a quick squeeze. He did feel a little cold, even through the thin blanket. Kix’s practiced smile relaxed into something more genuine. “It’s good to have you back,” he said.
“It’s good to be back,” Echo answered, but his tone wavered oddly.
~*~*~*~*~
The karking sensors were glitching. Either that, or the datapad was.
Kix never did manage to get a clean reading on Echo’s heartbeat, and after several false alarms, he finally stopped running to check each time his datapad flashed red with a warning that Echo had gone into respiratory arrest.
Except when Kix had arrived with some nutrient paste for latemeal, he’d found Echo lying on his side, eyes only partially closed, muscles slack and eerily still in a way that was all too familiar.
But then, when he dropped the tray on the ground in his rush to get to Echo’s bedside and determine what, if anything could be done, Echo jerked, eyes flying open, sucking in a deep, gasping breath.
“What?” he asked, eyes wide and wild. “What’s wrong? Are we under attack?”
“I thought you stopped breathing again,” Kix explained lamely. Because surely he’d been wrong.
“Oh.” Echo tried to smile, but the expression looked forced. “Was that my dinner?” he asked, nose wrinkling up slightly in distaste.
“Sorry,” Kix finally said, bending down to pick up what he could of the food, which had splattered across the floor. “I’ll get you more.”
This wasn’t like him, jumping at shadows. He wasn’t a shiny anymore. He hadn’t been for a long time.
But when he returned with a mop and Echo’s replacement dinner, he couldn’t quite shake the idea that he was an experienced medic, and he hadn’t just imagined Echo’s pale, almost gray face, slack with something more than sleep.
~*~*~*~*~
Echo wasn’t just cold. He was freezing, clammy to the touch.
Kix scrounged a third blanket and a small space heater and brought them both back to the recovery room.
He tried to ignore the unwelcome suspicion that neither was going to help much.
~*~*~*~*~
The fighting on Anaxes ground on, cycling new casualties through the med bay.
Captain Rex sent an apology for not checking in personally, but he’d been ordered out almost immediately after landing to deal with some new Separatist incursion.
The brief written report he’d appended to the message didn’t provide Kix with any helpful information, either.
~*~*~*~*~
“I’ve programmed it to cycle through the scans as quickly as possible,” Kix explained, trying to keep his words calm and even in the face of Echo’s obvious discomfort. It was only to be expected, really, given what he’d gone through. Kix didn’t take it personally. “I pulled your files out of the archives, so we’ll have a baseline for comparison.”
“Right,” Echo said, and it sounded like he was aiming for dry humor, but the word came out sounding more than a little strangled. His eyes never left the surgical pod. “Because I was dead.”
Kix didn’t wince. He was a professional. But it was a close thing.
“I think we’ll be able to remove a fair amount of the tech,” Kix said, shoving aside the thoroughly unwelcome suspicions which were trying to intrude on his thoughts. “But we’ll need to map it all and make sure we have a handle on what it’s actually doing before making those calls.”
Echo did glance away from the pod then, finally, but only to look down at himself. Most of the ports and anchoring plates that had been grafted onto his torso were hidden under the loose medical tunics, but the scomp arm and the twin mechanical legs were still extremely conspicuous.
Echo just snorted, mouth twisting into a small, bitter smile. “Not all of it, though,” he said.
It wasn’t a question.
Kix wasn’t sure how to answer, because no, not all of it. The limbs were just the obvious, outward evidence of the Techno Union’s experimentation. Given some of Echo’s other… anomalous readings, Kix was pretty sure they were going to find evidence that the modifications went a lot deeper that what was currently visible.
The silence stretched out uncomfortably long, and eventually Echo’s eyes drifted back to the surgical pod on the other side of the examination room.
“And a field scanner won’t be enough to get the job done?” he finally asked, but the resignation in his voice indicated that he already had the answer.
“I’m afraid not,” Kix replied, pretending that he didn’t notice the way Echo tensed up at the response.
It wasn’t personal. It wasn’t.
Kix hadn’t asked, not yet, but it wasn’t like it took a great deal of imagination to guess why Echo might have issues with the idea of any invasive medical procedures at the moment.
There were protocols in place for helping brothers who’d spent any time at all in Separatist hands, but they were ones the medics had cobbled together for themselves after being deployed. It wasn’t like the Kaminoans briefed their ‘property’ prior to surgery. They simply ordered, and the clones were expected to obey.
This was better, even if all of the medics knew that their training regarding such things was still painfully incomplete.
“Will I be sedated?” Echo asked.
“It’s up to you,” Kix replied.
Echo breathed out slowly, a long exhalation that he was obviously using to steady himself. “No sedation,” he said, and Kix pointedly ignored the way the fingers on Echo’s remaining hand twitched, half-curling into a subconscious fist. “Let’s get this over with,” he said, looking and sounding like a man facing his own death.
He sat down on the edge of the gurney without further comment, swinging his metal legs up and onto the platform with audible clanks. The loose legs of his medical reds caught oddly on the joints.
Kix didn’t offer to help, instead walking to the terminal at the foot of the pod and entering the scan’s parameters. He knew Echo well enough to guess that any hint of a suggestion he wasn’t entirely capable of carrying out his orders wouldn’t be received well. But Kix did say, “I’ll be here the whole time,” once Echo had gotten himself arranged on the gurney. “I’ll probably need to ask some questions during the scan.”
He probably wouldn’t, but sometimes talking was a good distraction.
Echo just jerked a quick nod in acknowledgement, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
“Okay,” Kix said, selecting a series of different scans. “Here we go,” he said by way of a courtesy warning, and then entered the final command to start the scan.
Echo’s hand twitched involuntarily as the gurney slid into the pod, the only outward sign of distress the ARC trooper apparently allowed himself.
The graphic on the terminal’s screen appeared in slowly scrolling lines, starting with Echo’s feet. The details here weren’t all that important, but Kix would still save them and pass them along to Anvil’s squad. General Skywalker had already signed the forms to let the quartermaster produce a set of new prosthetics using the base’s on-site fabricators. Anvil just needed Echo’s specific dimensions and the specs for the neural interface the Techno Union had used to fine tune the builds they’d already started.
Kix hadn’t shared that information with Echo just yet. He wanted to make sure the existing tech was going to be compatible with whatever the Republic fabricators could generate. He didn’t want to get Echo’s hopes up over nothing.
Ankle joints, shin struts, knee rotors. It wasn’t like the GAR could outfit their troopers with synthetic skin or some of the other fancier models Kix knew were available in natborn facilities, but the legs the Techno Union provided really had been stripped down to the bare minimum. Kix had seen the initial design Anvil had pulled as a starting point. They were going to be a major improvement over Echo’s current prosthetics.
And oh, excellent. There were the neural interface plates. They looked fairly standard, for socket-style prosthetics. Scanning up into what remained of Echo’s thighs revealed similarly standard modifications, to articulate and communicate with the prosthetics. That was going to make things easier.
Kix expanded the view of Echo’s legs, selected the sections of the scan that showed the interface tech, entered a command request for the computer to append measurements to the visuals scaled to the millimeter, and then sent the information directly to Anvil.
In the meantime, the scan had reached Echo’s torso. Kix rescaled the image to fill the entire screen so he could get a better look.
It was… bad.
Kix knew that Echo’s internal mods were going to be extensive, but he wasn’t expecting this.
Parts of his brother were just missing. And it wasn’t just the obvious ones. There was some kind of device in his abdomen replacing a long stretch of both small and large intestines as well as one kidney. Another was grafted onto his heart, and a third replaced his left lung. Something that looked like a small power core had been anchored to the inside of Echo’s ribs, rivetted directly into the bone.
And those were only the largest of the mods. There were smaller devices, lengths of wire and tubing following the same paths as nerves, arteries, and veins. Ports, and circuitry, and kark even knew what, all networked together, all leading to a particularly dense web of modifications penetrating every region of Echo’s brain.
Kix needed to say something, but any possible words stuck in his throat.
So naturally, the pod started wailing an alarm.
“What’s the problem?” Echo asked, sounding tense.
Kix immediately silenced the alert. “Nothing serious,” he said, which was a karking lie. The scanner had moved from imaging to other analyses, and the alarm had been triggered by critically low blood-oxygen levels. Low enough that Echo shouldn’t be conscious, much less talking. “Just try not to hold your breath, it messes with the readings,” Kix finally said, hoping that was the issue.
Knowing it wasn’t.
Echo took a deep breath, and if it sounded a little ragged, Kix wasn’t about to comment.
Not when even more impossible readings started rolling in.
Blood pressure was far too low. Brain activity was far too high. And the report on Echo’s blood chemistry was mostly just a string of error messages.
The pod’s alarm shrieked again, this time specifically related to some combination of chemicals that should have been well beyond the lethal limits for a standard clone trooper. Kix immediately hit the button to shut it up and then entered another command to disable the auditory alert for any future anomalies.
“Kix?” Echo said from the pod, tension making his voice crack.
“You’re good,” Kix said. None of these readings made any sense. “I think some of your mods are throwing off the sensors, but you’re fine.”
That earned a dark crack of laughter. “By some definition of ‘fine,’” Echo said dryly. Despite the flat humor of his tone, his heart rate was picking up.
Kix was kriffing this up. He needed to say something comforting, to reassure his brother, his patient. Usually he was better at this.
“Let’s just finish the scan, and I can tease out the noise from the data afterwards,” Kix said in the practiced, even tone he’d had to cultivate for situations that were truly going sideways on him. “It’s over eighty-percent complete anyway. Just try to keep breathing steadily.”
Echo took one shuddering breath. Then another deeper one, in and out. Some of the regions of irregularly high brain activity evened out into something more normal.
The scan continued, reporting more and more impossibilities.
Kix had no idea what to do with any of this information.
~*~*~*~*~
Kix was so far out of his depths, it wasn’t even funny.
He could really use some advice, but the only sentients he could think of with the expertise to provide any meaningful feedback on Echo’s scan results were all Kaminoans, and it’d be a cold day in all nine levels of the Correlian hells before Kix commed any of them with this information.
He’d learned that lesson after what had happened with Tup. And Fives.
So Kix needed to figure this out himself. It was just that the implications he kept pulling out of the dataset were horrifying at best and catastrophic at worst.
There wasn’t any ambiguity left in some aspects of the test results. Echo’s breathing and heartbeat were beyond erratic, sometimes ceasing all together. Any attempt to analyze his blood chemistry kicked out a list of error messages interspersed with alerts for extreme anemia, hypoxia, and at least five different toxins in concentrations well beyond what should have been lethal doses.
And Echo wasn’t just pale. He was gray.
Then there were the mods themselves. As best Kix could tell, the device embedded in Echo’s abdomen was some kind of micro-fabricator. It seemed to be siphoning off raw materials from his digestive and circulatory systems to kick out the cocktail of fluids that had been giving the chem analysis fits.
At least it wasn’t producing nano-droids. That had been an initial concern.
The device replacing Echo’s lung fed into the same system, pulling more than just oxygen out of the air and sending those raw materials along to the micro-fabricator via tubes that bypassed whatever passed as his bloodstream.
The neurological implants were even more unsettling. There were processors grafted to the inside of Echo’s skull and running in rows down his neck on either side of his spine. Without a slicer, it was impossible to tell what they contained, but they were clearly doing something. Mapping regions of brain activity clearly showed signals originating in the processors triggering responses in different regions of Echo’s brain, and the reverse also seemed to be true.
Echo’s core body temperature was barely above ambient, and that fractional difference could be entirely chalked up to the heat generated by the power core embedded in his chest.
Kix had already arrived at the obvious explanation. It was just that the obvious explanation was also patently insane.
Echo’s file belonged in the archives.
~*~*~*~*~
“What do you think?” Kix asked.
Echo looked at the datapad with Anvil’s proposed schematics for the new prosthetic legs like he wasn’t really seeing it.
Kix curled his hands into his knees, mostly to keep from fidgeting in the awkward silence. Was there something wrong with the design? Did Echo not want the updated prosthetics?
“They look fine,” Echo said, still staring down at the ‘pad. He didn’t sound enthusiastic about the change. He didn’t sound upset either. Mostly he just sounded hollow.
This wasn’t the reaction Kix had expected.
But then Echo looked up and asked, equally flatly, “What happened to Fives?”
Kix’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again, and still no words came out. He had to say something, Echo deserved to know what had happened to his batchmate, but Kix wasn’t entirely certain what he could say about Fives. The instructions passed down from GAR high command hadn’t been a full gag order, but they’d been close.
“He died,” Kix finally said.
“I assumed,” Echo said without the slightest inflection in his voice. “How?”
“You’ll have to ask Captain Rex,” Kix said awkwardly. It felt like he was taking the cowards way out, but their orders had been pretty clear. “I’m sorry,” he added, meaning it.
“Yeah,” Echo said, without the slightest hint of an expression flickering across his face. He stood up without another word, placed the datapad back on the desk next to Kix, and then disappeared back into his room.
~*~*~*~*~
Kix had to write something. He was already overdue to file an initial report on Echo’s case. If he waited any longer, it was going to draw unwanted attention.
But what was he supposed to write?
Patient appears to be deceased. Implants are forcing facsimiles of biological processes, allowing the body to function at normal to slightly improved levels, relative to clone baseline standards. Rapid cellular regeneration occurs in the event of traumatic injury, but baseline division seems to have slowed considerably. This suggests that the patient will not experience normal aging. It remains unclear if the deceased trooper’s mind is in control of the body, or if the Separatist processing units are driving decision making and actions, with apparent access to the trooper’s previous knowledge and memories. Recommendation: close observation.
Right. Obviously not.
Because if it was Echo in there, a report like that would be a one-way ticket back to Kamino for vivisection.
Necrosection? Or would it just be called an autopsy, even though the dead body was somehow still moving around and talking?
Force, he needed a drink.
A soft sound behind Kix made him turn to see what it was.
Echo was standing in the doorway of his recovery room, watching Kix work at the medics’ shared desk.
Kix didn’t jump. He had more self-control than that. But kriff if it wasn’t a close call.
How long had Echo been standing there, staring at the back of his head?
“Everything okay?” Kix asked, dropping his datapad on the desk and swiveling his chair all the way around to face Echo.
Echo shrugged slightly. “Having trouble sleeping,” he admitted, expression haunted.
With any other brother, Kix would have immediately assumed Echo was suffering from nightmares. It was still the first thought he had now, but it was swiftly followed by immediate doubts.
After all, droids didn’t have nightmares.
Kix felt like a shab for even thinking that.
“You should try,” Kix said, rising from the chair. “Is there anything I can get you to help?”
Echo just shrugged again and rubbed his jaw with his remaining hand. He was starting to get a shadow of whiskers growing there, growth which should have taken hours now spread out over multiple days. “Maybe some food,” he said, and then grimaced. “Especially if it’s not more of that paste.”
“You’re already slated to start back on solid foods,” Kix said, searching Echo’s face for any confirmation that it was his brother in there. “Maybe I could also get you a razor?”
That earned a small grimace. “I can’t exactly reach my whole face with one… right now,” he admitted, vaguely lifting his scomp arm in explanation.
Right.
Force, Kix really was being a shab.
“I can help,” he said with what he hoped was an encouraging smile. “Just give me a minute to get everything together.”
~*~*~*~*~
“It’s like he only breathes when he remembers to,” Kix said quietly, mindful of the possibility of being overheard.
“Tell me you’re not suggesting what I think you’re suggesting,” Captain Rex, who’d finally managed to break away from command meetings, said stiffly.
Kix couldn’t quite keep from grimacing. “I know how this sounds…” he started to say.
“Do you?” Rex interrupted sharply. “He’s not dead.”
Kix should have expected this reaction.
He remembered how Captain Rex had been, in the aftermath of the Citadel mission. Their older brother had blamed himself for everything that had gone wrong on that clusterkriff of a mission. That kind of guilt didn’t just disappear overnight, especially if something happened to tear open the scars.
“He’s not,” Kix said, and it wasn’t even a comforting lie. Mostly.
Because Kix was almost convinced that it was Echo back in his recovery room and not some droid wearing Echo’s skin.
No Separatist agent would willingly submit to Kix’s battery of examinations and surgeries to remove much of the Techno Union’s work. A droid wouldn’t flinch away from needles or wake in momentary panic from reoccurring nightmares.
So it had to be Echo in there. A grimmer, more withdrawn Echo than Kix remembered, certainly. One with a whole host of physical alterations that Kix was only just starting to wrap him mind around, also yes. But still Echo.
Which made what Kix had to say next even harder, especially with the way Rex’s shoulders had started to relax incrementally at the first half of Kix’s admission.
But Kix was a medic. He had a duty to his patients and to his chain of command. And right now, that duty demanded honesty in the face of something impossible.
Something horrible.
“Echo’s not dead,” he repeated with grim conviction. “But he’s not exactly alive either.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Captain Rex said flatly.
“I know, I can’t explain it,” Kix tried again. “The Techno Union must have figured out–“
But Captain Rex’s comm indicator on his vambrace started flashing red, which earned it a quiet, heartfelt curse, but he did hit the button to defer the call, not that he could dodge it for long. The fighting outside of the base was still ongoing, and rumor amongst the rank and file was that it was still going badly. “What are you asking from me?” Rex finally said.
Kix hesitated, not wanting to put anything more on his Captain’s shoulders, but he also had a responsibility to Echo.
“I’m going to need to use a surgical droid to remove the unnecessary hardware,” Kix finally admitted, cutting to the chase. “I can get creative with my reports, but it won’t. And there’s no way it won’t notice the same anomalies I have.”
Captain Rex nodded, looking even more exhausted.
“We can’t send him back to Kamino,” Kix said, pressing a bit harder.
“We might not have a choice,” Rex said grimly. “But I’ll see what I can do.”
There was more Kix could say. Implications he’d thought through and chased down, between too-short naps and too much caf. This technology – whatever it was that was currently keeping their brother… well, if not ‘alive’ then at least ambulatory – it could change everything.
To be able to save more of his brothers, even from death, made Kix’s chest ache with the possibilities. As a medic, it was his duty to the Republic and to his brothers to save everyone he could. And with this technology, he could save them all, couldn’t he? In some form?
But that sat wrong with Kix in a way he couldn’t quite articulate. Echo had already given everything for the Republic: his entire life, and then his death. Except now his corpse was back up and walking around with full access to his training and memories. And it was Echo, alive or not. And now the republic could continue to ask that same sacrifice from him. Again.
And again.
And again.
Kix cut short that treasonous line of reasoning. Having Echo back, even like this, was a good thing. A miracle.
It was.
So instead of speaking any of those doubts out loud, Kix just nodded to Captain Rex, and said, “Thank you, Sir.”
~*~*~*~*~
The rumors started after the surgery.
The medical pods could be programmed to handle many things, but removing some of the larger pieces of hardware required a more hands-on approach. That was why Kix needed to bring in the surgical droid. There just wasn’t any way to perform the procedure without one.
And then, just like Kix had predicted to Captain Rex, the droid auto-filed a report upon successful completion of the surgery.
But if Kix ever found out who amongst the 501st’s medics saw that report and then ran his mouth outside of the med bay, Kix was going to tattoo the medical ethics regulations regarding patient confidentiality across his face.
Kix shut that osik down whenever he encountered it, but gossip spread fast in the barracks. So now half of the base was convinced that Echo was some kind of Separatist infiltrator.
And Echo was far too perceptive to not notice the change in his reception. Not when he’d been cleared to stretch his new legs around the training areas on base. And everywhere he went, he’d been met with icy silence.
Given that shaking every single clone trooper on Anaxes, all three battalions’ worth, wasn’t logistically possible, Kix had no idea what to do.
And what was worse, some natborn analyst even further up the chain of command had also read the droid’s report, so now they had orders to start testing Echo’s capabilities with his scomp arm. The message, in between the orders, was clear. Either Echo demonstrated that he is still useful, even critical, on the front lines, or he would be sent back to Kamino for ‘observation’ and ‘testing.’
Kix couldn’t allow that to happen.
~*~*~*~*~
Kix was going to murder Echo himself.
The minute, the karking second Kix signed the flimsiwork that said Echo could be considered for light duty – light karking duty, which he had only signed to buy them all a little extra time – the di’kut had marched himself into a strategy meeting with the Jedi generals and demand he be deployed on some kind of laser brained mission behind enemy lines.
Because of course he did.
Because in addition to Echo’s brothers treating him like a pariah, Echo himself was very clearly blaming himself for whatever information the Techno Union had managed to forcibly rip out of his brain while he was a prisoner of war.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, in the process of sabotaging the entire Separatist fleet and maybe single-handedly winning the battle for the Republic, Echo had also managed to get himself electrocuted in the process, which should have earned him a one-way ticket back to Kix’s med bay.
So yeah… Murder.
Except by the time anyone actually thought to tell Kix any of this and he went hunting for his patient, Clone Force 99 had already left, taking Echo with them.
~*~*~*~*~
Kix stood in the small office which had been assigned to the 501st’s clone officers, hands clasped behind his back to hide the way they were shaking. “Sir, I need to request the comm codes for whoever serves as the field medic for Clone Force 99.”
“Kix, it’s already done,” Captain Rex said, sounding more sad than anything. “General Skywalker signed off on the transfer an hour ago.”
“I am still requesting their comm codes,” Kix said, eyes fixed on the wall behind his Captain, fists clenched. “The medical files they have for ARC Trooper Echo are incomplete. Given his unique situation, I feel that it is imperative they receive that information as quickly as possible.”
Captain Rex blinked, seemingly taken aback by Kix’s formality. “You signed off on his return to active duty,” he said cautiously.
Because I couldn’t stall doing it any longer, not without risking drawing the wrong kind of attention.
And now he’s assigned to a team which is based on Kamino, where there isn’t anything except the wrong kind of attention.
Kix wasn’t sure what expression had crossed his face, but Captain Rex frowned.
Kix expected a refusal. Questions. He braced for them, knowing that whatever his brother asked, he’d have to answer. He was a kriffing rotten liar.
“Alright, Kix,” Captain Rex finally said, sounding strangely gentle.
~*~*~*~*~
Kix’s interactions with The Bad Batch had been pretty brief, and mostly negative. They hadn’t seemed to like ‘regs’ very much.
But they had agreed to take in Echo, and they seemed to like Captain Rex well enough now.
And they were brothers. That had to mean something.
Kix had to trust in that. It wasn’t like he had any other choice.
~*~*~*~*~
CT-6116: This is Kix with the 501st. Captain Rex gave me this comm code.
CT-9902: This is Tech.
CT-6116: Are you your team’s medic?
CT-9902: When it is needed.
CT-6116: Is this line encrypted?
CT-9902: Yes. Why?
CT-6116: Have you noticed Echo’s unique metabolic status?
CT-9902: That is certainly one way to put it, but yes.
CT-6116: I am asking you, as a medic and a brother, to do whatever it takes to keep the Kaminoans from disappearing him into some lab.
CT-6116: Please.
CT-9902: We have already discussed this. We have a plan in place.
CT-6116: Thank you.
CT-6116:
CT-6116: If there’s anything I can do to help, this is my personal comm line.
~*~*~*~*~
Even with their command structure largely destroyed, there were still a lot of droids positioned on Anaxes. Rooting them out took time, even if the grinding losses had abruptly and definitively shifted in the Republic’s favor.
Kix was kept busy with bacta and bone menders and the usual triage of a protracted campaign. That didn’t keep him from checking Echo’s status as often as he could.
Echo’s designation number remained listed as a member of Clone Force 99.
His current deployment status remained inactive, with his location reported as Kamino.
Until they’d finally received orders to leave the last of the mop up to the 187th and prepare for deployment elsewhere. Kix had been running courier duty, overseeing the transfer of patients from the planet side base to the venators in orbit, when Echo’s status finally changed.
Current assignment: Clone Force 99
Deployment status: Active (mission location redacted)
General Ti had personally signed off on the mission, which seemed like it should have been a good sign. A quick check, driven mostly by paranoia, revealed identical assignments for the rest of the Bad Batch. Wherever they were, this suggested they’d been deployed together.
Kix had thought the cold, hard knot inside his chest would release with that news.
It didn’t.
Kix had never trusted the Kaminoans. No clone did.
He wasn’t sure where along the line he’d stopped completely trusting the Republic as well. Not with the one thing he’d been trained as a medic his whole life to safeguard. Not with his brothers’ health and safety.
He’d known he’d have to see his brothers die. He’d used to believe that those deaths would mean something though. He had also believed the Republic would spend his brothers’ lives wisely, to bring about a final victory and a lasting peace.
Somewhere along the line, he had lost that conviction.
Maybe it had started with Umbara. Maybe it had been coming on even before that nightmare of a mission.
It had solidified further with what had happened with Tup and Fives.
Kix kept those thoughts to himself. They were dangerous. They were treasonous. But they also wouldn’t go away.
He had heard back from Tech a few times, but those messages had mostly consisted of requests for specs on Kix’s scanning equipment. Kix hadn’t heard from Echo at all. It left him feeling even more at loose ends, wanting to do something more proactive to help, but having no outlet for that energy.
And then an idea occurred to him, a clear path forward. Something he could do, with all of this pent-up frustration.
So after the last patient had been settled in the ship’s med bay, Kix pulled out the heavily encrypted datapad he’d been using to store the details of Echo’s case and saved all that data into a file called CT-1409 for later reference.
Then he opened two new folders.
It took some digging to find the archived files. Much of them were redacted, and someone had buried them under additional levels of security. But medics had overrides that weren’t open to all troopers, so Kix was eventually able to find the records he needed.
He made copies and saved them to his datapad with the file names CT-5385 and CT-5555.