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Fox wakes to cold fingers pressing against the scar beneath his ribs.
He doesn’t flinch.
That seems to disappoint Scalper.
“Pain?”
Her voice comes out as a rough scrape, every syllable dragged over the damage the Kaminoans left in her throat. She can speak when she has to, but it costs her. Fox has seen her go entire shifts using hand signals, datapads, and increasingly violent eye contact.
“No.”
Scalper presses harder.
Fox stares at the ceiling. “Still no.”
“You’re lying.”
“You asked if it hurt. You didn’t ask if I cared.”
Her fingers dig into another old scar.
Fox remains still out of principle.
The medical cot beneath him is narrow, hard, and somehow less comfortable than the floor where his body had apparently decided to stop functioning. His uniform jacket hangs over the back of a chair. His boots are still on because Scalper had probably evaluated the effort required to remove them and decided his circulation wasn’t worth the trouble.
A monitor chirps near his head.
Fox looks toward it.
Scalper catches his chin and turns his face back.
“Eyes.”
“They’re open.”
“On me.”
Fox focuses on her.
Chief Medical Officer Alpha-01 has pale hair pulled away from her face, cold blue eyes, and the general demeanor of someone deciding whether murder counts as preventative medicine. Unlike most clones made from Arla Fett’s template, Scalper is old enough to remember the training halls before most of the army had been decanted.
She’d been a trainer in the Medcorps then.
Just Scalper.
She was the one who found the flaw in the original aging sequence before mass production and engineered a correction. The Kaminoans had rewarded her by experimenting on her voice box until they ruined it.
Kamino was generous that way.
Fox watches her track his pupils.
“How long was I out?”
“Twenty-three minutes.”
“That’s inconvenient.”
“You collapsed.”
“I noticed.”
“No, you didn’t.”
He thinks back.
There had been paperwork. There was always paperwork. Requisitions from the Senate, deployment schedules from CorSec officers who still hadn’t accepted that the Guard had replaced them, disciplinary complaints against troopers who’d committed crimes such as speaking without permission, bleeding on expensive flooring, and failing to look sufficiently identical.
Then the floor had moved.
Apparently, it had been his body instead.
Scalper picks up a scanner and runs it over his chest. “Eighty-four hours.”
Fox knows better than to pretend he doesn’t understand.
“It was eighty-three and a half.”
Her stare could strip paint from a gunship.
“Approximately.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“I outrank you.”
“You’re still an idiot.”
That is the problem with Scalper. Rank only matters when she finds it medically convenient.
Fox pushes himself onto his elbows.
The medbay shifts sideways for a moment.
Scalper plants one hand against his sternum and shoves him flat again.
“No.”
“I have work.”
“You have syncope, dehydration, stimulant overuse, muscle fatigue, and the nutritional profile of a cadet who’s been licking the inside of ration wrappers.”
“I ate.”
“When?”
Fox searches his memory.
Scalper waits.
He finds nothing useful.
“That’s classified.”
She makes a sound that might be a laugh if her throat remembers how.
Around them, the Guard medwing runs at its normal pace, which means barely controlled collapse. A medic guides a limping patrol trooper toward an examination bed. Two sisters argue quietly over the last sterile bacta patch. Somewhere behind a privacy screen, a brother curses as someone resets his shoulder.
Half the injuries treated here come from the Senate.
Fox knows because he reads every report.
Bruised ribs from a representative who became offended when a Guard wouldn’t abandon his post. A fractured wrist from a senator’s security detail. Chemical burns from spilled drinks thrown during political arguments. Sexual assaults recorded as unauthorized interactions because the official forms don’t contain a category for what happens when Republic property says no.
The Senate doesn’t like language that makes its members look guilty.
Fox learned that during the Guard’s first week.
The Coruscant Guard had been commissioned in June, three months after Geonosis turned millions of lives into military inventory. Their orders were simple.
Protect the Senate.
Be seen.
Don’t be heard.
Fox commands the entire Guard, which makes him the highest-ranking clone in the battalion and one of the highest-ranking clones in the Grand Army.
It also means very little.
Commander Thire handles investigations and criminal justice, gathering evidence that courts sometimes discard because a clone’s testimony doesn’t carry the same legal weight as a natborn’s.
Commander Thorn oversees Senate escorts and patrols, which mostly means preventing elected officials from wandering into traffic and stopping them from touching troopers without permission.
Commander Stone controls the prison and riot divisions, inheriting detention centers previously run by CorSec officers who treated corruption like a family business.
They all report to Fox.
Scalper does too, at least in theory. As Chief Medical Officer of the Grand Army, every military medic eventually answers to her.
They’re the only Guardsmen permitted customized armor markings. Senators are less likely to complain when they can identify the officers responsible for telling them no.
ARC troopers are the other exception, mostly because ARC troopers consider regulations to be creative suggestions.
Fox designed their program himself.
It had frightened several Mandalorian trainers.
He remains proud of that.
None of it gives him the authority to protect a trooper from reconditioning.
A senator can file a complaint. A civilian supervisor can claim defective behavior. A CorSec remnant with the correct clearance can submit a recommendation.
Reconditioning means the trooper returns from Kamino without the memories that made them themselves.
Their name disappears.
Their habits disappear.
The joke they told badly, the brother they trusted, the sister they followed into fire, all of it is cut away until nothing remains except obedience wearing a familiar face.
Some are reconditioned more than once.
Fox saw one brother on Kamino who remembered three different lives and answered to four names. He’d spent hours whispering arguments to people only he could hear.
The Kaminoans discovered it.
By the next morning, his bunk was empty.
Decommissioning is a cleaner word.
The Senate likes clean words.
It means death.
Fox’s fingers curl against the medical cot.
Scalper notices.
She always notices.
“Temple?” she asks.
“No.”
“Nose?”
“Not bleeding.”
“Thoughts?”
“Unfortunately.”
Her gaze sharpens.
Fox looks away first.
He can’t stop it. The fear isn’t for himself, not usually. His brothers and sisters face those two possibilities every second they spend around natborns. Any natborn can report them. Senators simply have the influence to make the report move faster.
Fox has the highest rank a clone can hold.
He can submit objections.
He can request reviews.
He can bury a complaint beneath enough paperwork to delay it for several days.
He can’t deny it.
The drill of an old phantom pain turns once against his right temple.
Fox breathes through it.
Scalper’s hand settles briefly against the side of his neck, two fingers counting his pulse. Her skin is still cold, but the pressure is careful now.
“Too fast,” she rasps.
“I’m awake.”
“That wasn’t praise.”
A medic enters carrying another datapad. “Marshal Commander, the Senate appropriations office sent the revised compensation ruling.”
Fox closes his eyes.
Scalper turns toward the medic with a look of open threat.
The medic hesitates. “I can come back.”
“Give it to me.”
“Fox,” Scalper warns.
He holds out one hand.
The medic places the datapad in it and retreats before Scalper can assign her to graveyard rotations until the end of the war.
Fox opens the file.
The Senate had finally agreed to pay clone battalions under Jedi command after several Jedi Generals argued that soldiers required personal funds for leave, replacement equipment, and basic autonomy.
The ruling had passed.
Then someone added a qualification near the end.
Personnel directly serving under commissioned Jedi leadership.
Fox reads it twice.
The Coruscant Guard serves the Senate.
No Jedi command.
No pay.
His officers won’t be paid. His medics won’t be paid. His patrol troopers, investigators, prison staff, pilots, clerks, and riot units won’t receive a single credit.
The Jedi had made their case and apparently never checked the final wording.
Fox lets the datapad fall onto his chest.
Scalper watches him.
“They excluded us,” he says.
Her face doesn’t change.
It doesn’t have to.
“Again?” asks the medic near the next bed.
Fox looks toward the ceiling.
The Republic is paying the battalions led by Jedi because the Jedi asked. The Guard protects the politicians who wrote the law, cleans up their riots, investigates their crimes, and carries their unconscious bodies out of cantinas.
They get nothing.
That isn’t entirely true.
They get injuries.
Fox starts laughing.
It’s quiet and humorless, but several medics glance over anyway.
Scalper folds her arms.
“Concussion?”
“No.”
“Breakdown?”
“Scheduled for next rotation.”
“You’re not returning to duty.”
Fox stops laughing.
“I am.”
“You collapsed after an eighty-four-hour shift.”
“Eighty-three and a half.”
“I’ll sedate you.”
“You’ll have to explain that to my commanders.”
“Thire will thank me. Stone will help hold you down. Thorn will steal your boots.”
Fox considers that.
They would.
Traitors, every one of them.
He turns his head toward Scalper. “Four hours.”
“Eight.”
“Six.”
“Twelve.”
“That isn’t how negotiation works.”
“It is when I control the sedatives.”
Fox studies her.
Scalper studies him back.
The cold judgment in her face softens by a fraction, visible only because Fox has known her long enough to recognize it.
“Eight,” she says.
He exhales. “Fine.”
She takes the datapad off his chest before he can reconsider.
Fox closes his eyes.
Beyond the medbay walls, Coruscant keeps moving. Senators argue, CorSec complains, and war burns across Christophsis while General Skywalker gains a Padawan young enough to give his captain imaginary grey hairs.
On Coruscant, Fox remains a security system with a serial number.
For the next eight hours, apparently, he is an unconscious security system with a serial number.
It may be the closest thing to leave he ever gets.