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The transport drops through Coruscant’s atmosphere with all the grace of a damaged brick.
CT-5843 grips the overhead restraint and watches the planet swallow the viewport. City lights spread beneath the clouds in every direction, stacked in layers until Licks can’t tell where the surface is supposed to be.
He has never seen this many buildings.
He has never seen this much sky traffic.
He has also never been this annoyed by an assignment before reaching the landing platform.
Coruscant Guard.
A cushy posting guarding senators, standing beside doors, and arresting civilians who are too drunk to remember which speeder belongs to them. No battlefield bonus. No campaign pay. No pay at all, actually, because the Republic only compensates clones assigned directly beneath commissioned Jedi.
Licks’s brothers from his batch are going to the 327th.
They get General Secura, combat deployment, and actual credits deposited into personal accounts.
Licks gets red paint and the privilege of protecting politicians who voted against paying him.
The transport hits the platform hard enough to make several shinies stumble.
A sergeant waiting outside does not blink.
“Welcome to Coruscant,” she says through her helmet speakers. “If you fall off a platform, aim for something expensive.”
The rear ramp lowers into rain, traffic noise, and a skyline so enormous Licks’s brain gives up trying to understand it.
25 fresh troopers file out in white armor with only small red intake markings. All of them are 16. All of them graduated within the last five standard days.
Rumors around Kamino claimed younger batches were already being deployed.
Nobody had proof.
Kamino’s administrators denied it, which meant less than nothing.
The sergeant leads them across the platform toward a fortified entrance. Her armor is Guard red over white, scarred across the chest and blackened along one shoulder.
Licks falls into step beside CT-6102, who has been quietly panicking since they entered atmosphere.
“You good?” Licks asks.
“No.”
“Great. Strong start.”
“The buildings don’t stop.”
“They probably stop eventually.”
“Where?”
Licks looks over the platform edge.
The city continues downward until haze hides it.
“Bad question.”
Inside Guard Headquarters, the noise gets worse.
Troopers move through the corridors in pairs, squads, and occasionally at a full sprint. A medic runs past carrying a severed prosthetic leg. Two prison officers drag a screaming Rodian toward processing. An ARF trooper follows a massiff that has someone’s expensive sleeve hanging from its mouth.
Nobody reacts to any of this.
The intake sergeant ushers the shinies into a briefing room and locks the door.
“Helmets off. Sit down. Try not to develop personalities until after Medical clears you.”
Licks removes his helmet and sits in the front row.
The sergeant activates a projection of Guard command.
Chief of Defense Fox appears at the top, followed by Marshal Commander Thorn. Beneath them are Commander Ghost of Special Operations, Commander Thire of Senate Escorts and Patrol, Commander Hound of Investigations and Logistics, and Commander Stone of Prisons and Riot Control.
Several other officers fill out the divisional chart.
The sergeant points at Fox’s image.
“You probably won’t meet the Chief. If you do, don’t waste his time, don’t lie to him, and don’t ask whether he really threatened to launch a senator into orbit.”
A shiny in the back raises his hand. “Did he?”
“The senator remains planetside.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“You’re learning.”
She points to Thorn.
“The Marshal Commander runs the Guard. Anything too large, violent, politically dangerous, or stupid for divisional command eventually reaches him.”
Licks studies the image.
Thorn looks like every other Jango clone apart from the burn scar and the expression of someone who has not enjoyed a conversation in several years.
One of Licks’s trainers claimed Thorn once wrestled a fire-breathing krayt dragon and survived.
It was an obviously ridiculous story.
Krayt dragons did not breathe fire.
“Questions?” the sergeant asks.
Licks lifts a hand. “When do we receive account access?”
The sergeant looks at him.
“You don’t.”
“I mean our pay accounts.”
“I know what you mean.”
The room goes quiet.
Licks frowns. “We’re active-duty personnel.”
“You’re Coruscant Guard.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the only answer Finance recognizes. The payment statute applies to battalions under commissioned Jedi command. We aren’t.”
“So we work for free?”
The sergeant leans against the desk. “Technically, the Republic provides housing, food, equipment, and medical care.”
“That sounds like prison.”
“Commander Stone says prison has better sleep rotations.”
A few shinies laugh nervously.
Licks does not.
He had already known about the pay issue. Hearing it confirmed makes something hot and bitter twist in his chest.
The sergeant continues the briefing.
Coruscant has more than a trillion permanent residents, several million transient visitors, thousands of senators and diplomatic officials, and enough local criminal organizations to populate a small army.
The Guard handles Senate security, prison control, riots, investigations, military logistics, terrorism response, organized crime, clone disciplinary matters, and any emergency that civilian agencies decide belongs to somebody else.
Licks waits for her to mention door duty.
She never does.
At the end of the briefing, the doors open.
Marshal Commander Thorn walks in.
Every shiny stands so quickly that chairs scrape backward.
Thorn wears full red-and-white armor with a kama and a single pair of blasters at his sides. His helmet with painted wings above the visor is under one arm. The scar across his face and chin pulls slightly when he looks over the room.
“Fresh intake?” he asks.
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant says.
Thorn glances at the roster on her datapad. “They’ve had the pay briefing?”
“They’re processing their disappointment.”
His gaze stops on Licks.
Licks realizes too late that his expression is visible.
“You have something to say, trooper?”
Every survival instinct developed on Kamino tells him to answer no.
Unfortunately, 16 years of being the quickest mouth in his batch defeats those instincts.
“Just wondering why a cushy posting needs this many command divisions, sir.”
The room becomes so silent Licks hears the ventilation system change cycles.
Thorn hands his helmet to the sergeant.
Then he walks down the aisle until he stands directly in front of Licks.
“What’s your designation?”
“CT-5843.”
“Call sign?”
“Licks.”
Thorn studies him for several seconds.
“Why?”
“My batch said I never know when to stop running my mouth.”
“That checks out.”
Several troopers stare very hard at the floor.
Thorn takes the intake roster and enters something.
Licks’s assignment indicator changes from unallocated to RIOT CONTROL ROTATION: PRIORITY.
His stomach drops.
“Sir, I thought shinies rotated through every division.”
“You do.”
Thorn hands back the datapad. “You’re starting with Stone.”
“Because I spoke out of turn?”
“No. Because Riot Control will answer your question faster than I can.”
Thorn retrieves his helmet and starts toward the door.
Licks cannot stop himself.
“Did you really wrestle a fire-breathing krayt dragon?”
Thorn pauses.
The sergeant closes her eyes.
“No,” Thorn says. “That would be ridiculous.”
Licks feels vindicated for half a second.
“It was a durasteel sculpture of a krayt dragon,” Thorn continues. “It caught fire during a situation and fell on me.”
He leaves.
The sergeant looks at Licks.
“The trainers undersold him.”
Medical begins with seven vaccinations.
Licks knows this because the medic administering them announces each one with unsettling cheer.
“Coruscant respiratory complex, lower-level fungal infection, Bothan hemorrhagic fever, Skakoan particulate exposure, prison-block parasites, common spacer pox, and whatever strain of skin rot came through intake last month.”
“What do you mean, whatever strain?” Licks asks.
The medic presses an injector against his neck.
“We stopped naming them after six.”
The hiss of the injection makes his left arm go numb.
Across the room, another shiny tries to leave after his fifth vaccination.
A blonde medic blocks the door.
“You’re missing two.”
“I’ve decided I don’t need them.”
“That’s very brave of you.”
“Thank you.”
She catches him by the back of his blacks and drags him toward the examination bench.
The medical checks continue for four hours.
Brain scan. Blood test. Lung function. Bone density. Vision. Hearing. Stress baseline. Armor-fit reassessment because Kamino sent three troopers with incorrectly sized chest plates and apparently expected Coruscant to solve it.
Licks emerges with a headache, a sore neck, and a packet explaining what symptoms require immediate medical attention.
The final line reads:
Nosebleeds accompanied by right-temple pain must be reported to Medical.
He asks why.
The medic says, “Because we said so.”
The tour begins immediately afterward.
There is no meal break.
The intake sergeant walks them through Command, Medical, the detention processing levels, the evidence vaults, the vehicle hangars, the barracks, and the training floors.
They pass Commander Hound outside Investigations.
A massive female massiff walks beside him.
“This is Grizzer,” the sergeant says. “Do not run from her.”
One shiny looks at the animal’s teeth. “Why would we run?”
Grizzer lunges toward him. The entire intake group jumps backward. Hound catches her harness without looking.
“She likes fear,” he says.
Grizzer’s tail thumps against the floor.
Licks thinks Commander Hound must be joking.
He's less certain when they pass an interrogation room and hear someone screaming that the massiff knows where he lives.
Senate Escorts and Patrol occupies three levels filled with maps, rotating assignments, diplomatic profiles, and lists of behavior that various species consider grounds for blood feud.
Commander Thire is in the middle of explaining to two officers why a senator cannot be arrested inside the Rotunda without either a warrant or an active weapon.
“What if the weapon is hidden?” one officer asks.
“Then it isn’t active.”
“What if he says he has one?”
“Then ask where.”
“What if he refuses?”
Thire notices the shinies.
“Then use the new troopers as shields.”
The intake group stops.
Thire smiles pleasantly.
“Kidding.”
Nobody believes him.
The prison levels are worse.
Commander Stone meets them outside a reinforced blast door while something heavy strikes the other side.
“Block 12 is expressing dissatisfaction,” he says.
Another impact shakes dust from the ceiling.
“With what?” Licks asks.
“Lunch.”
“What was lunch?”
“Soup.”
The door bends inward.
Stone looks at Licks’s priority rotation marker.
“You’re mine first.”
Licks looks at the damaged door. The door takes another hit.
“When do we start?”
Stone checks the chronometer. “Seven minutes ago.”
Riot drills last 14 hours.
They begin with shields and end with Licks flat on his back while a training baton rolls away from his numb hand.
“Again,” the squad instructor says.
Licks stares up at the ceiling. “I can’t feel my legs.”
“Then they can’t distract you.”
His temporary five-man squad reforms.
CT-6102 braces beside him. CT-1190 takes the rear position. Two Arla-template shinies, CT-7745 and CT-3308, lock shields to the left.
They advance through simulated debris while veteran Guardsmen fire stun bolts, throw training bricks, and scream insults copied from real riot recordings.
The veterans are creative. One calls Licks an unpaid hallway decoration. That one lands harder than the stun bolt.
After the drills, the squad receives its first assignment.
Then it stops being a squad.
Stone separates them into pairs because five Guardsmen clustered together create an obvious target and leave too many corridors uncovered.
Licks gets paired with a veteran named Crate, who speaks only when necessary and looks as though someone carved him from exhaustion.
Their assignment is courthouse security.
Licks expects standing beside a door.
Within 20 minutes, a defendant attempts to escape through a ventilation duct, two family groups begin fighting in the gallery, and a legal clerk throws a datapad at the judge.
Crate catches the datapad without looking.
“Cushy,” Licks mutters.
Crate turns toward him. “What?”
“Nothing.”
They remain at the courthouse for ten hours.
Then they escort prisoners for six.
Then they return to Headquarters for debrief.
Licks’s first debrief report is rejected because he writes that the clerk “lost his kriffing mind.”
The reviewing officer circles the phrase.
“Use professional terminology.”
“What’s the professional terminology?”
“Experienced acute behavioral escalation.”
“He threw a datapad at a judge.”
“Then he experienced it aggressively.”
By the time the debrief ends, Licks has been awake for 36 hours.
Downtime appears on his schedule.
It lasts forty-five minutes.
He eats two ration bars, drinks something labeled caf that tastes like engine runoff, and finds his bunk.
Before he can remove one boot, an alarm sounds.
A logistics convoy has disappeared between the military depot and Senate District.
Commander Hound’s division takes the shinies next.
Licks is paired with Idol, an Arla-template ARF trooper with a massiff named Prayer and a data slate containing more crime statistics than Licks knew could exist.
“You’re with me,” Idol says.
“What happened to Crate?”
“Different division.”
“What happened to my squad?”
“Different assignments.”
“Will I see them again?”
“Probably.”
“That doesn’t sound certain.”
Idol checks her blaster. “Nothing here is certain except paperwork.”
They track the missing convoy into the lower levels.
Prayer finds the scent trail through a market, an abandoned transit station, and a warehouse full of stolen medical supplies.
The smugglers open fire before Licks finishes processing that this is a real operation.
Idol drags him behind a cargo crate.
“You’ve been shot at before?” she asks.
“Training bolts.”
“Those don’t count.”
A live bolt burns through the edge of the crate beside his face.
Licks’s arrogance finally leaves through the hole.
The fight lasts three minutes.
It feels like an hour.
Prayer tackles one smuggler through a stack of boxes. Idol shoots another in the shoulder. Licks catches the third trying to flank them and fires before he has time to be afraid.
His bolt strikes the man’s thigh.
The smuggler drops screaming.
Licks stares at him.
Idol kicks the man’s weapon away.
“Good shot.”
“I was aiming higher.”
“Then don’t put that in the report.”
The convoy is recovered.
Two drivers are found bound inside the warehouse. One is wounded. Licks spends the trip back holding pressure against the man’s side while Idol drives.
There's more blood than Kamino’s simulations included.
The driver survives.
Licks does not get time to think about it.
Another medical check follows because he was exposed to an unknown chemical inside the warehouse. Then another drill. Then a patrol rotation with Thire’s division.
He and a veteran named Linger spend 12 hours moving through Senate corridors.
Licks sees six senators shout at Guardsmen, three aides attempt to bypass security, and one representative insist that his ceremonial sword is not a weapon because it has historical importance.
Linger confiscates it anyway.
The senator threatens to have her decommissioned.
Linger hands him a complaint form.
“Fill out sections one through 38.”
“There are only 12 sections.”
“The rest unlock after you finish.”
He leaves without the sword.
Licks watches him go. “Does that usually work?”
“No. Sometimes they come back with staff.”
They answer a domestic disturbance in a diplomatic suite, break up a fight between rival lobbyists, and stop a drunk naval officer from climbing an exterior balcony to impress someone.
At hour 59, Licks begins seeing movement in the corners of his vision.
At hour 62, he receives another vaccination because Medical discovers Kamino’s records omitted a booster.
At hour 65, Riot Control takes him back.
Stone looks at Licks’s exhausted face.
“Still cushy?”
Licks raises his shield. “I’ve made several errors.”
“Good. Forward.”
The riot is real this time.
Prisoners in Block 12 have dismantled bunks for weapons and flooded two corridors. Guardsmen advance through knee-deep water while inmates throw metal, food trays, and pieces of plumbing.
Licks’s shield takes a direct hit from a pipe.
His arm goes numb.
Crate appears beside him, locks shields, and keeps moving.
“Thought you were courthouse duty,” Licks says.
“Rotations.”
“Do you ever sleep?”
Crate considers the question.
“Last month.”
They regain control of the block without lethal fire.
Three Guardsmen go to Medical. 11 prisoners do too.
One inmate bites Licks’s shoulder plate hard enough to leave tooth marks.
At hour 72, the shinies receive 30 minutes of downtime.
Licks finds CT-6102 sitting on the mess floor because every chair is occupied.
“How’s Patrol?” Licks asks.
“Someone threw a baby at me.”
Licks waits for an explanation.
None comes.
CT-7745 drops down beside them. Her left eyebrow is sealed with bacta.
“Logistics,” she says. “A senator’s pet ate a tracking beacon.”
CT-1190 arrives last, smelling like smoke.
“Prisons.”
“What happened?” Licks asks.
“Soup.”
They sit together in silence and consume food without tasting it.
Their original five-person squad has spent less than two hours together since landing.
A klaxon sounds before the 30-minute break ends.
Every shiny looks toward the ceiling.
Nobody moves at first.
Then training takes over.
The next eight hours blur together.
Drill.
Assignment.
Debrief.
Medical inspection.
Equipment cleaning.
Another assignment.
A Senate evacuation caused by a bomb threat that turns out to be a senator’s malfunctioning lunch heater.
A patrol through an undercity district where someone fires at them from a rooftop.
A report written twice because Licks uses the phrase “lunch-based terrorism.”
At hour 79, he stands in front of Marshal Commander Thorn’s desk with his helmet under one arm and no energy left to be embarrassed.
Thorn reads the rotation reports.
“Riot Control recommends keeping you.”
Licks stares straight ahead.
“Investigations says you notice movement quickly but require improvement in weapons discipline.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Patrol says you follow civilian-protection procedures even while being verbally abused.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Medical says you attempted to sleep during a vaccination.”
“I don’t remember that, sir.”
“That supports the report.”
Thorn sets down the datapad.
“Any remaining concerns about the posting?”
Licks searches for the anger he arrived with and finds it missing. So is the arrogance, resentment, and most of his ability to form complex thoughts.
“I’d like to revise my earlier assessment, sir.”
“To what?”
“This posting is not cushy.”
Thorn nods solemnly. “Growth.”
“Also, the krayt sculpture story seems more believable now.”
“That happened during a quiet week.”
Licks cannot tell whether he is joking.
Thorn enters the final assignment.
“Riot Control. You’ll cross-train with Patrol.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ll keep rotating through other divisions until Commander Stone confirms placement.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your first duty block is complete.”
Licks waits.
Nothing happens.
“Sir?”
“You’re dismissed.”
“For another assignment?”
“For sleep.”
The word means nothing for several seconds.
Then Licks’s brain catches up.
“How long?”
“24 hours.”
He nearly cries.
Instead, he salutes, turns, and walks out of the office with all the speed his remaining dignity permits.
The barracks seem farther away than Kamino.
He reaches his bunk, removes his helmet, and sits down.
One boot comes off.
The second does not.
CT-6102 lies facedown on the neighboring bunk, still wearing full armor except for his helmet.
“Maybe that’s why Guardsmen don’t go out,” Licks says.
CT-6102 makes a sound into the mattress.
“We’re literally too tired to care anymore.”
Another sound.
It might be agreement.
Licks lies back without pulling down the blanket. His body feels heavier than riot armor, and his thoughts have flattened into one dull line.
He has been on Coruscant for 80 hours.
He has been shot at, vaccinated, insulted, bitten, assigned to four divisions, separated from his squad, reunited with them over bad food, and personally corrected by the Marshal Commander twice.
The trainers did not exaggerate the Coruscant Guard. If anything, they undersold it.
Licks closes his eyes.
This is only week one.