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You did this. The face that stares at him every time he sees a mirror – so he tries not to look. You got Omega captured.
To save Fives, and for what? He failed. They all failed.
Belief, Echo tells himself. Anakin said… he trusts his general. Just not himself. And when the Marauder’s life has been half sucked out, it’s hard.
“Rex won’t be able to meet us for another rotation,” Echo tells the others over his shoulder, hand tight over the steering wheel.
“That’s too long,” Hunter replies, climbing in next to him. “We’re going now.”
“Hunter,” Wrecker protests quietly from the back. “The last time we did that… it didn’t go so well?”
“Yeah,” Crosshair agrees dryly, “We didn’t all make it out, and Omega, well, I don’t need to remind you.”
“She’s been gone for so long,” he argues. “The longer we wait, the harder it’ll be.”
Tech’s jaw clenches and he and Echo share worried glances. He’s… scared. They’ve been laying low on Pabu until they couldn’t anymore, and finding this intel was nearly impossible. It was hard enough as it was. Sitting made it worse. He’s worried about where Hunter’s stubbornness, the spiraling fear is leading them, and more about his own.
Echo can’t take care of them or keep them safe. He really tried, but he couldn’t even protect Omega, and she was older than Echo will probably ever live to be. He couldn’t protect his sister, his sergeant. How could he protect these kids? What if he loses somebody else trying to find that stupid base? Fives was alive as of months ago.
He’s probably dead now. Again. And not coming back. But Echo can’t think about him at all. he focuses on Omega instead, and mostly, keeping the kids as safe as he can.
And failing at that, through and through.
“We can do a careful recon and check it out,” Echo finally reluctantly settles on. “But at the first hint of trouble, we have to pull back. Got it?”
Hunter sighs grumpily. “Yes, sir,” he grumbles, climbing into the co-pilot’s seat.
Echo takes up the pilot, even if it’s hard for him to fly one-handed. He does the droid’s work, usually.
“If I die, I’m haunting you,” Crosshair huffs, climbing into something in the back.
“Unlikely. Ghosts are not real, and even if they were, Hunter would mostly likely be dead as well,” Tech replies flatly from right behind Echo.
“Fine, then I’ll haunt you.”
“Let me rephrase. We would all be dead.”
Gonky gonks worriedly.
“Wrecker, get to the guns,” Hunter calls over his shoulder. “Just in case.”
“On it,” he grumbles, heading back.
Echo sears, everything still feels like it’s falling apart without Omega. He never meant to make this happen when he came back to ask his squad’s help. Eriadu was supposed to be an easy mission, and instead… they lost Omega.
He’s trying his hardest to protect them, but he has no real means to do so.
They go in, heading downwards towards the planet, amidst the thick forested planet. Of course, a mad scientist would have a base here.
“Ugghhh!” Wrecker moans the second he steps off the ship, “It smells like rancid jotaz out here!”
“You’re the reason it went rancid,” Crosshair offers unhelpfully.
“Yeah, it’s worse than the ship,” Echo grumbles – Wrecker’s sure right about that. It does smell awful.
“Strange,” Tech speaks up from his datapad, “I’m not picking anything up on the scanner. Either there is too much atmospheric interference, or the base does not exist. Unless, of course it has been removed.”
“Removed, entirely?” Hunter echoes, standing from where he was crouching over the dirt, “I don’t think that’s very likely.”
“Uh, hey,” Crosshair says, pointing across the landscape. He’s the one with enhanced sight – Echo heads up to his side, looking out across the rugged terrain. They’re on the top of a near-cliff overlooking… the now damaged, twisted and mostly destroyed remnants of a building, large ash indentations coating a good portion of the area.
Echo’s entire being tenses with horror.
“Oh, no,” Hunter whispers, coming to a stop by the others.
“That’s Hemlock’s lab?” Wrecker asks, wide-eyed.
“It was,” Tech replies, “Once. It appears they destroyed it with another orbital bombardment.”
“What is it with the Empire and orbital bombardments?” Wrecker complains, “Why do they even have ground troops if they just blow everything up?”
“Hey, Tech, you think you can hack that junk heap?” Crosshair asks.
“Omega might have been transferred off world, like the other clones were on Kamino,” Echo says, heart hammering as he tries his best to calm down and stay level-headed, for the kids at the very least. Fives could have been there, too. “The Empire took her alive. There had to have been something important about her. They wouldn’t have taken her here and then killed her. That doesn’t make sense.”
“She’s Omega,” Hunter interrupts, open with something like near-hero worship. “Even if she was here, she could’ve made it out and still be alive. Come on, let’s check it out.”
“Fine,” Echo agrees broodingly, because they’ll go anyway, “But stay close.”
They take off down the hillside.
***
They meet a duo of literal reg clone cadets on the way.
The boys have, apparently, been living out in the open and wild, trying to survive ever since the Empire came through and bombed the place. Echo feels sick even hearing these stories. There are so many of their brothers who need help. And their sister, of course.
But it’s… hard.
They’ve been through so much since she left. To be honest, Echo doesn’t know how she did it when he was away. Their searches, after they finally got up from Pabu and started looking, have left all of them with scars.
Some physical.
Wrecker got shot once, and he just laughed even though Echo could tell he was in pain. He was trying to get the others to calm down. It worked on the other kids. Echo, frankly, just thinks it made him feel even worse. Wrecker shouldn’t have to worry about that. He’s a kid, and he took an entire blaster bolt.
He remembers Crosshair had been crying, clinging to his twin and refused to leave his side.
These kids – Deke and Stak – aren’t living in any better conditions. And, they’re about the same age. He needs to get them out of here. It’s not a place for fully trained troopers, let alone kids.
There are slither vines everywhere, some sort of living, moving vines, where Echo’s starting to suspect the smell comes from.
The younger cadets take them to a little cavern where they have a fire going, and to their leader – another kid named Mox. He’s maybe seven, near fully grown, but still small, and far, far too young to be on his own and taking care of two of his brothers alone.
“What do you want?” Mox asks.
“We’re looking for a clone,” Echo explains, “Our squad’s leader. Omega.”
“She’s a girl,” Tech interrupts, “About the height of your average reg, blond hair.”
“She was taken by an Imperial,” Hunter ventures, “Hemlock.”
“I knew a girl in the lab,” Mox replies. “But she didn’t look anything like that. She was younger than us. Dark hair, always wore some sort of glasses, like him.” He nods at Tech, who twitches.
“Hemlock had another kid in the lab?” Echo demands, his entire being bubbling up with unspeakable protective fury. After everything else, can’t say that even surprises him.
“She worked for the Empire. But she told a few of us she was a clone, too,” Mox replies, “Can’t say I ever believed her. She was nice, but she left us, too. Trailed Hemlock around everywhere -- we knew him. One day, the Imperials started packing up and shipped out, so we made our move and escaped. We were the only ones who made it out before the orbital bombardment. Even the clone troopers left us to die. Said they were following orders.”
The gutted hurt in his voice is obvious, unshakable, and Echo feels a numb horror along with raw fury. The Empire’s turned his entire family against itself until no one really remembers up from down anymore.
“We get it,” Wrecker offers tentatively, “We’ve lost people, too. And the regs have never been that nice to us.”
“I know a place to take you,” Echo promises, “But we need to figure out where Omega is first.”
“The base,” Tech interrupts, “I can hack into the files and see what info they have left.”
“Great,” Crosshair interrupts, “You think there’s even a computer system left in there?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Hunter snaps, “Omega would never leave us there.”
“One of the control room panels was still intact during our last scout. I tried to use it to send a signal, but there was no power,” Deke offers.
“Can you take us there?” Echo asks.
“No way. That area is covered in slither vines,” Stak argues, “It’s toxic.”
“Stak's right. Going near those ruins is a suicide mission. You're on your own,” Mox replies.
“They need help, Mox. I'll go with them,” Deke interrupts, and the rest of them set off, swinging by the Marauder to pick up Gonky and a few breathing masks to protecting them and filter the toxins.
“This clone you're looking for,” the new kid asks are they walk. “How long has she been gone?”
“Too long,” Hunter murmurs, “But we’re not gonna give up.”
“I wish the other clones felt that way about us,” Deke murmurs, “You may be defective CTs, but at least you’re loyal. Is she your sergeant?”
“She was,” Echo confirms. ‘Back when the war was still going on and we’d use those terms.” His heart skips a few beats, and he has to ask something else, something important. “Did you know a reg named Fives?”
“That sounds kind of familiar,” Deke answers, “But I don’t really remember. I’ve heard a lot of names.”
His heart simultaneously soars and plummets. It doesn’t really matter, anyway. It’s been a long time. Hunter, somehow always sensing his brooding, reaches up to pat his arm. Echo can’t express how sweet that is.
They keep moving in towards the building’s center and carefully dodging the slither vines the whole way.
“I’m getting the feeling this is a real, real bad idea,” Crosshair grumbles.
“I’m not seeing any other choice,” Tech snaps.
And, the arguing. Omega was very good at getting the kids to calm down. Echo, with his own Domino Squad experience, was really good at nothing starting them. Omega was always their peacekeeper. Echo has no idea what to do when his siblings argue except join the fight, or stay out entirely.
He went to call his general about that, maybe a month ago, but found himself staring blankly into the comm, heart feeling raw and empty, remembering Fives and wishing he was here, that anyone was here and he wasn’t stuck raising the kids alone. And he never made the call. Because Anakin has more important things to do than clean up Echo’s messes.
“Just watch your step,” Hunter warns. “And carefully. There’s something moving here. I can’t tell what it is. I think it might be more of those slither vines.”
Echo and Wrecker get Gonky settled in, and he and Tech set onto getting the controls working. Which honestly lasts more or less okay until someone sees something coming towards them, the twins start screaming, and basically everyone starts blasting.
The floor is moving. It’s one of the most terrifying, unsettling things that he’s ever dealt with. Like the entire thing is just alive.
Mox and Stak swoop up with the ship, and when the vines start slowly rising from the ground altogether, all their tentacles lifting along with the giant, central mouth or whatever it is. Wrecker finally ups to flinging the Marauder’s literal entire explosive container down to break the ship free – the vines were starting to wrap around that, too.
By the time all that’s over, practically everyone just drops in their seats, panting and utterly exhausted. Echo’s sore all the way to pieces he lost forever ago.
Tech just climbs to the far back, eye narrowed on his datapad and scrolling through the information he’s gathered.
“We are never doin’ that again,” Wrecker whines, climbing into one of the seats, wrapping his entire being around Lula and just sitting there, wide-eyed with horror.
“It was Hunter’s fault,” Crosshair offers.
“That’s not funny right now,” Hunter snaps back, climbing onto the nearest seat to Echo. He looks quiet, and outright miserable.
Echo’s definitely not missing how he’s been trying to step up, take lead roles that Omega once used to, handle things Echo should be doing but can’t. None of them things he ought to be.
But, of course, after Echo came back, or maybe after he left in the first place, he started nothing short of an impressive downward spiral for his squad. Why does he do that everywhere? He really does have the bad luck streak the regs always look at the sole squad survivor with.
Maybe it’s got a bit of truth.
Echo leaves the twins to keep the three cadets busy, and he takes a bit of the intel to skim through, too.
He tries to find Omega’s name, some mention, but draws blank. Instead, he finds… something else.
It’s a picture, for as cloudy and unclear as the thing is, a girl, dark-haired, the description Mox said of her. “That girl’s name,” Echo asks, “What was it?”
“I don’t remember,” Mox says, “Em-something. Might’ve ended with a y.”
“Emerie,” Echo reads off, just a bit dizzy. There’s almost nothing known about her. Just that she was originally transferred to Hemlock’s facility from… the Kaminoans. Not Kamino, but another planet of Kaminoan occupation. The girl was a clone, all right. And based on the age, she could almost be from the same squad as the kids.
CT-9902b.
B.
02.
“I found something,” Tech interrupts, and everyone is on their feet in a second, Echo’s surprise about this newfound realization nearly dissolving.
“Did you find her?” Wrecker asks.
Crosshair shoves him to try leaning over Tech’s shoulder, but everyone’s clustering so tightly, Echo guesses no one can see at all.
“No,” he grumbles, annoyed, trying to shoo them back. “It merely was the mention of a sector, but is still a lead we can go with. It obviously will not be an uninhabitable planet, nor a well-populated one.”
“But it’s the lead we’ve been looking for,” Echo interjects. “We’ll check it out, but this time, maybe we should wait for a little back up.”
“We need to take them somewhere, too,” Hunter suggests, “Pabu might be nice.”
“Pabu is an amazin’ place,” Wrecker volunteers. “You’re gonna love it there.”
“Pabu?” Stak repeats.
“What’s it like?” Deke ventures.
“It’s an island,” Hunter offers tentatively.
“Theres a lot of green, and they have flowers and a lot of food,” Wrecker gushes, “Like, all the food. A pirate friend of ours took us there once. It was amazing. Like the first time I’ve ever been full.”
Because he’s always hungry. Their running around across the galaxy means he really never has time to recharge. Echo’s honestly just taking that on to his already-long list of failings.
“And they have beaches,” Crosshair adds, “A lot of water, which can mean tsunamis, but they have a nice alarm system, and Hunter’s a mini alarm system if he’s there. So are the animals.”
“Please tell me there’s nothing like the slither vines,” Stak requests.
“Probably,” Crosshair offers before Echo can beg him to please, shut up. “Way out in the ocean. So don’t go too far from shore. I don’t think the boats let you, anyway.”
“There are good people on Pabu,” Echo interrupts, “They’re refugees from all over who have settled in. They took care of the rest of my squad when I was out for a while. They’ll help you, too.”
“We’re cadets without an army. I don’t know where we fit anymore,” Mox confesses.
“You’ll figure it out.” That’s Hunter again, finally up from whatever he was checking over on his datapad. “It took us a long time to figure out where we belonged after the Empire formed and we ran away from Kamino. You can make your own path, too.”
“You just ran away?” Stak asks, “I wish we got that chance. You’re lucky.”
If they hadn’t, they might have met Emerie already. But they’d also probably be dead.
“From a certain point of view, maybe,” Tech agrees begrudgingly, “We had to help rescue Echo and Omega from Kamino when the Empire arrested them, and thereby endangered ourselves. From there, we had to flee.”
“Still don’t know what we do without an army,” Mox replies.
“I know some of our brothers who can help train you, if you want,” Echo offers. Howzer, Fireball, and… a lot of others. They never thought they’d see their little brothers again. “But you don’t have to be soldiers anymore.”
“That’s true,” Hunter agrees, “You can find a place on Pabu that you actually want to be. They’ll help you.”
“What about you?” Mox asks.
“Our mission’s not over,” Hunter replies, crossing his arms. “After we find our leader, we’re gonna stay on Pabu too, at least for a little while. We have to figure out the same thing, too.”
“If we’re lucky, we’ll be there soon,” Wrecker agrees.
“Hopefully,” Echo replies, “But there’s one more thing I found in the files. Not about Omega. It’s about the kid Mox saw.”
“How is that our problem?” Crosshair asks flatly. “Hemlock had a kid. So?”
“Her name is Emerie,” Echo interrupts before Crosshair can say anything else embarrassing. “She’s a clone, from Kamino. I think she’s from your squad.”
The entire group seizes with a moment of near panic, looks being abruptly exchanged throughout them.
“Our group?” Hunter echoes. “We have another sister?”
“I find that to be unlikely,” Tech fumbles.
“Whoaa,” Wrecker settles on simply.
“I think she’s Tech’s twin, to be exact,” he adds, and the ship suddenly feels a whole lot smaller.
They’ll have another kid, and that makes things a lot more… complicated. But, chances are, Omega’s already found her. And… probably Fives, too.
But Echo’s not taking that risk again. He was so certain they could find his twin, and that cost…
It’s not a cost he’s paying again. And definitely not with these kids.