Where Glory Is
By Kudzu
"They never fail who die in a great cause"
Lord George Gordon Byron
It was a mission they'd never expected to undertake, and a mission they'd never wanted to. It was inconceivable and yet in hindsight, perhaps so obvious. It was as if the live-fire exercises they'd undertaken as trainees were coming to life, and on the very rain-slicked walkways that they'd come to know so well on the stormy world of Kamino.
Lord Vader had more pressing matters, in all evidence. Some of the boys kidded (privately, of course) that he was afraid he'd rust. It was all in good fun, as of course they had come to respect, or at least fear, their powerful commander over these twelve years spent serving beneath him after the rise of the Empire - all the same, though, it was probably quite more prudent to save the jokes about Vader's state of mostly-mechanical monstrousness for an occasion when the bone-chilling artificial breathing of the Dark Lord wasn't reverberating in the comedians' ears.
So it was to be an operation entirely undertaken by the successful spawn of Jango Fett, as fought against the less tested spawn of Jango Fett. The worst part of it was that Lieutenant Daltro didn't know which of the two factions Jango would have been behind, had he been there and without contract to either.
It was, of course, irrelevant, and there was no point in wondering about it. Besides, Jango surely wouldn't want to fight against the legion under the temporary command of his son.
Daltro peered out through helmet-worn macrobinoculars at the armor so old that he'd never worn it since he'd been activated by the Grand Army, thirteen long years ago. Daltro had served with distinction in the storming of the Jedi Temple and the pacification of countless worlds since then. The Empire was life, and he was loyalty to the last drop of it.
As he had killed the Jedi without discrimination, so would it be that he would kill his brothers - made so wrong, so profane, by a rebellion that had even gone so far as to touch the Kaminoans - and do service to his Empire.
"They've taken the eastern Omicron-Eight walkway," a voice identical to his own alerted him over the helmet comm. "Fett's taking Squad Seven in to flank, but we'll need further fire support."
Daltro swore beneath his breath and tapped the side of his helmet twice, then responded, "Daltro here; copy that. Their ETA to the landing pad?"
"If Fett does his job, hopefully there won't be one, sir."
So he was speaking to someone below his station. Very well; that gave him full authority to tear that particular evasion apart with the honed art of sarcasm. "Wouldn't that be wonderful, trooper. I want a number. ETA to landing pad?"
"Might be five minutes, if Fett can't hold after all," the voice responded, sounding sufficiently subdued.
"Then we should get moving. What's your position?"
The voice replied, "Platform Omicron-Two, sir. I'm looking straight down on all of this, and the wind's bad enough that I can't jump onto the next walkway down without risking a dip in the water."
"Dammit, man, put some explosives down there and blow that walkway out of commission!" Daltro snapped, already moving and signaling his platoon to do likewise. "Then lay down as much suppression as you can manage."
"But sir, they've got jetpacks -"
"You've been trained to shoot things all your life, haven't you?" Daltro responded sarcastically. "Use your imagination and just take them out!"
"Yes, sir."
With a few more muttered curses, Daltro clanked along the wet metal catwalk with his men in close pursuit. All their E-11 rifles were raised. When your enemy was trained in aerial combat and outfitted with flight packs, it paid best to be careful.
The attempted containment had spilled out everywhere in the stilted city. The anti-troopers roamed, getting split up from their squads and landing on platforms behind the 501st Legion's lines, only to find themselves without support and stranded far from their comrades. The lack of teamwork in these corrupted brothers of his sickened the clone stormtrooper. The teamwork of the white-armored troopers in the Clone Wars had won the day on countless planets and in innumerable systems. That same teamwork had kept their squads together.
The anti-troopers were hardly so cohesive.
The T-shaped visor of one seemed to come out of the fogging rain before him. The rogue clone's rifle was aimed straight at him, and it was a fortunate thing that his armor was built to withstand blaster shots. He took a glancing blast to the side before opening fire himself.
Although the Kaminoan armorers had upgraded the old Phase I clone trooper armor to bring it more up to date with standard technology, it was still no match for stormtrooper armor. Riddled burnt holes opened across the plasteel chestplate, and the anti-trooper grunted and reeled backwards.
It was an eerie feeling, and one that Daltro had never hoped to know, to fight what was essentially one's own self. Though he didn't doubt that training and experience as a member of the 501st made him a far superior soldier to any of these identical foes, they shared the brain of the same man. They were biologically the same, and their minds thought alike. It was as if he was fighting himself as he had been before Darth Vader had taken command of his legion.
In a way, it was easier. He could predict what his enemies would be thinking; it was as if they were old friends or rivals, whom he'd known for years and so long as so to have a window into their thoughts. They were clones. Their instincts were often congruous; their actions were often mirrored.
In a way, it was harder. The 501st alone did not have this advantage of knowing just how their adversaries thought. The anti-troopers were as much their clones as they were the anti-troopers' - possibly more so, as their instructors had doubtless taught the anti-troopers just how Imperial stormtroopers operated.
But it was more than that. He was fighting against his own kin. He hadn't been bred to kill others of his flesh, and the anti-troopers had been. He'd never been prepared for this, at least not before they were briefed on the Kamino operation, and the anti-troopers had been. They were the Kaminoans' last desperate hope for a return to isolationism and self-government. They had been made to kill others of their kind, their older brothers.
They had been raised evil.
AT-8/36 knew that his time had come. He'd been created four and a half years after the rise of the Empire, and biologically, he was just a teenaged boy. But the anti-trooper rebellion had begun, and every one of the Kaminoan liberators' clones from age two straight on up had been called into action. They were prepared to do whatever it took to remove the Empire from Kamino.
He'd been told about the Empire, over and over. He'd seen the footage of the massacres of civilian demonstrators on dozens of worlds, executed by his own brethren - those who came before.
The secret organization known aptly as Saviors of Kamino had been founded a year after Palpatine had declared himself Emperor and murdered the Jedi. The Empire's orders for new clone shipments grew more and more demanding in their nature; they forcibly took cloning technology, equipment, and sometimes even entire facilities offworld and distributed them to whomever of their other contractors and subcontractors they chose to, put them down on whatever planets they felt like.
Meanwhile, their presence on Kamino itself grew steadily larger and larger. They began exerting more and more control over the training and even the initial cloning process. They wanted clones faster and wanted their training to be rushed just to get them out on time.
The Saviors of Kamino wanted none of that. They saw the destruction that producing the Republic's limitless armies had brought them, and they saw the Empire's arrogance. They knew that soon, the Emperor would move to nationalize Kamino and the Empire would take direct control. It had already begun.
The clones that the cloning technicians and training instructors had been producing before joining the Saviors of Kamino - and now a good portion of them did - could hardly been reconditioned adequately to fight against the Empire that they'd been trained previously to die for. They might retain that loyalty in their subconscious and have a moment of confusion or even breakdown on the battlefield, or something of that nature.
So from that point on, their training had been slashed, and the Empire was not pleased with receiving their shipments ahead of schedule, but with only a rudimentary understanding of how to aim, shoot, and reload a blaster (and weren't even very good at that besides). Most of those troopers doubtless were relegated off to some low-risk security assignments at research facilities or Outer Rim city garrisons, or on Imperial space stations.
The Empire would have to find a new way to generate its armies of terror and oppression, because Kamino would soon be either out of their hands or completely destroyed.
It had been AT-8/36's duty to see to that.
"Sir," said AT-8/34, one of the soldiers in his squad, "we've finished setting the defenses."
These were the automatic turret defenses, which the Saviors of Kamino had acquired to defend their facilities with once their struggle for liberation was underway. His platoon had been programming the automated weapons while he and Squad 8-1 crouched as point-guard in the sterile white hallways. The Imperial troops were coming on fast, and it was best to just be ready to repel an attack wherever it came.
"Let's get outside, then," he ordered crisply. "No need to stay where the turrets can do our work for us."
"Yes, sir!"
The platoon followed him through the sliding transparisteel doors onto the covered balcony, then fanned out to survey the plasma- and lightning-lit battlefield that was Tipoca City. They just watched in silence for a moment.
It was broken by the arrival of Captain Beta-9, down from the sky on the roaring rockets of his personal jetpack.
It was somewhat of an odd decision by the Kaminoans to include an ARC trooper program in their secret series of anti-trooper batches, being as that they had been distasteful of the advanced soldiers' independent streaks and occasional flashes of rebellion. One of the original Alpha-class batch of ARCs had gone mad and deserted, only to lead a strike by the Mandalorians on Kamino during the latter months of the Clone Wars. Their number had dwindled, from death in battle, from grievous injury (as with Alpha-17, who had instructed them), or from induced stasis. Only maybe a couple remained in active service with the Empire out of the batch of one hundred.
But certain influential members of the Cuy'val Dar, Jango Fett's last living will, had insisted. Laan Shi, the cloning technician who had been in charge of his batch, had disapproved, but ultimately the Kaminoans as a whole had been swayed. A series of Beta-class Advance Recon Commandos was created; by now, they numbered one hundred strong at least. Beta-9 was three years his senior and among the first of the lot.
"Lieutenant!" the captain barked. "Imp reinforcements inbound to East Omicron-Eight walkway!"
"I copy, sir," AT-8/36 replied obediently. "Move to counter?"
Beta-9 hefted his rail gun. "Aye. Once secure, proceed to the landing platform. I'll be coming in right behind you."
"On my way, sir," AT-8/36 said, signaling his platoon to move out behind him across the narrow skywalks of the stilt city.
He had been born and raised in preparation to fight those who thought like he did and fought like he did. It was a grim prospect to look forward to, to kill his own flesh and blood, but it had always been reality. Years in the Empire's service and of taking the Empire's orders had twisted the once-proud, once-glorious, once-heroic Grand Army of the Republic into a miserable, enslaved entity: stormtroopers who kept fighting just because they were ordered to, tired and quickly aging men quelling one more peace march with nerve gas and blaster rifles, troopers hobbled to low-key desk pilots in some recruitment office to sign off on the diluting of their own ranks. It was nearly putting their older brothers out of their misery.
They were still brothers, of course - one could not deny a relation no matter how fervently he wished it was not there. They were clones, identical and bred for purposes similar, but so entirely different.
Both stormtroopers and anti-troopers had been raised to kill. What they now fought for was shockingly different; while the former fought for domination and oppression, the latter fought for freedom and independence in the name of their masters. There was nothing that the anti-troopers got out of this, save for being spared the dronish life of a stormtrooper. They were always servants. They needed nothing for themselves, nothing to be motivated by but the wants and needs of their masters.
They were told to fight. That was what their superiors ordered. It was what they wanted, what they needed. So that was their command.
Unlike the stormtroopers, though, they were given orders that were just in nature and were for a great cause: the cause of freedom and independence, just as the stormtroopers were given hateful tasks of domination and oppression. The stormtroopers had fallen from the glorious legacies of men and soldiers that they once were. Where they once battled darkness in the name of justice, they now spread darkness in the name of stamping out justice. Where they once saved from oppression, they now oppressed even those they had once saved.
They were enforcers of evil.
"Fett can't hold, sir," said the observing voice over the helmet comm. "He needs fire support."
Daltro ground his teeth behind his helmet. "Copy that, trooper. En route."
"Lieutenant!" TK-510 warned. Squad on jets at forty-five degrees."
The stormtrooper leader had already seen them; with a high-powered shot, he blew one of the green-trimmed anti-troopers straight out of the air, then sprayed a few more with a low-accuracy rapid-fire setting before somersaulting down the walkway and crushing himself down onto one knee. A succession of crackling red blaster bolts hissed over his head.
The anti-troopers would be using the E-11s that had been issued to Kamino for training and arming purposes. There was no need to use the old Clone Wars-era weaponry that incorporated EMP energy into the blaster bolts when the majority of targets were regular flesh-and-blood sentients, just like the anti-troopers who'd be targeting them.
Just like them.
Lieutenant Daltro could not shake the feeling that haunted him as he and his platoon exchanged fire with the outmatched jet troopers. It felt so wrong on so many levels to be killing even these evil brothers of his. Faces identical to his own at a younger age swam up before him, ghostly and accusing, with each man - stormtrooper or anti-trooper - that died before him.
He blinked them away furiously and blasted through the last remaining anti-trooper's helmet faceplate. He was not about to lose his composure. This was an operation vital to the continued reign of the Empire, and he was loyalty. He was obedience. He was an Imperial stormtrooper, and he would never fail.
"Press on!" he roared. "Move, move, move!"
The men under his command had been honed by years of experience in taking orders. Some of the clones in his platoon had served just as long as he; biologically speaking, they were nearing an age of mandatory retirement.
He still had enough fights left in him to make a difference to the Empire. By no means was he an old man or a rheumatic cripple.
Blasters blazing, they cleared a path through the few anti-troopers who had been separated, jetpacks empty of fuel, from the rest of the rebel army. Every time one of those silent faces appeared before him, he imagined Lord Vader throttling it and dragging it away from him. His lord was clearing his vision.
There were no regrets in carrying out the Empire's will, regardless of what orders were being carried out. What the Empire wanted, needed, and demanded was what Daltro and the rest of the stormtroopers would do. No matter what actions it took, it was necessary to fulfill the duties of whatever was ordered of them. It was right.
Disobedience would not be tolerated, and Daltro would rather have never come to exist than displease his superiors and masters.
"Almost through to Omicron-Eight," one of their anti-troopers reported from the front lines of the battle across the catwalks. "With the Imps inbound, that leaves the Xi sector exposed at Xi-Four."
Captain Beta-9 replied grimly, "I'll put Platoons Seven-Three through -Five on it. Get out there. Find, fix, finish."
"Lock and load," the soldier over the helmet comm added.
"Yes, sir!"
The anti-trooper platoon, plus one ARC trooper, continued its jetpack flight through the buffeting wind and pounding rain. For the seventh time, AT-8/36 checked his fuel meter. It was at 20 and steadily decreasing. They'd have just enough to make it to the East Omicron-Eight walkway.
"Guns loose and shoot anything that's an Imp," Beta-9 reminded them, as if they needed telling. But as a superior officer, Beta-9 reserved the right to issue them any orders that he saw fit, as long as they were not treacherous to the Saviors of Kamino. That particular failsafe had been added to the Kaminoan conditioning program after Order 66 had been carried out by almost every single clone trooper in the field, resulting in a mass execution of Jedi officers.
Out of the streaks of rain that obscured his vision, he saw the faint heat signatures of troopers. Switching over to standard vision from infrared, he could see the plasma bolts flashing red through the typically inclement weather.
It was time to face their enemies; their predecessors; their brothers. AT-8/36 had trained all his life for this. He would destroy these slaves to the Empire. The Grand Army of the Republic had failed in the end because of foolish mistakes made with them, and because of a man named Palpatine possessed of a manipulative, devious, black heart.
There were no regrets in killing these stormtroopers, for they were clones - just like them - who had ultimately fallen into the wrong hands. Whatever the Republic once might have been, it was no more, and the Empire reigned now. In the Empire's soulless, uncompassionate iron grip, anyone might be strangled dead and any world might be crushed.
Not Kamino. No matter what became of AT-8/36, Kamino would not kneel any longer. It was time to rise and look the Emperor in the eye with defiance, and it was time for Kamino to once again come into its own.
AT-8/36 was a hero; an unsung hero, and a nameless one. He was just a number and one more of the same face, one more of the same gun, one more finger clenching its trigger. But that was all that mattered. That was all that he needed to do. One more soldier to aim, shoot, and maybe even die - but die standing in the Empire's way. They would have to step over his cooling corpse if they ever wanted to get past him.
That was what it was to be a clone trooper. That was what it was to be a hero.
"That's Omicron-Two," Lieutenant Daltro observed. He frowned; his informer was nowhere in sight.
"Come in, Omicron-Two contact," he said into his helmet comm. "This is Daltro. Location?"
After a moment, the voice - who could tell if it was the same trooper's voice or another's? - came back in. "Now on Center Omicron-Three walkway, sir, heading to Omicron-Four."
Daltro hadn't been to Kamino since he was nine, but the layout of Tipoca City had been permanently ingrained into his memory by his time there. The anonymous trooper would still be in sight of the battle over control of East Omicron-Eight.
"If you're going to keep moving around, trooper," he said gruffly, "I'd rather use your rank and number than your location."
There was no response for long enough that Daltro began to wonder if the stormtrooper hadn't been gunned down by a few of those wandering anti-troopers, accursed things. Then, finally, "Copy that. This is stormtrooper TK-864, Private."
"TK-864 was promoted to Sergeant two months ago," Daltro said icily. "I signed the certificate."
"Yes, I must have forgotten -" the clone blustered.
Daltro cut him off curtly. "Get off the line, anti, and throw yourself into the ocean while you're at it."
Outwardly, he remained as polished as ever, only just nettled by the deception. Inwardly, he was livid. It was operating procedure to establish identity on both ends in communications. He'd gone against it, and it could cost the 501st in this battle. He'd left Xi sector exposed…
Again, he swore and tapped the side of his helmet twice again. "Daltro here," he said. "I need Xi to be shored up. We were diverted."
"This is Zeta," the voice of another clone lieutenant responded. "Copy, heading to Xi. Form up, troopers."
"Acknowledged. My gratitude."
Still silently cursing the imposter TK-864 - likely the sergeant's killer as well, to have his headset and identification number - Daltro continued with his platoon down Center Omicron-Five. The battle came into their sight; he thought he could see jetpack entrails, and knew he could see the plasma trails of blaster bolts.
"Form up," he ordered. "Let's go."
They were running now, boots coming down with wet clanks against the dangerously slick metal. It was only through much training in these very environs that they avoided slipping and falling; a stunt like that could get you thrown out of the Corps, or put to the mercy of Lord Vader. The Dark Lord did not appreciate incompetence.
"Guns free and fire at will," the lieutenant said, squeezing off a few shots of his own more-or-less blindly into the source of the scant energy bolts now coming over their heads, across on the West Omicron-Eight walkway.
The rain- and helmet-muffled but still sharp report of a sniper rifle rang out, and TK-517, behind his left shoulder, smacked down against the wet metal walkway. Daltro dropped low and sprayed a succession of bolts up at where the precision blast had likely come from. The veiled, foggy silhouette of a hovering jet trooper tumbled surreally down through the crashing sheets of Kaminoan rain.
"Stay alert and keep moving," he ordered, turning; behind him, he heard the sound of armor scraping against the catwalk as TK-517's corpse was toed out of the way and down into the turmoil of ocean far below.
Under peppered, poorly aimed blasterfire, the stormtroopers charged forward over walkways and platforms, not stopping to secure the ground they covered but just continuing ahead. They returned fire without even visually scoping out their target, just aimed their guns back in the direction of the bolts and shot them until their power pack depleted; they rearmed on the go, not slowing in their stride.
Daltro was unsurprised. He was doing the same easily, and the troops under his command had received the same training. Still, he couldn't help but feel a flicker of pointed pride in his men's cohesion and discipline as compared to the less organized anti-troopers.
He just tried to forget that communication mishap, and vowed to himself that if he ran across that anti-trooper - assuming that he wasn't the one that he'd blown out of the sky after TK-517 was sniped by him - he would end his life personally.
Vengeance was the way of the Empire.
At first, AT-8/36 thought he was a Cuy'val Dar. He was dressed in full Mandalorian armor, including a battered jetpack, and the sheer curtains of rain poured over him, droplets streaming off to leave his silhouetted figure gleaming as if molded from chromium.
Then a shot from his rifle struck one of his troopers - he thought it was AT-8/19 or AT-8/20; a pity, either way - to drop him out of the air, and the clone lieutenant quickly reclassified the man as an enemy combatant. Beta-9 immediately took evasive action with his jetpack, yelling for the platoon to do likewise.
As he bobbed and weaved, AT-8/36 checked his fuel indicator again and found it at 3. He returned fire in the Mandalorian's general direction before dropping to the walkway, signaling his men to do likewise before their fuel ran out and sent them plummeting to a concussive fate below.
"Fire at will!" he repeated Beta-9's order. The rail gun-armed ARC captain dropped to the Omicron-Two platform overlooking them and snapped his weapon into firing position.
Now the fireworks would begin. With a morbid fascination to see what the effects of the rail gun rifle on an organic target would be, AT-8/36 half-turned to track the projected path of the weapon's devastating bullets while keeping an eye on the stormtroopers that might emerge from the fog and rain without any warning at any moment.
Beta-9 pulled the trigger. With a dawning awe, AT-8/36 watched as if in slow motion as the hidden shadows that were the misdirected Imperial reinforcement stormtroopers were thrown out of sight, sagging lifelessly, by the incredible force of the rail gun projectiles. The loud report of the weapon firing would have doubtless blown out the captain's eardrums had he not been wearing a sealed-down helmet.
Feeling a reinvigorating surge of fervor, he yelled and charged forward at the same instant, spewing blaster bolts from his snub-nosed rifle. The jetpack-wearing Mandalorian hit his rockets and flew past him, taking a shot to his booted foot as he went.
The faces of stormtrooper helmets came out before him, set in an eternal grimacing scowl. Barely thinking now, he shot at them, blasted holes through the masks concealing features belonging to an older him.
And so this was: the new generation against a previous generation; the young and untested against the battle-hardened veterans; the cause of freedom against the force of dominion; a new hope against an old darkness.
Don't let the light burn out, a voice seemed to whisper into his ear.
Gritting his teeth in the desperation of being under fire, he just kept on shooting. Many of his shots sprayed wide; the E-11s, for all their advantages in being lighter-weight and less bulky than the old DC-15 rifles that predated him, sacrificed some degree of accuracy in sustained volleys.
It would come down to combined parts skill, numbers, ability, and luck.
Blasterfire that was audibly not of any weapon either anti-troopers or stormtroopers would carry mingled with the ripping sound of the rail gun well behind, above, and to the left of him. The Mandalorian was engaging Beta-9, possibly. He looked over his shoulder and covered the rolling ARC trooper with a burst of fire towards his new aggressor, but had no time for anything else. He turned back and was just barely missed by a spear of red blaster energy that skipped past his armored elbow.
The battle for Kamino had come to Platoon 8-1.
Daltro watched the mercenary Boba Fett tangle with the clone who'd fired such horrifically powerful rounds into his platoon out of the corner of his eye, even as he took one anti-trooper after another into his rifle's sights and blasted him down. The elite enemy soldier was adept at dodging, and soon he roared straight up into the storm on his jetpack, shredding the place where Fett had been standing with his repeater.
Fett chased him skyward, and soon they had vanished even from Daltro's peripheral vision. So the lieutenant focused his full and undivided attention on the business of putting down this wretched clone rebellion.
It was sacrilege. That the cloning facilities that had created him should be used to produce his kind, turned against the Empire that they all should be upholding the law of, was sacrilege in the extreme. It was an offense; if there was some higher power, some sentient aspect to the Force, it must have been disgusted in the highest degree.
These things, these warped brothers, were abominations. This was not battle as much as it was extermination.
His feelings of loathing and contempt intensified with each shot, whether it missed or hit. The young screams of the anti-troopers that he so well remembered his own comrades letting out as they died on the battlefields of the Clone Wars around him, before experience had hardened them so hard that they no longer cried out so loudly even in response to mortal agony, were musical to his ears. Every anti-trooper dead brought him almost inhuman pleasure. All his initial guilt at murdering his brothers had disappeared.
The Empire was master.
In a whirling blitz of red flame, grey rainwater, and white armor, stormtroopers and anti-troopers died over the sham target of East Omicron-Eight. It was like an intricate, homicidal dance - a competition. Two sides fighting one another, two sets of principles, values, and objectives set in square opposition to one another. Guns burning through armor burning over Human burning. Shouts and grunts of pain in cacophony combined with bzaps and cracks and krakows, was backdrop for intermarrying blood and rain and sweat and pain, blaster lightning and steam cutting lines through relentless precipitating water.
The Empire was master.
One more down, one more down, one more down, numbers and ranks thinning inexorably, white-armored forests of men being cut down one clone trooper at a time. Blaster trails illuminating cold, raindrop-flecked faceplates with searing red. Bolts coming and going, plasma and energy exchanging, light and dark and Empire and rebellion and harmony and dissonance.
The Empire was master.
The Empire was master.
Battlefield chaos, the gods' tears shed, flashes from blaster muzzles and charged particles in black clouds. Dozens of ghosts replacing dozens of men. Perseverance always overcame.
Just one more exercise he could die in. AT-8/36 had been made ready for this fight, though it had taken ninety intensive months since the day he was brought into the world to prepare him and he still felt as if he knew nothing but how to aim and fire and reload a blaster, how to barricade with the presence of his body, and hoped he knew at least how to die and hoped more that he wouldn't have to test to find out.
It was not that he feared death. Whatever came was whatever came; ultimately, it was inevitable, and best to die soon and in the glory of battle than late and without the blaze of battle his honorable backdrop.
He struggled to see where the glory was, beyond the dark figures of friends and foes, beyond the fierce rain and indistinct fog, beyond the black storm clouds and the orbiting wrecks of space stations that had once glared down with a security-minded eye for what was happening at this very moment and had found it much too late, past and into the bright and sparse stars towards the heart of the galaxy, and still wondered if he could find it there.
Everything was becoming one mass, one blurred amalgam of chaos and fire, life and death clashing.
He rolled to a knee and squarely shot through the vulnerable neck of a stormtrooper; without pausing to watch the man's helmeted head clatter to the deck, he fired up at two more and didn't check to see if he'd felled both, just one, or neither. A grenade was lobbed into the enemy, but quickly expelled from the walkway by a swift armored boot. Uncountable spears of scarlet blasterfire were not so easily diverted from purpose, and stormtroopers and anti-troopers both might have fallen dead, but by now, AT-8/36 was only focusing on the things he did and the people he shot, and sometimes even not those.
The blaster rifle clicked empty again, and he expended the useless power pack as a thrown projectile. Distantly, he heard it knock against plasteel, but did not check after it as he jammed in the next and the supply of destructive energy was replenished. The stream of crimson started up again, hosing armored enemy soldiers with piercing flares.
White. Streak red. White. Falling. Blackened.
He struggled to keep his brain in operation. A mindless soldier would not do on any battlefield. The Clone Wars had demonstrated that in excess of adequacy.
White. Streak red. White. Flash orange. Screams. Overboard. Streak red. White.
Hang in there, he told himself quietly, but just loudly enough into his brain to shake him back to analytic, rational reality. Nothing was making sense…it was so easy, too easy, to be swept away by the rushing horrors and disordered chaos of the battlefield. Men and blasters burned before him, and he just kept shooting. The power pack clicked down to zero again, and he put in a new one in short order and just kept shooting. Just kept shooting.
White. Streak red. White…
Think!
He was a seasoned stormtrooper and pulled himself out of the suctioning paralysis of battle stress and unreason. He would not let himself be incapacitated by it, not now and not ever. He would not fail Lord Vader. He would not fail the Empire.
Fight for me, the rasping voice of the Emperor seemed to whisper into his ear.
It was a message most memorable: it was three words that the Emperor spoke at every rallying speech he gave to military personnel. It was a reminder that the Empire was master.
The Emperor was master.
Everything was to and for the Emperor. It was his Empire.
Enforcers of his power, they fought on Kamino against their evil brothers who'd been turned against them, set to kill them or try to. He saw the Emperor plead that he keep Kamino held for him, plead that it could remain his generation of armies, plead that it could stay the birthplace for soldiers more like Lieutenant Daltro than any of the sacrilegious anti-trooper abominations.
As he continued to kill, the Emperor's wrinkled mouth began to turn up in a pleased, approving smile. Killing in the name of the Emperor brought the Empire prosperity. Killing in the name of the Emperor was good. He was to kill.
Fight for me.
He hit an anti-trooper squarely in the chestplate and followed the nonfatal attack with three more shots in the same precise location. The unholy clone fell backwards, dead in the pouring rain.
No tears for these foul mockeries of men. No tears for a duty that had to be done. No tears for suppression and renewed order. No tears for this necessary extermination.
Perhaps four stormtroopers remained behind him, and maybe five anti-troopers. They were even in numbers still, and he felt pure rage that their experience and skill had not let them eliminate the enemy platoon with at least half of them still standing. They were elite troops of the 501st against untested, half-trained abominations of boy soldiers. This was illogical.
Furiously, he kept up the killing and was fueled further in his rage by the peripheral knowledge that every anti-trooper who fell was shortly compensated for by one more stormtrooper downed.
They should have been easily eradicated, but like a bambui plant that never goes away, they remained up. They matched the Imperial troops: blow-for-blow, shot-for-shot, death-for-death.
AT-8/36 understood, though. They had a cause, a true cause. They fought for freedom from oppression, and that gave them the strength through imparted passion and conviction to be the more experienced, better-trained stormtroopers' equals in battle.
It was not their own freedom, in truth, that they fought for. It was a cause far more dear to their creators and masters. It was necessity to them, but just as keeping them in the Empire's grip was so doubtless necessity to the stormtroopers they clashed with on this rain-slicked East Omicron-Eight walkway.
Was it the justice of what they fought for? Was it that some higher power smiled on their cause?
Science said that the latter was not the case. But perhaps science could fail, or perhaps simply the knowledge of the former as motivation was sufficient to make their passion and their conviction stronger than that of their enemies. Whatever the reason, they were equal.
Then only one target was in his reticule, and the stormtrooper wore a grey pauldron marking him as a platoon leader.
A lieutenant.
Equal in rank.
Equal.
They pulled triggers at the same moment, shot into each other's heart at the same moment, killed each other at the same moment and died at the same moment.
It could be said that Lieutenants AT-8/36 and Daltro had annihilated.
It was the cause and the conviction that mattered, even if the Saviors of Kamino had failed in the end against the might of the Empire. They had fought bravely.
And their fight would be paralleled and would ultimately end in success across all the stars of the galaxy in years not too far from coming.
And there would be justice, for a time. For a price. For another war. It would come, sure as the rain would slash sloshing down upon Tipoca City.
Cause and conviction made men who might not have even stood before veteran counterparts or those better-equipped in all ways but that all-important hidden factor stronger, and strong enough. They were strong. And they were righteous.
And that will forever be where glory is.