The Highest Form of Service
By Kudzu
"If a man does his best, what else is there?"
General George S. Patton Jr.
Trainee 36873 sighed regretfully as he stared hard at the latest reports on clone cadet performance in their recent combat drill.
Squad 2232
Of Trainees 36873-36881
Targets Destroyed: 487
Shots Used: 773
Total Accuracy: 89.01
Galactic Standard Time: 1:22:37
Civilian Casualties: 8
Mission Successful: Yes
Squad 2233
Of Trainees 36882-36890
Targets Destroyed: 513
Shots Used: 702
Total Accuracy: 93.16
Galactic Standard Time: 1:21:02
Civilian Casualties: 5
Mission Successful: Yes
Squad 2234
Of Trainees 36891-36899
Targets Destroyed: 510
Shots Used: 701
Total Accuracy: 92.91
Galactic Standard Time: 1:20:52
Civilian Casualties: 5
Mission Successful: Yes
He didn't need to read the rest to know that once again, his squad had performed markedly below average. He had lived in Tipoca City for eight and a half years now, and that was long enough to know what fate was about to befall him.
"Bad luck, ner vod," said one of the other trainees, clapping him on the shoulder. "But it's an honor, you know. It's all for the Republic."
"My life is subordinate to the prosperity and well-being of the Galactic Republic," Trainee 36873 mumbled, reciting an old mantra.
"We'll give whoever's out there hell for you," another trainee told him. "Kaminoa a'den mhi, and the wrath of the fallen."
The wrath of Kamino.
The wrath of the fallen.
"Not fallen," Trainee 36873 shook his head. "But culled."
"So that the strongest survive to serve the Republic, as the strong serve better than the weak," another clone agreed.
Trainee 36873 smiled humorlessly. "And I am the weak."
"No shame, ner vod. You would serve the Republic as you could."
"You serve the Republic best with your death," a silky, most un-Jango Fett-like voice entered the discussion. Trainee 36873 turned and was unsurprised to find a Kaminoan standing beside them. A KE-8 Enforcer craft hovered tactfully several meters behind her. Just in case, Trainee 36873 thought bitterly.
The other trainees stepped back respectfully as the Kaminoan went on. "You would do best to go to your fate with the pride that befits a clone trooper, Trainee 36873," she said smoothly.
"I accept that this is the most that I can do for the Republic," Trainee 36873 said, hating himself for the words. What are you doing, he thought savagely to himself, you're throwing everything that you were created for away to die never even knowing what the Republic stands for at all…
"Your vows to the Republic, trainee," the cloner reminded him. "You have sworn to serve the Galactic Republic in peace and in war; to defend its citizens from harm; to uphold its principles against defilement; to obey its leaders and your commanders; to with your life or your death further the goals of the Republic. That is your function."
The familiar words just caused him more pain. How could he have failed? How could he…
"I understand," he said haltingly.
"You further the Republic's goals," the cloner said, black eyes glittering, "by giving up your own life so that only the best may serve the Republic when they come for their great army. By allowing yourself, a sub-par clone, to fight for the Republic, you compromise its safety. What if the battle should come down to the wire, and in the end, you simply are not good enough? Then the Republic will lose that battle, and sometimes entire wars are decided by single engagements. The Republic must be supplied with only the best of the best."
And then he understood: it was not just his honor here, but the honor of the Kaminoans that was at stake. They prided themselves on producing only the finest clones for their clients, and to deliver such markedly below-average units would be a blow to their own integrity. They simply couldn't bear to give the Republic anything less than what they asked for.
So the cloning technicians in Tipoca City culled and pruned to create the perfect garden, for that was an apt analogy for it. An army of haphazardly created clones was an unculled and unpruned garden that might as well have been wilderness, and wilderness was not orderly and nor was it the exquisite perfection that the Kaminoans demanded of themselves (and by extension, their clone trooper creations). Only with the most precise trimming could their garden be as perfect and neat as they wanted it to be.
Jango Fett, too, had demanded perfection from himself and from the ARC troopers that he had been personally training. The Kaminoans were following his orderly example, and this was a noble thing.
Trainee 36873's noble end, his life given to the creation of a perfect garden for the Republic.
"Yes," he said, with conviction in his mind and his voice. "That is honorable." And so it was.
The Kaminoan smiled; a rare expression to see on their pale, slit-nosed faces. "I am glad that you understand the necessity of this purge, Trainee 36873," she replied. "Ah - here comes the rest of your squad."
And indeed, here they came, Trainees 36874 to 36881, all looking sullen and miserable at their chosen fates.
Trainee 36873 blinked. We are to be executed, he reminded himself, and then he suddenly realized the enormity of it. His life, burnt out of existence for being something that he couldn't help but be -
Your lives are nothing before the necessity of the Republic's endurance.
Sian Gi had died two standard months ago when he had accidentally exposed himself to a disease that the Kaminoans were developing in an attempt to exterminate a species of shark that was threatening the aiwha populations. He had spent the last weeks of his life quarantined and alone, as so to keep the disease contained and to avoid contaminating the rest of Tipoca City's population.
And before then, he had been mentor to many squads of clones, including Squad 2232…
The Kaminoan watched these rows of identical boys sitting before him and began to teach, for there was only so much that they could learn from machine apparatuses. He told them again who and what they were: clones, created to serve the Republic. An army in the making.
They understood.
But the Kaminoan knew that they did not. How could these mere adolescents comprehend that their lives were for nothing more than to lay down their lives for a galaxy-wide entity that they had never even seen before and had no affinity for the ideals of? He himself found it a hard thing to imagine, and he somewhat pitied them. Although his kind - his superiors, in fact - had ordered their production, and he had no right to question them, he wondered if they truly were any better than slaves.
He told them none of this, and continued to teach what his superiors had told him to teach.
It was inevitable. Death was inevitable. He could either go to his execution knowing that he was serving the greater goals of the Republic to his last heartbeat and accepting of that, or pitying himself and wishing that he hadn't been who he was and had been able to live on to serve the Republic in battle.
There was wishful fantasy, and then there was bitter reality.
Fantasy was subordinate in that comparative equation.
Death in service. Service in death.
Geddon Faäs was a Mandalorian instructor of the clone commandoes, and on occasion Sian Gi had called him in to instruct the classes of the plain clone troopers. Those experiences were always unforgettable. The man had a way of speaking plainly in a way that a Kaminoan simply could not imitate. They had always learned much from his tutelage, and looked forward to his lessons.
Trainee 36873 had not seen Faäs in over half a year, and he would never see Faäs again…
The ex-Mandalorian wasn't sure what to think of the clone trooper trainees. They were no clone commandoes, certainly. They lacked the personality that had endeared his commandoes to him, and they lacked the tight, almost familial bonds that encouraged that personality.
He gave them his instruction, for that was all that he could impart. They paid rapt attention to him, each identical look on each identical face.
The clones did creep him out somewhat. In all of his days of service under Mandalore, he had never experienced anything quite so eerie as carbon-copy men rolled off of an assembly line, all looking the same and acting the same and speaking the same. He expected that he would never fully get used to it, or to the fact that they only reason that they were given life at all was to fight for something that they didn't really believe in outside of a physical need to serve it…the Galactic Republic, something that he himself had never really seen much of.
But he did his duty and he taught them all that he was allowed to, because he wouldn't be leaving Kamino anytime soon, and these clones would henceforth be his only form of legacy.
He was clone, built to serve. He had accepted this from the start, and it was the first thing that he truly remembered having been taught. This was his final act in serving the Republic, and even if he didn't really understand what the Republic was, it was all that he had to serve, and without service, he was built for nothing.
Life had to have meaning, and so he accepted blind service to something that he didn't know, and would never really know. The remainder of his life was now measurable in minutes, not years or months or weeks or days or even hours. He was about to die for love of the Republic: love that was all that he had to give, and yet more than any other being might have expected. But he was clone, and he was to serve. Unquestioning loyalty was his contribution to the world, even if he was among the weak.
You were bred to fight, but there are alternatives to fighting.
ARC trooper-in-training, Alpha-17, had been granted the opportunity on several occasions to instruct his fellow clones in the ways of warfare. A-17, like his fellow ARC troopers, had been trained personally by Jango Fett, the genetic source for the clone army. Fett had given them training that emphasized their individuality; the ARC troopers were genetically identical to him save for their growth acceleration. All of the other clone units were modified in one way or another, with their loyalty and obedience genes tweaked to make them more willing to follow orders.
Fett hadn't ever been partial to taking orders from anyone, and so his independently developed training program had made A-17's instructional courses quite different from anything else that Trainee 36873 had ever been taught…
In their way, they were pitiable, as the ARC trainee had decided. Blank faces that were the same as his own, with none of the fire of inspiration that he saw in his own comrades burning behind their dark eyes; it was a wonder that they managed to exist as what they were. They were as good as mindless, not compelled to seek.
The ARC trainee taught them what the Kaminoans had told him would be appropriate, although he was briefly tempted to "contaminate" their minds and ears with words that would require them to be purged, words that they were not yet deemed ready to hear.
At least that would stop their poor existence, bred to mindlessly cling to whatever word their superiors spoke as an order to them, not trained to innovate and to deviate where necessary from their rigid instructions. No one deserved to live like that.
And yet, the Republic did need them, and the ARC troopers could not win the Republic's wars all by themselves. Their existence was a necessary evil, and the ARC trainee decided that he could only hope that the galaxy would never request their creation again.
He had never truly understood these most cryptic of teachings until this moment, the moment of understanding that was to be precursor to his death. His death; and some might call it ignoble, but now he knew that it was much to the contrary.
The Kaminoan jabbed the needle into his arm, and he looked away, but in his heart he felt that at last, his physical weakness and imperfection had become mental strength and the pinnacle of perfection.
For the good of the Republic, for which fighting loyally on a battlefield was every clone's dream, and this inglorious execution was every clone's nightmare, he accepted his culling willingly. Was that not, he thought, the greatest sacrifice?
It was, to him; and in his eyes, even now as they grew dull, but at last were filled with knowing strength, it was the highest form of service.