Forward
This account of the Clone Wars was provided by a woman once known as Padawan (later Knight) Be-Katet of the old Jedi Order. A little over a year ago, she approached me with the intent of assisting in the New Jedi Order's continuing attempt to piece together the history of the Pre-Imperial Jedi and their role in the Republic. Over the course of our labors, Knight Be-Katet began to reminisce, at first sparely and then at greater length, about her own role in the Order and in the GAR. With my encouragement—or, as she would say, relentless badgering—she agreed to compile her somewhat disjointed recollections into a more coherent chronicle.
By her own admission, Be-Katet's memories are colored by age, nostalgia, and a lingering bitterness she struggles to suppress. I have done what I could to reconcile Be-Katet's personal narrative with existing information, but as many records from that time exist only as contradictory fragments or outright Imperial falsifications, I fear that its factual accuracy falls short of the academic standard. However, as one of the few living survivors of Order 66 and the Jedi Purge, Ba-Katet's chronicles serves as a unique insight into the events preceding the fall of the Jedi and rise of the Empire.
Though I assisted Be-Katet with the compilation and publication of her auto-biography, it is wholly her creation. Over my gentle objections, she has chosen to present it in a series of loosely-joined fragments interspersed with personal asides and occasional philosophical musings. From an academic standpoint, it is nothing more than an old woman's recounting of her turbulent youth—yet I find it fascinating both as an historian and as a person. It is my hope that others will as well.
Tools
They like to say that we Jedi saw the clones as little more than expandable bodies, meat-and-blood versions of the droids we fought against. That we cared little for the lives of the same-faced, same-voiced men we led. That we used them as mere tools we could use to prolong the reign of the dying Republic.
They forget, or perhaps ignore, that we Jedi saw ourselves as tools, too. Valuable tools, perhaps, with specialized uses, but no more and no less. One of the first lessons every initiate learns—learned—was that our lives would be spent in service, without ambition or dreams of glory. They also seem to forget that we had no kriffing idea the Republic was dying, though it seems obvious now. Even the blind can have hindsight. But that's a different story, and even now I don't know all of its details, so I can't tell you anything about that you couldn't learn from a better source.
I can't speak for all of these long-dead Jedi either, of course. Maybe there were some who were as bad as they say; I don't know and probably never will. We were united by our purpose, but we were also individuals, and as any idiot can see, grievously flawed. I can only tell you what I saw, what I felt, and what I did.
Skills
I was never supposed to be a soldier, and I say that without shame or pride. Once, long ago, in a galaxy you probably wouldn't even recognize, I was Padawan Be-Katet, and the path that I chose—or that the Force had chosen for me, which was almost the same thing—was that of a Jedi Sentinel. I was no warrior-born, like Skywalker, or warrior-trained, like Kenobi, though I could hold my own in a fight. The Force was neither exceptionally strong nor exceptionally weak in me, and my greatest talents were stealth, cunning, and an aptitude for mechanics. I spent most of my apprenticeship slinking through the criminal underworld, far from anything that could be called polite society, and even further from the Temple.
(I remember it as the one place in the galaxy where I could safely sleep. There, I had a bed that didn't smell of a dozen other people in a room where I didn't have to booby-trap the door, or even lock it. I made use of its resources—research in the Library, sparring in the practice rooms—but I loved it best for the simple security it provided.)
I expected to spend my life in a relatively combat-less conflict against crime syndicates and common miscreants, and I trained accordingly. I learned how to alter my appearance with basic cosmetics and dyes, how to slice into security systems, where to get phony ID that would pass all but the most rigorous scrutiny. I learned the languages and customs of dozens of worlds, and all the little mannerisms that would let me fit in with the dregs of society. Out of necessity, I learned to fire a blaster with a reasonable degree of accuracy. (The last thing you want to do when you're working undercover as a hired thug on a smuggler's convoy is ignite a lightsaber when you get jumped by the local toughs in a drunken bar brawl.) I learned to blend in.
I never learned to command.
Before
I was on Thranix when Clone Wars began, working undercover as a server in a some seedy club that laundered money for a local crime boss. (He, in turn fed his profits into a larger, planet-wide organization, which operated under the auspices of an intergalactic syndicate. We were going to take them all down, push them out of sector entirely. But that's irrelevant now. It was probably irrelevant then.) Five months of planting bugs and eavesdropping, of picking pockets and covert surveillance, of sending coded reports to Master Shinako and the local police. It wasn't anything galaxy-changing, but I had a purpose, and I was content.
When news of battle on Geonosis hit the local newsfeed and I knew, with a certainty that had nothing to do with the Force, that everything was going to change.
Two days later, my Master and were I on our way back to Coruscant for reassignment.
Change
The Grand Army of the Republic didn't need Jedi investigators, so my Master and I became warriors instead. I remember the wrongness of it, the niggling feeling that I could serve the Republic better by tracking down the Separatist's financial assets or infiltrating their spy network—but the Senate and the Council needed Jedi on the battlefield, so that was were we went. Padawan Be-Katet became Lieutenant Be-Katet of the 242, and my Master became Commander Shinako of the same. For the first time in years, I wore my Jedi robes and lightsabers instead of street clothes and a holdout blaster.
In a way, it's funny. I looked most and acted least like a Jedi during those years.
Ten
My first mission was simple. Slip past the Separatist defense lines and attack their base from the west. One Jedi Padawan did not count as an attack force all on her own, so I was given a squad of ten clone troopers—or maybe I was given to them. I wasn't sure who was getting stiffed in that deal, but it felt like someone was.
"Ten?" I asked incredulously. "Are you sure that will be enough?"
My Master's antenna twitched in acknowledgement. "It will be sufficient."
"But. . .ten?" I had never been in battle—small scuffles and shoot-outs, and once, during a mission gone terribly wrong, a gladiator's arena—and my vague imaginings of war were of countless numbers of men and droids shooting at each other across a stretch of open terrain, opposing fleets battling in vacuum.
"They were bred to be soldiers," Master Shinako said, as if that explained everything. The Verpine had been breeding themselves for particular purposes since time out of mind, so he undoubtedly understood the whole thing better than I did. "Ten will be sufficient." Vestigial wings fluttered in his version of a sigh. "When you see them fight, you will understand."
When I walked into the briefing room, I froze for a moment in utter bafflement. Ten heads, identical but for a few tattoos, turned as one; ten identical bodies snapped to attention; ten identical sets of brown eyes met mine. I knew intellectually what a clone army was, but I was unprepared for the actuality. How will I ever tell them apart? I wondered, and then, How do they tell themselves apart?
I don't remember what we said to each other—terse greetings, a businesslike briefing—but I remember their utter lack of dismay at being placed under the command of what would, in most human societies, be considered a mere child.
(Of course, they would have been children, too, if one judged them solely by age. That is one of the many things we Jedi and the clones had in common. There is—was—no such thing as a Jedi child, only Jedi with the bodies of children.)
I remember their resolve. It was not merely unthinking obedience. They knew that they had a task to complete, and that it would be dangerous; they knew that failure would cost more than their own lives. But they prepared for it without fear. They accepted their role with an absolution I could only admire, displaced creature that I was.
I remember my shock when I finally understood that these men—ten strangers I could not even tell apart—were now mine to lead. Mine to save or to doom. I was accustomed to the responsibility of protecting and serving a galaxy, but this was different. Paradoxically, it felt even more immense. I remember fearing that I would prove unworthy, resolving that I would not.
I remember their names.
Names
Grin. The sergeant and second-in-command. So called because he seldom smiled. Obviously.
Target had drawn enemy fire away from his team during his first battle.
Rash. "Don't ask."
Riley merely liked the sound of it.
Slips once trod on a wet patch and faceplanted in front of our General during an inspection.
Crackshot was the best sniper.
Nougat vehemently protested his name and tried to change it on many occasions, but it always stuck.
Bluff couldn't win a game of sabaac if his life depended on it. He even tried playing with his helmet on once. It didn't work.
Ward tended to end up in places he wasn't supposed to be—a gambling den, the officer's mess, the wrong side of the planet—through no fault of his own, of course.
Flash was apt at coming up with a quick solution to an unforeseen problem.
They didn't all come to my command with those names, of course. Just Target, Nougat, and Crackshot. The rest acquired theirs over time. There was no logic in their name-taking; it just happened. When some act, mischance, habit, or whim distinguished one from his brothers, they were named for it. Sometimes they chose, sometimes the others chose for them.
They called me Lieutenant Be-Katet at first, then LT, then Bek. Before the end, they called me sister.
"Real" Author's Note: I've been watching a lot of Star Wars: The Clone Wars on Netflix, and though it's definitely full of things that make me howl in protest (pacifist Mandalorians, Spider-Legs Maul, etc.), I found myself liking the hitherto mostly faceless clones a lot more than I anticipated. Honestly, their deaths make me tear up sometimes. And I feel like writing something sad. Now all of a sudden there's a leather-faced, embittered old woman ranting in my head.
I know there's two "types" of clones: the more-or-less straightforward soldiers in the cartoon, and Mandalorian-heavy Traviss types. Honestly, I prefer the first, and I've only got one Traviss book, which I found in a thrift shop. If more turn up, I'll attempt to read them despite my bias, but until then, I'm sticking with the cartoon type for simplicity's sake. Since I'm writing about an unexceptional Jedi and average grunts, it shouldn't make a lot of difference.
If anyone who reads this notices some blindingly obvious error, I'd like to know so I can correct it. I've been a SW fan for a long time, but I'm much more familiar with Episodes IV-VI, EU between VI and New Jedi Order, and KOTOR. I know almost nothing about the Clone Wars that wasn't in the movies.
*Names: Ward is short for "wayward;" Flash as in "a flash of inspiration" or "it came to me in a flash." During Nougat's scout training, his Trandoshan instructor enjoyed sneaking up behind him and "killing" him while hissing "Tasssty little nougat!" He got stuck with it.