I popped the seals from my helmet and sat on the durasteel floor. There was no other seating in the bay.

That was hellish, to say the least. The Adjudicator's engines thrummed to life beneath my armor, and I felt myself say goodbye to the planet below. The decks rattled, which were signs of recent repair work for this wing. That explained the lack of starfighters in the fighter bay, and lack of grease stains on the plated metal we lay on. It had been damaged and then repaired, possibly during the fighting we'd been doing in the week below, and lost all their ships in the process. Or perhaps it had been particularly costly for transports. If it had, it still hadn't taken long to transport us off the planets' surface to the Adjudicator; there weren't many of us left to call it a victory.

I glanced down at my helmet. It had deep gouges laid into the armor right above the viewplate, and the top crest had broken clean off when I'd been tossed through the air and landed badly. I imagined that the rest of my armor wasn't in great condition, either. I picked up my DC-17 and held it against my body and wrapped myself around it, the way a musician might their instrument, and checked it over as well. There were signs of wear beginning to appear here and there, such as a cracked stock, and the trigger guard had bent. The ventilation along the outer part of the barrel was chipped as well. When had that happened? After planetfall, there hadn't been a moment of time that wasn't spent running or shooting. Sleep was a nicety that I hadn't afforded myself since planetfall, almost half a week ago.

Now that I was finally still, I realized how much I ached, but nothing seemed broken. Not that I'd know if anything was truly wrong from experience. I picked myself up off the ground and made my way over to a bulkhead and leaned against it. Several of my brothers lay along the floor. Some of them were bleeding, others held their arms to their sides, covering blackened parts of their armor.

As bad of shape as I was in, they had it worse. Blood was seeping through the cracks in their armor. Some lay flat and just breathed with difficulty, and others did even less. There were no medics, no medicine being distributed. There was no time to spare. Some other, new conflict had sprung up, and we were already on our way to the new frontline. I felt myself lay on my side. My mind was still sharp from the drugs, but my body was beginning to fail on me. I couldn't stay awake any longer, without the constant drum of heavy cannon or the snares of blaster fire to keep the beat of my consciousness, and so it began to slip.

Tomorrow had become right now, I realized as I glanced at my chrono. I had slept five hours, a lifetime for someone who had subsided on pills for the past three days. I considered myself lucky to have caught that much time, even if I had to hurry to the examination and refit. Those clones who weren't able to make their way to the examination in time were… well, it was rumored that you were cannibalized, whether or not there was anything wrong with you. That's the thing about being in a clone army: your organs are interchangeable. There's no question of matching blood types. The surgery is cut and paste. Literally. And then you're a part of the reinforcement waves instead of the first round.

The armor, likewise, is all the same size and make. You take off your armor, get into the fresh set. The ship's droids polish the old armor up, and from another old set assemble a working set of armor, recharge the energy cells, and it is ready again, and put on by the next clone in-between engagements. The same with your rifle. Nothing about you is you. Nothing about you is different. You look the same, you share your possessions, you share your combat, and you share your blood and organs. Every part of you is present in everyone else around you. Even your brains and psychology are the same.

I was disinfected. Even the water on board this ship is recycled. I was dried off by recycled air, and then I was fed the first food I'd had in days that wasn't loaded with stimulants. It was one of the only things on this ship that hadn't been recycled, reused, and then spat back onto or into me. It tasted absolutely delicious for this reason. For the reason I could eat another day made it taste like victory. The timer was present on the overhead above, and it indicated to me that I had less than ten minutes to make my way to the hangar I was brought in on. Total time in-between missions, you ask? Five hours, forty five minutes and counting. There was no time for self-congratulatory moments in this war I was fighting.

My new armor was just the same as the old armor, it even had the same familiar smell to it. My rifle had the same familiar weight to it that it should have, though in the days of fighting I had grown used to a lighter than usual stock.

I arrived on the deck. It was still bloodstained in areas, despite the droids cleaning it as best they could. The ship was still in hyperspace, but mechanics had already been over the few dropships that had made the return journey from that dismal moon.

The Admiral walked about the ship, instructing us via holovid as to where the central city's capital was, and how we were to storm it, which group we were assigned to. I had been a part of Epsilon squadron, Gold group. I was now Alpha squadron, Red group. It was only important for self-identification later. We stood through it mutely, staring at the display and learning what we could of the city. The ship came out of hyperspace, straight into a battle that was already being waged. The ship shuddered under withering turbolaser fire. The ship began a yaw and returned fire. I saw starships exiting their adjacent hangars, ready to engage the enemy ships.

We formed up and marched to our dropships silently, filing past the Admiral who had only just finished his briefing. The life of a clone was one of never sleeping, of never resting, of non-stop combat. It became your life.