Massive thanks to Impoeia for the support & beta'ing and to you, dear reader, for sticking with the story after all this time.

Cp 13 – The Parting of Ways

"Make the enemy pay dearly for every inch of ground they take. When you're in a bad way, outgunned and outnumbered, that's when you dig deep and give 'em hell. That's why you were made, to be better than the other guy. Ordinary humans in your situation might give up. Not you. Never you.

Never give up and never give in because every enemy you can take down is one less to shoot at our troops. So keep going, if not for you then for the poor buggers who have to come in later and finish what you couldn't."

—Recorded holo-lecture from Kal Skirata, GAR trainer.

.

Dale stalked away from the Administrator before he did something that he was going to regret. Krinking long-neck. She was just like the rest of them. Essix had gone to Kamino for that female and what did he get in return? Erased, as though he'd never existed. He squeezed his hands shut, wondering if Nala Se knew what Essix had sacrificed for her. She had shown him exactly how much she valued loyalty and friendship. He was done calling her Administrator in his head. Respect was earned.

He passed one of the Kaminoan techs from third shift, nodding a polite greeting out of habit. Did he know about reconditioning? Did all the long-necks know? They had to. After all, it wasn't like they had to be wary about morale problems! As for the other clone staff… if he hadn't known, chances were that they didn't either. Maybe he should tell them.

Maybe he would. Right after he stopped in on Hops and Jud to see how they were doing. In the end, this was what it was all about. Being treated like a sentient, not a droid with no rights, and sentients cared about the individual rather than the number.

Both men had been placed back in their room; two men luxuriating in a room built to hold twelve. The only difference between now and then was that both Jud and Hops were now sporting cannulas that snaked out from the wall and sat under their noses, feeding them supplemental oxygen. Jud was fast asleep when Dale entered the wardroom. Hops waved when he caught sight of Dale, his face lighting up. Dale smiled in return. That one was never short of an infectious grin and the way he'd coaxed Jud out of his shell... well, he would be an asset to any infantry company, that's for sure. Dale usually tried not to get attached to patients, they just melted back into the chaos and he'd only ever find out they'd lived or died when he looked up their numbers, but he knew that he was going to miss Hops when he left.

"Hey, good to see you, doc," Hops said quietly. "Big honking hero over here has just fallen asleep, which is why I'm whispering." He winked at Dale conspiratorially.

Whoever thought of pairing these two together sure knew what they were doing. Dale slid onto the bed where Hops had been patting the coverlet flat, knowing full well he had a dopey grin on his face. Hops's brush with death in the sim room hadn't seemed to dull his spirits at all. If only he could bounce back that quickly. Gah, he was getting maudlin again.

"So what's the official verdict?" he asked Hops to distract himself from his earlier dark thoughts.

Hops shrugged. "No harm, no foul. Blinding headache, but they've given me some pain tabs for that. You might want to look at getting the environmental system in the sim room fixed though." He leaned back into his pillows.

Dale forced a grin. "It's being looked into," he improvised. "Sorry I wasn't there. I, uh, got called away."

"Well I have to admit the new guy didn't have your sparkling bedside personality; seems very green and shiny. Though between you and me, you might wanna have a word to him about picking something a bit more original than 'Forr' for a name."

"I'll talk to him about it," Dale promised. The name didn't ring a bell. Whoever Forr was, he must be new to the station.

"So..." Hops drawled. "Any word about when we're getting transferred off this floating snowfield?"

He obviously hadn't seen the way his chart was glowing a faint green. "Let me check." Dale unhooked Hops's chart from the end of the bed and started flicking through it, making theatrical humming noises.

Hops fidgeted, obviously impatient, so Dale played it up, tssking as he scrolled down the report. Then he replaced Hops's chart and started going through Jud's green-lit one at a Hutt-paced crawl.

"Well?" Hops finally demanded.

Dale stopped his theatrics, pleased to get a rise out of the incorrigible trooper. "You're both classed as fit for duty. See here?" He pointed to the relevant field on Jud's chart. "Next transport—off the top of my head—is supposed to be arriving in a few days and you'll probably be transferred to whatever infantry company is short of men." He hooked Jud's chart back in place and settled back on the bed.

"You'll be back to business as usual, huh?" Hops said.

"Something like that," Dale admitted. "Wait for the next medical crisis to happen and twiddle my thumbs in the meantime."

"Too bad you're not coming with us," Hops remarked. "I think you'd do alright on the front line."

Dale barked out a short laugh, startled by Hops's suggestion. "Be a battlefield bacta dispenser? I'd probably trip over my decee in the first few minutes. I haven't been anywhere near combat since basic training."

Hops shrugged, apparently unfazed by Dale's reaction. "Shame. We could use a guy with experience out there." He yawned suddenly and deeply. "Sorry about that."

Dale patted his knee through the coverlet and got up. "Nothing to worry about. You should probably get some rest."

"Sure thing, doc," Hops got out around another huge yawn.

When Dale looked back from the door, Hops had curled up under the coverlet and looked to be as oblivious to everything as Jud was. It was good to see they were both going to be fine. He hoped they'd have better luck wherever they might find themselves.

Essix emerged from slumber with a mouth that felt like he'd been cleaning bedpans with his tongue and a brain that was doing its best to claw its way out of his skull, millimetre by excruciating millimetre. At least the light wasn't too bright. He cracked an eye open and realised why. He was in a cell about three meters squared, bare of everything but the cot he was lying on and rather than a door, the orange shimmer of a ray shield closed off the front of his pen.

Moving hurt, but when his first tentative motions didn't produce a state of sudden nausea or stabbing pain, Essix hauled himself up to take stock.

His head hurt —yep, already knew that. His tongue... well it would be better if it wasn't capable of self-tasting.

His wrists and ankles hurt from when he'd fought the restraints. There wasn't a mark on his skin to show for it. He poked his wrist. The hurt was definitely there, sharpening when he pressed down. He had a sore patch on his forehead too, where the strap had rubbed.

He unfastened the catches of the bodyglove he was in. He didn't really want to see what he looked like after a full day of poking, prodding, and testing that would've turned a lab rodent into a gibbering mess, but it was like picking at a loose scab - you knew better, but were unable to leave well enough alone.

Nothing was bleeding. He could see cred chip-sized patches of raw skin down his front. He twisted around, hissing as he made sore muscles twinge. His back was just as bad. Although the wounds looked fresh, they weren't bleeding and there weren't any scabs. The yellow-eyed tech had obviously splashed some glue stat on the incisions. Essix cynically figured it was more to stop him from getting an infection than from any gesture of humanity or kindness.

He did his top back up. No point making Yellow-Eye's job easy for him. Essix might have no choice in the matter, but it didn't mean he had to go meekly.

His belly looked like it was searching inwards for food, flat where there was usually a slight bulge. He was well and truly empty. As though freshly reminded of the fact he'd not eaten since that ration bar in the shuttle, his stomach gave a loud grumble in protest of his neglect of it.

"Don't complain to me," he said. "It's not my fault we're on an impromptu diet."

"Ah. I see you're awake."

Essix looked up to see a clone standing in front of his cell. The stranger still had that gangly awkwardness about him, the skinniness of limb that said he wasn't quite done with his adult growth. He was definitely the right age for a cadet, but he wasn't wearing the red fatigues or grey jumpsuit of one. Essix tried to say something but the sides of his throat, parched of all moisture, chose that moment to glue themselves together and sent him into a coughing fit.

"Easy there," the stripling said, "I'll take you off to the docs and then you can have a drink. Sound good?"

Essix managed to swallow and nodded in reply. His stomach groaned again, embarrassingly loud. Essix debated digging in his heels. They weren't in the science section anymore, the grey walls of his cell attested to that, so he figured the chances of an electroprod appearing were slim. Right now, he wanted answers to something that had been niggling at him.

"There was a clone who brought me here," he said. "I want to see him."

The kid shrugged. "That was me."

This bishwag saw him all doped up? "No," Essix insisted, "it was another man. Name of 99."

That got the kid's attention. His brows drew together as he scowled at Essix. It was about as intimidating as a tooka kitten snarling. "What's it to you?'

"I want to see him," Essix repeated. He wasn't about to go into more detail. He was enough of a freak as it was, no need to throw tibanna cartridges on the blaze.

"It's not going to happen, so just behave and we'll get you to the doc's, then get you fed."

Essix didn't budge from his spot on the bed.

The kid crossed his arms. "Are you going to play ball and come quietly or do I need to fetch some helpers?"

Something flared up in Essix. It was one thing to be treated as a thing or an imbecile by the scientists, but by another clone? Normally Essix tried not to make snap character decisions or to hold first impressions against people, but right then and there he promised himself that if he had a shot, he was going to knock this arrogant little mynock down a peg or two.

He lay back on the bed out of spite. He was done being talked down to. Old lessons nagged at him, memories of lessons learnt the hard way, of not antagonising your captors and of never turning down the opportunity for food and drink. Essix ignored it all, shoved away the guilty twinge at disobeying orders and breaking regs. He'd played nice and now he was sick of being jerked around.

There was a ventilation grill embedded in the ceiling, its bolts flush with the rest of the panelling. It was way too small for anything but a maintenance droid to fit through.

"Last chance," the kid said.

Essix ignored him, fantasising instead about the spacious crawl ways of Kaliida Shoals.

"Seriously, you don't want this tech involved." The kid sounded like he was half-pleading now.

If he had a piece of furniture in here, a desk perhaps, and if the shaft was big enough to fit through, Essix could drag it under the vent, then maybe pry the grill off with his fingertips and escape into the undercity that he wasn't supposed to know about.

"He's a piece of work," the kid continued.

Yep. Dumb idea. He was stuck in the cell with not even an emergency hatch in case of flooding. Perhaps the designers meant for the ray shield to fail before the occupant drowned. Or likely they hadn't really considered the possibility of having renegade product when they'd built the Military Complex.

The kid huffed. "Fine. Have it your way." There was the sound of feet moving away.

He was alone again.

When the chrono beside her sleep tank chimed, Nala Se had already been awake and dressed for eighty-two minutes. Normally she needed two alarms, sometimes three, to rouse her from her rest. Essix had insisted on the third one after she'd missed a head of department meeting. Essix had covered for her admirably, but when he'd had come past her room later he had found her still dozing in her tank. It had been most embarrassing though he'd waved away her apologies.

She turned off the chrono's increasingly shrill beeping and then deleted her alarms from the chrono's memory. Who knew what the routine of the next occupant was going to be?

The room around her was uncomfortably bare of any touch of personality. She'd told the cleaner droid to box up her things and it had. She'd come back to her room after seeing Kenobi off to find it cleared of all her furniture and a mound of crates packed full of belongings jumbled together. Droids came in a wide range of intelligence, from ones that gave normal beings a run for the money in the intelligence stakes to those that were no more alive than a respirator. Kaliida Shoal's cleaner droids were definitely on the latter end of the scale. Had she been a little less distracted earlier, she would've asked one of the more intelligent droids to do the task.

There was no apparent logic in the droid's packing, so this morning, she'd pulled it all out and redone it herself. It wasn't as though she'd anything else to do. Her paperwork was all up to date and filed in such a way that anyone could pick it up. She'd written up some notes to help her successor settle in last night, the bacta tanks were cleaned, she'd ordered all the supplies, and scheduled the different department heads to cover her essential duties until the next Administrator had a handle on things.

Now the impersonal metal crates that the Republic was so fond of lay in two small piles: one of things to be incinerated, the other a handful of items with small notes attached to say who the intended recipient was—no point sending her dragonfly off to incineration when Topuc Ti would probably enjoy its grace. The furniture from her dejarik nook was gone. She hoped that the cleaner droid had passed on the cushy chairs and board to another staff member rather than simply incinerating them, but suspected that wasn't the case.

She had called up another cleaner droid and was instructing it thoroughly and with as little ambiguity as she could manage about how it was to distribute the things she was handing on, when her door chimed.

"One moment please," Nala Se called. The droid picked up the box with the dragonfly sculpture in it. She hoped that Topuc Ti found it aesthetically pleasing and would keep it. It was a selfish thought, but this way something of her would remain on the station.

She opened the door and the droid whirred out, almost knocking over her visitor in its zeal to carry out her instructions. It was Topuc Ti, wearing a blue shift with mauve chevron patterns adorning his left side.

"Greetings, Administrator," he said, bobbing his head politely.

Nala Se caught her breath to call the droid back, but it was already gone, leaving only a fading echo of the faint whirring of its wheel mechanisms in the corridor.

She sighed and Topuc Ti looked at her, a question in his grey eyes.

"I had set aside a few things for you; that droid has them. No doubt you will find them when you return to your quarters," Nala Se said. She motioned for Topuc Ti to come in.

"That was very thoughtful of you, Administrator," the other Kaminoan said as he entered the room.

The door hissed shut again and Topuc Ti rounded on Nala Se. "You are leaving," he said sternly.

Nala Se cringed inwardly. She had forgotten that oversight, not wanting to make a fuss, yet the tide came in anyway. Time to be honest. "I've been recalled to Tipoca City," she said.

"To do..."

"Administrative work." Well, semi-honest.

Her friend didn't seem convinced. Nala Se stuffed a tendril of annoyance into a box. She used to be so much better at lying, what had happened? "It isn't worth taking these things back to Kamino with me," she said, trying to sound blasé and as though there was no room for inconvenient questions. "Not with so little room on the shuttle and not when my needs will be provided for when I arrive." See Essix? Truth, yet not – just as you recommended.

"Well... only if you're sure..."

"I am," she said firmly.

Her positive tone seemed to do the trick.

Topuc Ti straightened and asked, "When do you leave?"

"Within the hour," Nala Se replied.

"So soon!"

"Would you accompany me to the docking bay?" Nala Se wasn't quite sure where that had come from. She didn't really want company, but the other Kaminoan was already murmuring a polite refusal.

"I have a meeting I must attend." Topuc Ti bowed, then backed out of the room.

Nala Se was alone again in the barren shell of her room. There was nothing more for it.

Nala Se reached the docking bay with nearly twenty minutes to spare. Sek Nor was there already, a sleek white briefcase at his feet. He didn't acknowledge her arrival out loud, but there was a slight downwards turn at the corners of his mouth. She had half expected him to be still emotionally volatile after Taun We's ruling, but instead it seemed that the fight had gone out of him.

Out of the window beside the airlock, she could see the shuttle as a gleaming oval against the blackness, the light from Kaliida Shoals reflecting off its hull. Like all Kaminoan vessels, it was an elegant construction, smooth and sleek with no antenna masts or protrusions marking its surface. Faint puffs of sparkling mist came from its thrusters as it matched the rotation of the station in preparation for docking. Closer and closer it came, changing from oval to a solid circle of white as it rotated, then backed slowly towards the docking port.

When the docking port hissed open, showing the interior of the shuttle, Nala Se was able to see that there were indeed windows embedded along the sides of the craft and a large viewscreen framing the cockpit. She went to the viewing window beside the hatch and from the outside, the exterior of the shuttle looked continuous. It seemed that there had been some advances in materials technology she was not aware of.

Once the very young co-pilot, who couldn't have graduated from pilots' training more than a few years prior, outlined the features of the shuttle – refreshers, sleep tanks, galley – Nala Se seated herself in a work alcove close to the shuttle's rear door. Sek Nor had already claimed the viewing area and she had no wish to be next to him for the next eighty hours. She could've sat in the cockpit with the pilots but she rather suspected they would want to talk of normal, work-a-bout things. It was going to be a long trip back to Kamino; her last trip ever. There were no windows in the alcove but that didn't bother her. She'd already said her goodbyes — there was no need to draw things out. So as the stars stretched and blurred, marking their transition to hyperspace, her last view of Kaliida Shoals was not of her station gleaming against the black of space and the garish colours of the nearby nebula. It was of the blank, featureless wall of the shuttle.

As I said at the start of the chapter, thank you so much for sticking with the story. I hope you enjoyed the update - feel free to comment with your thoughts on it - and I'm already working on chapter 14 so there shouldn't be a two year gap between updates this time :)