Postscript – Order 66

"These men, O king, have not regarded thee: they serve not thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up"
Daniel 3:12

The Clone watched the transport ship fly away, taking most of the troops with it. He and a platoon consisting mostly of fresh soldiers were remaining here on the Madhouse planet, to stand as opposition to any Separatist troops who might try to establish a new base here.

The planet was simply too remote to send troops to root out the Separatists, and it had been used too many times as a stronghold to afford leaving it abandoned. But the forces were spread thinly, as usual. Lucky Squad and two of the lieutenants who had survived the battle here on the Madhouse planet were being shipped out to accomplish other tasks.

Lieutenant Jac would stay here. He didn't mind. He liked this world. And he found that he had a certain affinity for guard duty. There was a quietness to it, yet the unexpected could happen at any moment. No big drum rolls for the guard, just holding his post, going on. Plenty of time to think, to learn, and to remember all that had gone by. And to teach.

Jac knew he should get the fresh troops working on erecting a tower to boost radio reception; as it was they couldn't catch transmissions originating much farther out than the planet's nearby moon. He ought to get them right to work. But instead he stood watching until the ship was gone.

Then he turned to look at the clones who were setting up the guard post, using materials of the planet to construct temporary buildings within which to work and sleep. They were rookies, the lot of them. Rookies. Always he was given rookies to work with.

A smile crossed his features as he thought of Sergeant Red's parting words.

"I swore I'd never leave you behind again," he'd said.

"You're not," Jac had replied "You're just... scouting ahead. Don't worry. I'll be fine. I've got plenty of rookies to keep me occupied. Go on, your ship's waiting."

How Akida came to know all that he did is another story, to be told at another time and in a different place. It must only be understood that he did know. He knew a very great deal.

Akida had never known a night untroubled by dreams. Flashes of insight, brief and flickering, cast his dreams in an unfavorable light. He had seen... seen all. Perhaps it was his nature as a clone which permitted this. Because he was accepting of that which must be and would therefor not interfere, he was allowed to see that which might otherwise remain hidden from the living.

He had never understood what part he was meant to play in the story which had slowly unraveled before him as he grew up. He'd wanted only to mind the machines, to fix and repair. But he had found himself denied this simple pleasure, and been driven further into his own subconscious. He was not seeking answers, merely escape. Escape from the truth which he must not speak and could neither touch nor hinder. What would be, must be.

He awoke to the sound of slumber around him. Tonight. Everything he had seen, everything he knew, it came down to tonight. He lay awake in the dark, listening to the breathing and snoring of his brothers. Sorrow pierced him like an arrow and he closed his eyes against it, trying to will it away.

What will be, must be. How many times had he told himself that?.

His mind returned to that first inspection. Standing among clones who had never seen the things he had, who didn't know the things he did. He remembered feeling sure that they knew something, something he never would. And then he'd met Jac. Of all the people he'd met in dreams, Jac was not one of them. An enigma in his world, a clone who went against the grain while always seeming to serve the laws he had been taught to obey.

What was his purpose?. Why did I have to see him before... why couldn't we just never have met?. It would be so much easier... so much better, if I'd never seen him. Never known... what I know now.

A clone wasn't meant to make judgments about what was right or wrong. He wasn't meant to see the things Akida had. He wasn't meant to know, merely to serve.

Akida didn't move when the door was flung open. He knew who stood there. He knew what he and his brothers were being called to do.

He lay gazing at the ceiling for long seconds while his brothers moved around him, putting on their armor, preparing for the thing which seemed so heinous, so wrong. All because of Jac. Akida had never had any doubts before, but he did now.

What will be.

Akida didn't finish the thought, sitting up and rolling out of bed. Why did he have to know?. Why him?. Why not someone else?. Why not no one at all?. What was the point of seeing, of knowing, if you didn't do anything about it?. If you couldn't do anything about it?.

There are things in this life which are beyond the control of the living. Circumstances align themselves to create what are often called coincidences, blamed on chance and luck. Yet there are times when mere accident seems only too inadequate an explanation.

When Anakin Skywalker had met Jac, he had sensed a purpose in the clone. In his arrogance, he had tried to possess Jac, to claim the purpose for himself, to bend it to his will. But he had lost out to Obi-Wan. At the time of Order 66, Jac was the last thing on his mind. When he had come, reborn as Darth Vader, and ordered the clones to follow him into the Jedi Temple, unease had awoken in Akida. The young clone had long known of the terrible future that lay ahead.

The wave of clones followed Darth Vader up the steps and into the Temple. Not one hesitated, if they had any reservations they kept those thoughts carefully to themselves. For them, purpose and meaning had not changed. They did as they were ordered without question, which was exactly as they had been designed. Their entire existence, in a way, had come down to this moment. This is what they were.

Destroyers. Killers of the innocent. Not by their own plans, wants or beliefs, but at behest of an unseen hand whom they had been created to serve. It was this that Akida had always known, yet never been able to speak of. He had seen this. Now that it had begun, he wondered how many others might have seen. Had Jac known all along that this was how it would end?.

The clones spread out, ensuring that no younglings would escape from the slaughter. Each blast was the auditory registration of another life at its end. Another voice silenced, another pair of eyes which would never see again, a spark of life extinguished by the pull of a trigger.

Akida drifted farther than the others, to a darkened corner away from the center of the massacre. There he found the two younglings that he knew he would. He raised his rifle instinctively, responding to command as he had always been taught. But something stayed his hand. He looked into the eyes of the girl, and could not pull the trigger. For an eternal second, she held him so, though there seemed no reason. She could not stop all of them, and certainly could not stop Darth Vader.

Her eyes fell, dark lashes hiding her away, and Akida found he could pull the trigger. But something had happened in that instant. He heard her voice, deep inside, one soul to another.

The choice is yours.

Akida fired two quick bursts, which impacted the wall just above the girl and her brother. If that had been all that was required of him, Akida would have been most relieved. But he knew it was not. He had made this decision and now he must follow through to its conclusion. He did not know why this was so, only that it was, and it was not his place to question.

"Come," he said in a low voice.

He never once paused, never once looked back. What must be, must be. And so must this be.

No one noticed Akida leading Iyan and Jez away from the Temple. Perhaps no one would have cared if they had. Perhaps it was always meant that the two younglings should survive. But maybe it simply worked out that way purely by chance.

Akida left behind him a bloodied hall, once a sanctuary, now a place where Death had found form and substance, the boundary to all that was sacred shattered by a single driving force. Desire.

Want mistaken for need, corrupted and Evil, an entity in itself.

Lucky Squad had been temporarily reassigned to serve under General Sofiane and his Padawan, Iako Shay. Many squads were moving around at this late date of the war. It's entirely possible that there was sinister method behind this apparent madness. Breaking clones from those they were most likely to be loyal to, causing stress, confusion and chaos. Seemingly the work of Separatists planted inside the Republic. As it was clear that orders might not always be followed, even that most important and deeply planted of orders might not be so foolproof as it was meant to be.

With free-thinking clones, anything could happen.

If the Jedi felt any sense of foreboding that morning, they didn't let on. Red wasn't sure if he felt something amiss, or if it was just he unease about having left Jac behind. Lucky Squad would be alright, Red knew. It was always inevitable that Jac would grow separate from them. He was never too long in one place or any one group, Red knew.

Jac had, perhaps, been with the men of Lucky Squad for longer than any other before them. Red didn't know that.

The planet was a glittering one of great beauty, with clear waters and sand like diamonds. The sky was a wondrous shade of pale blue, the sun a bright shining point in a sea of fluffy clouds. It was a place approaching what some might narrowly define as being paradise. In moments, it would briefly become an extension of Hell itself.

The clones were lined off behind the Jedi. To an outsider, they might look like a wayward bunch, only vaguely keeping together. But anyone who knew them intimately could see the carefully arranged order to them, not a man out of place, moving in perfect sync with one another, doing so only subconsciously.

Red cast a glance at that great dome of sky, and it suddenly seemed faded to him, as if at any moment it might disappear entirely, leaving the world open to the icy grip of space. Was this some kind of warning, or was it merely a wandering mind?. Red would never know.

Sofiane signaled for the men to halt. He'd sensed something. Quite possibly the onrush of his own doom. The clones who could melted into the undergrowth, crouching down and disappearing in spite of their noticeable white armor. They were near a stream, and much of the crystalline bank was clear of any cover. The clones who had stopped here knelt down and hoped for the best.

Red found the water unusually distracting. Its splashing sounded overly loud, and he turned his head slightly to look at it. It seemed ordinary enough, a clear laughing brook and nothing more. With that realization, there came a flash of insight. Something was wrong.

Order 66 came across the radio, delivered straight to the captain crouched behind Sofiane. There was no hesitation. Collectively, the clones arose and turned on their masters.

All, that is, except for Lucky Squad. Sergeant Red raised his right hand and the men under his command tensed. But when he pointed, his finger drew a line to their brothers. If they felt horror, or had thoughts of disobeying their sergeant, they showed none of it in their actions, which were swift and undeniably sure. Perhaps they felt, as he did, that this was something they must do.

Not because someone was forcing them to, but because it was right for them to do so. Or perhaps they believed in Red, as he had believed in Jac. Maybe they simply trusted in him, and had yet to find themselves, what they believed in. In the end, it didn't matter.

Bristler fired the first shot, cold-blooded as ever. The others were quick to follow suit. For Lucky Squad had been taught to think, and to be devoted to those who had won their loyalty, not to a mere thing such as the Republic. They knew that their orders were not handed down by any God.

Perhaps in answer to Red's sense of "right", they turned on their own kind.

The Jedi who had once thought of every clone as being alike quickly recognized that Lucky Squad was defending him. It gave he and his Padawan a fighting chance. It was all they needed.

Darth Sidious had feared Jac's influence on the clones, and rightly so. Lucky Squad was not the only one to refuse to turn on the Jedi whom they had fought alongside. Nor were Sofiane and Shay the only ones to escape with their lives.

They left in their wake the bodies of many clones, whose blood poured across the once beautiful landscape, their betrayal of the Jedi coming to a violent end. In the end, the brook was no longer clear, nor laughing. It was stained with blood, and weighted with bodies. Blood of those who were, perhaps, innocent after all. Guilty only of having learned to follow their orders without question or hesitation.

"Where will we go?," Iako Shay asked her master.

Sofiane was silent. He didn't know where they could go. He knew the Jedi Order had fallen, though he did not understand how or why. He knew of no safe haven. If even the Temple itself had burned, where was there left for them to go?.

"I know a place," Red volunteered "I know of people who would hide us."

"Where?," Sofiane asked without hesitation.

Word on Aakaria spread fast. It wasn't long before every clone deserter on the planet knew of the two ships that had landed in the desert. It took little more time for Flame and his band to go and investigate.

They were startled to see Lucky Squad hanging around the larger craft; downright alarmed to find that the squad had Jedi with them. And they were utterly baffled by Akida and his passengers. A Jedi, a Padawan and two younglings. Four survivors of the massacre.

"Hello, Flame," were Red's first words "mind if we hang around for awhile?."

"Greetings, Red," Flame nodded gruffly, his choice of words betraying how much time he'd spent with the Na'taves "what brings you bastards here after all this time?. Finally come to round us up?."

"No. Actually... I'd like to try farming, if that's alright with you."

The survivors were brought before Majesty Meisheb. Her palace had burned, and she now resided in the forest with a handful of followers. Other Na'taves were scattered across the planet, every one of them in hiding, biding their time, eagerly awaiting the day when they would reclaim their world.

"I grant you sanctuary," she purred "None shall find you here."

And thus, the rebellion on Aakaria found its beginning.

Aakaria would one day be a safe haven for rebel fleets. It was also a training ground. Not for Jedi. Sofiane, his Padawan and the younglings did not stay long. No, it was a training ground for rebels. After all, who knew Imperial troops better than former members of the Grand Army of the Republic?.

Red and Lucky Squad soon moved on in secret, and set up a base of their own on the planet of the Baivd. The Baivd never joined in the war, indeed nobody who stayed on the planet ever saw them or the Sacred again. Perhaps they moved on and existed there no more. Nobody could say for sure.

In the chaos which followed the rise of the Empire, nobody took any notice of a squad missing here and there. In fact, it was impossible to track down everyone. Clones were of little interest when there were Jedi still to be hunted down and killed off.

Perhaps Vader looked for Jac. But, more likely, he had forgotten The Clone entirely. It seems likely that Jac never again entered Vader's thoughts, such an insignificant thing did The Clone seem to be. Such an easy thing to forget when one thinks themselves to be more important than anything. So easy. And so dangerous.

The radio tower on the Madhouse planet did not go up until after the order was sent out. The clones on the planet didn't know that the Republic as they knew it had suddenly ceased to exist. Because of this, no message was ever sent to them. Nobody knew they were there, nor is it likely that they even remembered the clones.

And so, the clones would wait on their guard for the ships to return and relieve them. Ships which would never come, because nobody even knew the clones were still here. Sooner or later, they must have realized that their wait would be in vain. But they, in their faithful service, would not choose to fail the masters who had abandoned them. They were the survivors. For them, the war would never be over.

Such was the price paid by the innocents.

You might be asking yourself: what did Jac do that was so great?. What difference did he make?. What purpose did he serve for the Force?. Look at his story again, and ask yourself this: what didn't he do?.

We are all of us given the opportunity to affect the people around us, the people who meet those people, and even people who only hear tell of us. More than that, the things we do can shape the world around us, have lasting effect on people who never even know we existed. That is our strength, and our weakness. And Jac was no exception.

Jac's purpose was in the people whose lives he touched, whose very beings were altered simply by having met him. Perhaps Obi-Wan, Anakin or even the Emperor himself were changed in subtle ways, which fundamentally altered their own behaviors, their own interactions. And, just perhaps, helped change the balance of the Force. Or maybe... it was all just happenstance, a series of unlikely coincidences which led down a trail of uncertainty. Maybe, just maybe, he really was just another clone.

Jac never received Order 66.

A/N: Thank you all so much for reading (and reviewing), I hope you enjoyed it.

Yes, I did notice several broken and uneven bits of the story as I was publishing it. They are the direct result of all the stuff going on in my life. Maybe someday I'll come back and rewrite them, or at least the 9th part of the story. Until then, this will have to do.

As you may have noticed, there are a veritable plethora of untold stories within this one. Due to my own nature, it is likely that these stories will remain untold, at least for the foreseeable future.

Thank you again, and goodnight everybody.