Author's Note: This chapter was co-written with the wonderful laloga, who not only wrote the second part of the chapter, but also gave permission for her Alpha-85, "Tully", to join the show once more. To find out more about this delightful character go to her profile at once and start reading. *Makes shooing motions* Go. Go.
The End of One, The Other Carries On
"Tin soldier made from fear and shame,
Tin soldier shaped by lies and pain.
I'm a tin soldier; weapon more than child.
A gun to point whichever way they choose.
I've nothing left to lose."
"Tin Soldier" by Julia Ecklar
Geonosis, Petranaki arena, 22 BBY
In the aftermath of his first real battle, Wren had to think about Asher and his long ago question about the reality of the simulations. Finally he had an answer, though Asher was no longer here to hear it.
No, the real thing is nothing like the simulations. It's a lot worse. Although, considering the amount of carnage he had witnessed a year ago, when one of the cannons had exploded during a training exercise, he supposed that that had come pretty close. Certainly, there had been the same amount of blood and shredded bodies as there were now. And the screams: that was another similarity. Except, in the training exercises, he'd never heard his enemies scream in the throes of death or mortal injury. And the Geonosian bugs could scream like nothing Wren had ever experienced. He figured that sound would stay with him for a while, just like the dry, rasping beat of their wings and the shrill ringing of the sonic blasters. Kripes, those things could do a lot of damage to a body.
He leaned against the wall of one of the many tunnels that riddled the Petranaki arena, close enough to the entrance for light to filter through the darkness, but far enough that the rest of the patrol wouldn't see him. He just needed a few moments to himself, to collect his thoughts and wait out the shaking that was running through his limbs. Fatigue, he knew, as much as the effects of his sinking adrenaline levels. He always felt drained after a fight, though during, weariness was a foreign concept.
And that's all it is, he reminded himself. Aftermath of an adrenaline rush, nothing more. Not…the other thing.
But who was he kidding? The fact was, his limbs weren't just shaking because of the strain of a prolonged battle. He'd done training simulations that had lasted longer than the subjugation of Geonosis. His body could take it. No, what bothered him was what he had seen during the battle and what he was hearing now.
Wren closed his eyes and listened to the urgent whispers coming through various comm channels in his helmet. Troopers' voices all of them, keeping to the closed squad and company channels, avoiding the public ones.
"Did you see….Was on the balcony with…Fought against the Jedi…Fought with the enemy…Why…How…Can't be…Couldn't have known…Dead now…Took twelve Jedi to kill him…Always honorable…"
He silenced the voices, closing all comm channels and leaving nothing but the emergency override as a means of contacting him. Blessed silence engulfed the private world of the inside of his helmet. Not that it did anything to alleviate the chaos in his mind. Nor did it help with the images flashing before his eyes. He saw it, again and again, Fett's armored body falling to the red, sandy ground of the arena, headless. With a mangled cry that was both frustration and sob, Wren pulled his helmet off of his head, letting it drop amidst the dust and rubble.
Fett was dead. Fett was dead? Fett was dead. But he was dead at the hands of another.
He spun around, away from the entrance and viciously kicked a Geonosian corps, riddled with blaster burns. The hard, chitin exoskeleton of the bug cracked with a pleasing sound beneath the force of his armored boot, so Wren kicked the thing again and again, letting his anger carry him away.
Fett was dead. Decapitated by a lightsaber instead of shot by a blaster or stabbed with a knife. Hell, he would have even broken the man's neck with his bare hands if he'd ever gotten the chance. Except, now he would never get the chance again.
The exoskeleton broke completely and something stinking and organic began to spill from the corpse, still slightly warm. It was the aroma of the thing that kept Wren from kicking it any more and he turned away from the dead bug. But he was still seething.
This wasn't how it was supposed to happen. Fett should have been his. He had been the one who had suffered for eight years under Fett. What possible grievance could the Jedi have had with the bounty hunter that would give him the right to usurp Wren's prerogative on ending Fett's life?
Not one. But still, before his eyes the purple blade kept descending, over and over again, always ending in that elegant sweep that cut cleanly through flesh, bone and cartilage. There hadn't even been any blood, the heat of the lightsaber having instantly cauterized the wound. No blood, no final death scream; just a clean, quick kill. That hadn't been what he had deserved!
Taking great, gasping breaths of the hot, dry air, Wren leaned his head against the dust and sand covered wall of the tunnel.
Fett was dead. Now he would never avenge Asher. Or Thrush. Because to Wren's way of thinking, Fett was as responsible for Thrush's fate, as he'd been for Asher's. Because ultimately, it had been Fett who had set all their lives into motion, and yet, he had never claimed any responsibility for the clones. They were just units to be trained after all.
Is this what you wanted, old man? He wondered. Are you proud of your clones, of the army you created? We came, we saw, we killed and we died. We're finally fulfilling our purpose.
He had thought that, once Fett was dead, he would feel…well…he wasn't sure what he had expected to feel. He had thought, maybe relief, validation, a sense of accomplishment as with the end of a difficult mission. A lessening, perhaps, of the constant anger that seemed to suffuse him; that made him want to strike out and fight and fight until he collapsed in exhaustion or was killed. But there was none of that. The anger was still there, as potent as ever. And beside that…he just felt empty. Empty and tired. He didn't even have the satisfaction of having the other clones see Fett for what he really was.
For kriffing fek's sake, the man had been fighting on the orders of the very person identified to them as the commander of the droid forces. And yet, they were still singing his praises!
Wren slammed his fist into the wall, liking the sound of his gauntlet scraping against the rock, liking the feel of the bones of his hand moving and giving way to the solid mass of stone. So he hit it again.
He'd seen it all; had been given a front-row seat, so to speak, from his position in the gunship as it had approached the Petranaki arena. He'd seen the Jedi, all huddled together and surrounded by tan colored battle droids and the dead. And he had seen Fett; Fett, all armored up on a balcony next to an elderly Human male, whom the HUD identified for him as Count Dooku, a priority target. And as he had lain down a volley of covering fire, he had watched Fett rocket down to the arena, where he had proceeded to fight against the Jedi.
Wren breathed in the close, musky smelling air of the tunnel and was once more overcome by the confusion he had felt at that moment, as the man he had hated for almost all of his life had, in fact, become the enemy. And confusion had given way to anticipation as his boots had connected with his very first battlefield and he had finally started the work he had been trained for, for the past ten years. And all the while he had kept his eyes on Fett, had worked himself towards the man's position, somehow knowing that, today of all days, it would finally end. Wren had just never expected that end to come due to the actions of another.
And in the wake of Fett's death, what was he left with? His vendetta against Fett had been the last thing to connect him to his old life, to his time as an ARC cadet, to his brief time with Asher. And now, it was all gone. So much dust on the harsh Geonosian winds. Where did that leave him?
Wren stepped back from the tunnel's wall, then leaned his back against it and slid down to the sand covered ground to sit amidst the blasted corpses of Geonosians and droids alike. He felt oddly disconnected to it all, as if neither he nor the planet beneath him were truly there. It was all just…so surreal. The unexpected call to battle, the flight here and the battle itself. The strangeness of the planet, the grace of the Jedi, the sudden reality of what it was the clones were doing. And always, always, the image of that unstoppable purple lightsaber. He'd never seen a lightsaber in action before that. But that too seemed far away and unimportant.
The last time he had felt this…disoriented, was right after he had killed that commando, during his informal trial.
Reflexively, he looked down at his hands, checking them for blood. But there was only the black of his gloves and the white plastoid of his gauntlets. He drew a thumb over the back of one hand and it came away covered in the red sand that marked this planet. Red, but not the red of blood. His armor had been as glaringly white and shiny as the walls of Tipoca when it had been issued to him. Now, it was filthy from hours of battle; covered in fine sand, scraped here and there from close contact with hard objects and charred from blaster burns. His shiny status hadn't lasted long.
And what blood there was, was purely his own.
Relieved, he let his head fall back against the tunnel wall. But the feeling of emptiness, of floating outside of himself persisted and he didn't like it. Didn't like how it left him feeling helpless, not in control. Just as he did not like having to see Fett's ignoble death every time he closed his eyes. The man hadn't even done him the favor of dying slowly.
The old anger swelled within him and he grasped at it gratefully, letting it crest and wash over him. Anything to forget; anything to get him away from the memory of the face he had turned into an indistinct pulp and the feel of another clone's blood on his hands.
He let the anger fill him; let it propel him forwards, to a stand and away from the wall. What did it matter that Fett was dead? So the old man had finally bitten the dust, well, he couldn't have chosen a better world for it. It was pointless to waste this much time and energy agonizing over a dead man. Jango Fett hadn't been worth this much consideration alive. And he had other things to look forward to now, aside from the killing of an old man.
The war they had been promised for ten years had finally arrived. Even as he and his patrol had swept through the arena, searching for possible last pockets of enemy resistance, there had been talk of future plans for reorganizing the fleet, of integrating the Jedi into the command structure permanently. Already there was speculation about where they would be sent next, rumors of planets seceding from the Republic, of a spreading droid army. He still had plenty of enemies to fight, even if they had not loomed as large or as long in his life as Fett had. There was an entire galaxy at war out there against which he could prove his skills.
The thought gave him some satisfaction, and even though it rang slightly hollow, he decided it was enough. Better than sitting around here, struggling with the reality of Jango Fett's death. He was a man for fierfek's sake, not some cadet crying out for his sergeant. He didn't need Fett. Didn't need the older man to show him the way, didn't need him as a standard by which to measure himself. It wasn't like he would miss the old barve, because he wouldn't. He didn't. Wren had always found his own way in life, so really, nothing had changed. He was still alone. And Fett wasn't worth this much emotion. He sure as kriff had never wasted any on his clones.
Wren rolled his broad shoulders, as if trying to shirk off this line of thought and walked a little further down the tunnel to retrieve his discarded bucket. It was time he got back to the patrol. He was just in the process of bending over to get the helmet, when he caught the slightest of movements from the shadows. His head shot up and dropping the helmet again, he lifted his Deece instead.
The blaster whined with the charge and he quickly activated the small lamp attached to the barrel, cursing his lack of helmet. Stupid. Just karking stupid.
The lamp was not as powerful as the one attached to his helmet and barely pierced the shadows further inside the tunnel. But it was enough light that, for perhaps a second or more, he saw the startled and filthy face of a child. A child with his face, when he had been about five standard years old and had looked like ten. They both froze.
Boba! The name went through him like a shot and Wren quite honestly did not know what to do. Boba had been with Fett when he had come to Geonosis. That made him the enemy as well, didn't it? So he should take him into custody.
Or just shoot him, another, more malicious voice whispered in his head. It would be easy too. His finger was already curled around the trigger. All he needed to do was pull and Fett's pet clone would be done for. He would have exacted at least some measure of revenge against the bounty hunter.
But even as he considered shooting the boy, another memory came to him. Three, to be precise. It was Asher's face, startled and happy after Wren had offered to help him improve his marksmanship. It was Thrush's face, empty and bleak as he gazed over the ruins of the training room that had become the grave of most of his company. And it was the face of the commando whose name he still did not know, and who was dead at Wren's hands. So many already dead before the war had started. So much clone blood already spilt and through his own fault as well. Did he have to add to that kill count?
Wordlessly, Wren lowered his blaster and Boba scuttled backwards into the darkness of the tunnel.
You're on your own now kid. Welcome to the club.
The comlink on his wrist beeped, as did the one in his helmet. Wren pressed the receive button and the voice of a clone, uppity with authority, echoed through the silent tunnel.
"All squads, report to RV point Gamma for transport. Repeat, report for transport offplanet. Over."
Wren gathered up his helmet and made his way towards the exit of the tunnel to rejoin his patrol squad. It looked like endex for now. He cast one last look over his shoulder into the darkness. He wondered suddenly, if Boba had seen what he had seen; if the clone knew how Fett had died. And he wondered, if Boba was feeling angry. Perhaps, he even felt hatred.
Not my problem, he thought and stepped into the glaring light of Geonosis. He had other concerns now. Like getting to the RV point and seeing where his next fight would come from. There were a lot of enemies waiting for him to take them down.
Geonosis, RV point Gamma, three klicks outside of the Petranaki arena.
As far as first battles went, Alpha-85 supposed this one had been a success.
For starters, he was alive – immensely preferable to the alternative. The worst injury he'd sustained was a shot to his left arm that had stung pretty badly but had not incapacitated him; after he'd been struck, a slather of bacta and a stim shot had done wonders, though now he was starting to feel the pain-killing element wearing off. His kit was no longer shiny and clean, but scoured with rusty, Geonosian dust, and his blue-striped kama now sported a few char-marks where he'd managed to avoid stray blaster-bolts hitting his body.
Some time during the fray he'd momentarily stopped shooting things in order to change out the powerpack on his deece, and had been set upon by a trio of bugs. Thanks to his training, he'd been able to dispatch them the low-tech way via his fists and his forehead, the latter of which was smarting a little from the impact.
Ah, well. At least the bugs had made a satisfying crunch when he'd smashed them to stinking pieces.
Grinning behind his bucket at the memory, Alpha-85, who called himself "Tully," scanned the area again, taking in the controlled chaos in the aftermath of the battle. The perimeter had been secured and reinforced by a circle of All Terrain Tactical Enforcers. The heavy Mass-driver cannon positioned atop each of the AT-TEs were performing continuous sweeps of the terrain, wary of a possible ambush. Although Geonosis had been officially ruled as subjugated, there was always the chance of a last-ditch enemy offensive and no army was ever more vulnerable than in the first hours after a battle, when the chaos of the fight gave way to the chaos of shifting thousands of troops offplanet and towards the waiting Acclamator-class assault ships orbiting above.
So while a sea of plastoid mingled within the relative safety of the circle, squads still patrolled outside of the perimeter, weapons ready, and the AT-TE crews were still on-duty. In the meantime, what seemed like an endless line of clones was waiting to step aboard the troop transports for evac from the dusty world.
Some of the satisfaction from his bug-crunching memories faded and Tully sighed. Tired, hungry, sore – not to mention the way his kriffing arm was hurting worse with each moment – he was beyond ready to be off this rock...but of-crinking-course he'd been assigned to what he thought of as "babysitting:" overseeing the regular grunts as they made their way back to the starships.
It was his own fault, though he didn't really want to admit it.
Considering that Tully had seen more than a few shinies lose their heads with all the new experiences, the overall fighting had gone well. Even though he knew a loss of control was to be expected – the regular clones had not had the same thorough training he'd been given – he'd made his own fair share of cracks at the grunts' expense over the ARCs' private comm channel. Shinies were there to be mocked, and Tully figured he'd stopped being a shiny a long time before today, despite the new scars on his armor.
Anyway, he and several of the other ARCs had laughingly commented on the ineptitude of the regular clones, but only Tully had been unlucky enough to be overheard by ARC Captain Dax, who'd then seen fit to bestow him with this delightful little task.
Though his body was still humming with adrenaline, Tully knew he'd crash from exhaustion before too long and hoped that he'd be away from here well before that happened. Assuming the crinking shinies can get a move on, that is.
With that, he cleared his throat before calling out to the steady stream of grunts who were lining up in obedient, orderly rows before him, waiting their turn to step aboard the larties. "Troopers! If you're not bleeding from the head or missing a limb, hurry it up!"
At his shouting, most of the troopers did pick up the pace, but the line still moved no faster than a Dagobian boulder-slug, and his teeth gritted. ARC troopers were vastly more efficient than these di'kutle, but he knew that the regular clones' numbers were what gave them an advantage in battle, rather than any kind of useful training. They were meant to be disposable, and as he watched them shuffle along, even more of his satisfaction faded at the dark thought. It was a reality that he and the other ARCs were well aware of, but normally he didn't have to think about it too much, segregated as they'd all been for much of their lives.
Tully watched as two bucket-less clones limped along before him, bracing each other up as they went, and speaking quietly. He wondered how many more battles either of them would see before they fell and didn't rise again. He wondered if they were even aware of how much useful information was left out of their training. It was common knowledge among the ARCs that the grunts were only told the bare minimum, just enough to let them point and shoot. Nothing more was necessary for the cannon fodder. Poor bastards.
He was jostled out of his thoughts when something hard and unforgiving bumped into his injured arm, causing him to let out a hiss of pain. Annoyance flared right along with the feeling, so Tully rounded on the trooper – some crinking shiny who wasn't paying attention to where he was going. "Watch your step, di'kut, or I'll knock some sense of direction into that thick skull of yours."
At first Tully only saw a regular trooper with the markings of a private, his armor stained and charred in places like those of all the clones around them. This fellow had been in the act of putting on his helmet, but at Tully's words he'd turned his head slightly to the right, perhaps to catch sight of who was shouting at him.
That was when Tully caught sight of the scar at the corner of the other trooper's mouth: a thin line that ran up his cheek, giving the illusion of lips turned up into a perpetual half-smile.
Recognition, hard and icy cold, formed in the pit of Tully's stomach. No kriffing way...but I know that scar. His mouth fell open in utter shock as he gaped at a man he'd thought long dead. "Wrench?"
It was impossible, surely it was. Surely it was the stim playing tricks on his eyes, or the rippling heat from the Geonosian sun toying with his brain. Surely Tully wasn't looking at Alpha-20, a fellow ARC trooper who'd been terminated after...
Tully's gut churned at the memory. The day of that commando's death had been one that he would never forget. Of course, Tully had seen clone blood before but the sight had never been as horrific as it had that day. It was murder and betrayal, all rolled up into a knot of unanswerable questions.
What had been worse was the knowledge that Wrench – ferocious, brilliant, Wrench – had killed another clone in a fit of fury that, in retrospect, Tully thought they all should have seen coming.
And now he was looking at the man, the brother, the murderer who himself should be dead.
This didn't make sense; it was like trying to put on his helmet only to find that it didn't fit any longer. Tully's throat went dry and scratchy, like it'd somehow gotten coated with dust despite the filters of his bucket. Impossible. It had to be impossible. He swallowed and called out again, a note of urgency in his voice where authority should have been. "Trooper!"
A few helmeted heads glanced his direction, and the lips of the trooper quirked upwards, turning the half-smile into a smirk of arrogance and amusement. The expression, like the scar itself, was way too familiar for comfort. Then the face of the man Tully thought he knew turned away, quickly shoving on his bucket and moving towards the waiting transports. Tully debated for one moment, then decided to haran with his task and moved to catch the other clone. He had to know the truth. It was irrational, crazy and stupid, and he was probably hallucinating, but he had to know if it was really Wrench.
Of course, he had no idea what he'd do if it was. If Wrench hadn't been terminated, as Fett had told them all...
Tully gritted his teeth. He knew Fett hadn't told them everything, but the thought that he'd been lied to so blatantly made him want to shoot something, or someone.
Now, of course, the kriffing shinies decided to hurry along, so Tully found himself pushing through what seemed like an ocean of plastoid, wave after wave of clones who were unwittingly preventing him from reaching his goal. Frustrated with his lack of forward motion, Tully switched tactics and tried to call his lost brother's name again but the word got stuck in the lump that had suddenly formed in his throat.
But his efforts were useless.
By the time Tully was able to break free, the trooper had disappeared into the anonymous mass of white-armored clones, just one among the many. Gone. Like a ghost; like he'd never been there at all. Frowning, Tully stood beside one of the gunships, rubbing his aching arm and trying to figure out what the hell just happened. He removed his bucket and pulled out a water-flask, trying to put his thoughts in some kind of order as he gulped down the liquid and savored the cool trickle down his throat.
It was probably just his imagination. He'd seen an osik-load of other clones today, more than usual. Yeah, Fett didn't tell them everything, but there was no way – no way – that Wrench wouldn't have been terminated for the murder of the commando. Hell, Tully had seen fellow ARCs terminated for a lot less. The Kaminoans did not tolerate aberrations and it was no secret that Jango Fett had always hated Wrench.
Fat lot of good that did either of them.
Tully took one last sip of water, still trying to correlate what his eyes had shown him with what his brain understood. To his heart, he gave no consideration because it was unreliable, anyway. Maybe he was more fatigued than he realized. Maybe he'd gotten a concussion from knocking the bugs around. Maybe what had seemed like an unmistakeable scar had just been a post-battle hallucination.
Maybe he was kriffing insane.
A part of him hoped that was the case, because he didn't like the idea that he'd been lied to any more than the idea that any kind of useful information had been left out of his training. If Fett hadn't told the other ARCs the truth about Wrench, what else had he kept hidden? What other answers were out there, hidden beneath questions Tully didn't know to ask?
Stowing the flask, Tully glanced around again but of course "Wrench" was nowhere to be found. I'm just tired, he thought with a scowl. That's all there is to this whole mess.
It was useless to fret about all that nonsense now, anyway. He had a kriffing job to do and the last of his energy was fading fast. He shoved his bucket back on and turning back towards the rows of shinies who had – predictably – begun to mill about in his absence. Fragging fantastic.
"Oh, come the kriff on," he called out to the nearest bunch, who nearly fell over themselves to get out of his way. "This isn't an obstacle course, guys. It's simple: Get. On. The transports. Now."
As the grunts scrambled towards the nearest larty, Tully resisted the urge to look around again. Right now he had a job to do and it was sloppy to divert his attention from the task at hand, no matter how annoying it was. The best course of action was to let the sighting go and ask a medic to scan him later, just in case he did have a concussion.
All around him, the shinies hurried along, but Tully suddenly felt very odd and out-of-place. It made no sense. He was just tired. He needed to focus on his job and nothing else.
Because, he told himself, it was pointless to search for a dead man among the living.
