Ahsoka Tano and Captain Rex Are Dead
Bonus Epilogue 4.
"The Hutt's trying to stall us."
There was a snort of agreement on the other end of the open comm channel – Chopper, Tup decided – and then Gus' voice cut in, annoyed. "Tup's right. Slug's trying to get out of paying us. Keep an eye out."
Tup didn't need to move to take a look around the warehouse. The HUD in his helmet wasn't as elaborate or filled with upgrades as the one that had once been inside his clone trooper bucket, but it served – and it had wraparound vision. His eyes slid to the left, and the cameras slid obediently along the track of his eyes, scoping out the sights well outside of his peripherals. The catwalk along the western wall now had a single man standing just to the right of what remained of a crane. The crane's boom, latticed rather than solid, provided just enough cover to make a shot at him difficult. The Rodian was not yet poised for shooting, but there was a blaster rifle in his hands, and he was casually surveying the floor below. Two more men, another Rodian and a Twi'lek, had slipped in from the eastern doorway, quietly taking up posts along the exit.
"Chopper," Gus said, his voice low though no one outside of their comm channel could hear, "You keeping the engine warm for us?"
Chopper gave a single, abrasive chuckle. It wasn't hard to imagine a smirk quirking one side of his mouth, wrinkling the faded scars on his cheek. "And the Plasbursts. Just say the word."
The last thing they needed was Chopper getting trigger happy on a Hutt gang, much less setting a dockside on fire. Still, it was increasingly looking like they were about to get double crossed. Krething Hutts. Tup kept his shoulders relaxed, spine straight and posture at ease, though he silently rolled forward on his feet, shifting his weight for faster response time if he had to make a run towards Jesse, at the front of their little triangle and having to deal with Jeeba directly.
Tup was glad. Jeeba was annoying. She usually paid well, though. Usually. Pity this was about to devolve into a firefight. Gus was standing to Tup's left, making his own subtle preparations, shifting his weight backward and stretching out a kink in his neck as he tilted his blaster upward a few more inches. His helmet was tilted down, casually, as though he weren't really paying much attention to Jesse or the melodramatic Hutt in front of them. He angled himself towards the side exit, where the Rodian and the Twi'lek were. They were trying to catch the three clones in a crossfire. Wouldn't be that easy, though. Gus would take those two, he had the would-be sniper on the catwalk.
The south exit was still open. Having Chopper and their rather menacing interceptor looming over it must be dissuading them from getting too close – either that or they were planning to herd the three of them out that way – but that was unlikely, due to Chopper and the ship. The light freighter was rigged out as an interceptor, and with the modifications the four of them had made, there wasn't much a little gang like Jeeba's would have to fight it off with. Especially not with a pissed off Chopper at the helm.
"But I wanted him alive!" Jeeba was moaning, her stubby, jewelry laden arms waving in the air and clutching at her – cheeks? Or was that a chin? Tup wrinkled his nose. Some body part that was roughly on her head was getting grasped in theatric agony, anyway. "Oh, my poor darling!"
Jesse's voice was crisp, and clearly running out of patience. "The reward said dead." The imagecaster, with the glowing, fallen image of one of Jeeba's former lackeys, winked out as Jesse clipped it back onto his belt. "You reneging on the contract, Jeeba?"
The Hutt moaned again, writhing backward as she clutched her head. Bracelets jangled up her arms and a gaudy, fist-sized faux ruby glittered at her puce-colored throat, the chain overwhelmed by the rolls of her flesh. "You killed him!" she shrieked, green eyes rolling up in her head, and that seemed to be the cue the others were waiting for, as Jeeba flung her hands in the air and began screaming.
The first shot was towards Jesse, at the forefront of their little group; Jesse though, was already moving backwards from Jeeba's arm waving, and though there was a startled yelp as a green streak of plasma burned the air an inch from his chest, it didn't hit. Instead, it tore through the air with a scent of ozone and fire, and slammed into the far wall of the warehouse. Jeeba's histrionic screeching accompanied the sudden shouting of her men – two behind her, the rifleman on the catwalk, and the two at the eastern exit – and the discharge of blasters.
Tup moved forward, twisting to the left and bringing his blaster to bear. He'd never been a sniper in the GAR – but his aim was slightly above average for a clone, and that meant he was likely several times better than whatever scum Jeeba had scrounged up locally. Still, no chances. He moved quickly. A blue blast, then another, charred the air in front of him as Gus' shots flew outward; further shots he could just see out of the corner of his eye. As Tup moved forward to take his shot at the Rodian hiding behind the crane's boom, Gus dropped to a knee and continued fire at the two door guards.
The Rodian's alignment was wrong, for shooting him and Gus. A little too far forward. He was prioritizing Jeeba, and with Jesse still closest, that meant Jesse was the first target. Tup grit his teeth and fired; the shot, had it been fully clear, would have hit the Rodian sniper full in the chest, but instead it dinged off the latticework, reducing the metal scrolling to slag. Still, it bought a moment, the Rodian flinching back and twisting aside as the shot slammed into the boom, frighteningly close to his face. Jesse rolled to the side, blaster coming up as his head swung around, back to Tup's as he opened fire on Jeeba's two bodyguards. She let out a gargling shriek as one of them was flung off his feet by a Jesse's second shot.
The Rodian had recovered; Gus was swearing virulently over the comm channel, and he could hear Jesse's heavy breathing, faint grunts as his blaster recoiled into his shoulder. The room was filling with the smell of char, smoke and blood. The air filters on his current bucket weren't nearly as good as they were before. Tup grimaced, ignored Gus' shouting, and fired again just as the Rodian took aim.
This time, the latticework didn't get in the way. Tup jerked aside just as a green shot sizzled towards him, streaking through the space he was still vacating and racing down his calf armor and boot, singeing the armor and melting the boot; Tup got a whiff of melted plastoid just as he felt the burning sensation slice down his ankle and outer edge of his foot.
Still, the Rodian was the one down, and Tup watched as his arms flailed, his right one flopping over the edge of the catwalk and releasing his blaster to drop below.
Another shout from Gus, this time accompanied by a shout from Jesse; Tup spun, feeling his leg spasm from the sudden twist after injury, but he moved through it.
He made it around just in time to see the Twi'lek dropping a Force pike down on him, the tip crackling with blue energy.
It was peaceful.
It was also a place he'd seen plenty of times, in one shape or another. Sometimes it was a beach, with turquoise water turning to white foam on a sandy shore. Sometimes it was a mountain side, high above lavender clouds, the sky turning red from sunset. Sometimes it was as it was this time, a wide, open plain filled with tall green grass, waving in the wind. The sky was blue and high above, cloudless.
There was never a horizon. It always tapered off and grew blurry before the land met the sky. It was nice though, calm.
"Well, at least I'm not dead," he said with a sigh towards the blank blue sky, and propped himself up on his elbows. You didn't dream when you were dead, especially not of places you wanted to go, even if they were somewhat generic and fuzzy on the edges.
"No, you're not," came the reply, and Tup turned his head to see the Captain sitting about a meter away, in full armor though with his bucket sitting on the grass beside him. "Got hit with that Force pike pretty hard though. Jesse got him for you."
Tup shrugged. That's what brothers did. If he'd missed the Rodian, Jesse would probably have a hole in his head by now. "I'm in the med pod?"
"Yeah. Been about six hours. You won't be contracting with Jeeba again."
"Dead?"
The Captain shook his head, looking skyward. "No, but she got her tail burned. Been wailing about her beauty being tarnished. You four better keep an eye out for bounties on you."
Tup sighed. Wonderful. It was their first as a team, though if anyone figured out they were clones, there'd be Imperial bounties on their heads instead, and those would be considerably more profitable. He lay back down, looking at the blades of grass curling in around him and the blue expanse of sky beyond. They kept their helmets on, and not just when doing business. They didn't opt for the Mando look, though it was tempting – that particular brand of armor came with its' own warning – but the four clones knew little of Mandalorian culture, outside of the occasional cuss and a few lines from Vode An. Fighting was another thing they knew, and taking up as a band of roving mercenaries and bounty hunters for hire was their best fit for a post-GAR career choice.
Sixteen months of scraping by. It wasn't all bad – they went where they wanted, turned down jobs that seemed sketchy, got to eat better food than in the GAR on occasion – but Tup hated it. Hated always running, looking over his shoulder, never knowing when or how it would end. Fearing capture. Fearing recognition. Being caught in the same sort of violent loop as in the GAR with no way out of it. He was good at soldiering because it was all he'd ever known, all he'd ever expected to do. But sixteen months of seeing the galaxy – there was so much more out there. There were other options, beside fighting and killing for a living.
He just had no idea how to grasp them.
"What it like, Captain? Not having to fight all the time?"
The Captain turned his head towards him, looking slightly surprised. His brows were lifted. "Tired?"
Tup kept his eyes on the sky, an expanse of perfect blue. "Too tired."
The Captain paused for a long moment, and though the grass rippled in the wind, there was no sound. At length, the Captain said, "It's different. Quieter. But I'm not the best one to ask about settling down."
Of course not. The Captain and the Commander still popped up at times, checking up on them, giving them tips and advice and information. Helping them stay one step ahead of the Empire. They were still fighting, in their own, ghostly sort of way.
"You want to stop fighting, Tup?"
Tup frowned up at the sky. "I'm no coward."
A chuckle made him turn his head towards the Captain, who had a small smile on his lips as he looked into the blurry distance. "No one said you were, Tup."
The sky rippled, and the tips of the grass began to blur. Tup said aloud, "I'm waking up," but there was no response; the Captain was gone, and the haze of the horizon was drawing closer, until it turned into the harsh light of the overhead lamps in the medical pod.
Jazz hummed through the air. A quartet of Bith musicians were in one corner of the cantina, rocking back and forth as they blew, strummed, or pounded on their instruments, respectively. Leaning against the back wall, a chest-height round table in front of him with a solitary drink, Tup tapped his foot against the floor, keeping time to the rhythm. The music snaked through the room, slipping between a group of tipsy Sullustans before winding its way past a pair of Devaronians playing sabacc against a Toydarian. On a precariously narrow stage, a Twi'lek in diaphanous silks swung around a pole, her lekku flying around her as her hips swayed to the music and a mixed group of men at nearby tables salivated.
For a moment, Tup closed his eyes. Everything was peaceful; or as peaceful as such a place could be. The music played. The smell of alcohol hung in the air, pungent, sharp, sweet, becoming cloying as it mixed with the stink of the sweat, hormones and grime of a dozen different species. The Bith musicians paused, and there was a breath of quiet, where all the sound was the clinking of glasses and the mindless mumble of voices. Then the music returned, lively and bright, bringing some spark to the otherwise dingy room.
Tup's foot tapped on the floor, sticking a little bit each time it touched. Someone had spilled liquor here not long before Tup had taken up his vigil. He folded his arms across his chest and tilted his head to the left, towards the dancer spinning on her pole, while his helmet's screen swept to the right, towards Gus in an alcove with two Dugs. It was either Gus or Jesse who handled face to face transactions. Tup had discovered he had no taste for belligerent clients, never quite knowing when to push back or how. Chopper had the opposite problem; he had no difficulty haggling, but would often be too blunt, too rude, and they'd found themselves separating Chopper from a potential customer twice before he'd been disbarred from representing their little group of mercenaries.
Gus was handling things today. The Dugs looked upset, pounding their feet onto the table and turning in towards each other to argue. Still, the anger appeared to be of a more general sort, and not directed at Gus, sitting casually across from them with his hand near his blaster, but not tensed for shooting. It was a good sign, really. The Dugs clearly were in need of something and were upset about it – the greater their need, the greater their hunger for what they needed, the more Gus would be able to wring out of them. Their ship could use some new power couplings and a thorough check of the hyperdrive, by a real mechanic. A few weeks of food would also be in order, and not just protein bars and dehydrated nutrient cubes. Salads. Pastas. Steaks. Sweets. Real food. Tup's belly gurgled at the thought, his mouth watering slightly.
Gus leaned forward slightly, an arm coming out to lie casually on the table, and he waved a hand easily. The Dugs quieted, heads drawing closer to Gus' as they listening to whatever it was he was saying to secure the job.
Tup heard the fight before he saw it, taking a moment to watch Gus' dealing with the Dugs. The sound of a table crashing to the floor drew his attention, along with everyone else's, towards the pair of Devaronians and the Toydarian, who had, a moment ago, been playing sabacc. Glass shattered and the Toydarian's wings were up and out, humming as they rapidly beat the air. "Cheaters!" he shouted, a three fingered hand reaching for the holster at his potbellied waist.
But the Devaronians were already moving. One was laughing, his long tongue curling out of his mouth to taste the air, while his friend slid forward, not with a blaster, but with a vibroblade, flat along the palm of his hand. It pierced into the Toydarian's small chest with a vaguely wet, crunching noise, breaking bone and sinking into vital organs. With a gurgle and a yelp, the Toydarian's blaster shot fired wide and high, thudding into the ceiling and taking out a light as he fell to the floor, the Devaronian still on top of him.
There was a caesura in the music, a pause for breath in the dozen conversations. The dancer on the stage stilled, her eyes wide and her lekku trailing over her shoulders.
The Devaronian stood up. Flicked his wrist and sent droplets of blood splattering to the floor. He sheathed his blade on his left forearm, then looked around at the wide eyes watching him.
He grinned.
The caesura ended. Music began again. The murmur of conversation struck back up. The dancer tossed her head back and continued to dance.
It was not the first time there was a death in the middle of the cantina, after all.
The Devaronian flipped a coin towards the disgruntled looking barkeeper, who jerked his head towards the droid beside him. The droid backed out of the bar, wheeled over to the corpse, and hauled it up. It then headed towards the back, and, presumably, the exit.
The entire scene took less than thirty seconds.
"It's settled. Ready to go, Tup?" Gus' voice asked over the comm. Tup looked around the room, stopping for a moment on the pair of Devaronians pushing their way towards the bar and a less messy area. The overturned table, glass, alcohol, cards, and green blood lay splattered across the floor, seemingly forgotten.
Nobody except for him seemed to be concerned at all.
Tup looked away from the mess, and said, "Yeah, Gus. I'm ready to go."
"I saw a man murdered today, and nobody cared."
It was night on the plain this time, and there were two gibbous moons hanging heavy in the black sky above. The horizon was still far in the distance, vague and blotchy where the seam of the sky met the weft of the land. The grass was green, bordering on golden brown in the moonlight, stirring faintly in the wind. Seed pods were forming on the tips of each frond, young yet with electric yellow buds. The heavier, more mature stalks bobbled in the light breeze. Not grass, then. A type of grass, maybe, but more than just grass – some sort of foodstuff: wheat, probably. Propped up on his elbows, his legs stretched out before him, he could see bulbous green trees in lines in the distance. If he was sitting in a wheat field, then the trees were probably planted there deliberately to prevent soil erosion.
"That happens," the Captain said, standing a meter away, his arms folded over his chest. He was in full armor, as always. His helmet was clipped to his belt.
Tup snorted. "It shouldn't."
"No," the Captain agreed. "But it happens."
Tup tilted his head back and looked at the moons. Each one was three-quarters full, convex at the edges as each one ballooned out towards fullness. One was a pinkish-orange. The other greenish-yellow. The greenish one was heavily pockmarked by craters, and shapes and fissures could be seen scrawled over its surface from orbital bombardment. The pinkish one, smaller, had a smooth sea of serenity across most of its landmass, with white curves and crests interrupting its surface.
"This is a real place, you know," the Captain said, and Tup turned his head to look at him again. The Captain was looking out over the sea of grass. It reached his knees. "It's nice. Not for me, but maybe for you."
A week ago, a day ago, he'd have frowned and told the Captain he wasn't leaving the others. He wasn't going to go run off and hide somewhere by himself. He wanted to be with his brothers – not alone in the galaxy – even if it meant continuing on in a cramped little ship with not nearly enough food or energy. Even if it meant fighting on after he was sick of running. Even if it meant staying a mercenary when he was sick of being a soldier, much less one for hire.
Then some unknown Toydarian in a third rate cantina in the middle of nowhere was stabbed in the chest, and nobody cared.
That was what his death was going to look like. His brothers might care. But no one else. He'd either get killed on a mission, caught by the Empire, or stabbed to death in the middle of a cantina while people looked on with only the vaguest of interest.
He didn't want that to be his fate: blasted to bits trying to kill someone for money, tortured to death by the Empire, or tossed in a dumpster by a cantina droid.
Captain Rex was a good man. Honest. Fair. And too kind, looking out for him from beyond the grave.
The scene was infinitely pastoral, a stark contrast to so much of what he'd seen in his life. No stark white halls like Kamino. No grey corridors like those on Republic star destroyers. No grimy landing docks like those on a thousand different worlds. No dirty cantinas where men were murdered and forgotten.
There was sky and stars, moons and trees, grass and wind.
Tup tilted his head to look up at the Captain again. "What are the coordinates?"
It was warm, on this world.
During the day, as the yellow sun rose into a blue sky, the heat became all encompassing, permeating the air and radiating against his sweaty skin from all directions. The early morning was cooler, thanks to the lack of sunlight, but now, nearing noon, the warmth from the sun poured down from above, and the heat of geothermal venting seemed to creep up his feet from below. His stomach was beginning to ache with hunger, and Tup began to look forward to having another packet of rations for lunch. The nearest grove of bulbous, ash-green trees was several minutes' walk ahead or to the east; he opted for ahead. Might as well get a little further down the road before he stopped.
The road itself was dirt, pressed flat from the resistance of repulsors; though he hadn't seen any, there must be speeders that came this way now and again, just frequently enough to keep it smooth and clear of debris. Pebbles protruded from the packed, dry earth, and scraggly brown weeds clawed their way out of cracks of dirt. The grass that stretched out on either side of him rolled, sloping away and rolling out over hills in the distance, green and thick, but somewhat faded, as though there had been some mild sort of drought lately, and the grass was struggling to stay alive.
Tup licked his lips and frowned before turning his attention back to the winding road before him. Three hours of walking since the last town. It wasn't so bad, compared to his time in the GAR. His feet didn't hurt, and he wasn't anywhere near dehydrated. But with the pressing, humid warmth from all angles, and the lack of insulating, temperature controlled armor, he was getting a little tired, sagging under the constant heat. A speeder coming along would have been too fortuitous, of course.
He shouldered his backpack and trudged on, ignoring the feeling of soreness in his feet. The Captain was real. A ghost, yes, but real. The Captain wouldn't have sent him out into the middle of nowhere on a backwater world to die. There was something out here; the grass, though browner than it should be, was grazed. Clumps of it were shorter than others, and there was a distinct lack of flowering plants. There were grazers around here. Nerf, probably, though possibly bantha; there was plenty of scrub for either herbivore to eat - not a lot of tracks for bantha though. Nerf. Maybe eopies.
Tup crested a hill, drawing up to a cluster of the scattered, platter branched trees and edging over into the little bit of shade they produced. With the sun now directly overhead, there was little relief from its brightness. He shielded his eyes with a hand and turned, looking out over the hills. He'd reached what must be the upper lip of a grassed over caldera. The land seemed to be shaped like a pair of lopsided rings, their bands pressed and rising against each other. Behind him sprawled a circular caldera, mostly appearing to be pasture. Ahead, though, lay a larger, more manicured, oval shaped basin, with a patchwork of fields checkering it in shades of green, brown, gold, and violet, swaying slightly in the light breeze off the north.
Fields and crops meant farmers. People. Probably those who traveled the dirt road into town often enough to keep it smooth. The coordinates the Captain gave him ended around here, somewhere.
"You'll know when to stop, Tup," the Captain said, and when the trooper gave the Captain a skeptical look, the Captain had merely smiled and faded away. "Keep walking until you know when to stop."
There was, tucked into the fields and into a dip in the terrain, a set of darker smudges, in a cleared away ring. Compared to the size of the caldera itself, the structures were small, modest even, but likely enough to have residents. Keep walking until you know when to stop. The homestead was probably still a good half hour walk away, possibly a bit more. His stomach rumbled, and he twisted to pull it around himself enough to grab a nutrient bar, before slinging it back around his shoulders. The bar was, as they always were, dry, but mixed with a little water from the canteen on his belt, it was tolerable.
He walked forward. He could take a little break at the homestead, if they'd let him, and hopefully refill his canteen. He was running low on supplies, too - a farm might let him work a couple hours in exchange for a meal, before taking off again. It was cooler walking at night, though not much. He'd be able to check his coordinates more carefully against the stars.
It smelled of young wheat, and overturned earth. Dusty but also clean, the smell of dirt and the plants rising out of it. Not a bad smell. Fresh, in a way recycled starship air never did. This world was harsh in its own ways, but it was a different kind of harshness than what was found in the life of a mercenary for hire. It was less men being cruel to men, and more the difficulty of living on a warm, backwater world.
The wheat gave way to corn, just above knee high. He'd overheard someone in town expressing that as a good thing, this time of year. Something about the amount of growth compared to the number of months it'd been growing. Despite the dryness of the soil, it was prospering. The leaves were just long enough to flop over, though the stalks were still short. The very beginnings of silk were visible within the long leaves, currently more blossom than vegetable. The leaves rustled in the wind, creating a sea of green across the field.
He followed the path down until he reached a gate, and the clearing. To his right was a lumpy, almost boot-shaped house with a porch. To his left, a roundel-shaped barn with the door open; the pungent smells of hay and animal waste emanating from it. The homestead was positioned in a slight dip in the land, and with a smattering of the lumpy-branched trees ringing the area, it felt just a couple of degrees cooler.
It was quiet for a moment, as he paused at the gate. In the stillness, though, he could just hear the sound of an engine, slow and heavy, rumbling nearer. Stepping just inside the gate, he waited, doing his best to appear harmless and perhaps a little lost. Both were true anyway, though the blaster at his hip declared him not entirely without defense, should anyone try to attack him. He wrapped his hands loosely around the straps of his backpack, well away from the blaster and within plain sight.
The grinding, dull drone grew louder, and after a long moment, a bulky green and yellow speeder tractor chugged into view, rounding the back of the barn. A man was perched on the driver's seat, made slightly hazy by the amount of dust the old tractor was kicking up from its' repulsors. Tup straightened as the man twisted in his seat, pulled a lever, and the tractor wheezed to a stop.
The man noticed him, body tilting in his direction for a moment, before he swung down from the driver's seat. He ran a hand across his forehead, then down his face, and flecks of sweat flew off to the ground. He was in dirty, dusty clothes that were probably brown to begin with, but were coated in additional streaks of dirt and grime, smeared a bit with grass. He wore heavy, canvas gloves, which he was pulling off and tucking into pockets in his pants.
There shouldn't be anything familiar about him. Some farmer on a backwater world, in a backwater set of fields. But there was; it was in the set of his shoulders, the spine-straight, chin up, relaxed but wary way he walked. It was in the matching height and matching jaw, and in the matching eyes that Tup knew entirely too well, since, until he left the others, he'd seen every day of his life on other men. He still saw them every chance he looked in a mirror.
The man stopped in front of him. He smiled. His teeth were white against his dust-streaked face and his brown eyes gleamed in the sunlight.
"Been waiting for you the last few days. Tup, right?" He tilted his head, taking in the teardrop shaped tattoo under his right eye. The smile broadened, and the man's hand extended. "The name's Cut."
"Keep walking until you know when to stop."
He turned away from the man for a moment, and looked out over the cornfield behind him, the rising slope of the caldera's edge beyond him, then back and at the house, the tractor, the barn, and then again at the man.
It was quiet, save for the sound of animals lowing in the barn, and the wind.
Somewhere, in the middle of that gaze, he'd begun to smile.
Tup lifted a hand and extended it. His hand grasped that of a brother he had never known, but was a brother still.
"That's right. Name's Tup. It's good to meet you, Cut."
It wasn't so hard, to feel like he'd found a home.