The beacon clatters to the floor of the Resolute II's deck, wires sticking out every which way, emitting an obnoxious buzzing noise and flashing, alerting anyone who cares to know that it's been tampered with. It's silenced when Fives' booted foot slams down on it, crushing all the vital components that keep it operating.
"That's the last of them," Anakin says, resting his arms on the edge of the maintenance hatch. "Hand me that welder. It was wired into the bulkhead between the fuel venting shaft and the maintenance shaft and there's a hole there now."
Fives hands him the tool. "I'm not a mechanic, sir," he says, "but that doesn't seem wise."
Anakin vanishes into the shaft, but his voice echoes back to the trooper above. "Well, it's not meant to be removed." He says something else, but it's drowned out by the whirring of the welder echoing around the enclosed space. A few minutes later, it stops and he climbs out, kicking the maintenance hatch closed behind him. "That should hold for now."
"'For now,'" Fives repeats uneasily.
"Eh, long enough." Anakin shrugs and summons the remains of the beacon to his hand with the Force. He activates his comm. "Lieutenant Ritchie, Lieutenant Drive, status update."
"Ritchie here," comes a crackling response. "We think we've found and destroyed all the beacons abord the Paladin."
"This is Drive. Deliverance is clear," comes the second response.
"Good," Anakin says. "Jettison the beacons, just in case. Artoo will transmit the next set of hyperspace coordinates." He begins walking down the hall, Fives following him.
"General, I'm curious," Fives says. "Now that we've, well, deserted, what do we do?" His voice betrays that he's not entirely comfortable with his new reality.
Anakin shrugs. "Whatever you want. You can stay with me, or you can leave and figure it out."
"It's just, most of us don't have anywhere to go," Fives says. "We don't have many connections outside the GAR, and the connections we do have are back on Coruscant."
"You can stay here as long as you want," Anakin says. He stops in front of a trash receptacle and tosses the broken beacon into it. "Leaving is always an option." He adjusts his comm and speaks into it. "Okay, Artoo, jettison the garbage."
Fives hears a series of beeps echo back over the comm. Clones aren't taught any language but basic, so he doesn't understand the binary. Anakin does, though.
"What do you mean you can't jettison the garbage?"
"Beep boop whee-oop!"
"It's not a computer-delegated task?" He lowers the comm for a moment, confusion showing clearly on his face. "How old are these buckets? They haven't built star cruisers with manual maintenance protocols in thirty years." He raises his wrist again. "Okay, Artoo, where are the manual controls?" Beeping that, if Fives didn't know better, might have sounded irritated. "Okay, okay. Rex, do you know where the manual controls are?"
"Sir, the 501st is a ground unit," Rex responds, his voice crackling slightly over the comm. "We're only given basic emergency training on operating Jedi cruisers."
"Artoo, send me the ship's schematics," Anakin says. R2-D2 acknowledges with another string of beeps and Anakin produces a handheld shortwave holoprojector. A little projection of the Resolute II appears above it, a few smaller rooms helpfully marked in red.
"We're close to that one," Fives points out.
"Let's check it out," Anakin says.
It isn't the first, or the second, or the third room they check. Those rooms are two supply closets containing cleaning supplies and a small empty room with a computer terminal that doesn't connect to any of the ship's systems. Nobody knows what it is for. The fourth room they check, however, is full of panel after panel of switches with helpful labels like "Atmosphere Composition Valve" and "Water Recycle and Purification Protocol".
Anakin uneasily raises his comm again. "Artoo, do you have access to water or atmosphere maintenance?" Even Fives recognizes the answering beep as a negative. Anakin grumbles unintelligibly, but he moves forward into the room and starts combing it for the garbage maintenance controls. Fives follows.
As it turns out, the atmosphere and water maintenance controls are two of about fifteen that are properly labeled. Beyond that the labeling system seems to be abbreviations carved straight into the metal of the panel with a sharp object; DS, FBR, MMU. A fine labeling system for the people that regularly work there, perhaps, but not of much use to inexperienced users. Anakin and Fives throw out possible meanings for the acronyms as they read them. "Forward Barracks Radiators?" "Why would we want to radiate the barracks?" "Not all radiation is bad." "Where do you suppose the aft barracks radiators are, then?" "I wouldn't know, sir. These don't seem to be organized at all."
It's at that point that Anakin pulls out his comm again. "Artoo, send me a copy of the JC-VC-1.8 manual. What? I know what a point eight looks like, Artoo. Well, what is it then? Okay, then send me that manual. What do you mean, there is no manual?"
He is silent for a moment as R2-D2 starts to explain himself with a long series of expressive beeps and whistles. Anakin cuts him off before he is done, though. "No, system hoppers don't have manuals. Warships have -" It's Anakin's turn to be cut off as Artoo beeps indignantly.
"What is it, General?" Fives says.
Anakin looks righteously angry. "Apparently we were running short on new warships so some wermo took a decommissioned VC-1.6 and stuffed it into the shell of a point eight." He sits down in one of the chairs and unlocks the panel, lifting it up to expose the wiring below. "Aw, kriff," he mumbles as he takes it in. "Artoo, send me the point six manual. I'll see what I can do."
As Anakin sets up his holoprojector with the manual open and leans over the control panel, Fives shifts his weight and gathers his thoughts. It's common knowledge in the 501st that this is the best time to approach the General with things he might not want to hear; he's calmest when he's picking apart a droid, repairing a speeder, or adding borderline-illegal gadgets to his astromech.
"General, when we left you told us we were leaving the Republic that enslaved us." He's paraphrasing.
Anakin glances up from the mess of wires and fuses. "Yeah," he says noncommitally but dangerously. Still, he seems to be waiting to see where Fives' line of reasoning is going.
I never really saw service to the Republic as slavery, Fives thinks. He isn't going to say that. He remembers all too well the General's palpable rage from Kiros, even though he had only seen it from a distance. This is a topic that needs to be approached cautiously.
"We were raised to have a purpose in life," Fives says. "Service of something greater. And a lot of us… I believed in it."
Anakin looks angry, and Fives hopes it's not directed at him. "That's slavery, Fives. When someone demands you sacrifice yourself to something or someone else and doesn't even give you a choice."
"People who put themselves ahead of everything else are…" Krell, he thinks.
"Trust me, you're so much bantha poodoo to the Republic," Anakin says. "You're a blaster that can think for itself." He turns back to his control panel. "The Kaminoans make clones and sell them as slaves, the Republic buys them, and the Jedi use them. I didn't make anyone come with me."
"No, sir," Fives says. "We're here because we're a little more loyal to you than the Republic."
Anakin traces a wire from the base of the control panel and through a crazed tangle, frowning. "I'm not your CO anymore. You don't owe me loyalty."
"Loyalty isn't owed, General. It's earned."
Anakin lowers the control panel back into place and presses a switch. A screen lights up, reading, "Garbage disposal sequence initiating… Ready." Anakin presses another switch. The screen blinks again; "Garbage disposal sequence in progress… Completed."
"I'll get that hooked up to the main computer eventually," Anakin says, apparently in lieu of responding to Fives' comment. He activates his comm. "Beacons are jettisoned. Send the signal to jump to hyperspace."
"Copy that, sir," says Rex.
Anakin turns and walks out of the maintenance room, pausing only for a second when the ship jolts into hyperspace. "What do you want, Fives?"
Fives falls into step beside him as Anakin starts down the hall toward the lift. "I'm not sure what you mean, sir."
The lift is at their level, and the door opens immediately. "What's important to you? What do you want to do with your life?"
"I've never thought about it before."
"You have time," Anakin says. "In the meantime, I could use all the help I can get, if you're up for it."
"Up for what?" Fives asks as the lift doors open on the command bridge.
Fives isn't Force-sensitive at all, but he can see anger suddenly flash in every taut line of Anakin Skywalker's body. "There are other slavers in the Galaxy besides the Republic."
Writing this chapter was like dragging a Christmas tree backwards through a swamp with one hand tied behind my back.
1. I definitely believe that most of the 501st would follow Anakin if he was like, "Hey, we're deserting, get in the star destroyer," especially after Umbara. I do not believe they would all agree with his sudden ideas of slavery. Nobody wants to believe they're a slave.
2. We apparently have shockingly little information, from either Canon or Legends, fully explaining how waste disposal works in Star Wars. This from the series that came up with a backstory for that guy running around with an ice cream maker during the evacuation of Bespin. I wound up making a lot of assumptions about it, the most relevant of which is that star destroyers don't have trash compactors.
3. There are multiple entire people out there who find the trash compactor scene from A New Hope to be the least believable thing about Star Wars and claim it breaks the suspension of disbelief. And have written essays about it.
4. Sometimes I misspell "Skywalker" as "Skylarker".
I have chosen not to translate R2-D2's dialogue into English, instead leaving the reader to imagine what he said based on the reaction of the characters. I would never be able to approach the level of adorable and insightful achieved by Jen425 in For the Republic (which can be found on AO3), which you should all read if you haven't already. If you're here it probably is relevant to your interests.