So I got the same question a few times about the previous chapter so I thought I'd address it here. There are no inhibitor chips in the clones in this AU. I just really don't like the inhibitor chips, and I feel the clones are more interesting without them, but that's just my personal opinion.
Now with that said, let's get on to the good stuff!
Kowalski blinked his eyes open. There was no sound, no heat, no alarm, just pain shooting through him. As he came back into control of his limbs, he saw the wreckage of the shuttle, blackened and twisted by thermal detonators. The vacuum had quickly snuffed out the fire, and somehow Kowalski had escaped without any major injuries. He was likely concussed, if the ringing in his head was any indication, but that would have to wait.
He had to stop Massey. He had to prevent the alien specimens from ever leaving this system.
One of the shuttle's wings had carved a slash into the wall of the docking bay, bisecting the airlock. Clawing his way along the wall, Kowalski slipped through the gash to find a trail of blood leading out of the airlock. Forcing the doors open, Kowalski noticed that the trail led deeper into the space station.
His single shot from earlier must have wounded Massey.
Without hesitation, there was no telling how long he had been unconscious, Kowalski took off in pursuit, following the trail of blood through the silent hallways.
If looks could kill, the glare that Ahsoka eyed Crespi with would have incinerated him. "Drop him," she snapped to Barriss. The Mirialan nodded and released her hold, not about to question the pissed off togruta standing above the shaking clone.
"You'd better have a good kriffing explanation for that!"
Crespi looked her in the eyes and, to his credit, did not back down. He gave no apology or pitiful display of begging for mercy. "You know as well as I do what's going to happen to Larte. It's inevitable. And if the alien she carries bursts out in the dropship, we'll all be done for. Even if we kill it before it grows, the acid blood will burn a hole right through the hull."
"And so you propose we kill her?" Ahsoka yelled, not even trying to hide the anger and disgust on her face or in her voice. "That's not your decision to make."
"It'd be a better death than that thing chewing through her chest!"
"He's right, Ahsoka," Kaeden's voice was quiet as she spoke, full of sadness, but understanding. "I don't know how much longer until it births, and there's no way for us to remove it. I don't have a choice left."
Ahsoka turned towards her. Her eyes wide with shock. "Don't say that! There's always a choice, Kaeden."
"Sometimes there isn't." Crespi said softly, his voice haunted. "Sometimes you don't have a choice. No time to think, all you can do is act."
Kaeden gave Ahsoka a slight, sad smile. "If I have to go, I'd rather it be on my own terms. I don't really see any alternative."
No. Ahsoka thought. Reaching out with the Force, she touched Kaeden's mind and with the wave of a hand, Kaeden fell limply to the floor.
"Place her in the airlock," Hoop yelled from the dropship. "If it… hatches or whatever it does, we can space it without endangering us or the ship."
"Seems like a fair compromise," Barriss said, but immediately shut up after Ahsoka whipped her head around and glared daggers at her. But Ahsoka sighed and finally nodded consent to Hoop's suggestion.
"I've installed the second power cell," Hoop said. "We can leave whenever you give the word."
"Barriss," the Mirialan jumped at Ahsoka growling her name, something that gave Ahsoka a slight twinge of satisfaction. "You pilot us out. Mr. Crespi and I are gonna have a little chat. I want off this planet."
Teraan struggled up the ladder as the rock behind it became lesser and lesser. She had almost fallen off the ladder a couple times, a part of it below her had fallen away completely and left her dangling, and her shoulders felt like they had been strained to the max, and then some beyond that.
But finally, at long last, she had made it to the top of the emergency ladder, still some ten-twelve feet below the lip of the turbolift shaft. Someone had blasted it all away with explosives, and luckily for Teraan, the blast had left plenty of hand and footholds for her to use. Climbing it with a crushed ankle would be a challenge though, but she had come this far and would not give up now.
She had made it halfway up when there was the blast of engines roaring from above her. Teraan almost lost her grip, but quickly pulled herself up. She'd have to move quickly.
No time left for caution, Teraan put all her remaining energy into one last jump. Hands found the durasteel flooring of the loading dock and she screamed against burning muscles as she pulled herself up.
Rolling over, Teraan saw their shuttle missing and what appeared to be a mining dropship of sorts rising onto repulsorlifts.
"WAIT!" Teraan screamed, waving her arms over her head as she hopped awkwardly on one foot towards the dropship. But its stern was towards her, and whoever was inside did not see her. She tried to run to it, placing weight on her shattered ankle and collapsing to the ground with a shout of pain.
"NO! DON'T GO!" The cry shredded her vocal cords as it came out, raw with pure emotion and despair. But her words were drowned out by the thundering of afterburners as the dropship disappeared into the reddish sky, leaving Teraan the sole human survivor left on Tartarus.
Tears flowed freely from the Alderaanian's eyes, even as she squeezed them shut, pounding her fist into the durasteel floor. It wasn't fair. It just wasn't fair. She had made it all this way, barely scraping by with her life, only to be left behind to die at the final second.
Teraan just lay on the ground, pounding the floor with her fist and cursing out the survivors for leaving her behind, the aliens for separating her from her squad, and the minors for discovering and unleashing the aliens in the first place! She cursed everyone, letting her rage and frustration vent out until all that filled her was sadness and despair, and all that came out were gasping sobs.
If you go into space, you'll die there. Kriff it all, Teraan wanted to live, to see her uncle again, maybe even visit her nerf herding parents. But blast it, what could Teraan do now?
She looked at her surroundings through tear stained eyes. A few destroyed mining offices, a wrecked communications room, and… a mining loader. A tracked vehicle used to load the samples brought up from the mine into the dropships.
She hobbled over to it, and somehow it appeared to be in good condition, minus the bloodstains inside from when the aliens initially overran the facility. Teraan busted open the steering console with the butt of her blaster and began hotwiring it, another survival skill that her uncle had taught her. With a growl, the loader's engine sprang to life.
She next eyed the communications area, wrecked and mostly damaged beyond repair. Her comlink had been lost when she lost her helmet down in the mine, but if she could find what she wanted…
Teraan grinned to herself. She doubted that she had more than a half standard hour before the bomb below her went off, meaning it was time to get to work.
Kowalski crept through the darkened halls, following the thin line of crimson blood on the durasteel floor. He swung his weapon light left and right, illuminating various bits and pieces of machinery in the hold. The whole place groaned and creaked, as if it was shaking itself to pieces.
Multiple times, Kowalski paused at what sounded like the skittering of claws against metal. He had heard that sound before… right before the aliens attacked the first time, carrying away half the squad.
Kriff's sake, there was another one up here as well! In the darkness of the dying space station, it would be even harder to spot.
Shadows moved to his left.
Kowalski ducked and fired, the muzzle flash illuminating the eyeless skull that he had come to hate. Kowalski rolled to the side and the alien landed next to him on all fours. It spun its head to hiss at him, and the stormtrooper pulled out a concussion grenade, jamming it into the alien's mouth.
The grenade detonated, staggering the alien and disorientating it. It fell backwards for a moment, tail knocking his blaster across the ground as it thrashed wildly.
Without his weapon, Kowalski chose to sprint for the hold's blast doors. As the alien threw off the last of its disorientation, Kowalski dashed through and hit the switch, closing the doors behind him.
He had been lucky. He was alive, but without his blaster. His grenade supply was exhausted, leaving the stormtrooper's only weapons as the small plasma torch and his vibroknife. He didn't like his odds if he had a second encounter.
The emergency lights were on in this hallway, just bright enough for him to make out the trail of blood. He followed it, knife in hand. Maybe he'd be able to get the drop on Massey. If there was one good thing about the damage he had taken, it was that his armor, blackened with soot and carbon scoring, would blend into the darkness better.
The trail led to a stairwell. He started up it, only to duck under cover as blaster fire pierced the ambience of the station. Running footsteps faded as Massey ran away from him.
Kowalski followed, mounting the stairs as quickly as he could. He found himself in a communications blister, blood trail leading out the door away from it. The main unit used for out-of-system communications had been damaged, but Massey had cannibalized it to make a short-range transmitter.
Hooking his comlink up to it, Kowalski keyed in the Captain's frequency. "Crespi, sir. Do you read me?"
He did not see the shadows begin to move behind him.
Barriss and Hoop sat in the small cockpit of the mining dropship, Barriss doing the flying, while Hoop made sure that all systems were functioning as intended. There was another reason, however, for them to be there. With Kaeden still unconscious in the airlock, it left Ahsoka alone in the dropship's cabin with the clone who had nearly killed her friend.
The glare she fixed on the clone was just as strong as it had been in the loading dock below. Her voice was almost a growl, full of menace and the guarantee that he would regret it if he refused to talk. "Mind telling me what happened down there?"
"I already told you my reasoning for what happened with Dr. Larte," the clone responded, eyes hardened like durasteel.
"No," came the counter from Ahsoka, "before that. You could have killed Kaeden at any time since that thing latched itself onto her face. But you didn't. Not until I felt a huge spike of anger course through you during the alien attack. So what changed?"
The clone was silent for a long while. Ahsoka pushed, the anger in her eyes leaching out into her voice. "Hey, give me an answer Crespi!"
When he did speak, his voice was quiet, barely more than a whisper. "Crespi's dead. The man who used to be him, died… sixteen, seventeen years ago. All that's left is RC-709, formerly known as CC-0709." He looked up at her, the strength in his eyes had faded, now almost looking like cracked glass. "You are right about one thing though, Tano, something did change down there."
"What was it?"
"They say that people reveal their true nature when they're on the verge of death. That those last moments will reveal who they really are. I stared death in the face, and I saw who I was: a murderer, broken and haunted by his past actions. That moment broke the facade I had put up for over a decade. It shattered my morality and left nothing but animal instinct. The instinct to survive. Larte posed a threat, so the instinct acted."
"What did you see?"
"I saw something that I know for a fact you've experienced and re-experienced many times. I saw Order Sixty-Six."
In the instant it took for her brain to comprehend those two words, Order 66, the memories flooded her. The confrontation of the clones, her desperate escape, and demanding the truth from Rex at the tip of a lightsaber. She shook it off, but RC-709's eyes indicated he knew the memories she lived with and saw sometimes when she tried to sleep.
"Tell me about it," Ahsoka's voice lost some of its anger as she spoke.
RC-709 did just that, explaining the… closer than protocol relationship he had with his commanding officer, Jedi General Mylar Kila, a young Cathar Knight she had met briefly in the Temple, and the events of that terrible, tragic night. He paused at the comm message from the Supreme Chancellor, gathering himself for what had happened next.
"I didn't want to believe the Chancellor, I knew in my head and in my heart that Mylar would never turn against the Republic she had fought and bled for. Even if the Jedi had committed treason, surely not all of them were guilty of it, right? But… orders were orders, even ones as terrible as Order 66. I decided to detain her, to try and figure out what to do next with her side of the story as well. But then I… I saw her killing her own men, my brothers. I couldn't believe it. I understood afterward that she had done it all in self-defense, but in the moment… it made Palpatine seem verified, and I acted without thinking. I destroyed two lives with a single shot. I killed her, and I destroyed myself.
"Ever since that day, I've tried to pawn the blame off onto someone else. First I blamed her for killing her own men and forcing my hand, then I blamed Palpatine for giving the order, and finally I blamed the Separatists for the whole damn war. Later when I encountered Vader and his Inquisitors on a mission, I told myself that Mylar's death was for the best. Better for her to die a Jedi than to live twisted and corrupted by the dark side, with everything that made her special to me perverted and evil.
"But down in the mines, those aliens, they brought those memories back somehow. Made them resurface. I twisted the truth as I always had, to shield myself from my responsibility, until finally they brought up the one I'd hoped I'd buried forever. The memory with which my guilt could no longer deny. The memory of what I had done… it came to me as I stared death in the face."
Ahsoka was silent, processing this revelation. She had expected he'd carried out the order given his earlier statements, but she didn't expect the raw emotion pouring out of the clone. But the fact that he and his general were in love! And he still did it anyways?
"Why didn't you disobey the order?" Her voice was low and deadly. "Captain Rex was similar to you at first. He tried to detain me and await confirmation on his orders, but in the end he chose to help me escape after I showed him that Palpatine had already destroyed the Republic. Why would you ever follow an order that causes you to harm or kill someone you care about?"
"Because when soldiers disobey orders, people die," RC-709 responded, his eyes narrowing and burning with fire. "Deadshot, the clone who was my best friend, his squad was transferred in from a legion that was completely destroyed because his commander disobeyed the order to keep advancing. The droids regrouped while they were resting, and slaughtered 90% of his legion! And many clones knew about Ryloth, where you, Tano, you got your whole squadron killed because you disobeyed orders."
Ahsoka snarled at the mention of that battle, baring her canine teeth. "That was different!"
"Was it?" RC-709 snapped. "Every order we give and take holds the lives of our men in our hands."
"My orders didn't tell me to betray and kill someone I loved."
"There's always a bigger picture that a frontline soldier doesn't know. Information that I don't possess. Get the order and execute it if it's lawful and justified. That's what a good soldier does. When we stop to question every lawful order that's handed down, we lose our effectiveness and our ability to fight and defeat our enemies. I received a lawful order from my Commander-in-chief, and the information I had available meant I carried it out. If I had refused, how many more of my brothers would I have lost that night? How many more might she have killed?"
"That doesn't justify betraying and killing your girlfriend!" Ahsoka yelled at him in response. "She wouldn't have killed any of your men if you just told them to stand down. She might still be alive and living with you if you had just ignored the order!"
"You think I don't know that?" RC-709 stood as he shouted back at Ahsoka, his veins standing out in his neck. "I threw away my future when I pulled that trigger! Why do you think I still wear this armor, and fight for the person who ordered me to destroy my own life? I have nothing left in my life. Nothing other than one man, alone on your space station, and the thing that I was bred to do."
Ahsoka said nothing, only glared at the clone through the scowl that twisted her face. All she could do was say what was on her mind. "You disgust me. After everything Mylar did for you, after everything the two of you went through, and you killed her anyway. You're no better than a droid, you and all the clones who followed Order 66 to the letter like good little soldiers. I don't know whether to kill you here and now, or let you wallow in your own misery."
"And what about you?" RC-709 yelled back as Ahsoka began to turn away. "What would you do? What would you do if someone you loved appeared to have betrayed you? If they had killed your friends, your family, your brothers? Would you forgive them and welcome them back with open arms or would you take revenge and cut them down where they stood?"
Ahsoka stopped in her tracks, the clone's words slicing through her hate and anger right down to her core. How would she react? What would she do if she faced Anakin again… if what she feared had happened to him was indeed true? Would she accept Anakin back despite the atrocities he had committed? Could she? Or would she strike him down given the opportunity?
Her reaction to merely seeing Barriss again was telling. It had merely scared her earlier. Now her reaction horrified her.
Ahsoka sighed and her head drooped. "I…" She forced the words out. "I don't know. I truly don't know."
Hoop's shout suddenly came from the cockpit. "There go the power cores!"
Ahsoka and RC-709 both looked out one of the portholes at the swirling sands of Tartarus below them. The explosion radiated outward from the mining complex, liquifying the mine and annihilating all the aliens that may have remained alive in the hive.
As they watched the shockwaves and explosive clouds ripple over the surface of the planet, RC-709 spoke. His voice had lost its edge. "You do not need to judge me, Tano. I have already judged myself. I have no intention of leaving this system alive. I don't deserve anything more than that. All that matters to me now is making sure the last survivor of my squad makes it out of here with his life."
A new sound whined through the now silent tunnels of the Tartarus Mining Facility: the high-pitched whistle of power cores gone critical mass. The whistle changed in an instant to a thundering boom as the power cores exploded, spewing energy in every direction. Stone liquified in the intense heat of the blast as it traveled through the mine. Everything was obliterated, the mining tunnels, the ancient underground city, the alien ship, the remains of the alien hive. Everything burned as the explosion ran its course.
Above ground, a fireball plumed into the air. Ash, smoke, fire-blackened debris joined with the swirling sandstorms that plagued Tartarus. The shockwave from the blast expanded out from the mining facility, kicking up a wall of dust that tangled with the howling winds.
When all was said and done, the Kelland Mining Facility on Tartarus was a ruin of twisted, blackened, and half-melted durasteel, scoured by the driving winds and stinging sands of the hellish world.
Almost one klick away from the now ruined facility was another piece of wreckage. A tracked mining loader lay on its side, having been thrown about by the shockwave from the blast. Inside, an exhausted woman lay on her side against the door, looking out at the fireball dissipating in the sky. She lay her head on the cool transparisteel of the window and closed her tear stained, bloodshot eyes.
She had given it her all. Her body hurt all over from exertion and exhaustion. Marooned and abandoned, Blake Teraan drifted off. She had been fortunate to secure a jury-rigged transmitter from the facility's ruined comm station, but she had no energy left to operate it. The time for action had passed.
It was time now, finally, to rest.
RC-709 walked away from her and sat alone, at the back of the dropship. Ahsoka read him through the Force, and all his anger, rage, and self-hatred had been replaced. All that was left in him now was… resignation. He had accepted who and what he was, come to terms with his past. She could sense now that whether he lived or died no longer mattered to him, all that mattered was making sure Kowalski, the last survivor of his squad, got out alive.
Ahsoka walked over to the airlock and peered through the window. Kaeden sat against the outer door, her eyes opening as she felt Ahsoka watching her. She grimaced initially, but gave Ahsoka a weak, sad smile. So far, she was still okay. Ahsoka nodded back, before turning away and heading for the cockpit.
She heard RC-709's voice behind her. "Bren? Yes, I read you. What's your status, trooper?"
Kowalski's voice came next from RC-709's comlink. "Massey destroyed the shuttle, sir. I pursued him through the station to a communications bay. He managed to jury-rig a short range transmitter to some ship in this system."
"That's odd, why not just escape in the shuttle? And who's ship is he contacting?"
"I don't know, sir. None of this adds up. Best guess is he doesn't want to be traced?"
RC-709 was about to respond when Kowalski gave a shout of surprise, followed by the sounds of blows being traded, before Kowalski yelled again, this time in pain. A new voice, that of the rogue stormtrooper Massey, spoke faintly through the connection. "Let me clarify something for you…"
The link went dead in a haze of static.
Kowalski had been grabbed unexpectedly from behind, his helmet ripped off and his face jammed into the communications console, causing him to yelp both in surprise and pain. He threw an elbow behind him, but it was caught by his unseen assailant. Kowalski was rotated and clocked in the face by an armored fist.
He fell to the floor, spitting out blood and a cracked tooth. He flipped onto his back, only for a stormtrooper boot to kick him in the head. Stars flew before his eyes, but through them he could make out Massey's face gazing down at him.
"Let me clarify something for you, Brennan." Massey said as he cut the connection to Captain Crespi's comlink.
"Massey, why? Why are you doing this?" Kowalski yelled up at him, spitting another glob of blood out, staining part of his already marred armor a crimson red.
"You very well know that I was once a bounty hunter. Pressed into Imperial service under threat of life imprisonment, I owe no loyalty to your Empire. My loyalties have always lay with myself. When we heard the distress call from here, I realized the creatures described in the transmission matched an expensive bounty issued by the Czerka Corporation."
"So that's it?" Kowalski spat back. "You're doing this all for the credits?"
"I've always checked bounties before missions, trying to scrounge up enough credits to leave the empire forever. I don't care for your ideology, Kowalski. I know you swear loyalty to the Emprie because the Rebellion killed your parents, but in the end all we can do is look out for ourselves. This bounty will net me enough credits to disappear completely. New name, new face, freedom."
He walked over and locked the far door to the communications bay, then he went over to the bulging duffel bag laying on the floor. Opening it, he pulled out a large, ovoid thing. Kowalski's eyes went wide with recognition. He had seen those before, in the Alien Queen's chamber. Horror filled him as the realization of what was about to happen struck home.
"You can't!"
"The bounty for these… facehuggers, is large enough," Massey laughed. "But the price for an actual specimen inside a host's body? I'll live like a king."
He left the alien egg on the ground in front of Kowalski, grabbed the now half-full duffel bag, and went to the communication bay's other door. "Thank you, Bren. You're gonna make me a very happy man."
The egg opened with a squeal as the door closed, Massey watching through the windows with glee. Kowalski crawled backwards until his back hit the wall, gazing in fear at the spider legs that appeared on the lip of the egg.
Here he was, weaponless, wounded, and alone. He had seen what had happened to the poor victims of his squad that had suffered this fate. The facehugger perched momentarily on the lip, coiling its tail underneath it.
Then it sprang towards him, aiming for his face.
So... rather dialogue heavy, but that was inevitable with the argument between Crespi and Ahsoka regarding his role in Order 66. Not gonna lie, that part of the chapter was both my favorite and least favorite part to write.
Anyways, I hope you guys all enjoyed this chapter. As always, feel free to let me know what you thought in the comments.
Next Chapter: Time is running out and multiple lives hang in the balance as the survivors of Tartarus return to Charon Station. Hounded by the last remaining alien, they must hurry to stop Massey and save Kowalski.
coronadomontes - Thanks!
