Lacking Heavy Weaponry
By Kudzu
"Let us train our minds to desire what the situation demands"
Seneca
How can I be a clone trooper when my job is not to destroy my enemy, but to bandage my brothers, keeping their legs elevated while more of them rush by with guns blazing? Why do they receive the glory while I perform tracheotomies and loot my brothers' corpses for intact limbs and organs, unblemished skin for grafting and fresh blood for transfusions? Why are they the proud infantrymen of the Republic, while I am just a medic, a Human droid?
CT-55/M2 wrestled with these questions every day, every hour, every minute of his life. He was no soldier, as much as he desired to have been one and not a battlefield surgeon. Not a medic. He wanted to not just heal, but kill, as he had been originally created to do.
Where is my Deece rifle? he asked himself sometimes. Where are my reverse-polarity grenades?
Where is my glory?
Sometimes he thought that some cruel god must be hiding them from him, and sometimes he thought that he'd spend the rest of his life searching for what he was robbed of by fate.
The Kaminoans had constantly reminded him that he was lucky to have been kept alive. The others in his batch had frequently gone on to greatness, serving at Muunilist and Hypori. He hadn't. From his earliest exercises, he'd never been the marksmen that his brothers had been. He hadn't run as hard or swam as fast.
He just hadn't been strong enough. But instead of culling him with a lethal injection as they had done with so many other sub-par trainees, the Kaminoans had given him a medical kit and some stimpacks, and they had entrusted him with the duty of saving those wounded in live-fire training from the jaws of death and helping them recover back to their full health.
By some accursed twist of fate, M2 had actually been good at the damn job. And so the Kaminoans made him a medic.
They told them that he was fortunate to have not been disposed of. They said that he was lucky. But sometimes, despite knowing what good things his service as a medic did for the Republic and for his brothers, Emtoo wished that they'd just killed him instead so that he'd never have to suffer the ignobility of standing by while the other troopers marched into the thick of battle.
He would never paint a kill mark on the side of his gunship. He'd never feel the grim, fierce satisfaction of seeing droid parts scatter in his rifle's sights. He'd never be awarded the Chancellor's Service Medal after some daring commando raid into an enemy battleship core.
He knew blood and gore and injury and death. But they were not of his enemies. They were of his brothers.
Emtoo understood that it was a selfish desire of his, to wish that he'd died instead of being shipped out to serve as some lowly field medic for his injured and dying duplicates. He'd saved the lives of many clone troopers - more glory for them to grab in a life not cut so short, thanks to him; more units surviving as assets to the Republic's militant defense.
In a way, it was honorable in itself. He was saving lives. He was helping his brothers and he was helping the Republic.
He still wished that he could be out there, shooting and destroying and killing - but if he was, who else would be back here, in his place, patching up the wounded and stacking up the dead? A droid - one of the cylindrical FX-6 medical robots that were standard-issue among gunship crews? He didn't trust them. Droids had their precision, but they couldn't ever replace organic sentients. If he was the one in pain, bleeding profusely from a shrapnel wound in the gut or missing an arm and both legs from a landmine explosion, he'd rather have one of his brothers or even some volunteer field doctor operating on him than some droid. He'd rather see the grim, slightly squeamish, sympathetic looks on their faces as they dug bits of sharp durasteel out of his belly and cauterized the stumps of limbs violently torn from his body than the cold, faceless metal chassis of an FX-6 droid carrying out surgical operations on him like just more mindless procedure. But, too, he thought, he would rather be that maimed, dismembered clone than the surgeon standing over him…
He didn't like his job. Maybe sometimes he thought he'd rather have died back in the Baran Wu cloning station. But what had happened, happened.
It was up to him to find his own glory in his job. It came more to him every day. And maybe - just maybe - someday he'd see enough glory to make those damn questions go away.
CT-23/X17 plinked his gloved fingers off the hull of the AT-TE Grievousblood. "Intact?" he asked gruffly.
"You're standing next to it," replied the Galactic Marine crossly, arms folded. "You're the engineer. You tell me."
"Well, obviously it's in one piece," Exsev retorted. "How are its hydraulics? Any trouble with the turret rotating mechanism? Blasters all firing? Computers online with no problems?"
"You're the engineer. You tell me."
"Marine!" Exsev barked. "My job isn't to take your walkers for test drives. It's to make sure everything's in working condition, and where it's not, I get down on my damn hands and knees and fix it. I don't make my rounds to get lip from the likes of you. I ask you again: does this walker have any problems?"
Somehow, the look on the Marine's screened faceplate seemed to grow more ugly. Exsev could just imagine that the soldier - identical to himself, although doubtless having collected more scars - was giving him a nasty glare of death behind his helmet right now. "Left chin gun's firing rate is down point oh-two seconds, roughly," he said grudgingly. "Other than that, nothing worth mentioning."
The clone engineer looked askance at him. "Does that mean that nothing else is wrong, or that you don't think that whatever else is wrong is a 'big deal'?" he queried.
The Galactic Marine hissed in vexation. "Does it matter?"
"Do you think that it'd matter if some 'minor' problem ended up stalling your walker in the middle of a battle and getting you all killed out there?"
The other clone snapped back, "There's just a few cracks in the passenger seats. Nothing that would 'get us all killed'."
"Would be rather inconvenient to have them collapse with troopers in them," the unflappable Exsev said. "I'll take a look at the seats."
"Have it your way," the Marine snorted. "I'll be painting a few dozen kill marks on the sides if you need anything."
Exsev knew that this last comment was a pointed jibe, and he had to admit that it stung a little. He was an engineer, not a soldier. He hadn't displayed the qualities of an ideal clone trooper back in training on Kamino; luckily, he'd shown an unusual amount of aptitude with a tool kit and the Kaminoans had decided to make him an engineer instead of killing him with a swift, merciless lethal injection.
He wished he could have been a better shot with the rifle. He wished he'd had a little more tactical intelligence and capability. But wishes don't always come true, and Exsev knew this very well. So he played sabaac with the cards that had been dealt to him, uncomplaining but sometimes feeling just a little cheated. But that was life.
Exsev kind of liked to philosophize. He thought that maybe he'd have less time to ponder the intricacies of existence if he was charging headlong into a formation of super battle droids rather than oiling creaky joints and realigning blaster gas chambers and XCiter modules. So, he thought, every nebula has a beauty to it. There was something good to be had in everything. It wasn't always stark contrast, good fortune and bad.
The engineer got down on his damn hands and knees and began to tinker with the faulty blaster cannon.
He was a loadmaster; a scribe of cargo, a crucial module in transportation, and sometimes a psychological counselor for shell-shocked clone troopers coming off the battlefield as the only surviving member of their squad or having borne helpless witness to their subordinates bleeding their lives away trapped in the wreckage of an assault walker.
CT-89/T38, or Talon as he was often called, was no soldier.
This was a somewhat sobering thought, being as that most of the other clones grown on Kamino were made to be soldiers. But he had been placed in a different program. He handled transportation duties, armed with only a short-range blaster pistol to defend himself should he somehow fall under attack.
He'd been told once by his Kaminoan instructor that his projected kill ratio in the event of direct combat against Trade Federation B-1 battle droids was two droids destroyed before they would vaporize him. Such optimism, he'd laughed to himself, knowing full well that what the trainer said was the absolute truth the way a computer projected it.
"Pile in, pile in!" he growled as the clone troopers clambered up the ramp in a roiling white-armored mob, a little too slowly for his tastes. The disorder and chaos of loading onto the transport ships after a hectic and fierce battle such as this one was characteristic; the crisp precision in which they filed neatly out of the Acclamators in their perfect columns was abandoned once scores of them had been blown away and officers - clone, volunteer, and Jedi - had perished in the vicious fighting.
Many of the clones that straggled aboard were just carried along by the upward flow of the crowd. Many of those were dazed and confused, still dazzled by the bright flashes of concussion grenades, still numb from watching so many comrades - brothers, really - die. Talon felt for them. He was their brother just as were the ones who they'd lost in the field. He comforted them, never getting too sentimental (outwardly) but reassuring them all the same. Awkwardly, he exchanged stories with them that he'd heard from far too many others just like them, who'd been thrown back by some mine's eruption and had picked themselves up off the ground to find their squadmates vaporized - charred bones and shattered armor fragments all that remained, or even nothing left at all.
All the stories were tragedies, and Talon had to harden his heart against them. Every time the weary infantry returned to the ship after a battle, he always knew what was coming. More sad, graphic, horrible stories of loss on the fields of war. More tales of death and grievous injury.
Always the same. Always the same.
There was one, staggering up to him now, trembling in his armor even after having experienced almost two years of the Clone Wars. Fresh loss - the first time that he'd really seen it, Talon supposed.
"Loadmaster?" his clone brother croaked.
"You're safe aboard the Venomous, ner vod," Talon said reassuringly, just as he had done hundreds, if not thousands of times.
The soldier removed his helmet with shaky hands. His eyes were wide - of course - and horrified. "They're dead," he gasped. He was staring past Talon blankly as if he wasn't even there. He swallowed and suddenly locked eyes with the identical ones of the loadmaster. "I watched them die, loadmaster. I couldn't save them…"
"What's your name, Private?" the noncombatant asked.
"Don't have one," the trooper mumbled. "I'm just CT-407/012. And I should have died."
Talon glared at him angrily. "Don't say that," he snapped. "Don't ever say that you should have died. You survived to fight another battle. You serve the Republic, trooper."
"I'm sorry!" the distraught CT-407/012 wailed. "You don't know what it's like. You've never fought…"
He's right, the loadmaster realized with a shock. He'd heard it all to the point of not caring, only repeating empty comfort and ordering the grunts to not say, "I should have died." It had become his job.
But for all he'd heard of it, and for all he'd seen through recorded images and live feeds from the planetside action, he hadn't been through a harrowing ground campaign before. He'd never so much as fired a full-power bolt from a blaster rifle.
CT-407/012 was wrong - he knew what grief and shock that war could inflict on its participants. But he was right, too. Despite all the stories that Talon had listened to - now usually just half-listened to - he didn't know what it was like. He'd never fought.
"No," Talon agreed softly, his voice almost lost in the chaotic noise of armored boots clanking against metal deck plating. "I just know what I've heard." He studied the trooper, whose shoulders were now heaving with dry, noiseless sobs. "You need a name," he said.
CT-407/012 looked up. "Me?" he asked. "I don't deserve a name."
"Yes, you do," he said firmly. "You need a name." He was silent for a moment before deciding aloud, "You're Point. You made a point, and it made me think."
"Point," the newly named clone trooper repeated. He said it again twice more before smiling faintly. "Thank you."
"Don't dwell on your losses," Talon said, almost gently. "They died for their purpose. They wouldn't want you to mourn them for too long, or wish that you'd died with them. You are not a failure. It was not your fault."
Point nodded. "Thank you -" he paused expectantly.
"Talon," the loadmaster supplied his name. "And you're welcome."
"Send in battalions Dactillion and Anester," Commander Van ordered. He leaned back against his seat in the shielded forward command center as it slowly traversed the endless tundra terrain and sighed.
Van's story was an interesting and unusual one among the ranks of the clone commanders. As a trainee on Kamino - 14887 - in the Su Des northern station, he'd shown little aptitude with the blaster rifle and poor management of the mechanics in an AT-TE walker, but to compensate for these lacking skills, he had a tactically brilliant mind. Some of the other trainees had joked that his cloning vat must have been spiked or something, and he'd heard that Supreme Chancellor Palpatine himself had recently taken note of his abilities.
Most of the other clone commanders were simply flash-trained and educated to have leadership skills and learned tactical management from the Mandalorian Cuy'val Dar sergeants or Kaminoan tutors. For few did it come as a natural talent worthy of exceptional notice. But Trainee 14887 found himself rapidly reassigned to their ranks, undergoing personal instruction from Rav Bralor, one of the most decorated of the Mandalorian trainers sequestered on the stormy world. He was not flash-trained like most of the other commanders.
He left Kamino as Clone Commander 452. He commanded from the rear at Geonosis, told not to charge into the fray as an infantry leader on foot as many of the other yellow-striped tacticians did that day. He oversaw portions of many other battles since then, although he was not selected for the ARC trooper Alpha-17's experimental training program due to his physical lack of talent.
Several dozen of his brethren, along with some fresh commanders, returned from Kamino with new inspiration. They had taken names, like Bly, Keller, Raster, Odd Ball, and Faie. And there was something different about them, implacable…CC-452 had never really figured out just what it was.
But he, like a huge number of his clone brothers, took a name for himself as well - it was becoming quite the sudden, popular fad among the troops. He christened himself Van, and rose to the position of Senior Clone Marshal Commander among the likes of the renowned Eanone and the shrewd Threnn. Like him, Eanone, Threnn, and the small handful of others hung back from the direct fighting, not even carrying heavy armament with them. They sat at tactical computers, sometimes collaborating with the (technically superior, but only just) Jedi Generals inside their hardened bunkers or mobile FCCs, like the one that Van was seated in now. They issued orders and stared intently at tiny blips on sensor screens, always thinking - even in their rare minutes of sleep - about how best to crush the enemy when they were employing any given tactical maneuver.
He looked hard at the displays, where symbols and blinking dots represented the forward spear of the Republic platoons, and more symbols and dots showed the known positions of the Confederacy droid troops - and yet more symbols and dots were reserved to mark the locations on the map where Separatist units were suspected to be lurking.
He shook his head in dissatisfaction. They didn't have enough hard reconnaissance.
He threw a glance back at Captain Jayas and said commandingly, "I need a squadron of unloaded Larties -" slang for the Republic's LAAT/i attack gunships "- over positions marked Jaithan's Tooth and Albino Panthac ASAP. Reports on Sep -" Separatist "- positions mandatory, with visuals to accompany if possible. Live feed would be ideal. Give the word, Captain."
Jayas saluted. "Yes, Commander. Comming Angel Flight now." He turned away, apparently speaking into his helmet comlink as ordered.
"Anester reports major hits on vectors Epsilon-Zero and Tau-Three," Lieutenant Ion relayed urgently from in front of Van.
The senior commander swore. "Casualty report?"
"Estimated sixty dead, and taking fire from Geonosian sonic cannons, sir," Ion replied.
This was the part of commanding that Van hated: hearing news of unsuccessful or costly assaults that he had ordered, and receiving the casualty reports of men who had died because of strategic decisions on his part. He swallowed the familiar guilt and said, "Someone get me air cover on Anester. Bring the Blackwater armor up to defend their right flank, and pull Brass Group off to hook in on the left."
"Airstrike on the sonics, sir?"
"You got it," the commander affirmed. "Rip them, and have Anester stagger lines to avoid splash hits."
"Dactillion reports penetration!" Captain Mandel suddenly cried.
"Position?" Van asked, leaning forward in his seat and feeling a thrill of excitement.
Mandel tapped a finger on his displays. "Got through at Gundark Claw," he replied, barely containing his own joy. "Broke the lines."
Van grinned in fierce triumph. "Pull Argos off of the Sep convoy near Great Typhoon," he said. "Bring them around to bombard the positions north up to seven klicks of Gundark Claw with rockets."
The battle was as good as won. More clone battalions began to pour through the hole that Dactillion punched through in the Separatist droid army, and the droids began to be recalled to their core ships to beat a disgraceful retreat.
It didn't bother Van that he wasn't out there fighting himself. His mind was his true weapon. He didn't need a rifle or a missile launcher to be a large cog in the Republic's war machine.
The campaign on the ice world of Galzia Menn was done.
He was, like very many other noncombatant clones attached to the Grand Army of the Republic, no fighter, but he had a job nonetheless. Senior Clone Marshal Commander Van was an architect. He had his job doing what he did, just as medics, engineers, loadmasters, and more had jobs that kept the Grand Army in fighting shape.
There was fulfillment in more than being the one to pull the trigger that killed a man or vaped a droid. And when one gave themselves over to accepting and looking to make the most of the situation that they found themselves in, there was actually a lot to be said for lacking heavy weaponry.