Those Who Carry the Rifle
By Kudzu

"It's the man, not the machine"
Chuck Yeager

"To be a clone trooper, you have to be strong," Commander Keller reminded his soldiers, walking back and forth in front of the rigid row of men in white armor. "You have to be prepared for all eventualities. You have to fight through them.

"No soldier of mine will lay down their blaster and give up the battle."

"Yes, sir!" the clones chorused in their almost perfectly identical voices. They were created and conditioned to follow the orders of their superiors. They responded in unison, without hesitation, utterly devoted to carrying out Keller's commands to their last exhalations of breath and beyond if they could.

They, like their commander, were tools for the Republic to wield, that many-armed monstrosity battling another many-armed monstrosity. The Clone Wars were clashes between titans. Keller understood what it was that he and his men were fighting for, and went under fire in its service gladly. They had no other choice. They didn't want any other choice. War was their domain.

Keller roared, "You must have the greatest discipline, the finest mentality, and the clearest of mind! You must not dwell on past errors if you should make them - and you will! We are no omnipotent gods - but we are the closest to them, and the Republic has us. You do not fail when you should die: you fail when you lose. Never lose."

"Yes, sir!"

"Never hesitate to sacrifice yourself for the Republic! Never fear to die! You are but parts of a greater fight, and the rest live to replace you. We seed the stars!"

"We seed the stars!"

And so it was, just as it was always.

The assault ship dipped lower.

Binis Jusns stared blankly at the tactical display. A holographic depiction of a landed Acclamator-class assault ship (Mark II) glowed blue on the circular board in front of him. The walls of the room seemed to press in around him as he watched transparent blue clone troopers march down the vessel's ramps, spilling out neatly onto the terrain surrounding it. Holographic gunships and starfighters buzzed across the display board.

We're in trouble.

"Commodore Gate demands that we immediately deploy our forces, sir," his aide said from his console.

Binis glared down at the man. "Is Commodore Gate aware that the number of troops aboard that assault transport is enough to overwhelm this garrison three times over, Shaa?"

Shaa shrugged his shoulders uncomfortably. "I don't know, sir," he replied. The Ennthian was not one of the Confederacy's brightest officers, but he was smart enough to keep himself in check when speaking to a superior. He had given the honest soldier's response.

Binis pounced on it. "Well," he snarled. "Why don't you find out, then?"

He nodded formally. "Yes, sir." Shaa busied himself with the transmissions as Binis turned away.

"Can you explain the concept of peace, Commander?" asked CT-106/7855.

Keller frowned. "It's an absence of war," he said. "Nobody fights one another. They all mostly tolerate each other and get along."

"Does anybody ever kill each other in peace?"

"Well," the clone commander replied slowly, choosing his words carefully, "violent crimes happen all the time, no matter where you go in the Republic. But there are no two factions trying to destroy each other."

"What about 'gang wars'?" the inquisitive trooper queried. "I've heard about them from Clone Intelligence reports."

This was tricky. Keller hardly considered himself a definitive expert on this sort of subject to begin with - he was a warrior, he thought, and as such his opinions on matters of peace were utterly lacking in any sort of value at all - and he got the distinct impression that even to a dedicated philosopher - like a Jedi, perhaps - CT-106/7855's questions would be difficult to answer. "Well, those gangs who are fighting might be at war with each other," he explained. "But their wars aren't usually officially recognized by larger governments like the Republic."

"Or the Confederacy?"

Keller flashed a grin, hidden from his brother's view by his customized commander's helm. "After we're through with it," he answered cockily, "what Confederacy?"

They shared a brief laugh before becoming professional soldiers once again, settling into the tough-as-nails troopers encased in shiny white armor that they were created to be. And they were, as the Separatists now were beginning to understand.

At his order, the lead AT-TE tank gunner targeted the nearest outpost. The base's precise position was triangulated by gunships and Torrent attack fighters flying recon over it. With another order from Keller, three green beams of pure destruction lanced out from the trio of SPHA-Ts that brought up the formation's rear, striking the structure into duracrete-and-quadranium powder.

And so they marched, inexorable and immortal. Droids and mercenaries attacked, and clone soldiers died, but more simply arose to fight in their place. They were all one man, parts of a greater fight, and the rest lived to replace them.

Garrison forts were blasted into ruin. Bombs turned columns of battle droids into scrap. Missiles scattered the segmented bodies of AT-TEs across the green land. Blasters burned holes through droid, mercenary, and clone alike. They marched on.

The clone infantry of the Grand Army of the Republic seeded the stars.

Separatist Commodore Oeran Gate muttered oath after oath as communication lines to dozens of bases across Varisor were severed. He could hear the explosions now, feel them…

The clones were coming. He knew that they were no weaklings, no sad mockeries of Jango Fett, but rather legions of men who were Jango Fett. He'd known the man, briefly - knew that one Fett was a menace well enough to know that sixteen thousand Fetts were unstoppable. Perhaps Commander Jusns, killed instantly when the enemy had fired on his outpost, had been right after all, though doubtless in his characteristically whiny fashion. He'd never liked the man.

But that was neither here nor there. "Here" was Varisor, under invasion by a force well strong enough to decimate the Confederacy presence on it. "There" was someplace else, preferably safer, and maybe with scantily clad dancing girls and refreshing tropical drinks thrown in as a bonus, where Oeran Gate wished that he could be at that particular moment in time.

But even if he couldn't have his blissful tropical paradise, he certainly could get out of this mess.

"Captain A'shari," he called. "Ready all available craft for immediate evacuation of this base. Get all essential personnel out. Leave all automated military equipment."

"Including the droids, sir?" the Togorian hissed obediently.

"Yes. Leave them."

"As you order," A'shari growled. "Should the ships be programmed with a destination?"

Oeran thought for a moment before nodding and saying, "Aquarius should do nicely."

"They flee," said CT-57/1338, "like the hut'uune that they are."

Hut'uune. Cowards.

And they were. "It is their way," Keller rationalized. "They are greedy businessmen, not honorable warriors. They don't know anything about courage, or valor, or honor. They know the credit." He pulled back his hood and removed his helmet to stare each of them down. "Be glad that such a trivial item does not dominate your destiny. And pity," he added, sliding his helmet back on, "the ones who it does."

They stared back at him, helmets as expressionless as only plasteel masks could possibly be. "What does it mean, to pity one's enemy?" CT-150/983 asked, sounding almost disgusted.

Keller put his hood back over his re-helmeted head. "It means," he said, "to spare a thought to how pathetic they were in life, and how miserable they must have been, before you kill them."

"And thus in our pity…" Keller could practically see the machinations of CT-150/983's brain in motion behind plasteel, flesh, and bone - after all, that brain was not so dissimilar from his own. "And thus in our pity," the clone trooper repeated, "we grant ourselves new motivation to kill them."

"Pity can be constructive in warfare," Keller agreed. "Perhaps it is cruel to leave them alive - those valorless hut'uune."

The whining of blaster cannons firing. An explosion. Droid parts raining from the sky.

And it was another world saved from the grasping hands of the Confederacy.

Clone troopers in the ranks of the Grand Army of the Republic are equipped with the standard DC-15 blaster rifle. It is long-barreled and bulky. Blue bolts - standard blaster plasma discharge combined with an additional EMP punch for additional effectiveness against droid adversaries - whine from its mouth, ripping through the robotic centurions of the Confederacy.

But it is not so easy as that.

The rifle is a difficult thing to bear. It is an awkward weapon, and heavy: heavy with responsibility; heavy with power; heavy because it's heavy. Not all can lift it; of those, few do not struggle to heft it further, to tote it through fiery battlefields, through raging conflict, through chaotic war.

These weapons are borne by the clone troopers, guardians of a dying era and maybe heralds of another era yet to come. On these guns rests the trust of a galaxy and the promise of death to those who would throw themselves before them to die for a deluded cause.

Strong are those who carry the rifle.