The entire walk back to their racks through the pristine white halls of the cloning facility Ace feels his dread building. However nothing happens just yet, and Tyy stops the squad before they can get back to their racks.
"How about we stop by the mess and grab some grub?" The squad stops in their tracks as they collectively realize it had been a while since they had eaten last. None of them could eat lunch that day, nerves meant they would have puked anything right back up. Border, Chance, and Tap all look hopefully at Ace causing the clone to roll his eyes and agree that they should get something to eat.
As Sabacc Squadron enters the massive mess hall they see many clones wearing cadet armor eating in small bunches, indicating squadrons. Some try to branch out and befriend those from the other squadrons, however often they would feel left out as basically every squadron had already developed nearly perfect communication with one another.
As Ace crosses the threshold Tap steps beside him. "I guess this is the last time we eat in the cadet mess, our graduation ceremony is the first thing tomorrow." Ace, who is only half listening, responds with something about missing the place before moving towards the food line, the anxious feeling from before distracting him immensely. He once again glances upwards to the Kaminoan observation deck, however this time it is largely unpopulated, no Jedi, no Jango. He knows the clone's collective father wasn't often on world but Ace is sure he had heard rumors of his ship having landed recently.
Ace soon finds an open table and directs Sabacc Squadron to sit down, quickly they all begin laughing and chatting about the challenge and how they were becoming proper troopers. Tyy and Tap begin talking about their armor and what they would paint on it. While Border and Chance start talking about getting real gear finally, and hopefully seeing some action.
Meanwhile Ace is lost in his own thoughts, he stares out one of the high windows at the storm clouds above and wonders if they really were about to see the war they had been made for begin. Ace is so lost in thought he nearly doesn't notice a ship flying away through the Kaminoan storm. He recognizes it as Jango's ship instantly.
Seconds later Ace is pulled from watching Jango's ship leaving by Border grabbing his attention. "Well, what do you think it's gonna be?"
"What do I think what's gonna be?" Ace says, snapping his attention back to the other four clones watching him expectantly.
"Y'know, the war, what we've been talkin' about for the last 5 minutes. Ace, have you been taking stims again?" Border says with an eye roll. "Personally, I hope it'll be something like a hutt invasion, where we just have to sit back in defense positions and watch them stumble into our lines of fire."
Tyy looks exasperatedly at Border, "Oh come on, there is no way we'll be fighting someone THAT stupid. I think it's gonna be those separatists from the Republic the holonews has been talking about, I hear it's a real crisis brewing."
Chance suddenly looks worried and glances up at the observation deck. "Keep your voice down about that alright? Just because I sliced you into the holo doesn't mean you can shout about its contents where the long necks might hear you."
Ace then decides to cut in, stating simply, "I don't really care where we go so long as we get off this planet. I can't stand being watched like this for much longer."
As it turned out they didn't need to wait long to find out the mysterious location they were being shipped out to. Not more than a few days later Sabacc Squadron was loading onto an Acclamator Assault Ship in preparation for imminent deployment. Despite all of the clones having never been on a starship, they knew the Acclamator inside and out thanks to the flash training they underwent. Ace thought he saw some command troopers in everything but wasn't sure. And after a short journey through hyperspace (which all the clones were in awe of, having never been in hyperspace) they were gearing up and loading into LAAT Gunships over Geonosis.
The air was rich with excitement in the LAAT which Sabacc Squadron was sharing with another Squad of fresh clones. The two squadrons shared excited thoughts with each other over their helmets' private comm channels. Bets were made on who could get the most kills by the end of the day and prayers were sent off in traditional Mando'a. However their naivety and excitement at finally leaving Kamino and doing exactly what they had been built and bred to do made the reality of Geonosis hit them like a brick wall.
Upon entrance into the atmosphere the gunship doors opened revealing the dusty skies of Geonosis to Sabacc Squadron. The sky around them was thick with other LAAT gunships all now opening their doors as well, however the sky was equally as thick with laser fire from both the ground and the gunships. Somewhere to Ace's left a trooper from another squad huffed out a laugh before saying, "it's a good thing those bugs can't aim."
It was less than ten seconds later when the gunship immediately to the left of Sabacc took a direct hit from anti-aircraft fire. Instantly it burst into a ball of flames, and swallowed the gunship immediately behind it into a bright fireball of death. Just like that, multiple squads of rookie troopers just like Sabacc had been wiped out. After a second of processing nearly half the gunship ripped their helmets off and lost their lunch out the side of the gunship, meanwhile Ace simply stared at the rapidly retreating fireball in complete shock. This was nothing like the simulations.
Upon realizing that their gunship was rapidly nearing the dusty ground Ace shouted over his comm lines to the rest of his squad. "Alright boys! We've trained for this, check your hud for directives and stay close, but most importantly stay alive, Ib'tuur jatne tuur ash'ad kyr'amur."
The rest of Sabacc Squadron nodded in agreement as they prepared themselves to face the now looming droid army. Steeling his nerves Ace looked across the battlefield. A huge field of battle droids was crashing directly with a wave of white armored clones. Vehicles interspersed on each side firing huge laser blasts and rockets which seemed to wipe out entire platoons on either side. The worst part was that despite the clones clearly pushing the droids back the droids had intensely superior numbers. And from the sky it was obvious that the clones would be hard pressed to fully destroy the droid's positions without taking serious casualties.
Suddenly a light went off on Ace's hud, as he looked at his squad they clearly had gotten the message as well, link up with nearby clones and join the push towards the Core Ships attempting to leave the surface. Though they all had their helmets on Ace knew all of them had to be in a state of sevier confusion. Blindly charging across open desert terrain with no cover towards the biggest guns their enemy had? What were their generals thinking?
However Ace quickly snapped him and his squad out of it good soldiers follow orders as they neared the ground just behind the front lines. A Jedi not too far away leading from the front, blue lightsaber swinging. Sabacc Squadron looked at each other and immediately rushed towards the Jedi the second the LAAT touched the ground. Blaster fire was thick around them as they ran past burned out hulls of AT-TE walkers and the many disfigured corpses of clones that all of Sabacc tried desperately to ignore as best they could. And once they reached the Jedi they all breathed a sigh of relief, they all knew that the Jedi were their generals, and damn near invincible ones at that.
Without a moment's rest Sabacc Squadron crouched low a bit behind the Jedi, and began blasting any droids in sight. And by the maker were there droids. At first it felt just like training, they would blast the droids and avoid getting hit. Then suddenly a spray of rockets landed nearby.
Ace heard the screams before he realized what he saw when those rockets landed. One of them struck in between a squad of clones fresh off a gunship. The explosion caused Ace to close his eyes briefly as his noise dampers made him go deaf as the explosion passed. When he opened his eyes it was as if the world had slowed down, Ace saw one clone blown clean off his feet, as in literally, his feet remained on the ground while he did not. Another screamed in agony while raising a fist and bloody stump into the air, his arm gone below the elbow. Yet another of that squad stumbled forward before looking down and seeing a hole straight in the middle of their chest, the sight making him seize up before falling dead to the ground.
With the world still slow and his head spinning, Ace returned his focus to the wave of droids coming towards him and his men, when suddenly the hairs on the back of his neck stood up and he tackled Tyy to the ground to his left. A split second later a B2 battle droid's wrist mounted laser turned a fresh clone into a headless body which continued to walk forward for a few seconds before it tripped and fell to the ground twitching. Ace quickly pulled himself and Tyy off the ground, Tyy said something but Ace still couldn't process any of what was happening around him. He scanned the front line and saw the same blue lightsaber from before still swinging just as brightly, however the wielder of it turned around as if surprised. Ace made eye contact with the Jedi and saw something akin to recognition-suprise-shock in her eyes which made his blood run cold. However when a blaster bolt found the Jedi's side and sent her to the ground his blood went even colder. Ace and all of Sabacc Squadron watched helplessly as multiple battle droids stepped around her and shot her corpse until it was completely unrecognizable in seconds. They sprung into action and downed the droids around her but it was far too late.
Ace rushed forwards to the Jedi, rolling her over onto her back. Her entire torso was littered with carbon-scoring and her eyes were staring into the sky. For a brief second the Jedi's eyes moved to Ace, and her lips almost turned upwards ever so slightly. Before rolling back into her head as she died. Ace started to move away from the corpse of the Jedi but stopped himself. He saw the blue lightsaber nearby, broken from the foot of a super battle droid. And picked the Kyber crystal up from the pieces. Ace didn't even know why he did it himself but he slipped the crystal into his pocket.
Then time seemed to resume for Ace as he saw red. He let his rage fuel his movements as he blasted through droid after droid in the pursuit of an impossible seeming goal. The rest of Sabacc Squadron worked in tandem with him. Rotating out behind Border's shield as they reloaded, jumping out and firing on the nearest droids, and jumping for cover whenever artillery rained down around them.
After a time that felt like forever but could have been less than ten minutes in reality the terrain shifted and Ace found himself falling into a shallow ravine. He hit his bucket on a rock as he went down and saw his vision get blurred. He saw the rest of Sabacc Squadron jump down into the ditch and surround him before his vision went black.
His last thought before the darkness took him was just that he wished his brothers weren't destined to die like this.