Chapter 13

Fox stood with Wick as the elevator to the Chancellor's office descended to the main Senate building floors. He'd already issued the command for all clone troopers stationed within the Senate compound to leave, and he'd be meeting with them at a rendezvous point down by the freight entrance so they could make for the transmission dead zone together.

Every nerve in his body vibrated with tension, but Fox kept his thoughts ordered and his heart rate down. This was just like any of the many other disasters he'd handled: the bounty hunters taking senators hostage, the regular assassination attempts, the Force-damned zillo beast. He'd kept it together then and he'd keep it together now.

Except it wasn't the same. Not at all. Not with Chancellor Chuchi and every single one of his clone brothers at risk.

"Commander Fox?" Wick said.

Fox jerked his head up to the clone commando, embarrassed to have been caught unawares at such a time as this. "Yes?"

Wick coughed. "It's… not my place to say. But you and the Chancellor-"

"Then I suppose it's best you not say it," Fox snapped.

Wick fell silent. Fox considered apologizing. Wick was a good clone, and Fox's behavior recently had been questionable at best. He opened his mouth to say as much, then he heard the blaster fire.

"Dammit," he cursed under his breath. Something was going wildly wrong, but without his comms he was blind. He jammed the emergency stop button, but the elevator had already stopped at their floor. Fox tensed and drew his deecees, looking to Wick with a grim set to his jaw. "It looks like we might be about to walk into some real osik. Get ready."

Wick nodded and they moved to the sides of the elevator beyond the edges of the door just as it began to open. A hail of blaster fire immediately riddled the back of the lift with singed holes.

Fox smashed the button to close the doors and bring the lift back up to the office. "We've got to get to the Chancellor!" he shouted over the melee.

Wick peeked around the side of the lift doors. "Sir! We've got hostiles incoming!"

"Keep them out of here!" Fox yelled.

The lift doors closed painfully slowly, and a Senate guard managed to storm in with barely enough room to get through. Blaster fire nailed him in the back as he staggered inside, and he collapsed onto the lift floor just as the doors closed.

Wick knelt by the injured guard's side and felt for a pulse. "He's still alive."

"We'll administer first aid in the Chancellor's office," Fox said. "We just need to get up there, disable the lift, and evacuate the Chancellor."

"Understood."

The injured guard groaned, and Wick leaned closer to him. "Who did this? What's going on?" he asked.

The guard's eyes shot open and he jerked away from Wick. "D-don't come near me! You clones did this!"

"Calm down, friend, we're here to help." Wick said.

"It must be Bacara's men," Fox said. "I'll see if I can get in contact with Rex."

"Don't touch me!" the Senate guard yelled.

"Calm do-"

The injured guard reached for his blaster and Fox reacted, drawing his deecee and firing only a split second after the guard's shot rang out. Wick slumped to the floor and the man collapsed on top of him before Fox even had a chance to draw another breath.

The lift filled with a terrible quiet, and Fox forced himself to move. He crouched by the two bodies collapsed on the ground and checked for pulses. They were both dead.

His hands shaking, Fox tapped Rex's code into his wristcomm.

"Fox!" Rex responded immediately. "I just finished talking with the Chancellor. We think the 21st is heading to the Chancellor's office!"

"They're already here." Fox's voice was strangely calm, and the world seemed to move around him in slow motion.

"Dank farrik! You've got to keep them out of the Chancellor's office at all costs!"

"Why? Why would they come here? The Order was supposed to target the Jedi."

"There's a special comm device Palpatine had installed in his office. It will override any security measures and open the comms of every single clone in the GAR. We think Bacara's looking to use it to activate the Order in every clone at once."

Fox understood the words, intellectually acknowledged their horror, but they didn't pierce the cloud of numbness that had fallen over him. This couldn't be real. This couldn't be happening.

"Fox? Do you copy?"

"Copy that. I'll keep them out."

"No, you should get out of there and let the Senate Guard take care of it," Rex said. "Bacara could try to turn you."

"There's no one else but me. They're already at the Chancellor's office." Fox's gaze fell to the bodies on the floor of the lift. "I'm all we've got."

Rex let out a string of colorful curses on the other end of the line. "Fine, just… do whatever you can to keep them from using that comm device. I'm sending a drop team over right now. We'll get there as fast as we can."

"Understood."

The lift slowed to a stop at the Chancellor's office, and Fox tried his best to shake off his mental fog. He shot the control panel as he left the lift, hoping it would buy them enough time to figure out an exit strategy. He jogged into the office, his eyes searching for resources he might be able to use to block Bacara's way, then jumped at the sound of a single blaster shot.

"S-stay back!" Riyo's delicate voice called. "I'm armed!"

"Chancellor!" Fox said, raising his hands. "It's me! Bacara's coming here and we need to find a way to get you out of here."

Riyo stood behind her desk with a slim blaster held out straight in front of her. Her arms shook but her mouth was set in grim determination. "How do I know it's… it's really you?" she asked. "How do I know you haven't been turned?"

Fox took his helmet off and dropped it to the floor, then held his hands out, palms up. He took a cautious step out into the open space of the office. "I don't have any ill will towards you or the Jedi Council. I just commed Rex and he told me what you said—about the comm device in here. Let's rip that blasted thing out of this office and get out of here."

Riyo slowly lowered her blaster and Maja's head peeked up from behind the desk. "I've been trying for the past few minutes to disable it, but the blasted thing is invincible," Maja said.

Eyes flicking to Riyo for approval, Fox took another step towards the raised dais on which the Chancellor's desk sat. She nodded, and he stepped up to the desk. "The 21st is already almost to the office. We need to move fast. Where's the device?"

Maja pointed him to the comm device—a metal box that took up an entire drawer in the massive desk. A white light beeped cheerily up at him, ignorant of the scratches and gouge marks all over the durasteel—signs of Maja's efforts.

Fox drew his blaster and shot.

"Wait, don't-!"

The blaster bolt ricocheted off the comm device and Fox barely managed to dodge the bolt that shot back up into the ceiling.

"It's magnetically sealed. That was the first thing we tried," Riyo said.

Fox let out a groan of frustration. "Can one of you try to disable the lift? I blasted the controls but we might be able to do something more permanent."

"I might be able to disconnect the power source," Maja said.

She hurried over to the lift and Fox returned his attention to the black box of the comm device. He felt along the smooth metal of the box for seams, outlets for wires, even just a good ridge for leverage. Nothing. He curled his fists in frustration and tried a good, powerful punch straight at the durasteel. Unsurprisingly, his fist didn't make a dent in the case, but Fox felt better nonetheless.

Fox huffed and leaned against the wooden frame housing the comm device. Sweat dripped down his nose and fell onto the smooth, mirror surface—the durasteel only interrupted by a single white button. If Fox hit it now, he'd be able to reach every single clone in the GAR. So strange, that this one piece of metal and cords was capable of enslaving the entire military force of the Republic.

"...Have you tried finding its power source?" Riyo asked, and Fox jumped at how close her voice sounded behind him. He looked over his shoulder and there she was, eyes wide and wringing her hands nervously. This must be terrifying for her, and here he was getting tunnel vision.

"There's no external power source that I can see," Fox said. "It must have some kind of long-term battery inside. "

"Fox… I don't think we're going to be able to disable this…" Her voice wavered with a kind of uncertainty he'd never heard from her before.

"I'm not going to let anything happen to you," he said.

"No! It's- Fox, you need to keep them away from the comm, alright? It's more important than anything else, including me."

Fox narrowed his eyes at her. "I can't do that. You're the Chancellor."

"We don't know if they mean me any harm. And if they get that comm device, the Republic could very well fall. We both know that's more important than either of us."

"Riyo, I'm not going to-"

Her expression hardened. "I order you!" she said, silencing him. "If it comes down to my safety or the integrity of the GAR, you choose the GAR."

Fox flinched backwards like she'd struck him. Riyo hurt, Riyo in pain—the idea of it was almost more than he could handle. But he'd follow orders. He'd do his duty. It was what he'd always been good at, after all.

"Yes ma'am," he said.

Their gazes held for a long moment, then Fox forced himself to look back to the comm device. Maybe if he dismantled the wooden drawer encasing the device, he'd find some kind of opening.

"Riyo!" Maja's panicked voice sounded from the elevator bay. "I think they're coming through!"

"Get back here!" Riyo shouted. "There's a ray shi-"

The doors to the lift burst open before she could finish her sentence and Maja fell backwards with a shriek. Five clone marines burst through, and Fox immediately recognized the mauve kama and Commander's pauldron of the clone at the head of the small group. It was Bacara.

Bacara raised his blaster at Maja, who scrambled backwards in a fruitless attempt at escape.

"Maja!" Riyo screamed.

Bacara fired, and the blue beam of a stun ray shot from his blaster. Maja collapsed, her body limp on the floor.

Fox grabbed Riyo's arm and yanked her down behind the desk. His mind raced for a solution, but no ideas came. Unless Fox managed to take these five marines out, and any other clones who came up that elevator shaft, Bacara would activate the Order across the entire GAR.

"Stay behind the desk," he said. "I'll go for Bacara first."

"No, I can-" She jerked out of his grip and lunged for a drawer on the far side of the desk.

Fox panicked. He moved to intercept her but he was too late. She broke cover and yanked a drawer open, then slammed her fist down on the large red switch inside.

The heavy warp of a ray shield descended around the dais on which the Chancellor's desk rested. In the next breath Bacara opened fire, but his stun rays dissipated uselessly off of the ray shield's impenetrable surface.

Breathing hard, Riyo rose to her full height and faced Bacara. Fox stood as well, his heart still racing, and took up his post at her side. It sure would have been nice to know about that ray shield.

"Commander Bacara," Riyo said, her voice remarkably controlled and authoritative, considering. "Explain yourself. What gives you the right to assault the Senate?"

"Chancellor Chuchi," Bacara said with a respectful nod. "The Jedi have infiltrated the Senate and orchestrated the overthrow of Chancellor Palpatine. Chancellor Palpatine left behind orders in case of a Jedi betrayal, and we are carrying out those orders."

"As current Chancellor, my orders supersede those of Chancellor Palpatine," Riyo said. "And I order you to stand down."

"Ma'am, we have reason to believe the Jedi were behind your election. We will delay judgment until after the threat of the Jedi is resolved, but if you attempt to interfere with our operation we will be forced to assume you are in league with them."

"W-what?" Riyo sputtered. "That's preposterous!"

"Deactivate the shield and move aside, Chancellor Chuchi. Otherwise we will assume you are hostile."

"I will not! There are rules! Procedures! If you have reason to believe the Jedi are corrupt then you bring it to the Senate!"

Bacara shook his head. "They're too dangerous—their infiltration of the Senate is too deep. They can read minds, Chancellor. Former Chancellor Palpatine understood this, and he knew the only way to overcome them was through sudden, overwhelming force. I will ask you one more time to step aside."

"No. You'll have to kill me first," Riyo said, a fire flashing in her eyes.

Bacara kept his blaster trained straight at her, his posture straight and exact. "We've been stunning wherever possible to avoid unnecessary casualties, but if you insist-"

"Bacara!" Fox barked. "I know that inhibitor chip is calling the shots, but even with it you can't possibly justify killing the Chancellor to protect the Republic."

Bacara's helmet turned in Fox's direction, the opaque mirror of his visor betraying not a single hint of the brother Fox had trained with on Kamino. "CC-1010. And I'd always thought you were a good soldier."

"Good soldiers follow orders, but they also think for themselves and don't surrender their consciences to their superiors. I had to learn that the hard way." Fox knew there was no way his words would penetrate through Bacara's grim determination, but still he hoped. Surely the inhibitor chips couldn't erase him so thoroughly?

Bacara shook his head. "Enough talk. Commander Fox, execute Order 66."

Fox threw his hands up to his ears as soon as he registered what Bacara was saying, but it wasn't enough. The words wormed into his brain, clicking something deep underneath his thoughts into place. He struggled, attempting to grab hold of the sense of self and conviction he'd cultivated over the course of his short life, but it kept slipping through his fingers. His veins shook, his heart screamed, and his jaw clenched so tight he thought it might break. Then he was lost.


Riyo's heart dropped into her stomach. For a brief moment she stared at Fox's pale, shaking form in horror, then she lunged for the drawer with the comm device.

He threw himself at it a millisecond after her, but she managed to beat him to it. She thrust the device behind her back and held her arms out to the side to block him. He stopped short of tackling her to the ground, but the way he loomed over her told her that was simply because he found it unnecessary. He was big as a mountain, unstoppable as gravity, and armored in blood red plastoid. He was going to take the comm device from her, and there wasn't a thing she could do about it.

He seized her by the arms, his fingers digging into her skin. There was no doubt in Rico's mind that he could toss her across the room if he wanted. That very same deadly competence that had made her feel safe and protected had been turned against her.

"Step aside, Madam Chancellor, or I'll be forced to remove you," Fox said. His dead eyes stared down at her, reflecting nothing but raw intent. She cringed away from him, her terror amplified by how terrible it felt to be afraid of the man she loved.

"No!" she sobbed. "I'm the Chancellor! You still have to listen to me!"

Fox paused, his grip on her and easing just enough to relieve her circulation. "That's… true. I'm loyal to the Republic. Good soldiers follow orders."

"Fox!" Bacara shouted from the other side of the ray shield. "Chancellor Chuchi's election was orchestrated by the Jedi! She's in league with them! As an agent of the Jedi, our orders extend to her as well."

Fox's brow furrowed and he bit his lip hard enough to draw blood. "Our orders were to execute all Jedi. We don't have the authority to extrapolate further."

"If we don't get to that comm device, we will be unable to complete the mission," Bacara said. He leveled a grim look at Fox. "You know what to do."

The slight furrow to Fox's brow ironed out and his expression set. His vice-like grip returned on her arms, and he jerked her away from her desk with enough force to nearly dislocate her shoulder. Hot tears welled in Riyo's eyes, and her vision blurred. She looked up into Fox's face, her heart searching for the familiar amber warmth of his own eyes, but she found them cold, empty.

"Fox…" she whispered. "Please…"

Riyo could swear a flicker of something lit in Fox's eyes, but he held his steely expression, his grip still firm on her arms.

"Riyo," he said, his voice barely audible. "I love you."

I love you? Riyo's mind struggled to make sense of the words she'd longed to hear from him for so long. Then Fox was letting go of her arms and reaching for his blaster, and Riyo was wondering if they were a sort of apology for ending her life. Then panic shifted to horror as Fox's blaster arced past her body and back towards his own head.

"No!" A wild shriek ripped from her throat.

He set the blaster just under his chin. She lunged for him, her frantic arms desperate to knock the weapon from his grip. His finger pulled the trigger, and the blaster went off, firing a bolt of pure energy up into his jaw.

He crumpled to the floor and a horrible, choked wracking sound filled the air. Is that my voice? she wondered with a terrible sense of disconnect. Is that sound coming from me? She knelt over his prone form, gathering his body up into her arms, and sobbed. Then she forced herself to look at his face, to bear witness to what had happened.

Her heart froze in her chest.

A scorching line of seared flesh ran up from the back of his jaw to the top of his skull, just barely grazing his ear. His face was whole—she'd knocked his aim off just enough to avoid completely destroyed it. A flicker of hope ignited in her chest, despite the long years that had taught her to expect the worst. Riyo pressed two fingers to his neck, shoving them under the tight fabric of his undersuit.

A faint pulse fluttered beneath her fingertips, and Riyo breathed again. He was alive.

In a strange, distant sort of way, Riyo registered the sound of Bacara comming one of his men across the room.

"Get those engineers up here on the double. We need to get this ray shield down."

Riyo wrapped her arms around Fox's chest and clung to him like he was the only thing keeping her from shattering. She could still hear the chatter and bustle of Bacara's men beyond the ray shield as they worked out a way to get through, but the sound was tinny and distant to her ears. What did the rest of the galaxy matter, anyway? What mattered beyond the man she loved? Beyond the fact that his life might be slipping away at this very moment?

Riyo stroked gently at Fox's thick, curly hair—something she'd always wanted to do but never quite managed during their few brief encounters. The engineers arrived up the lift and immediately set about dismantling the source of the ray shield in the ceiling of the office. It was no simple task—Chancellor Palpatine had sprung for only the finest security—but Riyo knew the barrier wouldn't last forever. She struggled to care, willing herself to action as she imagined a now unattainable future where she got to hold him like this every night.

Fox's chest gave a sudden, weak heave, and Riyo squeezed her eyes shut. Fox wouldn't give up. She knew that. Even in the face of overwhelming odds, he'd do what he needed to to protect her and the Republic. Riyo gritted her teeth and pressed her forehead to his. She couldn't just sit here and wait. She owed it to every single clone who'd sacrificed for the Republic to protect them from this… this complete betrayal of their sentience, autonomy, and individuality.

Riyo reluctantly let go of Fox and got to her feet. The engineers working on the ray shield already had the mechanism disassembled, and though she didn't know much about the mechanics of the thing, they seemed alarmingly close to success. She turned thoughts of them out of her mind and returned to the comm device in her desk. Forcing a few deep breaths, she scanned the comm device carefully for seams, screws, or vulnerabilities of any kind. There was nothing.

The ray shield sputtered, and Riyo's head jerked up. The engineers whooped and Bacara signalled for his men to move in. More of them had arrived, a handful at a time up the lift, and almost a full platoon waited with blasters ready from behind the ray shield. Swallowing thickly, Riyo braced herself. She'd done what she could, but she'd reached the end of the line.

The ray shield flickered again, and Riyo threw herself over the durasteel box and screwed her eyes shut. Then a deafening boom sounded from behind her, and she whirled around. A Republic LAAT/c hovered just on the other side of the giant transparisteel window, a squad of clone troopers with jet packs already unloading from the ship. Captain Rex led them, jetting straight for the window and igniting a blue lightsaber as he made contact. He stabbed the lightsaber right through the high-security transparisteel and began cutting a wide hole through the window.

The ray shield sputtered its last breath and dropped, and Riyo grabbed Fox's unconscious body and hauled him with her under the desk. The window behind her shattered, and Rex's men unleashed a hail of stun ray fire across the room. Bacara's men returned with live blaster fire. Riyo squeezed her eyes shut and held Fox closer to her, trying her best to focus on his faint heartbeat and ignore the shouts and groans and sounds of bodies dropping to the floor.

The fight raged on, and backup arrived for Rex's team—a mixture of Senate Guard troopers and 501st clones, from the brief glimpses Riyo caught of the melee. No matter how many blasters were pointed in their direction, they kept all of their own weapons to stun, and eventually the sounds of fighting tapered off.

Rex crouched on the ground by Riyo's hiding place and reached a hand out to her. "Chancellor! Are you unharmed?"

"Y-yes. I'm fine, I… I'm unharmed," she said.

Rex's eyes flitted to Fox's limp form, his body propped up against hers. "...And Commander Fox?"

"He's alive, I think. At least he was right when you arrived." She fumbled to feel for his pulse again, but the ringing of blaster fire in her ears and pounding of combat boots against the floor still echoed in her head, confusing her senses. "Please… Please take him to a hospital right away."

"Of course, ma'am."

Rex signalled for a medic and the man had to pull Fox from Riyo's arms. She staggered out from under the desk and Rex helped her to her feet, then she watched as the medic carried Fox through the chaotic battlefield that had once been her office. Bodies littered the room—some stunned, some dead, though Riyo couldn't tell which was which. They were almost all clones. She felt sick to her stomach.

"Ma'am, I'm working with the head of the Senate Guard and Senator Organa," Rex said. "I suggest you head to the hospital for an evaluation as well. We'll sort all this out."

"Is… Are all of Bacara's men accounted for?" Riyo asked.

Rex grimaced. "We believe so, though it's still too early to be 100% certain. The Senate Guard managed to fight a lot of them off, then the 501st arrived with backup and we routed them. It helped that we knew exactly what they were after."

"I,.. I can't rest until everything's-" She cut herself off, feeling suddenly light-headed. Her foot landed strangely against the ground and gave out under her weight, and Rex caught her before she fell.

"Madam Chancellor, please. You're in shock."

"Alright. Alright, I… I'll see a doctor."

Another medic came for her and she ended up on the same emergency response transport as Fox. She sat in the corner with a thin blanket over her shoulders while Fox lay prone on a stretcher, his expression slack and his head lolling with every bump and jolt of the transport. Riyo scooted her chair closer to him in the cramped space of the ship and took his hand in hers. She squeezed his cold fingers tightly and closed her eyes.

"I'm going to do everything in my power to make this right, Fox," she whispered, barely hearing the words herself. "I swear it."