Matryoshka

22 BBY

Geonosis

One heart, one mind.

A simple adage, but a powerful one. From the days of our hatching it has been the only adage Geonosis has ever needed.

Truth be told, adhering to its tenet hasn't come without sacrifice. What it gave my people was something more valuable, though - a life without hesitation, without regret. Perhaps that was why the Lesser King had given us the order to kill those two Republic heathens so willingly. Perhaps that was what made it so easy for him to arm my wife and children with rifles, to have us fight in the Separatist's coming war. The King knew we would listen, that we were bound to do so.

For us Geonosians it never became a question of why you do something, but when. You were expected to give it your all for the Hive. Your heart, your mind, and all the things in between. But sometimes, even that wasn't enough for the Hive.

Sometimes, they still asked for more.

It is dark when the two outsiders first approach our crypt. Pitch-black to the human's unadjusted eyes.

In the time since we were first made aware of their approach the Hive had carved our bodies into the crypt's eroding walls, granted us ample room to hide for the coming ambush. We watch quietly as the outsiders now begin to wander through our hallowed halls. Watch as they pass unknowingly by our throng of bodies, our skin leathered and toned by the earth, near indistinguishable from the walls of clay and rock paste that we call home.

Sunlight billows in from the entryway as the pair enters. My wife looks up to me uncertainly in turn. She has never liked the light. It is hard to do so when the familiar darkness of the Mother's nest is all that you have known your entire life. I try to comfort her in any small way that I can, but it is hard. The love between us can not be expressed openly, only understood in the form of commitment. A shared vow to carry on the burdens of the Hive.

Still, in time her gaze hardens. We had a job to do.

I can't help but glower as the first human walks right past my eager form, a braid laced to his head. The Republic called him Skywalker, a knight trained in the arcane arts.

He was the guardsman for our real target, the female at his side. The story had gone that she was the Queen of a faraway world, a fierce opponent of the clients our Lesser King now did business with. Here, now, dressed all in white, the Queen wasn't fierce at all. She was a sheep among wolves.

"Wait..." Skywalker speaks first, stiffens his posture, stops dead in his tracks.

It is only now that he realizes we are hiding all around him. It is only now that the ambush can truly commence.

All at once we are peeling our bodies away from the muddy walls, flinging ourselves at the duo en masse. Men, women, children. A dozen families just like mine. All of the Lesser King's servants.

The man brandishes a blade of sapphire in turn, lights the dim passage a dazzlingly blue. He spares no time in keeping us at bay, striking and chopping, slicing my people's limbs off left and right. No hesitation, no remorse, just lethal efficiency. We weren't the first tribe of innocents he had slaughtered, that much was for certain.

I charge forward with as much vigor as all the rest and, promptly enough, am flung haphazardly against a wall. Still the man fights us, cutting dozens of Geonosians down to a scant few. One pained war cry after the next we each fall to his sword. Soon the cries turn to echoes, the echoes to silence.

By the time I can stand again the fracas is already over. Skywalker and the Queen are gone, fleeing further ahead. They leave only bodies in their wake. One tunneling, voluminous hall of bodies.

And yet it is only one body that I find my gaze drawn to. One body crumpled and strewn below all the rest. The darkness finally comes back to greet my wife but she is not alive to welcome it.

It is all I can do to kneel down beside her, to rest my head against hers. My heart may be fleeting now, but my mind is set.

As Skywalker has taken from me, I will take from him.

. . .

In the years before the war I had hoped to become a Picador. A rider of beasts, a keeper of peace among my people. I've long accepted it to be a fool's errand. These days, there was no peace worthy of keeping. Every step further from my wife's corpse was another bitter acceptance of that reality.

Having left the crypt defeated it was no small relief to hear that Skywalker and the Queen had been so promptly captured. It is hard for a being such as myself to put the feeling into words, to go from bottomless despair to joyous retribution in such a short span of time. All that mattered in that moment was that the heathens were set to be executed. At this point, it was the only thing moving me forward, driving me to the execution arena.

As a hatchling I remember being enamored by Petranaki Arena. It was a point of communion between the arena of old and the convicts of new. A place of reckoning. The amalgamation of all the things the Hive championed.

As most best laid plans tend to go, this one was foiled. The execution attempt was an abject failure, Skywalker and company made a mockery of the arena beasts set to kill them.

I sat there bearing witness to it all, watching in the arena stands with my mouth agape. Rooted in place by fear and anger, unable to put strength to action. It was only when the Republic's gunships filled our skies that I finally had the resolve to fight back. I was no Picador that day, but I certainly channeled the spirit of one.

No doubt you have already heard tale of the battle that came in the midst of my decision, the battle that split my world in two. The Battle of Geonosis. The inciting action for what would go on to become the Clone War.

I don't remember the battle as the history tomes might. I remember it as a single-minded pursuit.

All around me my homeworld was contorting, twisting further and further into a hellscape. Metal spires careened towards the sandy dunes, bolts of crimson and emerald jousted throughout the air. Legions of man and machine charge at one another as I stand there defiantly in the crossfire. The lone protector against a mass of foreign invaders. The Picadors don't tell you the realities of battle as you go rushing into them. They don't tell you about the crush of bodies against one another, the sting of smoke cauterizing flesh, metal colligating with bone.

For as connected by mind as we championed ourselves in being, there was so much we kept hidden from one another.

It wasn't clear when exactly I fell. All I can recall now was the batter of boots trampling over me, sacks of plastoid and metal piling over my frail body.

Perhaps it is better that I don't remember. Perhaps that is why my people's employment came in the same breath as the battle droids and clone soldiers all around - we were plentiful and easy to manipulate. Each of us willing to follow a leader's dogma to its bitter conclusion.

The truth of the matter is, I don't remember much of the battle at all. It was one prolonged moment in time, and then it was over.

What was left was hardly worthy of description. The Republic took their attack ships away, their knights and their soldiers, and they left us there to pick up the rest. Our Separatist 'allies' weren't far behind, turning tail to protect their interests on other worlds, to manipulate more tribes to their cause. All of them, gone. Racing to pick up the very same battle they had just left behind. To wage this war on a thousand more worlds, a trillion more people.

It is only now that I began to see the truth that our King never could. We were an ends to a mean, another stone on the pathway to galactic conquest. I can feel the grief finally overtaking me as the warships disappear high above into the amber clouds.

Geonosis would rise again, of that I was certain. No matter how scorched and war-torn, it would stand back up defiantly. But it would not be the same. It would be without its heart, and with only the fractures of a mindless mind.

End