Chapter 15

…

Rex watched as the hyperspace distortions on the viewscreen cleared, returning to the familiar star-scattered blackness of space. The closest star system was three light-years away; he was sitting in an expanse of absolute nothingness. He checked the coordinates and knew he was exactly where he needed to be. But it didn't feel like it.

It had been a long flight. Days of nothing to see but the dreamlike tunnel of hyperspace, nothing to hear but the hum of his small vessel. He had tried to sleep through as much of it as possible with the help of sedatives, but his waking moments had left Rex feeling like with every passing hour, his connection to anything and anyone that had ever mattered to him was slipping away into the memories of a life that belonged to someone else. His entire existence had been one of solidarity and mutual purpose; now he couldn't help but think of his battalion and know he would never see the face of a brother again. He understood it in his mind, yet every time he thought of it, his chest tightened as if he were realizing it for the first time.

Never before had he felt such an overpowering desire to abandon his mission. Just turn the ship around and run back to the Republic, run as he had onto that battlefield in Umbara, relying only on the thin hope of enough people believing his desperate words before anyone could shoot him down. Would Cody believe him? Kix? If they did, would others turn them in to be executed?

But he knew he couldn't do it—he couldn't abandon the mission. No matter what it felt like in the face of the nothingness of space, he was here for a reason. The Separatist super weapon had to be destroyed, and by now, any chance he had ever had of stopping the Chancellor was hundreds of light years away. If he ever returned, he would be a traitor, a deserter. This was his last chance to serve the Grand Army—to serve his family. There was no way for Rex but forward.

Rising from the pilot's seat, he forced his surroundings back into focus. The readings on the console glowed; he let his eyes wander over the controls, the smooth material of the seats, focused on the fact that his breath came with less and less effort as time went on—anything but on thoughts of what he was leaving behind. He had only a few hours at most to live, to perceive anything more. Rex stretched his aching shoulder and picked up the datapad Skywalker had handed him just before they'd parted: special instructions to be read before disembarking in the one-man craft. He'd already memorized and then repeated the instructions from Agent Soltam multiple times on the way here; what more could there be to instruct?

He turned it on, aware this would be the last thing Skywalker ever said to him.

Rex, the instructions began. None of the usual time-stamping or military structure of a mission file, and even General Skywalker observed such things most of the time. Rex sat back down in the pilot's chair. This was a personal message.

Rex, the message said. Sorry I couldn't tell you this in person—things probably haven't been easy for you. But this had to be kept quiet until you were out of contact. I'm not going to just allow a good man to be sent to his death like this. That's why I asked for you to be sent on this mission. There's a narrow chance for survival, but it's still a chance, and I want you to take it. In any case, I figure it's better than what they would do to you on Kamino.

Echo has a contact behind enemy lines who agreed to help you disappear, if you can get clear of the ship before the explosion. I don't know who it is, but Echo trusts him. You should know that Echo's the one who brought the possibility of this mission to my attention. He seems to be looking out for you. Maybe he's trying to make up for what happened.

At the end of this message are some instructions to put your communicator on the same frequency as his contact. Key in the distress signal after you've destroyed the ship and hopefully he'll come and pick you up before anyone else can get to you. But Rex, remember you are supposed to have died on this mission. If the enemy gets a hold of you first, you know what to do.

It's too dangerous for you to try and contact me from Separatist space. Don't even try it. I doubt we will meet again. Try and make a life for yourself out there. Whatever you do, do not come back to Republic Space. And forget about this conspiracy of Fives'—you have to promise me that. You're resourceful, and smart enough to stay out of trouble. I know you won't waste this chance.

There was no stamp or signature at the bottom, just a space and then the promised set of instructions.

Rex stared at the screen, mind racing, heart jumping a little. General Skywalker was… telling him to desert. He almost didn't dare to give in to the hope that was painfully flooding him in a feverish rush. Skywalker told him to forget about the conspiracy, but Rex knew that was one promise he would not be able to keep. If Skywalker knew what was truly at stake, he wouldn't be telling Rex to forget about it—he would be orienting every moment, every action, toward stopping it from happening. And that's exactly what Rex would do. It would be difficult to proceed from behind enemy lines, but he knew from experience that the small space between difficult and truly impossible could make all the difference. There was still a chance to save the Republic, and everyone he'd left behind.

Filled with new determination, he followed the instructions to reconfigure his communicator. Then he carefully punched in the commands to direct the ship toward the nearest star on autopilot and double-checked his work even though it didn't matter so much now where the ship would go. He jumped to his feet, put on his new, unmarked helmet and passed through the doors into the small airlock at the back of the ship where the ugly little one-man vessel waited for him.

It really did look like a bit of space debris. Unevenly formed, the outside had been purposely blackened with scorch marks and made to resemble a warped piece of a larger ship, or even a bit of rock if one didn't look too hard. Feeling slightly giddy, Rex checked all his gear before he pushed the button to open the hatch up top: jet pack, fuel, oxygen, magnetic action on his boots, everything strapped tight, sealed and working properly. He checked his front pack for the materials to enter the maintenance hatch and transfer the virus to the ship, made sure they were all accounted for and securely stowed, then strapped the pack on. He heaved himself to his feet, shoulder and chest screaming in protest. He gave himself a moment to clear his head and catch his breath, and then it was up the ladder of hand and footholds set into the vessel's side before sliding into the cockpit.

This was the sort of mission commandos were usually sent to do—demolitions, assassinations, that sort of thing. But even they weren't usually sent where there was no hope of return—the time and effort spent creating their specialized units was too high a price to be squandered lightly. Rex thought of Diode Squad, of Echo, out there doing special missions, and felt a swell of gratitude for his friend. He hoped Echo would have the time and means to keep searching for a solution.

The cockpit was cramped, even smaller than an escape pod. There was barely room to move with his pack in there. Rex shifted it to the side before he activated the magnetic clamps so it would stay secure against the wall. The hatch closed and sealed, then Rex sent the command to the carrier vessel for environmental controls to disengage and the ramp below the vessel to open.

Strapped into his seat, he felt weightlessness kick in. He fired up the engines, ran pre-flight checks. Everything by the books, everything looked over twice to make sure the vessel was ready to go and would operate properly. Smoothly, the little piece of rocket-powered debris flew away from the ship carrying it. The controls were a little more sensitive than what he was used to, but soon Rex had come about and was headed at a steady pace toward where the super-weapon was supposed to be.

He kept his eyes on the long-range sensors, waiting with bated breath for the tiniest blip. Minutes passed in which he repeated again, under his breath, the calculations he'd need to input for his final approach before cutting power.

There. He had it on sensors. The thing was massive—it could only be his target. Now there was only a narrow window of time for him to shut down power before it sensed him. With cold fingers he punched in the target coordinates and the calculations necessary for his flight trajectory. It took a few minutes, and every step of the way he ran through the order in his mind again, saying it out loud to make sure he got it right. The formulas weren't that hard with the computer doing most of the work, but he couldn't afford to be sloppy or overconfident. The results came back and he came to a full stop, steered the ship to the exact point recommended by the computer, and edged forward again at low speed, adjusting by tiny increments until his trajectory matched what the computer was saying.

"Course laid in," he whispered at last, no General Skywalker around to hear him. He gave the engines a tiny burst of power—the little craft moved at a leisurely pace, nothing there to obstruct its approach toward the invisible pinprick of darkness ahead. "Initiating shut down."

He synced the ETA countdown with the chrono on his wrist. The engines went dead, the lights and screens blinked off. There was a nearly inaudible buzz of circuits burning themselves out, then nothing.

In the sudden silence and near-total darkness, Rex's breathing was loud in his ears. He checked to make sure his oxygen was flowing properly. The faint rhythmic hiss of his suit's support systems was comforting in the overwhelming emptiness, the only light now coming from the pinpricks of the stars and the glowing numbers ticking down on his wrist.

There was a hole in the starry globe he drifted in, dead ahead… a black smudge no bigger than his thumb, blocking out the stars. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, it grew. He kept his eyes on it, occasionally glancing at the numbers counting down even though it was still at least thirty minutes to arrival. His heart rate jumped, his breathing hitching, so loud, when a stray thought brought him back to the reality that he could very well still die. This could still be the countdown to the end of him, and, should Echo fail, the end of the Republic's hope of survival.

Another hiss, another breath, each one closer to his last, one way or another. And another, and another. He shut his eyes, dredging up the courage and determination he'd always been able to rely on during moments like this. This was for the Republic. Not only that, it was personal. It was his friends—his family. No way could he lose focus now. The darkness and silence and oppressive sound of breathing and blood flow pressed him further into his restless body, trapping him on all sides with the vast sense of emptiness. But he kept his eyes fixed on the ship, narrowed the universe down to tunnel vision, thinking with satisfaction of all the people the superweapon would never get to kill. It would go down in flames, and he would watch.

The next set of information was the method of accessing the maintenance hatch. Between calm but increasingly loud-seeming exhales, he pictured the schematic he'd studied from the mission file. Getting to the array would be easy enough. Entering the hatch—also easy. Activating the virus—that was the complicated part, if only because things had to be done exactly right the first time. Still, all things considered, it was a pretty straightforward mission. But adrenaline was already in his system, building up as if the little craft were a bubble sucking in energy from surrounding space and trapping it inside.

Ten minutes. The black smudge took up a fair amount of his view now, and he could only just start to make out any variation on its surface. He pictured each motion he'd need to make to smoothly eject. At five minutes he would unstrap, pull the pack on and get into position. At two minutes he would open the hatch, pull himself out, spot a target landing point, and adjust stance to jump. It would be easy.

The chrono was at eight minutes. As soon as he left the vessel, he would turn, activate the magnetization on his boots, bring his feet down firmly onto the surface of the beast, and there would be no risk of drifting away. Even if he did, the jet pack would bring him back.

Seven minutes. Segments of the ship's hull were beginning to look distinguishable. He could still see a fair amount of starred space in the lower part of his viewscreen. He was going to pass under its belly—no, over its back. He saw the giant array and realized he was upside-down… or the ship was. There was no other point in sight to judge his position against.

Six minutes. It never hurt to be prepared too early. Rex unstrapped himself and set about the awkward task of putting on the jet pack, moving slowly, adjusting for the fact that nothing stopped moving on its own in zero gravity. A tug here, a tug there—the pack bounced lazily between his shoulders like a balloon before he had it strapped securely. All the while, his own breath hissed in his ears.

"Five minutes," he whispered, crouching on the seat, and was struck with how, if he had broadcast it, the only people or droids or computers to hear his voice for… lightyears, probably, were on the very ship he was about to float under… over. He wondered how many.

The numbers seemed to be going more quickly on his chrono. Three minutes. He braced one magnetic boot against the wall, checked his suit's seals and oxygen readings again, and pulled hard at the lever by the door. The last bit of pressure and gas burst out of the crack opened in the hatch, and Rex disengaged the final lock. The door swung out, and he pulled himself up slowly, breathing, into the dark, eternal space between his tiny space rock and the behemoth it was passing. His eyes were drawn irresistibly to the stars all around him, almost every direction stretching away forever. He felt like a dust mote, drifting in the darkness, not even a beam of light to make him visible.

Well, there was the light on his wrist. One minute, thirteen seconds.

His boots held firm to the vessel's surface, though he could lift them if he wanted to, with some effort. The feeling of being connected to something, even if it was a lifeless hunk of metal, was reassuring as he craned his neck to try and judge his distance from the ship. It was hard to be confident in his own depth perception when everything was so dark and huge. Even his white armor was dim, a dark grey on black, like snow on a clouded night.

Fifty seconds. Hissing breath and the whirling blur of stars on his periphery as he searched the hull.

Forty seconds. There were thin, even stripes of a lighter darkness on the hull above him. A ladder?

Thirty seconds. It was the only variation that seemed promising. He'd have to risk it.

Twenty seconds. His eyes jerked repeatedly between the chrono, his wrist raised to eye level, and the ladder—yes, it was a ladder. It was a bit of a steep angle, but it was a better target than the rest of the hull, smooth and featureless as far as he could tell.

Fifteen. He crouched and straightened experimentally. His boots held tight. He shifted one foot to the side, sliding it roughly into a firmer stance.

Ten seconds. "Nine," he breathed, turning on his headlamps. "Eight. Seven. Six. Five."

He crouched slowly and grabbed one of the bars on the door, disengaged the magnetism in his boots.

"Four. Three." He tightened then loosened his grip. "Two." Eyes off the chronometer—on the ladder. "One."

He jumped.

There was no wind rushing in his ears, no sense of air resistance or push or drag as when falling within a planet's atmosphere. The only indication of speed was what he saw with his own eyes. The stars were all below him, the ladder rushed forward and down at him much faster than he expected. Quickly reengaging the magnetism in his boots, he cast a hand up to catch at the rungs as he passed, but snatched at nothing—he had misjudged the distance. He grasped again at the last rung and his fingers grazed it before he passed on, sliding through space just parallel to the ship, his back still to it.

Automatically, he hit the jet pack controls to turn, and his body whirled. His knees and helmet scraped the hull and he bounced away, twirling wildly in space.

Stomach trying to lurch free from his body, Rex gave another short burst on the jet pack, one on each side, to stabilize. It took a couple tries, but then he was facing the ship again, drifting back toward it, heart thudding fast. He brought his boots up underneath him, felt them connect to the hull, first one, then the other in a jerky lunge.

A relieved breath burst from him and echoed in the helmet. "Made it," he breathed, and the unresponsive stars made him think of the last time he'd been out in space like this, with Fives and General Skywalker, trying to rescue Tup. He took another heavy step and blocked his mind from going any further. No distractions on this mission. Not until the ship was taken down.

Slow and steady was the journey toward the array. It loomed over him, a massive concave dish affixed to a long shaft like a bullet the size of a Venator-class Destroyer, raised two hundred meters above the surface on a wide base. The hologram and the numbers hadn't prepared him for just how large this ship and its accompanying super weapon were. Rex could easily see how a single weapon of this scale would be fraught with technical issues, and he was both amazed and disgusted by the enemy's boldness. He was lucky to have landed within eight hundred meters of the base, but as he walked, the array barely seemed to be getting closer.

The next half hour drifted by in a silent, starry hike. Rex tried to keep up a quick pace; he had enough oxygen for the rest of the mission, but who knew how long it would take for this contact to pick him up? His skin chilled at the thought. Echo had gone to Skywalker with a request to save his life; Skywalker wouldn't have thought to ask Echo for contacts in Separatist space. That information must have been volunteered. It was a terrible risk Echo had taken on his behalf, drawing attention to himself, just as Rex had warned him not to. He hoped Echo knew what he was doing.

Finally, Rex put his hand on the towering cylindrical base of the array. Everything was coming along. He closed his eyes and imagined the schematic, then realized he was close to the hatch. He followed the mental schematic until he was standing below a featureless rectangle bolted into the side of a wall some twenty meters above him. He stepped onto the wall, and the wall became a floor, the entire orientation of the ship shifting in a dizzying way from long to tall. He looked away from the ship toward to dish and traversed the few paces toward the door and knelt down. The bolts rimmed the entire perimeter of the door, just as expected. He took out his tools from his front pack, magnetized them, and set to work.

As he knelt, onehandedly unsealing the bolts on the door according to his instructions, the adrenaline of the mission started to wear off from the methodicalness of the work. Still, it was impossible not to look up between bolts and take in the vast profusion of bright specks in all directions, joined by faint shadows of colorful nebulae. It was different than sitting in a ship. There, infinity was distant, an image seen safely through a window. Rex wondered where the nearest inhabitable planet was, and where he would hide if he survived this mission. What his life could have been if he didn't have to focus on destroying the chips. If he had been free to make whatever life he could, what would he have done? Would any society ever have accepted him? He was almost relieved that it didn't matter.

When the last bolt was off, he lifted the door from where it was set in and flung it out away from the ship. Then he lowered himself in.

The hatch was small and cramped. He entered a few paces toward a turn in the compartment which opened a little more widely into what Rex knew to be a computer terminal. He couldn't help but wonder how the Republic had come up with all this information. Must have been from someone who had worked on the ship.

He took a deep breath and recited the passcode to himself before entering it into the sleepy blinking terminal. After he did so, more lights on the computer wall turned on and the hatch itself was illuminated with a green glow from above. He pulled the chip from his pack and inserted it into the slot next to the main screen of the terminal. He still didn't know much about computer systems, but the mission file had made the rest sound simple enough. He input the series of commands he had memorized into the keypad without even watching the screen. It wouldn't have made a difference—rote memorization was easier than navigating this foreign system.

"Just a few more," Rex murmured to himself, needing to hear something other than his own breathing. The dream feeling was back. What was he doing in this moment? Everything had changed the night Fives died. Tup's murder of General Tiplar, the General's strange dreams about him betraying Cody, had all led up to that, but that was the moment it had all changed, when the way things were supposed to be had died. No matter how he'd tried since that moment to resurrect the reality he knew, to wake from the bad dream, the awful truth always came back.

Suddenly, he realized he didn't remember the last button he had pressed. He felt dizzy and laid his palm on the wall, breath coming short. No, no losing focus now. That awful truth, the faces flashing in his mind—those were all the reasons why he had to finish this.

"You can do this," he said under his breath. "You have to do this." Oxygen was at twenty percent. He couldn't remember the button he pressed but he knew he didn't have many more. He looked into the screen for the first time and realized it was only waiting for him to confirm that the data on the chip was to be uploaded into the array's targeting system. This was it then. "Sorry," he murmured with a faint grin. "You're not killing anyone from the Republic today." The last button sank into the keypad.

It was time to go—now. The virus was going to make quick work of the superlaser. Rex demagnetized his boots and threw himself toward the exit of the hatch, then kicked himself away from the ship with as much force as he could muster, then slammed on the jet pack controls. A few seconds of sustained propulsion got him going at high speed, the ship shrinking rapidly between his feet. Then once more, there was only his breathing, only the imagined sound of his heartbeat as he went up and back into nothing, reminding himself there was no need to even look where he was going—there was nothing to crash into, after all.

Every bit of instinct and training he'd been given screamed against what he was doing. To drift alone in space, far away from any larger more detectable object to never be found, to suffocate alone and be swallowed meaninglessly by the void. Even against the conscious knowledge that he was no safer on that ship, it felt like a loss to watch the super-weapon vanishing toward a microscopic point.

When it was no bigger than his thumb and still shrinking, he saw a green glow begin in the bowl of the dish. The superlaser seemed to be charging—then without warning, an eruption of light pierced through the back end of the massive bullet-shaped mount of the dish, and that was all he managed to see before the ship disappeared in a soundlessly expanding oval of brightness. It roiled outward in front of him, a silent film. Rex threw up his good hand to shield his eyes.

Secondary explosions kept the bubble of light alive for a few more seconds, emerging and dissipating irregularly. Rex saw specks of darkness quickly growing, brought into contrast by the blast. Debris, flung out by the energy of the explosion—they grew farther apart from each other and passed him by. The pieces would keep flying away with nothing to stop their frantic journey, until something else pulled them into orbit. He wondered… if he pushed his jet pack to the limit and continued at that pace, would he also find a star or planet to circle? If he died out here, how long before his armored corpse was pulled in by the gravity of something else?

Oxygen at fourteen percent. A few quick, careful taps of his fingers on the comm. on his wrist, and the distress signal began to transmit, the blinking from it corresponding with the rhythm of the radio.

This was it. Nothing now to do but wait.

…

Rex had never been claustrophobic in his life. Considering that much of a clone's life was spent in growth acceleration chambers or the narrow sleeping pods on Kamino, it wouldn't make sense to allow for such a fear. Now, as he drifted endlessly, even despite the way his breathing stayed too loud and his pulse too noticeable, it wasn't that his suit felt too confining. The universe around him was so vast, the very size of it felt as if it were shrinking him, compressing him into a glass ball where he spun, slowly, near-motionless and helpless to see anything but black… black and white, white specks in his vision that seemed like hallucinations, kind, cruel illusions of some distant life far away which he could never reach again, which had never really existed. Direction, purpose… it was all false. There was no up or down. There was just endlessness, and silence, his own breath, the sight of his own legs and arms the only evidence that he existed at all. But even those were starting to seem flimsy.

He closed his eyes and tried to slow his breathing, conserve oxygen. His body was absolutely still—what reason could there be for his breath to come short now? But the beating of his heart resonated through his scarred chest like strikes on a drum, stubbornly reminding him of death encroaching.

Purposely he focused on the images he always fought to ignore. Here in the star-flung darkness, the conspiracy began to feel distant and unreal, but he couldn't succumb to that comforting delusion.

He heard again Fives dying gasp in his ear, Cody breathing shakily—both of them shaking, shaking in his hands. Echo's blank stare, Tup's monotonous chanting, his panic, Waxer's face twisted and tear-streaked, while Skywalker curled in fetal agony under his own men's blaster fire, smoking and screaming until he went still. Commander Tano, lightsabers raised, her eyes wide with disbelief before she too jerked in flashes of light and fell, silently, eyes defocusing in a split second between passionate life and death.

Rex's breath hitched and he eased off, but closed his eyes again after a brief blink to shake himself from the nightmare. That was why he had to live. That was why he was here, waiting, risking everything on this contact of Echo's.

Rex swallowed the fear that rose inevitably with those images. There was hope. There was hope even if no one was coming. Even if he didn't survive. He had to believe that.

Suddenly he was falling, and panic pulled his eyes open, one arm flailing out from where he'd kept it tight against himself. He was moving faster now, backward, not forward as before, and he couldn't turn around. Something irresistible was pulling him in the opposite direction he had been drifting. He reached for the jet pack controls but paused, thinking.

His heart began to pound. He was caught in a tractor beam. The contact had found him—he was going to live.

As the tractor beam pulled his body into the ship's hangar—bare to his view but for a few empty cargo containers—he wished he had his DC-17s, even if this was an ally. The airlock closed, the tractor beam disengaged and the return of gravity sent him thudding to his hands and knees. Cold pain bolted through his left shoulder.

Rex was on his feet just in time to see the door open. A tactical droid stood less than a dozen paces from him, an E-5 rifle in one hand, an empty holster strapped awkwardly across its wide, short chest segment

The warmth Rex had felt at the prospect of being saved evaporated into stony chill and he hurried to pull off his helmet. The tactical droid walked toward him in that steady, soulless way of a machine, gun raised. Rex threw the helmet at it and reached into the small compartment on his belt where a poison pill given to him by Agent Soltam was waiting.

Rex had the pill halfway to his mouth when the helmet collided with his face, thrown back at him by the tactical droid. There were two clanking footsteps; something metal struck his wrist so hard the pain shot all the way up his arm. An iron grip yanked his shoulders forward, and a split-second scream tore at his throat when the droid's knee drove itself into his wounded chest, crushing his armor where it made contact.

He dropped to the ground, doubled over, gasping, momentarily blind. With effort, he opened his eyes, saw the pill as a white dot, a star on the dark floor of the hangar; he reached for it, and the droid's wedge-like foot stomped down, grinding it to powder.

Rex had to think through the pulsing pain and resurging horror. Remaining options: eject into space without his helmet, suffocate and freeze; find a way to evade the droid and destroy the ship and himself along with it. Either way, he had to move fast.

Panting in shuddering gasps and groans, he rolled from his side onto his stomach, pushed away from the floor, shaking. Knees up beneath him. Breathe. Left arm buckling, right arm extending—

"Rragh!"

The droid pushed down on the back of his neck and Rex's face hit the floor.

"Your reaction is one of many possibilities I anticipated," said the droid, holding him still with one hand and a portion of its impressive weight. Rex could see the flashing light of its "mouth" out of the corner of his eye. "You are the deserting clone I agreed to retrieve. I will not kill you. You will not be allowed to harm yourself."

Rex cast about desperately in his mind, fighting through the fog of pain, straining against the weight on his neck. Somehow the Separatists knew about him and his mission. Who had talked? He had no weapons. No allies nearby to distract the droid or jump it from behind, tear off its head like he so wanted to do right now. Right now, his physical strength was no match. All he had were his wits.

He relaxed and unclenched his fists. "Alright," he panted, practically kissing the deck as he struggled to turn his head. "You got me, droid. What do you want?"

"Your cooperation will make this situation less painful for you."

"I'll tell you anything you wanna know," Rex said.

"This is not an interrogation. I am not interested in Republic intelligence."

The droid's flat digital voice filled Rex with hatred. He gulped a few more deep breaths. It thought it was a clever droid, trying to play mind games.

"Then how do you think you know anything about me?" Rex rasped into the floor.

The droid's face disappeared out of his periphery. "I was instructed to follow your distress call, and informed that you would be without a ship. The probability of finding a single living thing stranded in space is low enough that I am certain you are the human I was meant to retrieve."

His rescuer was dead. This droid must have captured and then replaced whoever it was… after torturing them for information. It was the simplest explanation. Either that or Echo's contact had betrayed them.

"And who informed you of all this?" Rex dared to ask.

"The intermediary."

Rex wanted to rage against the hand holding him down, but he had to bide his time if he wanted any chance of escaping this interrogation. He'd never heard of a droid using tactics like this, but no doubt some were capable of it.

"Who?" he repeated.

"Unimportant. We must leave these coordinates before we are detected."

The metal hand eased off his neck and settled on his arm instead, just above the elbow. When Rex turned to look, the end of that E-5 was pointed right at his face.

"You do not trust me," the droid said. "This is necessary. I predict you will attempt to destroy me or steal my weapon for use against yourself. For the time being, you will be confined to the quarters I have prepared, to prevent… damage."

If this droid trapped him in some kind of cell, any chance he had to avoid torture would likely disappear until they reached whoever this droid was going to gift him to. If he resisted, the droid would either stun him, kill him, or continue to feign harmlessness and give him a chance to strike. Two out of three options that would keep his intel out of enemy hands… those were decent odds.

"Stand," the droid commanded, and his grip on Rex's arm lightened.

Rex twisted and aimed a heavy kick at the blaster. It clattered to the floor a few feet away. He lunged for it. His chest seemed to burst as he hit the ground, grabbed the gun and rolled onto his feet in a low crouch. Icy fire ran up his shoulder and into his skull, and his left hand was shaking so wildly he wondered if he would be better off firing the rifle one-handed.

He lost his balance as he tried to rise—winded, vision blacking out—and in that split second the droid was on him again, trying to wrench the gun from his hands. Rex's determined grip on it yanked him to his feet—he dropped his weight to try and throw the droid. No good; the thing's stance was sturdy as stone. Rex straightened, shaking violently, sweating, but he didn't let go.

"As I predicted," the droid said, answering Rex's glare with glowing white, indifferent eyes. "You are a hazard to me, to my ship, and to yourself. You will agree to follow me to your quarters, or I will stun you and carry you there."

"Alright," Rex panted through gritted teeth. He released the gun and pinned his shuddering left arm against his side with his other hand. "I'll go." Better to have his eyes open for any further opportunities… even if his vision was swimming.

"Excellent." The droid stepped around behind him and laid a hand on his shoulder. Rex could practically feel the gun pointed at his head. "You seem unusually weak for a Republic clone. I did not expect to cause any lasting damage with my attack."

Rex stepped forward at pressure from the droid's hand, wishing he had a good response to that. Like a blaster bolt to the head.

Beyond the hangar was a dim hallway, cold, perhaps even colder than the hangar. The skin of his face tingled at the chill where it wasn't still burning from being scraped against the floor.

Everything in the ship was bare and sterile, wires and workings exposed in places as if a repair crew had disappeared in the middle of their work. Rex made mental notes of what he saw, matching it to what he knew of basic ship design in case he got a chance to hotwire a system-wide disaster. He would need time for that, though—not now.

The droid stopped him at the second door they came to.

"Open it."

Rex clenched his teeth and pushed the button. Before his eyes had even taken in much of the room's minimal features, he noticed warmer air meeting his face. The droid pushed him firmly inside and then shoved him forward a few steps. When he turned around it was blocking the doorway and had both hands on the rifle.

"Do you require anything?" it said.

Rex glanced around. It really did look like a cell, if a bizarre one. There was a sleeping pallet on the floor right in the middle of the room, next to an empty storage container that came up to just below his knees. "What is this?" He picked up one of nearly a dozen drink packs on the floor.

"Water." The droid pushed a button by the door and a ray shield flashed down around Rex.

"What—!"

"You may use the storage container to hold your human waste. I will bring you nutrition cubes as needed."

"You expect me to believe that you're not taking me prisoner for the Separatists?" Rex growled. "With all this?" He gestured at the ray shield.

"I do not expect you to believe it." The droid had turned to go, but twisted its top half to look at him again. "You will continue to rely on your experience, which conditions you to identify droids of my design as a threat. Until this conditioning is changed, I will deprive you of any ability to cause damage."

The droid left; the door shut behind it. Rex looked at the water pack and wondered if there was some sort of drug in it to make him talk. No sense risking it, even if he was thirsty. His throat felt raw.

He strained to look beyond the glowing distortions of the ray shield. There wasn't much in the room he could have used to "cause damage" anyway; the room was completely empty but for a small sink and shelf area over in the corner. If not for the ray shield, he could have possibly pried open one of the panels on the wall and accessed controls, or pulled up the grate in the floor beyond which was most likely a maintenance pit. But it would take a lot of time with no tools or weapons, and only one good arm.

The pallet was stiff and thin. Rex was used to that. Once seated, he took stock of himself. He had none of the supplies he usually carried into battle, just the armor and jet pack.

Rex swept the room one more time, searching for cameras. He didn't find any, but that meant nothing. Up above him was the ray shield emitter, only vulnerable from outside the cone of light that trapped him. His helmet was gone. Perhaps the jet pack could lend him some force to catch the droid off guard in a second attempt to steal a real weapon.

He looked with disgust at his arm, which was still shaking visibly as if a live current were running through it. Spasms of pain kept radiating from his shoulder, and he could barely control his fingers. No, he was no match against the droid like this. He was never going to get his hands on the gun for long enough to do anything. But maybe he wouldn't even need to leave this room. He could rig the jets on his pack to explode—make it quick, instead of the slow burning alternative.

Carefully, still panting from the pain, he took off his crushed armor and examined the jet pack. An explosion would require a build up inside the pack, which meant he had to find a way to block the openings for the actual jets. Perhaps if he used them to superheat some of the smaller armor plates, they would melt enough to create a seal? But then they could just as easily melt off, canceling the explosion, and he'd be wasting fuel that could be used in a more direct—albeit more painful—death by fire.

Rex stared at the jets and wondered what would be the quickest part of his body to target. If he breathed the emissions directly, it would scorch his insides, he would black out and die from suffocation… yes, the face would be best. His torso had proven too resilient.

He expected to feel more disturbed by this line of thought, but it was the possibility of living that worried him most. Was he missing his chance the longer he waited to try it? What if he somehow survived the burning as Echo had survived the blast in the Citadel, and was left even more helpless in Separatist hands, having done half their torture for them? What if he simply couldn't keep applying the heat long enough to die, but let his body's reflexes betray him into a temporary escape?

Rex shivered and shoved the jet pack off his lap with his right hand, fuming at his own hesitation. Cowardice. He had been ordered to avoid capture at all costs, life included. But more than anything, he wanted to live to see this conspiracy defeated. His comrades were in danger. If the droid was alone, there was a chance to defeat it. So a part of his mind argued, but the rest of him scoffed. What chance? He couldn't fight like this.

He couldn't take his eyes off the jet pack. A poison pill was one thing. It worked instantly. But this….

The door opened; the droid was back, still holding the rifle.

"No one is in pursuit. Danger of detection has passed for now."

"And where are we going?" Rex weakly pushed himself to a stand, wishing he hadn't taken his armor off.

"To the Akuria system. The second moon of Akuria One will provide an ideal hiding place for you. It is isolated, with no intelligent life forms. I understand you are trained for survival in harsh environments."

"I don't plan on hiding forever, droid," Rex growled. "Why exactly do you think I'm deserting in the first place?"

"To enhance the probability of your long-term survival," the droid said. "To become free from the control of other life forms."

"And what is the point of freedom if I'm stuck on a planet where I'm the only person who exists?"

"It is the only place you would be free. Among intelligent organic life forms, you are merely property." The droid tilted its head slightly.

Rex felt his face twisting, shuddering like his shoulder, and it was just as difficult to control. "I don't care about—!"

He stopped himself. Better not to give any hint of his true purpose… better for the droid to think that he was deserting for selfish reasons that had nothing to do with anything truly important. If it was even telling the truth about where they were going.

After a few deep breaths he managed to say, "Fine. But I'd still rather risk it and try to pass as a normal human being on some inhabited planet somewhere. I don't care if I have to wear a disguise. Maybe a droid wouldn't understand this, but most organic creatures don't really want to live their whole lives without anyone else around." His face was still quivering maddeningly—the pain in his shoulder must have his nervous system on the fritz.

"Hmmmm," the droid said in one long, single tone, circling him. "I do not think that is a good strategy."

"Well," Rex huffed, bristling as it passed behind him. "Of course you would say that. You're probably just taking me to some secret base to be interrogated. Handing me off to your master."

"I have no master. I am independent."

"Right." Rex rolled his eyes. "An independent Separatist droid. You expect me to believe that?"

"No. This conversation is becoming redundant." The droid had reached the door again and switched off the ray shield, gun trained on Rex.

"Go on!" Rex taunted, heart hammering as he stared down the barrel of the E-5. "Get it over with."

The droid came closer, and Rex stood tall until the gun was nearly touching his chest. Then the droid stepped on the jet pack and kicked it backwards. It skidded its way out the open door.

"You are injured," it said, kicking his armor away as well. "I will reconsider our destination."

Rex lunged forward without thinking, but the droid flung out an arm and threw him backward. He crashed down onto the mat and was left gasping helplessly as the ray shield came down again. The pain was making it hard to focus on anything, but he still heard the droid's voice loud and clear.

"I am not programmed to deal with medical concerns. It will be up to you to prevent any further harm to your body in the interim. I agreed to keep you alive and in fair condition. I intend to honor that agreement, but you seem determined to subvert me in this. Your resentment toward droids is truly impressive." The droid's flat voice made everything it said sound sarcastic.

Rex struggled to sit up, his head not agreeing with his body about what position he was in. He managed it just in time to see the door shut again. Once again, it was just him, breathing loudly in the silence.

Just as he feared, he'd missed his one opportunity for escape. What had he been thinking? He bowed his head and pulled his disobedient arm back against his body, breath hissing shakily through his teeth in uneven gasps. There was nothing now for him to use to avoid interrogation, nothing but his own unsteady mind and the failing strength of his body. I won't let you down this time, sir. But he had. He had failed his last promise to his General.

…