Chapter 27
The droid dropship shook as the shockwave from the explosion caught up with them. Rex and Jester held on for their lives as the dropship almost spun out of control and crashed. Luckily for them though, Emotion was an expert pilot and had managed to get the ship he designed back under control. When the ship left after the planet's atmosphere, the ride became much smoother.
Emotions voice then came over the ships intercom.
"It should be a smooth ride the rest of the way there, that is if the Republic cruiser doesn't shoot us down on our way there," Emotion told.
Rex walked to the cockpit door and opened it to find Emotion at the controls and the xenomorph 2.0 unit sitting in the copilot seat.
"Patch me through to them and I'll tell them not to," Rex ordered them.
Emotion typed some commands into the console and the holographic image of a Republic Clone Officer appeared.
"Captain Emotion what a surprise," The officer said.
"Relax, he's with me" Rex said, stepping in so he could be seen.
"Captain Rex, I'm glad to see that you are alive" The officer said. "What about Master Floraroma and the others?"
"They…they didn't make it. Commander Jester and I are the only ones that made it along with Emotion and one of his experiments," Rex explained.
The officer remained quiet for awhile as he silently mourned the loss of the others before speaking again. "Do you want a squad to meet you in hanger when you land?"
"No, I'll be able to handle it," Rex told him.
"Understood, Captain, you are cleared to land then," the officer said.
The image of the officer than disappeared.
"Land us in the ventral hanger bay," Rex told Emotion.
Emotion nodded and piloted the dropship to the ventral hanger while Rex headed back to join Jester. Jester was seated with his back against the wall, his legs pulled to his chest while his arms rested on his knees. His helmet was off showing a sadden expression that made Jester look like an entirely different man. Rex removed his helmet and sat next to Jester.
"Hell of a day, huh, Jester?" Rex asked him
Jester just nodded.
Rex knew what was bothering Jester, because it was bothering him as well. It was the fact that they were the only two survivors to come back from the mission, not counting Emotion and his cybernetic freak show. Surviving the mission while all of your brothers died around you was a tough thing to deal with, especially after facing an enemy like the xenomorphs. Some would consider themselves lucky, others would say it made them a better solider, but most men, like Jester and Rex, would carry the memory with them as long as they lived.
Rex wasn't a stranger to survivor's guilt he's been through missions like this before, missions usually involving Emotion's experiments, where he found himself to be the only one of his brothers that had survived. At first Rex couldn't handle it; he was born to fight alongside his brothers and to die fighting with them, but as the war grew on he was glad he had survived because it gave him a chance to end this war so that his brother's deaths wouldn't be in vain. Despite his desire to end the war quickly for his fallen brothers, Rex sometimes found himself reliving those moments but in more horrific detail then what actually took place, and he knew that he would find himself back in the hive when he got a chance to rest, if he could rest that is.
The two rode the rest of the way in silence as they mourned the deaths of their brothers and the death of the brave Jedi that accompanied them. Eventually they felt the ship land as Emotion set it down in the center of the ventral hanger bay. Rex and Jester stood up and opened the ships side door and exited as Emotion and X-2.0 1 left the cockpit.
When all four where off the ship and on the floor of the hanger Captain Emotion stuck out a hand to Captain Rex, Rex took the hand.
"Thank you, Rex, for everything," Emotion said as they shook.
"Always a pleasure, Emotion," Rex replied back.
"You, your brothers and Master Floraroma preformed expertly in the face of an unknown enemy and I thank you personally for saving my life and all of Felucia" Emotion continued. "I know its meaningless now, after all I've done, but I can only hope you will forgive me in time and I'm sorry for your losses,"
"We all make mistakes, Emotion, when at war and death is something you can't stop," Rex told him.
Emotion just nodded before turning to glance at X-2.0 1. The cyborg was focused on the loading ramp of the droid dropship. As Emotion looked at it he noticed that the ramp wasn't closed completely.
"Strange" Emotion said. "The ramp should be close completely,"
Emotion walked over to the ramp pressed a button to its side and the ramp then began to lower.
"Captain I advise you step away from there," X-2.0 1 warned.
Emotion turned to face them. "Why? There couldn't be anything in there,"
Just as Emotion had finished saying that, the tail of the xenomorph queen came flying out and impaled Emotion through the chest. Emotions head quickly switched to fear before slowly switching to sad and then anger as the Xenomorph Queen stepped out of its hiding place and raised Emotion body into the air. Rex and the others step back in fear and surprise.
The queen then grabbed Emotion's lower and upper half and ripped him in two, sending both halves flying along with red emotion fluid. The queen then took a mincing step toward the group and let out an angry hiss. X-2.0 1 was the first to act. It pounced onto the queen and began to crawl around her as it slashed her with its claws and stabbed with its tail. The queen let out several shrieks of pain and tried to grab her cybernetic child and throw it off of her but X-2.0 1 was too fast.
Rex and Jester quickly put their helmets back on, withdrew their weapons and ran back. The two didn't know what they should do for sure. They could open fire on it but risk hitting X-2.0 1 and then there was her acidic blood which would eat through the ships haul when she died thanks to the cuts she was getting from X-2.0 1. As the two wondered what to do Jester spotted an X-wing starfighter and an idea came to him.
"Keep her distracted, I have an idea," Jester told Rex.
"Wait, Jester what are you," Rex started.
Rex however was too late to protest or get any more from the clone commander because he had already started running for the X-wing. Rex managed to catch up with Jester as he slid into the cockpit.
"Jester what are you doing?" Rex asked.
"We can't afford to kill her in here so I'm going to ram into her and take her outside," Jester explained.
"You'll get yourself killed if you try that," Rex protested.
"I'm a dead man anyways, Rex. It's been an honor serving with you" Jester said with a salute. "Oh you might want to hang on to something,"
Before Rex could ask why, Jester closed the cockpit and turned it to face the queen. Rex quickly ran back and fired a couple shots at the queen to get her attention. The queen moved to the right, still trying to get a hold of X-2.0 1 when Jester fired the X-wings laser cannons at the sides of the hanger bays entrance.
The protective shield of the hanger suddenly disappeared and the vacuum of space began to suck the contents of the hanger out into it. The queen fell to her knees and dug her claws into the floor of the hanger, fighting the pull of space when the X-wing suddenly launched forward and rammed into the queen. The queen grabbed a hold of the ships cockpit as it drove her and X-2.0 1 out into space.
Rex tried to grab a hold of something, but found himself being pulled out into space as well. As he flew towards the exit he felt something grab his wrist. He looked down to see the upper half of captain Emotion. Emotion had managed to grab a hold of Rex with his left hand while his right hand used the strong magnet in it to hold them to the floor of the hanger.
Rex looked back in time to see the hangers blast doors begin to close and the X-wing explode, killing the xenomorph queen, X-2.0 1 and Jester. The blast doors managed to close fully and gravity was restored, causing Rex to fall to the floor.
"Rex…" Came Emotion's fading voice.
Rex moved and held the upper half of Emotions body.
"Easy, Emotion, don't talk," Rex told him.
Emotion barely managed to shake his head.
"I…I have one last thing to ask of you," Emotion said.
Emotion then reached a closed hand out and Rex moved an opened palm hand out for him. Emotion then clasped Rex's hand and Rex felt something hard end up in his hand. When Emotion removed his hand, Rex found a red cube, a holocron, in his palm.
"It…It contains all of my research. Everything I had learned from the xenomorphs and the location of the crashed ship where we first found the eggs" Emotion explained. "I couldn't bare myself to destroy all of my research or see it be destroyed so I copied everything onto that holocron before I left to hide,"
"What do you want me to with it?" Rex asked.
"Destroy it" Emotion said, with whatever passion he had left. "Do what I couldn't do. If you fail to destroy it then hide it somewhere where no one would be able to find it. There is a great evil controlling this entire war from the shadows, using both the Republic and the Confederacy as tools to further his own agenda. Make sure he doesn't find out about this holocron if you fail to destroy it. The xenomorphs are an uncontrollable weapon that shouldn't be used by any side of this war,"
Rex nodded. "Of course, anything else?"
"There will come a time in your life, Rex, when you have to make a choice, follow orders and do what you were truly born to do or rebel against those orders and fight for a cause that will free this galaxy of the tyranny of the last great Sith Lord" Emotion told him. "I hope you will make the right choice or die before you have to,"
"Wait, Emotion, what do you mean?" Rex asked. "What choice, who is the evil controlling the war from the shadows?"
"All…all will be reviled soon, this war will end sooner then you expect," Emotion managed to say.
Emotion's light had begun to fade since their conversation had begun and as Rex tried to think of a way to keep the droid online long enough to explain more, Captain Emotion's light went out. Rex shook the droid in hopes that he was still alive, but Emotion had been wounded to greatly and head lost too much of the fluid that kept him alive. Emotion died in Captain Rex's arms.
Rex took one last look at the holocron in his hand before closing it. He continued to hold the droids body until the damage control for the ship along with several clone troopers a medical droid and a couple clone trooper medics arrived at the scene.
The damage control got to work on handling the damage in the hanger while the clone troopers spread out throughout the hanger. The medical droid and medic troopers immediately headed for Rex with a stretcher following behind them.
Rex shrugged the medics off as he stood up, cradling Emotion's upper half. He gently laid Emotion's torso on the stretcher before looking for his lower half. He managed to find it pinned under a crate and after he had lain it with the other half he allowed the medics to check him.
Once the medics were pleased that Rex hadn't been to hurt and didn't need any immediate medical attention, they allowed him to leave with the stretcher. Rex took the stretcher to the escape pod bay and then laid both halves of Emotion's body on the floor of an escape pod. He then launched the escape pod and saluted it as it drifted into space.
Rex then found himself on the bridge of the Merciless where he gave a short version of what happened to the officer on board before they decided to return to Coruscant. Rex then headed to his barracks where he attempted to rest.
As he laid there staring at the ceiling of his barracks the officer called to tell him that Commander Cody was trying to reach him. Rex told him to patch it through and sat up as the holographic image of Commander Cody appeared before him.
"So, Rex, how'd the mission go?" Cody asked.
"Emotion is dead," Rex told him, sounding more depressed then he should have.
"Mission accomplished then," Cody said.
"They all died, Cody, every last one of the men I took with me on this mission died, so did the Jedi," Rex told him grimly.
Cody's face softened when he heard that.
"I'm sorry, Rex" He told him. "What happened?"
"It's a long story, so you might want to grab a seat for it," Rex said.
Cody did just that and sat down to listen as Rex told him in detail everything that had happened when the landed on Felucia to when he put Emotion's body in the escape pod and launched it into space. When Rex was done talking he could see the sorrow and fear on his brother's face. Cody took awhile to reply and when he did his voice came out in squeak.
"What are…what are you going to do with the holocron?" Cody asked.
Rex shook his head as he looked at the red cube in his hand.
"I don't know. I know from experience how bad these things are so I don't want to give it back to the Seps and I don't know if I could trust the information in our hands either. Maybe I will just destroy it," He answered.
"Yeah maybe you should destroy it," Cody said.
Rex nodded his head. "It'd be best for everyone,"
Cody nodded as well. "Contact me when you get back to Coruscant and try to get some rest, if you can,"
The image of Commander Cody then disappeared and Rex found himself once again staring at the cube in his hands. He should destroy; no he needs to destroy it. After the hell he and his men went through he couldn't stand to see anyone else have to deal with the monsters he faced on Felucia.
Rex stood up and placed the holocron on the floor of his barracks and withdrew one of his blasters. He aimed it at the holocron and pulled the trigger. The holocron then disintegrated as the beam hit it, destroying all the information Emotion had stored in it.
With the holocron destroyed and the base on Felucia nothing more than a large crater now, Rex no longer had to worry about dealing with any more monsters…for now.
Authors note: It's finally done! I'm sorry if the chapter is a little short and that final battle with the queen isn't as climatic as it should be but oh well. I mean if I could have had Rex fighting the queen in a Star Wars version of the power loader I would have, that would have been a lot more epic.
Anyways, I'm going to go back through all the chapters, edit them as best I can and fix any plot holes that might be there and then reupload them. I also might post two epilogues, one with Rex reporting on Corusant and one where Grievous finds Emotion's body.
Now about the sequel, I would love to work on one and I plan on making one with predators actually getting involve but I'm going to work on another story (the tough part is choosing which one) before working on it. I also have to decide if I'm going to set it during the Galactic Empire or keep it during the Clone Wars.
Anyways thank you all for reading my story, favoriting and don't forget to review!- Dustbot-062