For the Pantoran language I kinda just spit some words out. According to google translate they're just gibberish, so I'm not stealing anyone's actual language as far as I know.
Reviews;
TGP212th:You're very welcome. Thank you for your support. I will try not to keep you waiting too awful long though.
JaDe In NighT: Not really? The episodes (in chronological order) that I jumped over wouldn't have really involved her so... You'll find that out at the end of this chapter, actually.
QueenNagaina: Thank you, I have definitely not given up.
artistgirl16: Obi Wan is the absolute best, I will fight for him.
ScarletFishcakes: I'll try to keep filling you with joy even in the sad chapters! You're super sweet.
Guest from May 28th: It's kind of habit actually?
cozzizzie: You are very welcome! With any luck this chapter is just as good!
Death choked her.
It wrapped itself around her throat and pulled her heart up into it, dragging it close to her jaw. All around her in a field of white, crushed armor splattered with the frozen blood of the dead. Troopers littered the control room, draped across panels and twisted across each other's stiff limbs.
They had been murdered.
Aliette knew, could feel through the Force cast out around her, that there no survivors in the room. The only clones that still lived were the ones that she had brought with her in the investigation. There would be time to mourn them later, for now they needed to identify the dead.
Aliette helped her troops sort through with Rex and few from the 501st. She had chosen her squad to bring along, and Rex had brought with him a handful of his own. Six squads, three from each of their companies, had been dragged into the howling wind of Orto Plutonia after the vanished dozens that had stopped responding to their calls to the surface.
"How many are there?"
The soft voice of the Lady Chuchi, revealed to be Senator Riyo of, came from the entrance to the control room. Aliette looked up from where she'd been IDing a fallen clone, CT-1154. Blithe.
It took her a moment to find her voice, eyes locked on the two gold markings that added to the senators cheeks. Riyo Chuchi was a very powerful Pantoran, for all she deferred instantaneously to the Chairman.
"Too many," the words came quieter than Aliette would have willingly admitted. Riyo's eyes locked on her before her chin twitched upwards, the muscles in her neck tightened. The Senator's Center shifted from Discontent and Concern to something with a sliver of Pride, though it seemed to Aliette some how False. In time, Aliette's dropped down, her Center falling to Difference. She saw Punch and Jester exchange looks over the body of Rail.
Behind Chuchi, Cho came striding in with the command of a man with fewer lines than he had. The Ceri brothers, one face so familiar it made her chest grow tight, followed after him. They were proud and tall, towering over the crouched Aliette.
She busied herself with another body.
"Scrounging in corpses?" one of the Ceri queried, a low mock in his voice. In the corner Chopper and Gus bristled, both took a step towards the three Pantorans. His brother elbowed him, causing his teeth to click together before his eyes, the exact shade of gold as Aliette's, found someone else to look at. Perhaps it was that similarity that kept made him deign speaking to her in the first place.
"Aliette," her Master called, tipping his head into the room to find his Padawan. She ignored the scoff from Chairman Cho.
"Yes, Master?" She asked, pushing herself to her full height. She was barely as tall as the senator herself.
"What do you make of all this?" he asked, implicating the carnage that now surrounded them. She and the men had begun to sort the bodies by their squads, to make IDing easier for all of them, physically. Emotionally there was a grim darkness that clung to the pure white landscape.
"This is obviously the work of Seperatists."
The words were spit out from her right, curtesy of Chairman Cho. Aliette hadn't even been able to give her report.
Her teeth clicked together, irritation bubbled under her skin until she let it go, released her emotions into the Force where they would do her, and all around her, no harm.
They were called here by the Chairman, the forts were set up at his request, if he thought it was the separatists he was entitled to that.
Even if he was dead wrong.
"I'm not so sure," said her Master, who possessed a brain. "No one has touched these computers."
"Sir," Rex announced his arrival as he came in, "Scouts spotted a Separatist Base across the ridge."
Her Master's face went Grim. He turned to her and she stood up a bit straighter, chin lifting up. A job, perhaps. She would like a task.
"Anakin and I shall go investigate this Base," he declared, "Stay here with the men from the 212th and make sure that the Senator and the Chairman remain safe."
Chairman Cho snorted his disdain for his idea. Aliette swallowed back her Defense. A ghost of a smile appeared on her Master's face when he felt it through their Bond. She was given an answering touch of Flattery that she would jump so quickly for him.
Aliette, instead of biting arguments out, bowed Humbly a few degrees. "As you say, Master."
She may not be the biggest fan of Pantora, but she would protect these people with her life, if it came to that. Only because her Master had asked and her Vows demanded it.
As she waved farewell to the exploratory party that the 501st was taking on the Force whispered into her blood, plucked at her bones. It nudged her in the direction of something she didn't know yet. A glance at the others revealed that they were busy unpacking and securing everything.
She should stay with her men, whom she was in Command of, but with the Chairman there there wasn't much Commanding she could be doing in any case. He had quickly taken charge.
Aliette knew that leaving was a bad idea but the Force called soft words to her, tugging her hair with the wind and dragging her Cape across her shoulders. She was needed elsewhere.
With as much confidence as she could muster Aliette announced she was running one last Perimeter Check and confiscated a Freeco Bike.
"Hey you, droid!" Gus's voice cut through the wind of the snowy planet, blown in through a destroyed window in the outpost. It had taken half an hour to find the gold translator, even with all five of them looking for it.
The droid, C3PA, or something, turned around, its arms stiff and bent halfway.
"Yes, how can I be of assistance?" he asked, his high voice pronounced with precision.
"We want you to translate for us," Chopper declared from Gus's right. Jester and Punch flanked him to the left, and Sketch took up the rear. It was a lopsided diamond formation, since none of them were took the middle.
Sketch moved through them, the best with Tech, and flipped a few buttons on his wrist until the words that his bucket had recorded earlier in the day. The voice of Chairman Chi Cho echoed around them. Spitting words out again.
"Uwane Tunhara, tsi khezu chen bek. Aliette."
"Oh, my," the droid's surprise was warranted, as was the anger that rolled through all five clones when he made his translation.
"He said, 'Disgusting child, standing above your place. Aliette.'," the droid reported. Punch looked like he was about to live up to his name sake when Sketch caught him around the elbow, keeping him in place.
"He can't talk about the Commander like that," Chopper snapped, baring his teeth. His ruined eye glared harshly around them, down to where the Pantorans were gathered, save their leader.
It was Jester, ever the voice of reason, that prompted, "Why did he call her that?"
The group exchanged looks with each other.
"We could always ask her," Sketch put forth, tilting his head towards where they knew she was. Gus wasn't sure how, some Jedi trick probably, but all of them seemed to know instinctively where to find their CO. Whatever it was, it made it easier for them to go find her.
When they did, she was holding a holo pad, flicking through it. It wasn't hard to see carved in lines in her face, turning her normally kind, serene expression twisted into melancholy. Grief.
"Commander?" Punch threw his voice out, lifting the Jedi's chin. Her gold eyes levelled onto them, sorrow sallowing their depths. Unease turned across their skin, drawing their mouths into near identical lines.
"Yes?" she asked, tucking the pad to her stomach. It slipped partially into the thin cloak that she wore.
Gus was momentarily envious of her. Even in the heat producing under suit he had gotten and the insulating additions to his armor he was uncomfortable where the joints bit and cold where the heat didn't quite reach. They were the opposite of their tiny commander, who had barely put on extra layers for the frozen tundra that crafter the planet they stood upon.
"Is something the matter?" Sketch inquired first, before the rest could.
Gus blurted, "You looks sad."
He surprised them all.
"It's- I found a memoire of a trooper that was killed here," she held up the holo pad again, showing them the written Basic on the screen. It looked like a letter. "He was writing to a brother of his. He died mid-through."
"What are you going to do with that?" Gus asked. His shoulders straightened when her eyes focused solely on him. They stayed there for a moment only before wandering to a shattered window.
"I'm not sure. Not yet," her thumb rolled across a corner, smoothing the frost lined metal. Her gloves were so thing her fingers still looked slim.
Gus looked back at the others, then at his Commander again. She was already mourning someone she had never known. Would their question help or hinder? Punch made a jerk at her with his chin, drawing the Commanders attention back from wherever it had wandered. Whatever she was thinking.
"Is there something you all needed?" she quizzed, lowering the pad until it vanished in the folds of her short cape.
Gus seemed to be the only one who talked to her regularly. Disrespectfully, more like.
"Why did the Chairman say you were 'standing above your place'?" he asked outright. When her shoulders drew together and her eyes grew wide he wondered if he'd stepped to far this time. If she might actually discipline his insolence in the way that she never had the guts to before.
The Commander licked her lips before looking over their shoulders the way Jester tended to.
"That is… complicated," she said slowly.
It was Chopper that said, "He said your name weird."
A smile crossed her face, bitter and sardonic. She sat against one of the tables in the room and motioned for the men to join her. Which they did, one by one. Gus last.
"Names are important to you."
It wasn't a question but all nodded. There was a soft scuff from the hallway. They weren't alone.
"They are important to Pantoran's as well. So important… On Pantora you either belong to a clan or you're nameless gutter trash," Commander Ansa touched her chest. "Case in point."
"You have a name," he cut in, frowning at her. Aliette Ansa, Padawan Learner.
Her voice grew rougher. "Hardly. Aliette is no more a name than your numbers are. It isn't a name at all, not anymore. Once it was, now it is what the disgraced are called. The Undesired. It is practically synonymous with Orphan. It is given only to those who have no family. No Clan Name to call their own."
"What about Ansa?" Gut contradicted once more. If they weren't nodding with him Gus was sure that they would have punched him for his borderline insubordination.
To his surprise, she truly smiled then. A soft, far away one. "Ansa isn't a name as all. Ansa, it was given to me when I was taken to the temple, after a sign in the port they found me at," she repeated, a third time, "Ansa. Do you know what that means?" She waited until they shook their heads slowly. "It means Slick."
Gus's guts dropped hard to the ground. That was impossible.
"That is my name. Aliatte Ansa, The Slick Orphan."