The Clone glanced wearily at report in his hand. Guard duty was an exceptionally boring occupation, which also made it stressful. Nothing happened most of the time, so it was easy to slip into bad habits of only casually making sure that all was secure. The stress lay in the potential for something to happen after those bad habits developed. Nobody cared how long you'd been standing watch without incident, only that something had happened while you weren't doing your job.

This posting had actually be partly The Clone's idea. When it was discovered that the clones who had served under the treacherous Jedi Glyr Rtj-lyr were distrustful and even afraid of Jedi, it became apparent that something had to be done. They couldn't be relied upon because they had no faith or trust in their superiors. The Clone had come up with the idea of posting them somewhere without Jedi for awhile, allowing their fear to subside and their confidence to rebuild.

After all, it was illogical to think that the Jedi would be able to repair the damage done and still effectively wage war against the Separatists. The impracticality was such that, though The Clone didn't know it, there had been suggestion that the damaged clones be destroyed to protect the Republic from their betrayal. Except for Jac, who had not exhibited any reservations about Jedi.

He had the distinct advantage of having experience, of actually knowing that all Jedi were not like Rtj-lyr. The others had begun their careers under Rtj-lyr, and knew no other way for a Jedi to be.

However, Jac's solution was favored, it being the more pleasant to contemplate. Jac had suggested it to Commander Cody who had, in turn, mentioned it to General Kenobi, who had sent it up the chain to someone who had the authority to authorize it.

By this time, the battle for Aakaria was winding down, with the Republic being the winning side. A few scattered droid troops still remained, but the Separatists had clearly given up on taking over the planet. An outpost had been set up on the planet to scan the space nearby for approaching Separatist ships, and there were a few clones dispatched to man it and to search the planet for surviving droids.

Additionally, there was a small workforce mining for the ore which had been the true cause of conflict. Its value could not be overestimated. The Na'taves had little interest in the ore, or the mining operation, though some of their people hovered around the site, just so that the Republic didn't forget who truly ran this world. The ore was located at the tropical part of the planet, which ran like a band around it, the border between the frozen rocky region and the burning desert.

The Clone, having spent more time than he cared to admit on both the desert and dark side of the planet could say with some authority that this was the nicest region. Though humid and rainy, the climate was moderate, and both plant and animal life thrived here. Here, one never had to worry about starvation, heat stroke or frostbite.

The downside was that it was deathly boring.

The change of pace didn't much bother The Clone. It was something of a relief to find that the world as he knew it was once more in balance. He was in more danger from the enemy than the elements. Things were as they should be. Except that enemy sightings were rare, especially near the outpost. Troops were going farther and farther afield just to find a few miserable, malfunctioning droids to blast.

But Jac wasn't complaining. He was too wise for that. He knew well that peace was never a lasting thing, it was most often the calm before the storm. He didn't know whether to expect trouble to happen here on Aakaria, or to be transferred out to the front-lines of some other world. But, in any case, he didn't expect the peace, or the boredom, to last.

His co-workers did not share his contentment in that knowledge. They were younger than he was, both literally and figuratively, their wont for experience made them impulsive and, really, very irritating. He was not alone with these clones, whom he had come to think of in his own mind as "juvenile delinquents". The clone in charge of the base was a war-weary sergeant whose real monicker was Flame. But the delinquents had a different name for him. Grampa Joe. Where that had come from, nobody really knew for sure. Jac suspected it had something to do with the Sergeant's tendency to tell stories which were enthralling the first time, mind-numbingly boring and tedious the thousandth time.

It didn't help any that the delinquents had not the experience to truly appreciate Grampa Joe's tales of heroism. Though Jac was a good deal younger than Grampa Joe, he had enough experience to appreciate the stories, and the true horror of some of the situations Grampa had found himself in. He alone listened patiently to the hundred and first retelling of Grampa's exploits early in the war.

In his own way, Grampa was as damaged as the delinquents, but for a different reason. He had exceeded the average lifespan of a clone, simply by not getting himself killed one way or another, nor even wounded physically beyond repair. His long life was drenched in blood, soaked in the nightmare of losing the brothers around him, his victories and failures in battle blurring together in a drunken slur.

The Sergeant was, as the above might imply, drunk out of his gourd a lot of the time. Clones weren't supposed to drink, for the obvious reasons, but Grampa had taken to the bottle to escape his own memory. When he was sober enough, he ran the outpost. But he was often passed out in a corner, leaving Jac in charge of the delinquents, who all despised him for a variety of imaginary reasons.

Jac didn't mind. For once in his life, he had a job that made sense to him. No confusing instructions from Jedi, no wondering if this decision or that one was the right one, just simple, straight-forward duty. Jac liked simple, and it had been a long time since anything had been simple for him.

Simple didn't mean easy, however. In a given day, Jac handled as many as fifty or sixty reports and complaints from tower guards, squads in the field searching for droids or guarding the perimeter, and mine workers and the clones guarding the mines. He was even contacted by those in the Na'tave government on a regular basis to check up on progress and occasionally tell him off for troops tramping around on farmland.

This didn't bother him overmuch, as he knew that it would work itself out one way or the other. Everything would resolve itself in good time, and a "crisis" here paled in comparison with the real thing on the battlefield, where a crisis left untended resulted in the deaths of hundreds most times.

There was also no need for instant decisions. Jac could take a few minutes, hours or even days on a decision, depending on the problem, sometimes he could even wait until the Sergeant woke up and dealt with it himself. Jac was routinely surprised by the panic in the eyes of the delinquents when they reported a problem to him, as though they expected the very world to open up and swallow them if it wasn't solved right away. They acted as though their very lives depended on resolving these everyday issues immediately, if not sooner.

Youngsters. There was no accounting for their impatience. It was a wonder any of them lived long enough to become bitter and cynical soldiers.

Jac sighed heavily. The request he was looking at now required the Sergeant's signature to get it approved. Jac looked over at the Sergeant's desk. A soft snoring seemed to emanate from it. The Sergeant had drunk himself to sleep last night, slid out of his chair and wound up underneath his own desk, where he was still sleeping it off the next morning.

Jac laid the report aside. Grampa Joe could deal with that when he woke up sometime in the afternoon. The worried trooper who'd been fidgeting impatiently while Jac read the request looked at the temporarily ignored report with obvious horror. To him, it seemed that the world had just ended. He couldn't radio the squad in the field who'd made the request until he had an answer for it.

He shifted nervously, contemplating his options. He could simply delay radioing them until he had an answer, whenever that might be. Or he could call them and say he didn't have an answer, but would let them know when he did. Either way, they'd be mad as hell and probably shoot the messenger, figuratively speaking.

Jac looked at the clone still standing before him. He didn't have any real rank on this kid, except for experience points. That and nobody wanted to do this job. If they got too annoying, Jac always offered to let them take over, which snapped them back in line like a rubber band.

"You're dismissed," Jac said, in a tone that suggested the kid should have already known that.

When the clone continued to stand there looking nervous, Jac decided to give him a nudge.

"You can go,"

With a disappointed twitch, the youngster left, his mind consumed with what seemed to him to be a huge problem. How could he break it to the field troops that their request was neither accepted or denied, but sitting untended on Jac's desk?.

"Stupid kids don't know when they've got it good," this remark was so slurred Jac almost didn't catch it as the Sergeant crawled out from under his desk "I mourn the poor bastard who has to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with those delinquents on the battlefield,"

He slouched into his chair, poured himself a morning drink and downed it in a single swallow. Jac was not the only one who thought of the younger set as delinquents. If there had been any argument, he would have said Grampa started it.

"They had a rough time getting out of the gate," Jac replied passively, raising an eyebrow at the empty glass, but not commenting on it.

He would sooner have died than so blatantly break the rules, but he understood the Sergeant's need to escape better than most and so let it slide.

In fairness, was entirely possible that Grampa hadn't read the files of the newcomers, and so knew nothing of the betrayal of their master, or how their Captain had died. Even if he had, it was unlikely that he would have cared. Grampa grunted derisively.

"Well they won't get any sympathy from me," Grampa said "don't they teach those kids that nobody cares about their precious feelings?. In my day, whiners weren't tolerated. They went right to the front of the line to get shot at. They learned about how much feelings matter, if they survived long enough,"

Jac chose to ignore this. Instead of answering, he pretended the question had been rhetorical and collected the pile of reports that needed Grampa's signature, went over to the Sergeant's desk and set the reports down.

"More whiners, I suppose. Want things like food and ammo and blankets and all sorts of luxury items. Don't they know we've only got what the supply ships bring?. Do they think we're hiding the best stuff from them?. Self-centered bastards," Grampa ranted, even as he diligently read the reports, signing off on the majority of them, except the papers he seemed to form a close personal enmity with.

He then returned them to Jac, who took them wordlessly, checked them over to make sure there were no mistakes, and then turned to go back to work. Jac could have told Grampa that he'd worked with some who did horde supplies, leaving others to starve. But he didn't, because that would only cause Grampa to explode in a rage at the implication that he would ever do something so despicable.

"Lot of children out there, disguised as adults but without the fortitude or character to qualify. Bastards, the lot of 'em," Grampa grunted again, and poured himself another drink.

"Tell me," Jac said, settling at his own desk "is it age or drink that makes you such a cynic?,"

Grampa didn't dignify this question with an answer, grunting again and swallowing another drink. Jac shook his head and laughed, then went about his work.

It being one of the Sergeant's more lucid days, Jac elected to lead the morning patrol of the area surrounding the outpost. There were sentries posted in the surrounding area, near marked trails that might be used by Separatist troops to try and sneak up in the dead of night.

While the scanners did most of the work, there was always the off-chance that a well-timed squadron of enemy troops could make it past. The Sergeant, whatever his other faults might be, could never be said to be one who took chances. He refused to "let the clankers catch him with his rifle down", as he so eloquently put it. The youngsters at the outpost, especially the delinquents, thought these measures were absurd, and complained at length about the relative dampness of the ground, the constant dripping of water from the leaves of trees and the endless parade of stinging, biting bugs.

There were times, when he was most exasperated, that Jac had half a mind to tell them what a real bug bite looked like, what real rain felt like and what real discomfort was. But he knew that would only bring out their scorn, the same thing that happened when the Sergeant did tell them the way thing really were out there.

There are some things you just can't teach, no matter how many ways you try. Some things just have to be learned the hard way. Jac only hoped the delinquents lasted long enough to find out for themselves how mean and nasty the world could be.

The dawn patrol consisted of a peculiar mix of fresh troops for the sentry posts, supply troops for those working in the field (sometimes replacements for them as well, but not today) and clones who were flat bored of reading scanners and needed a change of pace. That change of pace was a two or three hour march through the jungle, using paths which, anywhere else, would have been well-worn. Out here, however, the plants seemed to sprout up overnight, and the earth didn't become hard-packed, it became sucking mud, which grabbed at a trooper's boots almost hungrily.

"I don't see why the furballs can't guard their own damn planet," one trooper complained bitterly, after tripping over a tree root "they don't want our trade or technology, and it's hardly worth the trouble to guard a rock pile in this jungle,"

"Tell that to the next Captain or Commander who wanders through," another clone muttered.

"That's just it," the first one replied "they don't wander through. Nobody ever comes out here because the war has moved on. We ought to be out there fighting the Separatists, and what are we doing?. We're mopping up the mess somebody else made on a planet that's not even strictly aligned with us. What for?. That's what I'd like to know,"

Jac had a ready answer.

"Because we were told to, Bristler. You don't have to like it, but that's how it is. You know that as well as I do,"

A/N: I'm very much aware that the correct spelling is "Grandpa". Thanks for not mentioning it.