Chapter 58

Fractured Memories

While the Whipclaw climbed into orbit, Ahsoka went over the footage she took of the shuttle's cockpit. Ylenic watched as she froze the image.

"That one clearly looks like another Windu clone," she said. "But the one next to him is smaller, and nearly white. And the one behind him is striped, like a Zabrak."

"When we were in the base I only smelled one human," Ylenic said slowly, favoring his ribs. The medical scanner had shown that several of them were cracked, and Ahsoka had helped him inject the area with a nutrient kolto injection that would help them heal quickly. "While it is possible that the others were hiding in the woods, or on the far end of the base, I think the simplest explanation is the most likely: there is more than one clone of Mace Windu. The pale one appears smaller, perhaps it is merely younger."

"That doesn't explain the skin, though," Ahsoka pointed out.

"No, but that does," Ylenic said, pointing at the copilot's hands and zoomed the image in. "It appears that he is wiping something on his forearm."

"You think that he's putting on body paint or something?" Ahsoka looked closely at the zoomed in image. "You know what, I think you might be right. What in the Core are they doing? Trying to all look different when they get to where they're going?"

"I have no clue, unfortunately," the older Jedi replied. "I am afraid that if we can't pick up their trail once we get to open space, we may have to simply wait until we hear from your bounty hunter sources."

"That's what I was afraid of," Ahsoka said as she punched the engines to full blast.

The Whipclaw rocketed out of the atmosphere, trailing vapor behind it. Ahsoka turned the sensors up to full and followed the direction she'd last seen the stolen Imperial shuttle going.

On a more populated system, she wouldn't have found anything. But with no other ion emissions from engines, she found a faint trail heading towards open space.

The moment the trail reached the edge of the planet's gravity well, it disappeared.

"Spast!" she said, "They must have immediately gone into hyperspace."

The Fourth handed the tube of white skin covering pigment to the First. The First pulled his seat back to give himself room. The First took the tube, and started to apply it to his forearms. "It is... unfortunate," he said, "that the Second was forced to stay behind."

The Fourth nodded. "He w...w...was a powerful J...Jedi. He gave his life s...s...s...so that we could fulfill our m...mission."

"If he was really so powerful," yelled the Third from outside the cockpit, "he would have finished off those pretenders and caught up with us."

"Shut up," the First yelled back at him, "and show some respect. He was my clone, and your progenitor."

"And he was o...o...one of us," the Fourth stuttered.

"He was the one dumb enough to get injured when we took the base," the Third yelled back at them. He stepped back into the cockpit and grinned, his whitened face covered in a complex zigzagging pattern of black stripes. "So... what do you think? Do I look like a Bpfasshi?"

"More l...like a Za...b...brak," stuttered the Fourth.

"At least I can talk properly," the Third sneered.

The First reached out with the Force, and the Third gave a garbled choke. "He stutters because he was taken from his tank early. Why was it that we had to pull him from his tank early?"

The Third tried to respond, but no sound came out. He frantically scrabbled at his neck, where the First's Force grip held him tightly.

"Oh, right. It was because you got cocky. You got caught by a clone trooper on guard duty. The Second was wounded trying to protect you, and I had to pull the Fourth from his tank before he was done with his flash learning regimen." The First swiveled around in his chair, coldly regarding the painted clone that he held just out of arm's reach with the Force. "I don't really care whether you learn respect or not. But I do care about our mission. We are to go to Bpfassh. We must infiltrate the Jedi Temple there. And we must root out any dark-side Jedi we find. We have not been able to contact Master Yoda, and he was planned as the lead on this mission. It will take all of us to make up for his absence. If your attitude gets in the way of the mission..."

He left his threat hanging in the air, giving the Third a slightly tighter squeeze, then he dropped the Third. The clone fell to the deck, panting heavily.

The First continued to apply the white makeup on his upper arms, covering up his dark brown skin with a pale white to blend in with the near-human Bpfasshi.

The Third thought about saying something back at the First, but then he recalled seeing what happened to the clone trooper who'd almost escaped from Mount Tantiss. The First had grabbed the trooper's helmet with the Force, then blasted the trooper's body with so much power that the helmet had split in two, nearly flattened, and the trooper had hit the armored exit door so hard that both had sailed hundreds of meters away into the jungle around the base of the mountain. The First was the most powerful of the four clones, and even as impulsive as the Third was, the Third knew that he was not to be trifled with.

He sneered at the First angrily as he pulled himself back up on his feet, then he wandered out of the cockpit, tossing the tube of black makeup in the First's general direction as he left.

"I d...d...don't really l...like him," the Fourth said. "Is that s...strange?"

"No," the First replied, "I don't really blame you. But he is one of us, and he has my memory imprint. The mission is as important to him as it is to all of us. The Second gave his life for it."

Ahsoka brought the ship into the hangar bay in the old mining base. The hangar was empty. Inside the control room she found ZT-47, still plugged into the stolen Jedi history database they'd recovered from Rudrig University, and his owner, Xho Fik'ta, working on a console nearby.

Xho clicked his mandibles together when he saw them. "Ah, Ahsoka, Ylenic, good to see you back in one piece. Jyssa received a lead on a well paying job through fairly safe space, so she felt it best to bring the two young ones with her. Zete and I have stayed behind to continue working on the database."

"That's fine," Ahsoka said, "I trust her to keep them safe. And she's got to keep up her business. Why did you stay behind? I mean... this place doesn't even have working 'freshers yet."

"Not a problem. And finishing up fixing circuitry now. Plumbing should be functional in nearby sections. Luckily my species does not sweat, so I do not require regular bathing like most humanoids." Xho noticed the sheathed vibrosword that Ylenic was using leaning on as a crutch and scampered over to him. "Classic echani design. Ancient. Possibly woven with cortosis fibers. A museum relic in perfect condition. Where did you get it?"

Ylenic grunted, "From someone who felt that I needed it more than another."

"Shortness of breath, singed fur, you are injured." Xho clicked, and leaned in to look at Master It'kla's wounds. "Burns are superficial, although the fur may never grow back properly. Shortness of breath suggests damage to endoskeleton."

"I am fine," Ylenic said, "and the wounds have been treated. Time, and perhaps meditation are all I need."

The large datapad that was ZT-47 piped up and said, "Will you be able to heal in less than six hours if you use a Jedi meditation?"

"Probably not entirely, but enough to be functional. Why do you ask?"

"Because that's how long it will take to get to Bpfassh at the Whipclaw's maximum speed," the little droid said, flashing a video onto his screen. "The Whipclaw just received this notification from the Inquisitors."

The video showed a one-sided battle between local police forces, mostly made up of pale-skinned Bpfasshi, and three men wielding lightsabers. A newscaster stood nearby, trying to speak over the din, but not much could be said about the situation.

Suddenly, one of the three leapt, and sailed through the air, landing in front of the camera. The newscaster ran, and the camera shook as the operator presumably let go of it and did the same. The Jedi sneered at the camera, his strange tattoo-like markings twisting around his features. A blast of Force lightning came from his fingertips, and the camera image went dark.

Despite the fact that one looked like a gawky teenager, and one had tried to obscure his face by adding black designs, Ahsoka immediately recognized them as more Windu clones.

"Grife... no rest for the Jedi," she said.