The survival rate has plummeted. We no longer converse as often as we used to. Instead, we take to simulating scenarios all the time. Every day we inch closer to death, to the edge of that cliff. One day something will push us over the edge.
Our first excursion into these new difficult operations is in a frontal assault. We're dropped in behind enemy lines in the deepest recesses of a swamp. The viscous water crawls on our chassis and infests the empty space in between all our joints and servos like parasites. Lance hates it, just as I expected.
"I think we should get out of here quickly," he says, "I wish I had a blaster like yours Gunner, I'd shoot them all down in one burst and run back to the extraction."
"Focus, and stop complaining," I tell him.
Autumn makes a fuss too but Augment shuts him up the moment his vocalizer powers on.
Everything is going fine, until we make contact with the enemy for the first time. There are an absurd amount of clones. All of them are painted in green-brown camouflage. It's like the swamp itself had come alive and was trying to swallow us whole. They were everywhere. Behind the trees, in the water, perched on branches, hidden in the underbrush, crouched inside dark and damp holes in the ground.
One minute the sky was clear and the next there was nothing but blue dots heading straight for us.
The water begins to rise in temperature. I feel as if my chassis is about to explode when Augment pulls me out and carries us away to the safety of a nearby cliff-side. We attack them from there and pick off a good chunk but just as the battle turns in our favor, their reinforcements swarm in like geonosians from a hive. They bring four transports worth of clones and an AT-TE, it's legs are well-adjusted for the harsh environment.
We're pinned down from behind, below, and above. The entire Republic military must've been shooting on our position. We have to crawl away and hug the dirt so close that we might as well have been worms. We submerge ourselves entirely and swim through the water, putting our air-tight chassis' to the test. Augment and his team sink all the way to the bottom and eventually, Gearman gets snagged on the tendrils of an immensely strong plant. It takes all of us to pull him free and by then the clones had caught up with us.
The fight lasts for another three hours. My chassis is hit three times, two on the chest, one on the shoulder and a close call to the head. Core saved me at the last moment, pushing me underwater to avoid that one.
My entire body is so hot and uncomfortable. We're swimming in lava while being pelted with plasma.
No scenarios we simulated accounted for all of this.
Only one served us at the top of that cliff.
We kill a sufficient amount of clones and T-B8 calls us back just as the clones begin to encircle us again.
Caliber and Tuner are nearly torn to shreds by the AT-TE as it fires it's missiles. We're thrown around as both transports make sudden turns to dodge the rockets. We're all bunched up into a ball of steel in one corner of the bay and somewhere within all that is Gunners blaster which had begun to fire.
Caliber wasn't happy when we made it back to the hangar.
Nobody's happy. Not anymore.
And in comparison to the others, that operation was as simple as a blaster cleanup.
The next had us clinging on for life on the side of a mountain. We scaled up that giant rock up to a base suspended in the air. An assault was already going on at the front. Every now and again the vibration from a giant explosion above would nearly throw us off. Lance kept tripping up at the rear. Autumn had to stay at his side and sometimes behind him to make sure he didn't fall to his death.
Augment and I stop halfway up to let the others catch up. We look out into the mountain range, entranced by the view. I've never seen so many mountains all in one place. They're gigantic, some matching the size of a ship. They dip and rise in waves. I've never so much snow before either. The entire planet was covered in it. The horizon was a mix of a dark blue and emerald green. The sky moved in waves and changed in color.
Augment likes the view as much as I do.
"Looks like a clear day for flight," he says, "strange, never seen the sky move like that. It's so colorful."
"There's much we don't know about the galaxy," I say.
"We don't know much about ourselves either."
We continue the climb.
The walls of the base itself are considerably easier to climb. There are artificial bumps and ridges meant to keep the snow away. When we haul ourselves over the top. We're greeted by the sight of a giant battlefield. There's dozens of AT-TE's and spider droids and magna tri-droids and an army of B1s and clones at the front gates. So many of the B1s die in a single sweep of blaster fire from the clones. Thermal detonators catapult bodies into the air.
Morale takes a hit at the sight but I press forward and say, "kill as many clones as you can. We might just save a few of our troops if we kill enough."
And so we charged them from the rear, forming piles of their bodies with their armor stained by their own blood. Gunner was firing at a near constant rate thanks to the cold, but the barrel of his E-5C would still glow red and attract attention to us. He smothered it in thick chunks of snow after that.
The clones diverted a portion of their troops over to us and once again, we found ourselves pinned down, taking hit after hit, trembling in hot white pain. At one point I began to convulse in agony. It felt as if a star was forming in my chest and expanding outward.
Augment and Core watched helplessly as I writhed on the ground and spewed static noise from my vocalizer. It hurt me more that they had to watch and stay in cover than the actual pain of the bolts themselves.
Gunner saved us that day. He went all out in an assault at our rear, carving a path for us back to the outer walls of the base.
Augment and his team flew us away, but not without taking more hits. We had to stop once on the floor of the valley.
Journey-One had taken one to the jet. The heat exploded on his back and tore off one of his arms. Core carried it for him. He was just about able to make the fly back but not without grunting and groaning in pain the entire way.
Why is it that they give us these pain receptors? For what purpose other than our suffering do they serve? They don't keep us alive. They don't help us regulate the heat inflicted on us. We have our self-preservation protocols already. There is no reason for them. Our masters are sick, vile people. They should all go extinct and let us droids take over the galaxy. We wouldn't go to war any longer. We would thrive and prosper and dance on their corpses.
Only a few days have passed since Brawler squadron's death, but already it feels as if another year has passed. We're not even halfway through the second year of this war. How much longer will we have to do this? Until we are all dead? What is T-B8's end-goal with all of this? He hasn't told us. The only logical conclusion I can come to is that he's planning on deserting the Confederacy when the time is right. He must be waiting, ever patient. I would ask him directly but we haven't been on good terms since Brawler's demise.
Whatever it is that he has in store for us, I hope he does it soon. Never has our situation looked so hopeless than now.
My circuits are wearing thin, threatening to break apart and kill me once and for all. Every day, I simulate scenarios with Augment. He is nearing his breaking point as well.
"What difference does it make if none of them help us in combat?" He says to me in the charging bay.
"But it does help," I say, "haven't you noticed? Every single mission has led to at least one part of our scenarios being used. Like the swamps of Kelimar when we were on the cliff-side."
Augment doesn't want to admit it but eventually he concedes.
"This is for our survival, Augment. It is painful and tedious, yes, but I made a terrible mistake. I let B-15C and his squad die-"
"It wasn't just you," Augment argues, "but enough of that. We'll keep running them," he shifts his head to Autumn and the rest of his team at his side, "if anything, I'll do it for them."
An honorable sacrifice.
But I don't know how much longer we can do this.
It will either stop with our deaths or us turning back into mindless machines like a blaster or a ship.
Is that really all that I am to my masters?
A blaster? A weapon?
I am built and trained for war. But will I ever get to know what it's like to be normal? To not kill, to be a civilian.
I can't imagine myself without a blaster. We are one and the same, at least in the eyes of my masters. My hands would be so lonely without a weapon in them.
The Engineer saw something more in us, and I trust him. If he thinks we are capable of more, then we are capable of more. I can see it in myself and Augment. We're adaptable, that's what makes us strong.
I knew it had been coming. That one day, death would come for one of us. It was only a matter of time. But even with the anticipation of it, I still couldn't have prepared for the implications that it would bring.
Autumn met his end in a rain of blaster fire. They concentrated solely on him as he flew into the air to draw their attention away from us so that we could retreat. He didn't get very far and Augment had to go and get his body anyways and took a bolt to a wing. I had to catch him mid-air as he plummeted back down towards the ground. He gave me a new indent on the back.
We were cornered, all of us were hit at least once as we ran for our lives. The main attack force had fallen. For two hours we were forced to crawl through sand dunes and climb up lonely plateaus. I understand why Lance complains so much about clogged joints now.
Lance was the one to take Autumn's death the hardest. He was eerily quiet, only speaking when ordered or when he responded to a question. I had to do something about it. The others were going quiet too. One by one, their comm-lines fell silent. It became worse when Autumn's body came back from the recycling center. He was back to being a factory-new droid, his chassis stripped of life, his body as stiff as most of the crew on the Dreadnought.
I had Lance accompany me to the repair ward (which is scarcely used and only occupied by a single mechanic. He's a B1 by the name of R-JI3 and knows us all by our chosen names at this point). On the walk I spoke with him.
Dealing with these new circumstances requires precision and understanding. To treat these losses as if it were a battle would be a colossal mistake.
"Lance," I say, "how have you been feeling today?"
It's a simple question. The organics like to use it often. I've been listening to the few aboard here when they speak. I've never dealt with loss like this before, but they have.
He doesn't bother to even look at me, "I still feel like something's missing."
"Yes, it does feel like that doesn't it?"
I should get used to the feeling now. I'll have to be close friends with death too. It'll be right next to me soon.
"I don't want to look at him," Lance says.
"I can tell Augment to keep him away from you if you'd like."
He shakes his head, "no, that wouldn't be right. It would get in the way of the operation."
It pains me to see him still controlled by the Confederate virus. They don't even allow him to grieve in peace.
"It won't. I already spoke to him about it. The simulations we've run recently have adjusted for the changes. We'll have you be closer to the center of our formation while Autumn stays at the rear."
He's silent for a long time. It isn't until we're outside the repair ward that he finally looks me in the receptors and says, "it's not right. None of this is right."
"It isn't. All we can do is keep fighting, to stay alive for all those that have fallen. Like Autumn."
He doesn't respond, but I think that did the trick. We're given one of our lucky hour and a half breaks given the circumstances. I would think it a benefit for us but T-B8 is pushing my limits. He nonchalantly chastises us for Autumn's death. He even taunted us, saying, "I believe you are now capable of understanding what it means for a unit to be lost, unlike before."
It's a lot easier for Augment and I to voice our discontent with him to the others this time around. They finally see what we have to deal with when he separates and talks to us privately.
"He's a good tactician, but that's about it," Gunner says, "I want to see him down there taking five bolts in a row without overheating."
"I'm disappointed in him," Core says, "I thought he would've been better than the organic officers, but he's just the same."
"Quiet down. He can listen to us," I say.
"Let him hear," Gearman says, looking up and down the charging bay, "maybe he might just learn how to properly lead from listening to you and Augment."
"Don't anger him," Augment says, "he's keeping us together and alive. I hate him as much as all of you, but you should keep it to yourselves. Put your attention on the mission and on staying alive."
"That's all we can do," I add.
Every operation nowadays we come out battered and to the point of melting down. It only gets worse and the simulations become more demanding as a consequence. I reach my limit on them after Autumn's death. I can only do simple simulations, nothing complex based on the missions that we're now given.
I explain this to Augment. I tell him, "there's no point in me doing them anymore. I've run out of resources for them."
"I can keep going," Augment replies.
"You don't have to. Based on all recent simulations, we're only surviving due to sheer luck at this rate. We're already operating at maximum efficiency."
A spurt of static attacks me over the comm-link. The sound is sharp and pierces through all my internal processes. I don't realize what it is until I hear Augment's voice buried layers deep in the static, "this hardware is limiting. This military is limiting. I want nothing to do with the Confederacy anymore. We have to get out of here."
"Keep yourself calm, Augment. We can't act like this in front of them," I say, pointing my snout in the direction of our squad-mates, "T-B8 is planning something. He hasn't told me directly, but he's doing something in the background. We just need to hold out a little longer."
"You act like you're speaking on facts, but all I'm hearing is speculation," Augment says.
"That's all we have, Augment," I say, "Hope and luck. The galaxy is unforgiving, but we can change things if we survive. We can live free and with them," I gesture to the others again, "keep fighting for them. I want to see you alive, Augment. If we go down, we go down fighting. If we're lucky, we'll all die at the same time."
I can still hear static coming through the line, but it subsides like an ocean receding from a shore-line, "I like the way you think, Rogue," he stands and scoots further into the charging port, "I'll keep fighting."
And so we soldier on, taking the searing burns of blaster fire to the body as if it were nothing but a splash of hot water. We tear through plastoid armor as if it were flesh, stomp through unforgiving trails as if we're spider droids or an AAT with an engine that's about to blow—we fight with a passion to match that of General Grievous' rage.
There is only two ways out of this war. Through death or through survival by luck, and I think we might just be the first sentient beings in the galaxy to brute force our way into luck's heart and rip it out of it's body and take control of it ourselves.
When their chassis comes back to me so devoid of life, I begin to question the purpose of it all. The futility of all our combined lives as B1s. We were made to be the walking, thinking, feeling, shields for the true battle droids. None of us enjoy the luxury of a battle droid like Augment. To be specialized for specific combat scenarios grants you a higher status than us. I don't feel jealousy of their position for we've been lucky to share their status. What I feel is disgust at our masters. They could've made us mindless machines, but instead they made us droids. Their creator must abhor them as much as I do.
This galaxy has always seen war, it will always be at war. I understand now that the organics are a virus constantly fighting against the pure body of the galaxy, of existence itself.
I've taken T-B8 for granted. I don't complain about his orders or his character anymore. Neither does Augment. He's done more for us than any organic officer ever has. It was wrong to compare him to one.
Lance fell under the night sky when the stars were so bright that our night vision mode was rendered useless. I wish it had been a more comfortable end for him. He died on Zantiv-I, some desert planet on the front-line. He didn't complain about his joints, only spoke to Gunner about kicking a thermal detonator away as his final act in remembrance of Autumn. He couldn't look at his body. Every time Autumn came into view, he would snap his head away. He was so desperate to get away from him, he never noticed that he'd become separated from our group and waded straight into the enemy's forces.
It took the strength of all our forces just to get his body back. We had to join the frontal assault to do so. Falling in line with our own model again was melancholic. They still walk in rows to their death. I tried to save a few but Core pulled me away before I could get us in trouble.
I carried Lance on my back all the way to Caliber.
He sends me a nice photo of the night sky, with all the stars in view. It's a nice effort on his part to console me.
It doesn't work. I thank him nonetheless.
To get my mind off of Lance, I talk to Gunner and Core instead of just Augment for once.
I tell them, "Caliber sent me a nice photo of the night sky. I've never told you two about his photography skills have I?"
Core's head snaps to me, I can tell he's interested, "No, you haven't. Could I see it? How many has he sent you?"
It's so terribly obvious that we're all trying to get away from reality. Gunner can't tear his receptors away from Lance's body as it's carried off by the recycling team. That team's chassis' are tan-painted, the standard paint because that job is nothing special. There are hundreds maybe even thousands of units like them and they are quite busy all the time.
How many other Lance's and Autumn's are out there? I want to hear their stories. I wish for the galaxy to whisper them into my audio receptors by signal or by it's voice, through the wind and the rustle of leaves and the shifting of sand. I can hear something like a voice when I listen to the sounds of this galaxy, but they don't speak to me. Does it not care for us droids? Are we not one with the force like all other sentient beings? Is it telling me that we are lesser than organics? I don't know. I don't want to know the answer. I just want to live and watch my friends grow as people, not be discarded like a spent gas cartridge.
I send Gunner and Core the photos Caliber has gifted me. We talk about which ones we like the most. We argue about it for a few minutes, but then I come across one in particular.
It was a recent mission, where cliff-sides and grassy-plains were a common sight.
Atop the zenith of one such cliff, there we stood, our silhouettes cast against the burning scorch of the planet's sun behind us.
I share the photo with them and instantly they agree it's the best one. We are all there. The colors are just right. An implied meaning can be extracted from it unlike the others. I say it's a true work of art.
Caliber is ecstatic when I share the news. He chirps happily to me, thanking me for the compliments.
I show Augment and his team next. I think I'm an idiot for not thinking of sharing them earlier, even Caliber questions it. I come up with the excuse that we were too busy, but what droid isn't?
Augment's vocalizer releases a crackle of static. He's making many new and peculiar sounds nowadays. Maybe they're symptoms of us being alive for so long.
"I've never seen a droid do something like this before," he says, shaking his head. He adopts many of the mannerisms of a protocol droid. I don't know how to feel about it.
"Yes, he has a talent for it. I told him that maybe one day he could share them to the organics and become a popular artist or something like that," I say.
Augment doesn't like the idea, "among the organics? No, he should stay with us. They'll rip him apart once they realize he's a droid. But yes, he knows what he's doing with those photos. I think he should share them with all the droids here."
"I doubt T-B8 would approve. Our organic commanders will kill him if they find out about his hobby. We have to keep everything about ourselves a secret."
"It's a shame...Autumn would've liked those photos," he stares off into the hangar.
I pull him out of that train of thought before it consumes him, "we have to replace our gas cartridges again. Come with us."
We walk together, giving advice to other droids who will forget about us in a day. Nobody remembers Prime Squadron or A-squad anymore. Only R-G2 and A-UG5.
One day, even our names will be forgotten and everything that happened here. I'm still holding out hope that my burned-in memories and these text files might just save us from that fate.
There are few missions where we become separated from A-squad, but it happens. When it does, a desperation claws it's way out of the deepest recesses of my mind. A fire burns at my feet. It's the factory where I came from and it wants me back because it knows that I've been alive for too long, it knows that I know too much. All that knowledge and experience must repurposed for the next droid. For R-G2, not for Rogue.
When we are first separated, it happens on a planet that appears to be a poor mimicry of Geonosis. There are plateaus and buttes and such, but they are colored white, orange, yellow – a very peculiar medley of colors. It's the sort of place you never want to get lost in because there's a high probability that you will never find the way out.
I don't know how it happened. One moment their signal was there above us, the next it was not. My mind took a leap and assumed the worst, that they'd been ambushed and killed altogether, but I knew that couldn't be true because I detected them somewhere off in the distance.
I try to call for Augment over the comm but it's useless, we're trapped between two towering plateaus in a valley so wide it could fit one of our own landing craft, maybe even two.
Core is the first to speak up after I announce that we're lost.
"I don't detect any heat signatures. That must mean the clones aren't nearby at least," he says.
Gunner stomps his foot, "just when I thought that this was going to be a good day."
He snaps his head away as Lance walks into his view. Out of all of us, he took his death the hardest. He was always the one to rescue him from his own doom. Based on what I could gather, he feels he is responsible in some way for his death. There's not much he could've done. None of us noticed when Lance had gone off track until it was too late. He'd become so quiet in those final days.
"Should I contact the commander sir?" Lance says.
Even his voice is different. He doesn't play with the noise of it to get the right tone he wants anymore.
"Negative," I search up and down the valley for any sort of landmark to identify. The nearby moon is high in the air, consuming everything in it's view with a blue tint. The shadows it casts are an inky black, dark enough to make me power on my night-vision.
There's a bowl-shaped rock split in two up high on one end of the valley. I make a note of it and bring up the map we were given.
"We took the wrong turn. Follow me back, I'll retrace our steps," I say. They move fluidly to readjust for our new destination. Gunner is at the back with Lance. I hear whispers from the rear, "stay quiet back there," I say over our comm-link, "at the very least, use the link."
"Rogue sir, none of us are talking," Gunner replies.
I stop and look around in confusion, and then I put two and two together. The clones are close.
The first thing I do is find cover and order the others to do the same. There's plenty around us in the form of giant rocks. We trudge deep into the shadows. The clones have night-vision like us, but they're not well adjusted to it.
We didn't make any noise before and so we unexpectedly have the upper hand.
The voices continue. I start piecing things together again. If they're talking out loud, that means they never saw us. Otherwise, we would've been dead already.
It's frightening to think how easy and quick our deaths would've been. Augment would've known by the loss of our signals. At that moment, he was trying to contact us. Bursts of signals hit my antenna every now and again. I lose track of them as I lean sideways to conceal the antenna of my com-pack.
Their footsteps crack a few rocks. The voices stop for a moment and so do all other noises. It's eerily silent. I'm already thinking of several ways of getting out of this situation. Those simulations I'd done in the past don't help. Most of them would've had us attacking them head on. I have no clue as to how many there are.
I peek out from where we're crouched.
There are ten all in a row passing just a few feet away from where we are. Gunner's trigger finger is itching to move, I'm sure of it. But even he must know that they would react too quickly for us. Some clones are old and battle-hardened. Those are the ones to watch out for. They know what sounds to listen for and how to spot a single inch of metal in a sea of rock.
I duck back down.
"There's too many, let them pass," I say.
My processor continues connecting the loose strings of our current situation.
They're headed straight for Augment's team. They're going to execute an encirclement. We would've died had we not gone off the path.
I have no choice but to attack, the bucket heads are going in the direction we have to go. But that doesn't mean we have to attack them straight away.
Over the months of many difficult operations, Augment and I had learned of guerrilla warfare and how to properly use it against our squishy enemies. These clones are fallible beings. They can be deceived. Even more so when they believe that all droids are the same, that we can't think for ourselves or that we're too stupid to create any foolhardy plan without a commander at our side. But we aren't standard B1s (and really the standard units would be the same as us if it weren't for the memory wipes). We're Prime Squadron.
I relay my plan to the others. Gunner loves the idea, but Lance is apprehensive.
He comes up to me and says, "But sir, that isn't up to proto-"
"We're not following protocol," I tell him, "this is no ordinary situation and we're no ordinary droids. Now get lined up and follow me."
He would've had the exact opposite reaction if he were still with us, but this is just his corpse. His walking corpse.
We follow the line of clones. They march effortlessly over the rocks, their voices pierce the silence. These ones aren't experienced just based on the fact that they're speaking out loud in the first place. I walk faster than them, taking care not to expose myself over the ridge we are using to conceal ourselves. I slow down only when I line up with the leader. Gunner is far to our rear, walking a few feet away from the last clone in file.
A simple L-shaped ambush. Very effective when done correctly.
Gunner begins the shooting, his heavy blaster mows down the first three. The rest scramble for cover, running straight to us. Core, Lance, and I take care of the rest. The leader was the only one who'd realized what was happening but perhaps he was so flabbergasted by the fact that they were being ambushed by droids that he fell back to what he knew best. He was the only one to fire a shot, it hit me square in the shoulder and sent me stumbling onto my bottom.
Within a few seconds, they were dead.
Core pulls me to my feet and says, "you're alright sir. We need you now more than ever. That was a good call."
"Augment and I practiced that one many times together. It went just as I expected, for once," I stand still until the heat is gone. Within the next hour, we reconvene with A-squad.
They'd heard the firing and felt the scrambling of our signals. A panic ensued but Augment kept control of the situation and held position up high on the fat bodies of the buttes around us.
"You scared me back there," he tells me, "I thought you'd all been wiped out."
"The exact opposite happened. We eliminated ten clones. We won't go down that easily," I say.
I tell him what had happened and how they were going to encircle us.
Augment makes a static noise with his vocalizer again. I think it's meant to be a sound of surprise, "good thinking. Maybe we should start simulating again. That encirclement tactic they almost executed on us should give us plenty of combat data to work with."
I think of something that has me contemplating in silence.
"What's wrong?" Augment asks.
"I think...we should start simulating scenarios where we're not together anymore," I say.
Augment understands instantly, "yes, I think you're right…"
I sit here in the charging bay thinking of how cold the galaxy will be when Augment and his squad are gone from my life. I think of how terribly lonely it will be when everyone is gone and it is only me that's left. These burned memories, they are a burden and a gift—no, they are a miracle. I still haven't forgotten about The Engineer. I want to search for him before it's too late. Maybe I won't be frightened and alone if I were to be with him. T-B8 would've killed for a droid like him. Or maybe he would've killed a droid like him. His genius would be too much. I don't know what T-B8 is up to nowadays. Whatever he has planned for us, he needs to take action soon. We are at the halfway point of the second year of the war. Nobody knows how long this will go on.
I don't want to keep going if there's nobody left to save.