Chapter 5 Winding Down
"There are waters blown by changing wind to laughter
And lit by the rich skies all day. And after,
Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance
And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white
Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,
A width, a shining peace, under the night."
The Dead by Rupert Brooke
By the time they arrived back at the command post on the edge of the drop zone, Rex was stunned at how crowded the place had become. It seemed that with the early rays of morning light, there had materialized a village a dingy prefabs and drab gray conex-style containers, swarming with clone troopers.
Through the milky haze of sunrise, a cordon of gunships could be seen lined up neatly behind the tents. These had brought in the second wave of troopers and the heavier equipment well after the initial assault had taken place. In some peculiar way, Rex found them to be a comforting sight – a way out, a way in, the ever-reliable war-horse that every infantry soldier trusted almost as much as he trusted the men flying the ungainly things.
Rex and Jesse made their way through the newly sprung prefab city, coming at last to a tent marked CP for command post. Inside they found a small concentration of fleet command personnel, including the intel specialist Kamat and Admiral Yularen's second-in-command, a Republic Navy captain—human non-clone—named Besserat. As a naval captain, he outranked an Army captain, and Rex approached him with the proper military deference. The two men knew each other quite well and had mutual respect.
"Excuse me, Captain Besserat."
"Rex," the man acknowledged. He turned, and taking in the captain's appearance, gave a small, expectant grin. "Glad to see you made it back in one piece. Hmph! you don't look like you've been rolling in the laurels."
"No, Sir," Rex replied. "How are things shaping up?"
"There's good news. General Skywalker's men have taken the airfield. He's asked for two more companies to come out and hold the place while he takes his company out to the base to help Commander Tano's group. We're marshaling Lima and Kilo companies at this moment."
"That is good news," Rex agreed. "Commander Tano must be meeting with a lot of resistance."
"Considerable," Besserat replied. "The enemy is very well-armed, but not well organized." A pause. "I'm surprised you're not out there . . . though you look like you need medical assistance. You're quite a fright."
"My thoughts, exactly," Jesse said, clearing his throat. "Captain Rex, I may not be a medic, but you need to get taken care of." He looked to the fleet officer. "Is the medical station set up yet?"
"On the other side of the gunship line. I agree with him, Rex, you should go get patched up."
Rex grunted an indecipherable response then left with Jesse to head to the medical station. Thirty minutes later, he was sporting a bandage around his arm and a square patch of gauze over his left eye. He'd found it humorous that the medic treating him had asked if he'd broken his nose in the fighting.
"No, I have Commander Cody to thank for that. I can barely get my helmet on over it."
It was during this visit that word came that the military base had been taken by the combined forces of General Skywalker and Commander Tano. That was all Rex needed to hear to decide that it was now time to join his general—with or without permission; and so he and Jesse commandeered one of the speeders that had been taken during the fighting to secure the landing zone.
In twenty minutes they were at the military base.
Rex quickly found Commander Tano, who was in the process of assessing the losses. So far, there were only twelve confirmed dead from her company, although there were a number of injuries—some of them serious. Only two were unaccounted for.
Fives and Pitch.
After the bulk of the fighting had ended, the two had volunteered to check and clear an outlying building, a warehouse of some kind, just inside the post's boundaries, and they'd yet to return; nor had they reported in via comm. A party of four troopers sent out to the warehouse to search for them had found nothing. Ahsoka still had men out looking for them.
Rex did not take the news well, although he gave no very strong indication of his feelings. He simply turned on his heel and began walking away.
Jesse sidled up beside him. "Where are you going, Captain?"
"To see if I can find my men," Rex replied in a clipped tone.
"I'll go with you."
Neither man spoke as they headed towards the building Fives and Pitch had been instructed to clear. Jesse knew better than to try and initiate any kind of conversation about the fate of the two missing men. Or anything else, for that matter.
Rex, moving with purpose but little situational awareness, could not stop every possible negative scenario from entering his head, and he questioned every step that had led to this moment.
His own decision to put Fives on the team. Fives was still relatively new to the 501st, having only come on board four weeks ago. Yes, he was smart and quick and fearless – but he was inexperienced and perhaps a bit rash. That only led to Rex berating himself for putting Echo on the team as well – also young, inexperienced, barely beyond Shinie, and now lying seriously injured on the battlefield.
Whoever made the decision to send them to assist Commander Tano's unit. They'd had their assignments before they'd even dropped into the zone. Once those tasks had been completed, they weren't supposed to be sent off to augment the units doing the bulk of the fighting. Still, Rex would have done exactly what they'd done – volunteered to enter the fray. He could easily call to mind his own disappointment at being told by General Skywalker to report to the command post rather than join him in the middle of battle. His own example was to blame for his men's actions.
Commander Tano accepting their volunteering to go clear the building. Pitch might be an old hand at such missions, but Fives was not. And Fives' impetuous nature might not have been the best match for Pitch's more meticulous and regimented manner of doing things. Rex could not accuse anyone else of being impetuous when he himself was the hallmark for last-second changes in plans.
The litany of misgivings did not stop playing in his head until they came to the building, where a number of troopers were posted outside. As they approached, Rex recognized Sixer, one of his veteran soldiers who came out to meet him. "Captain, you'll be glad to know Pitch and Fives are back."
Rex halted and stared dumbfounded for a moment. He was too relieved to speak. At last, he said, "Where are they?"
"Inside," Sixer replied. "They got back just a couple minutes ago—"
Rex burst through the door, followed the sound of voices down a narrow corridor, and turning a corner, entered a large hangar-type room; and here he came face-to-face with Pitch and Fives, both of whom were standing beside Commander Cody and two of his assigned lieutenants.
Rex hadn't even known that Cody was planet-side yet.
"Rex," Cody began, "Your timing is perfect. Pitch and Fives just got back from a bit of reconnaissance, and they made an important discovery."
Cody was being very politic in his choice of words, trying to sugarcoat the fact that, despite their important discovery, the two troopers had dropped off radar and not told anyone of their whereabouts. Cody could be forgiving if he wanted to, but Rex was going to have none of it. And the moment he was alone with his two soldiers, he planned to let them know, in no uncertain terms, just how he felt about the matter.
"We didn't find anything in the warehouse, Captain," Pitch explained. "So we decided to go take a look at a shed that was close by. Turns out it was just a junk shed, but when Fives and I started poking around, we discovered a passageway hidden in the floor. We decided to follow it and see where it went." He looked at Fives with a satisfied grin.
Fives picked up the story. "The passageway led to a kind of . . . control center. There were a half dozen of the enemy inside, and we—well, we handled them. We looked at their computer systems, and they had been in the process of deleting files. It looked like there was still a lot of information – information about Separatist plans for this system; but we couldn't get a signal back to the surface, so we came back up to report what we'd found."
Rex knew the significance of this find, and he allowed his pride and approval to overrule his anger for a brief moment, long enough to commend them, "That's very good." Then to Cody. "Commander, do you have it from here?"
Cody nodded. He knew Rex wanted his two troopers back, and he knew why. He looked to Pitch and Fives. "Good job, both of you." Then to Rex, "Thanks for the loan."
Pitch and Fives stood at attention. This was not the first time either of them had received a dressing-down from their captain; but this was the first time it hurt.
The pain wasn't necessarily due to the fact that Captain Rex was angry, for they had seen him angry before. And it wasn't due to the harsh words or rancorous glare with which he now addressed them. It was because they knew they had made a true error in judgment.
They should have contacted Commander Tano or Commander Cody about the hidden passageway and requested permission to investigate. Instead, they had gone off on their own initiative without telling anyone what they were doing. That was something Pitch never would have thought of doing on his own; but Fives was another story. Since coming to the 501st, Fives had exhibited a bit of . . . well, independent thinking that occasionally bordered on insubordination. He never meant to stir up trouble, for he respected Captain Rex more than any other officer he'd ever met, clone or otherwise. But somehow, he could not help but put the need to test out his own theories ahead of his own reason. On top of that, he had a charisma that drew others into his schemes and plans.
Rex was certain that Fives had provided the impetus for this little unauthorized excursion.
When asked if they had anything to say for themselves, the two men managed a genuinely contrite apology. Disappointing their captain was something neither of them would have ever wanted to do.
"From now on, when you decide to be heroes, you'd damned well better check with me first. I don't like being made to worry," Rex chastised them; then seeing that they were already suffering from their own consciences, he concluded with a simple, "That's all."
The two troopers turned sharply and headed back towards the budding cantonment area.
Rex glanced at Jesse, who had been present for the reprimand. "They're certainly made in my image, aren't they? It's hard to tear them up for something I probably would have done myself."
Jesse grinned. "You didn't seem like you were having much difficulty giving them a piece of your mind, Sir."
"Yeah . . . I guess I'm pretty good at that, aren't I?" Rex quipped, returning the lieutenant's smile.
"One of the best, Sir," Jesse replied. "Because you never hold a grudge." He inclined his head. "And we know you care."
"Don't get emotional," Rex chuckled. "Come on, let's go check on our injured."
Once back on the drop zone, Fives headed straight for the medical tent, which by the time he got there, had expanded from a single prefab into a string of them. Entering the first and largest, he found dozens of troopers being treated for a variety of injuries, some clearly more critical than others.
Major Hypes, the battalion medical officer, was present; but most of the attending personnel were from the Resolute's medical staff. Still, Fives recognized two more medics as being from the 501st, which was fortunate to have its full complement of sixteen assigned field medics, although Fives figured that most of them were probably still out with their companies, securing the objective. 501st medics were expected to be a lot more than field-doctors; in combat, they were expected to hold their own, just like their brothers. They needed nerves that were perhaps a notch up from most other troopers, and they had to be strong as a gundark, given that their job required them to carry or drag the injured while exposed to enemy fire.
Fives approached the nearest 501st medic.
"Bango, I'm looking for Echo. The captain said he was brought in."
Bango looked up for a moment from the shoulder wound he was irrigating. "He's in the next can. Kix is with him."
"Thanks."
Can was slang for the conexes, so Fives passed through the door, from prefab to conex. This enclosure was smaller than the first, with only a handful of troopers being treated.
One of those troopers was Echo.
Fives approached without hesitation.
Echo was lying on his stomach, the armor removed from his left leg and the body glove cut away to expose an ugly patch of discolored, frayed and bloody skin on the back of his thigh.
Kix was plucking little pieces of something from the wound with a pair of micro-forceps. He was completely focused on what he was doing and did not notice Fives arrival until he was standing right next to him.
"That looks nasty," Fives said quietly. "Will he be okay?"
"Oh yeah," Kix replied with certainty. "Some muscle damage, but a few days in the bacta tank, and he'll be good as—"
"I told you, a bacta-patch will do just fine. I don't need to go into a tank."
The sound of Echo's voice surprised Fives.
"Causing problems again, I see, Echo?"
It was Kix who answered. "Yes, he is. He's been trying to tell me how to do my job." His voice, however, was not accusative or even annoyed. He was poking fun, an absolute necessity in a place such as a field hospital.
"You didn't give him the medical regs to look at, did you?" Fives asked, only half-joking.
Echo turned his head and regarded Fives from the corner of his eye. "Did you come here to aggravate me?"
Fives put his hand on Echo's armored shoulder. "I came here to check on you, brother," he replied earnestly. "I had to make sure you were going to be alright."
"I'll be okay," Echo said.
"What happened?" Fives asked.
"The captain and I got caught in the middle of a firefight, and I got hit. How did you know I was here?" Echo asked.
"Captain Rex told me." A pause. "After he chewed my ass."
"Again? What was it for this time?"
"Oh, I'll tell you later, when you're a little more . . . comfortable." He looked once again to Kix. "Is he staying here or going back to the ship?"
"They're getting the more critically wounded out first," Kix replied. "He'll probably go out tomorrow, or maybe the next day."
"That doesn't look like a blaster wound," Fives noted.
"It's not," Kix stated. "It's a projectile injury."
"Projectile? Like—like a bullet?"
Kix tilted his head. "No, not a bullet. More like buckshot, but with a lot greater impact velocity. Still, it would have been worse had it been a bullet. With this, there's a lot of trauma to the epidermis, but the muscle was only slightly damaged."
Fives lowered his voice. "He seems kind of . . . woozy. Did you give him something?"
"Painkiller . . ." He leaned close and whispered with a sideways grin. "And a mild sedative. He's a little uptight."
A fond smile spread across Fives' face.
"That's putting it mildly. One of our squad mates used to say he'd been left in his growth jar too long," he recounted before quickly pushing down the wistful memory of Cut-up, a brother and squad mate whose frivolous and jokester personality Fives had come to appreciate much too late. After all, clones weren't bred to be funny. They were bred to be serious. All the time. What place did humor have . . .
No.
No, he would not entertain those memories. He wouldn't revisit the guilt of having once thought himself superior to the rest of Domino Squad. He'd been determined to leave the melancholy behind, and he'd thought that his induction into the 501st had been enough to do it.
But the memory of what he'd lost on the Rishi moon was still too fresh.
For he'd lost more than just brothers. He'd lost the sense of belonging and family that had been a part of Domino Squad. True, it may have been a quarrelsome and fractured family to a greater or lesser extent; but ultimately, they had come to realize that they were bound by something stronger than genetics.
But now, all that remained . . .
Just him and Echo.
He forcefully redirected his thoughts to the fact that Echo was going to be alright. The two remaining members of Domino Squad were still together. That mattered more than the haunts of the past.
"Looks like you're in good hands, buddy," he said, patting Echo's arm. "I'll come find you later on."
"Where are you off to?" Echo asked, his voice starting to grow even more muffled and slurred.
"Going out on patrol at 1600."
"Be careful."
"Don't worry about me. You just make sure you get some rest. And try to just let Kix do his job, eh, Doctor Echo?"
"You always end up right in the middle of things, don't you, Captain?"
It was not a question as much as a statement of the facts.
"Not by choice, Sir," Rex replied. He kept his eyes trained on the nose art of the nearest gunship. It was a voluptuous human woman, skimpily dressed, hair flowing, head thrown back, and . . . riding a missile. She looked like she was having way too much fun.
Rex knit his brow. He'd have to tell Cody that the troopers were getting a little too . . . hmm, distracted? The 212th pilots were the brains and artistic ability behind the nose art. Maybe Cody wasn't keeping them busy enough. Clearly, their thoughts were straying into areas that only interfered with the focus and cohesion of a military unit.
Still, it was a nice bit of artwork, and the woman was pretty-
"Not by choice," General Skywalker interrupted his thoughts, his voice carrying a skeptical tone. "Your team's mission was to mark the landing zone and perform limited reconnaissance."
Rex continued to stare at the nose art. His stance was rigid, although he had not been put at attention. Sweat was beginning to bead on his forehead and neck.
"It's damned hot out here . . . I wish he'd just ream me and get it overwith." But his only response was a professional, "That's what we did, General."
"And you've got Echo, seriously injured and sidelined, to show for it," General Skywalker put forth.
Rex said nothing.
"How did Echo get injured?"
"We were coming back from reconning the airfield when we ran into Captain Grommet and his men. While we were telling them what we'd found, the enemy attacked."
"And instead of letting Grommet's men handle it, you decided to stick around and engage the enemy," the general stated.
"It seemed the responsible thing to do."
Anakin eyed him knowingly. "You just wanted to be in the fight."
"Sir, I . . . " Rex hesitated. He could be honest. "I hate recon missions. You know I've always hated recon missions. Blasting the enemy . . . that's what I know best."
"And I understand you left a trail of dead Pylottans behind you."
"Thank you, Sir."
"It wasn't meant as a compliment."
"No, Sir."
Anakin blew his breath out and shook his head. "For crying out loud, Rex, would you ease up a bit?" A pause. "Look, I don't expect my first-in-command to be timid and go hiding from the enemy. You did right. You did well. I would have been happier if Echo hadn't been injured. I at least thought the recon team would come away without any casualties. And you don't look like you came through it unscathed. How's the arm?"
"It's a bit sore, but I can move it just fine. Kix stopped just short of ordering me to take some time off."
"That might be the only way to keep you out of trouble."
The corner of Rex's mouth lifted slightly. "Just following the lead of my commanding officer. Trouble seems to follow me."
Anakin could not help feel that swell of pride again. Rex really was taking on more and more of his own qualities – for better or worse.
"Which makes it easier, since you're out there looking for it, anyway," he replied. "Fortunately, you have me to look out for you."
"Yes, Sir; although I think it's the other way around."
The general clapped his clone captain on the shoulder. "Never a dull moment, Rex."