Dear Reader, Just a couple notes. You will see where I completely ripped off the lyrics from Art Garfunkel's Bright Eyes (just a couple lines). Just love the imagery in the song. Also, another homage to Rookies (so many good things in that episode). And some hints at Cody/Rex history. Enjoy. Peace, CS
Chapter 10 Austeniens
"The twelfth degree of humility is not only humble of heart, but always appearing so in his whole exterior to all that see him; namely, in the garden, on a journey, in the field, or wherever he may be, sitting, walking, or standing."
The Rule of Saint Benedict
Suffocation was not how Cody had imagined his end would come. He'd always imagined he'd be killed in action, in the blink of an eye and without realization, by blaster fire or a grenade or some other implement of war.
Not by an implement of nature.
As he lay pressed flat against the sand, Slip, Bounce and Sempe beside him under the tarpaulin, he began to think that a violent and quick death would certainly be preferable to the slow roll of an encroaching hypoxia, no matter how peaceful such a demise might be.
They held the tarp close over them, their gloved fingers clenched into the fabric with every bit of strength against the brutal force of the wind; yet still, the sand managed to whip up under the tarp, into their helmet filters and everywhere else the wind took it.
Cody could feel the weight of the sand increasing on top of them. Over his helmet comm, he took reports of the other men's status. They had all taken refuge under the tarps, spacing themselves far enough apart so that if one group got covered by sand, perhaps another group would be spared and able to lend assistance.
Of all the things he'd experienced in the throes of war, this was a new one for Cody. For the life of him, he could not remember ever covering sandstorm survival, either in Basic or ARC school. He found himself winging it now, and as the sand built up over the tarp, he wondered if perhaps they should have stayed on their feet and scrabbled to stay on top of the shifting drifts. Their armor would have protected them – except for clogging their filters . . . once again, suffocation. The wind probably would have blown them ascatter all across the place, perhaps never to regroup.
Crummy options all around. Nothing to do but cover down and wait it out.
The storm had thrown them into complete darkness, only adding to the uneasiness. For over an hour, the desert tempest roared and swirled and pitched its way from north to south. And when, at last, the sound of the tumult died, there was only silence.
On Cody's circuit.
But next to him, Sempe reported, "I'm picking up Rex on my comm. Are you not receiving him, Commander?"
Cody checked his HUD and helmet comm. Neither of them were working.
"The sand must have damaged it," he said. "No, I'm not hearing him."
"I'll put him on broadcast," Sempe replied. "Captain Rex, please repeat."
A moment later, there came Rex's voice, calm and professional and straight to business.
"Report."
Cody listened to the rest of his team call in. Everyone was accounted for—and still alive—but they were all trapped beneath the sand. None of them knew just how deeply they were buried, and digging out would be a cautious task to undertake, but it had to be attempted.
Otherwise, they would all surely perish where they lay and become a part of the desert that had defeated them.
"General Skywalker, the transport's failed to check in."
Before Anakin could respond to the Resolute's bridge communications officer, Obiwan, from the doorway through which he had just entered, spoke up with a hint of exasperation in his voice.
"Didn't we just go through this four weeks ago?"
"Hey, don't look at me. Cody's the mission commander. Rex is just along for the ride," Anakin came back cheekily.
"Yes, and Cody only seems to have this problem when Rex is with him," Obiwan noted, then to the comm officer. "Have you tried to raise them?"
"I've been trying, Sir," the clone replied. "They were out of contact range for at least one standard rotation, but they should have been close enough to the next relay nearly six hours ago. They should have made contact then. I've been trying to raise them ever since."
"Keep trying," Obiwan ordered, then he led Anakin aside. "If those two haven't returned by the time we're ready to go after Dooku, then we'll have to do it without them."
"You don't suppose they could have run into trouble again, do you?" Anakin asked.
"Let's hope not," Obiwan replied. "They're carrying what could be potentially very valuable cargo."
Anakin cocked his head to the side. "I was worried about my men."
"Well, I wouldn't," came the reply, spoken with a subtle grin. "They always manage to pull through somehow."
Was it really getting lighter?
Or was he slipping away into that world from which no one ever returned? Was this what it looked like to approach death? He'd heard all kinds of stories about near-misses and white lights, fogs along the horizon, strange glows in the sky, shadows reaching into the night . . .
And he'd never paid any serious attention. What was the purpose of pondering death? It was unavoidable, and whatever it felt like—well, that was something better left to the Jedi to contemplate. But now that he was facing it, he conceded that perhaps it deserved some little part of his attention; although he was having trouble corralling his thoughts. Everything seemed disjointed. Just how long had he been under here?
There was a rustling sound, a sort of murmur of voices, and then his helmet was being removed.
"Here now . . . " Something cool touched his face, and then he knew it was safe to open his eyes. He wasn't dead.
Cody's vision was blurry for only a few seconds; and when it cleared, he saw squatting down in the sand in front of him, a man with olive skin and a curious wad of cream colored cloth piled atop his head. Two long plaits of blue-black hair framed both sides of his clean-shaven face, and he was peering at Cody through eyes that, though dark and heavy, had a benevolence in them that seemed unlikely and out-of-place in a galaxy at war.
The man held out a satchel made from some animal skin or other. "Drink this, friend."
Cody took a quick, desperate gulp, coughed and then tried to speak, only to find his throat was so dry and irritated, he could not get the words out. He looked anxiously to his left then his right, feeling an immediate sense of relief upon discovering that the three men who had shared his tarp were also being attended.
"Slow down, drink again," the man instructed. "We know there are more of you. My brothers are searching for them now."
Whether through habit or conditioning, when Cody heard mention of the word, brothers, he took a closer and more discerning look at the man facing him.
No, definitely not a clone. Not that kind of brother.
Cody took another drink, then against the man's attempts at deferring him, he got to his feet and looked around.
There were at least a dozen men combing through the sand. They all wore the same curious headgear. They all had the same plaits of hair, though not all the same color, framing their faces. They all were garbed in the same loose-fitting tan and brown robes, cinched at the waist with a simple braided cord. But that was where the similarities ended. They were different heights, different colors, different faces, different builds.
"No, it is not a good idea for you to go over there," the first man cautioned as Cody took a first stumbling step towards the searchers. "Let my brothers do the work. They have life-sign scanners. They will find your friends."
"Tw-twenty-two," Cody spluttered, taking another gulp of water, rinsing and then spitting out a mouthful of wet sand.
"I understand. Now, please, please, sit and rest."
Cody could not sit and he could not rest. Not until he knew the status of his men. But he would at least stay out of the way. He leaned down and reached for his helmet with the intent to use its comm, but then he recalled that the sand had gotten imbedded into the circuitry, and his helmet was now good for very little other than protection.
Sitting on the ground to his left, the ever-attentive Sempe held up his helmet. "You can use it, Commander." He sounded as ragged as he looked.
Cody put the helmet on and called for a report. He received answers from only Gernot and Three Point. He looked at the HUD in Sempe's helmet. The chronometer had advanced barely two hours since the sand storm. How likely was it that all of them had survived being buried alive for two hours?
Cody stood waiting in silence. There wasn't much else he could do. It was then that he noticed the presence of six large reptile-like animals, each easily the size of a ground troop transport, All-Terrain Tactical Enforcer formally, or Grasshopper as a term of affection. They stood quietly by, thirty meters or so away, and even though no one was watching them, they stayed in place. They were lightly burdened with riding platforms, clearly marking them as the means by which the newcomers had arrived.
A shout went up in a language Cody didn't recognize.
The man with him translated. "Four more have been found, and they are all alive."
A few seconds later, another call went up, followed by the translation. "One of them is badly injured."
"Show me," Cody rasped.
His companion carefully led the way around one of the sand drifts, and here they came upon Jesse and company. From the way Jesse, Pitch and Hardcase looked—and sounded—Cody knew that they had put everything into protecting Kix, most likely using their own bodies to try and shield him beyond the protection of the tarp.
As the commander and the first man approached, two rescuers looked up and both began speaking at once in the foreign tongue of only moments' earlier. The man with Cody interjected calmly and gently, only a word or two in that language.
When the two men spoke again, it was in accented but perfectly understandable Basic.
"This one is hurt very badly. He needs help soon, or he will die."
"Prepare to move him," replied Cody's companion.
Cody, now having regained his wits and his ability to speak, took a step forward. "Hold on . . . who are you?"
"I am Fels Au-Ogusta," the man replied. "These are my brother Fels."
Cody was no wiser for the answer. "But who are you? How did you know we were here? We were buried under all that sand."
"We come from the Monastica," came the reply. "We saw you approaching when you were still far off. We could see that you carried some injured people on litters, so we assumed you were pilgrims coming for healing. We saw the sandstorm would overtake you, and we came to help. We did not know you were clones until we dug you out."
Cody eyed him warily. "Does it matter that we're clones?"
"No, no matter," Au-Ogusta answered. "It is only that we are surprised. We have never seen a clone here. How did you come to be here, out in the desert, and in such . . . difficult condition?"
"Our ship crashed," Cody replied. "We were trying to get to a facility we saw as we were coming down."
"A facility? That is the Monastica. That is where we live."
"Monastica? Are you a religious order?"
"We are." A pause. "We are Austeniens."
"I've never heard of that." Cody stated.
"I am sure there are many spiritualties across the universe that you have never heard of," came the amiable reply. Then he added, "We are a healing order."
This pronouncement seemed too good to be true.
Au-Ogusta went on without prompting. "That is why we thought you were pilgrims. We have many thousands of people every year who come to seek healing. When we saw you coming, Doma Maree sent us out to greet you. We tried to reach you before the storm hit, but it was moving too quickly."
As Cody listened, his hopes sunk a bit. Did this healing order of Austeniens actually have medical skills? Did they have the means to patch up his injured men? Or were they of the chanting, witch-doctor, power of good aura types? For while positive vibes and minimal skill might be enough to help those of his men less seriously injured, he held no illusion that Kix or Puzzle or even Echo could be healed by good thoughts. They needed real doctors with proven abilities.
"Here! Here are four more!"
Cody was jolted from his thoughts at the cry. With Au-Ogusta at his side, they headed back towards the front and around the opposite side of the drift.
And here, Cody felt the wind go out of him in one long, albeit haggard, breath of relief.
Rex was sitting up, forearms on his bent knees, helmet resting on the ground at his side, and a water bladder gripped in one hand. His head hung between his shoulders, and one of the Austeniens was kneeling beside him, gingerly probing between the armor plates of his shoulder and side.
Cody, like all clones, had been trained not to succumb to stress and fatigue. He'd been conditioned to accept loss as the inevitable outcome of any existence. He would lose many people throughout his life, and one day he himself would die. That was the way of things, and it was a simple enough truth to grasp. Pushing ahead through loss was a given in the life of a clone trooper. Cody firmly believed that. After all, at the casualty rate within the GAR, a man was lucky to share a foxhole with the same brother for more than eight months. That was the life expectancy of a clone once they first stepped onto the battlefield.
It had, on occasion, occurred to the commander how shallow such an existence might be. To grow up in a completely controlled environment, form insular friendships with fellow batchers, ship off to war, and in a few months be dead. Shallow, indeed. Perhaps that was why more and more of his brothers—especially those who were produced at the same time as him and were still alive to tell about it—lived as if they had to get the most out of every moment. They needed to make a difference in some way. They wanted all the experience they could get, never knowing if there would be a next time.
But for Cody, it wasn't like that. Quite by accident, the commander had discovered the great secret. All the experience in the universe, all the anxious running from one adventure to the next, from battle to battle, all the boons of being the perfect soldier . . . none of that could usurp the place of honor from the creation of a deep and abiding friendship, a bond of agape that found its way but rarely into the lives of people who lived in the center of the war's desolation.
And while Cody never consciously dwelled on his good fortune, it was times like this—seeing that Rex was still alive—that roused the tacit reminder in the commander's brain that, despite all the habituation of Kamino, he had somehow stumbled upon a relationship that fell outside the boundaries of what he had been taught to feel and believe.
When he thought back now on the earliest moments of that acquaintance—the wondering what he had done to end up being partnered with such an . . . unconventional brother, concluding that not even ARC school was enough to make him want to put up for one more day with that kind of arrogance, the determination that, if nothing else, I'm going to beat this guy—it was easy for Cody to see how all the things he'd despised in Rex initially were the very things he himself had wished he'd possessed.
Of course, he would never tell him that. That wasn't the sort of conversation fighting men had. And to own the truth, Cody felt quite certain that he had mastered the ability to have such a friendship without growing so attached that it jeopardized the mission. He was, after all, Obiwan Kenobi's clone commander, ever observing and imbibing his Jedi general's wisdom and even elements of his manner. The proper amount of detachment was only an observation away.
He approached Rex and dropped to one knee in front of him. "You okay?"
"Feel like . . . a sandbag," came the gravelly response, followed by a fit of coughing, then a swig from the bladder. "Damned helmet seals . . . "
Cody grinned. "They work better in space than against a sand storm."
"I guess in space, they don't have all kinds of debris trying to blow its way in." This came from Sixer, who was trying to shake the sand out of his hair.
Au-Ogusta was leaning over beside his brother, who was gesturing to Rex's side.
"You are injured here," Au-Ogusta said, indicating an area where it the black body glove was swollen and pressing against the armor plating and its connectors.
"Yeah, it happened in the crash," Rex mumbled, utterly disinterested.
Cody was not so sanguine. The previous morning, by his own order and as threatened, he'd checked over Rex's injuries, much to the latter's consternation—truly, the 501st captain was a terrible patient—and, in addition to a badly bruised shoulder—the result of a broken collar bone—he'd found an ugly discoloration that had stretched from under his shoulder about halfway down the ribcage. There had been no broken skin, no signs that he'd been suffering any significant pain; and other than to wrap it, there was little to do for treatment under the circumstances.
"Let them take a look," the commander ordered.
And for once, Rex did not argue.
Yet, Au-Ogusta made no move to remove the armor. "Wait until we are moving. We must get you out of the heat and the sand. All of you, we must get you to the Monastica quickly."
"Why, is something wrong?" Cody asked.
"More storms will come," Au-Ogusta replied. "It is the season. And you are all suffering much from such heat."
"We still have ten men missing," Cody pointed out.
"We will find them first," Au-Ogusta replied, then to his brother, "Start getting them on the Shempa and tending to them. Raise the shade cover. I will send Au-Bendit and Au-Marte to assist."
"How far is it from here to the Monastica?" Cody asked.
"Half a day's travel. But we will make it faster."