Dear Reader,

Again, I would like to start by thanking my reviewers: Ms CT-782, Tsani, Sued13, Akira Hayama, CanadianGirl2000, HuffleHecate, and CT7567Rules. As always, your reviews are much appreciated and give the impetus and motivation to keep plugging away! Well, this is the chapter I think most people have been waiting for. I hope it doesn't disappoint. It's a hard scene to write. I didn't just want to parrot what we see on the screen, so there is quite a bit of internal dialogue and the viewpoints of other characters. There is also the return of several characters from the earliest chapters of the story (the Bertegad Arc). I also took the opportunity to expand more on the relationship between Dogma and Tup, because it's something that comes into play later on in the original parts of my story. Lastly, I had to rewrite a little bit of how the transmission was made , to whom and by whom. It's something that always bothered me in the series that a trooper reporting in to Krell would have been 501st, not 212th. But the stolen armor was 212th. I think a good officer would have put that together pretty quickly. Yes, TV shows need to move quickly and taking time for stuff like that is not conducive to quality TV. So, I've tried to clean that up a bit here. I hope you enjoy! Peace, CS

Chapter 104 A Moment of Evil

"Act of injustice done
between the setting and rising sun,
in history lie like bones each one."

The Ascent of F6
Auden and Isherwood

"You have to be the better man. Remember what the captain told you: you can't abandon him. He needs you. But fek and all, he is furious at me. He may not even want to talk to me. Well, he'll just have to get over it. He can't stay angry forever." Tup had spent the first ten minutes of the patrol going back and forth as to whether or not he should approach his squad mate.

It had been quite clear when Captain Rex had called the battalion together to head out to meet the anticipated assault that Dogma was not in any mood to be sociable. He had kept his distance from everyone, a sour expression on his face. And leaving Dogma in such a state was not good for anyone, least of all, Tup.

Tup drew up beside him as their platoon, part of a two-company advance, now made its way forward through the woods. Whether Dogma wanted his company or not, Tup was going to make the attempt.

"It's eerie out here, too quiet," he remarked as a test of the waters.

Cold waters. Dogma said nothing.

"I guess General Krell was pretty mad about the botched execution," Tup went on, taking a chance by going directly to the source of the division.

Still, Dogma remained silent.

"Kind of, uh, amazing that we all missed," Tup said.

"Just—just shut up, Tup," Dogma ground out.

"Well, you're not saying anything, so it's up to me—"

"We're on patrol, Tup. This isn't a walk in the park . . . or a chance for you to clear your conscience," Dogma snapped. "We have to stay alert."

"I'm not trying to clear my conscience, Dogma," Tup replied. "You had to know, when you saw me on that firing squad, that I would never be able to kill either of them. That's probably why the captain put me on the squad. I think that's why he put all of us on there. Except you."

"I don't need an explanation—"

"Well, I need to know how long you're going to stay mad at me," Tup said, adopting a particular manner he used when he wanted to disarm his brother's easily triggered pique. "I've seen how long you can carry a grudge. Do I need to avoid you for hours or days?"

Dogma shook his head, but when he spoke, his voice had lost some of its edge. "Stop talking. Focus on the mission."

And while it wasn't quite the gesture of forgiveness Tup had been hoping for, it was good enough. He knew at least this one battle was won. Dogma might not have excused the debacle of the firing squad, but neither was he carrying any spite forward into the mission. Or if he was, he was keeping it under wraps for the time-being.

And that was a good thing, for Dogma certainly had the ability to make the lives of those around him miserable. His exacting manner could put everyone on edge; and if he chose to harbor ill will . . . that would not be pleasant. Umbara was already proving brutal enough; it needed no added difficulties.

Up ahead of them, Captain Rex was moving with both pistols drawn. "Stay alert. The enemy has both our weapons and our armor. They might try to trick us in an ambush."

It seemed straightforward enough, but for Rex, the conundrum still remained. Who was it in that earlier transmission? Since leaving the airbase, he had gone against radio discipline and contacted all four platoons out on patrol. None of them reported having run into any trouble with the enemy other than a few minor skirmishes. The trooper in the transmission had made it seem like he'd been engaged in a major confrontation – to the point of losing armor and equipment. Rex had even gone so far as to attempt to contact General Kenobi, but for whatever reasons, his long-range communications were not getting through.

Rex and his men were now drawing extremely near to the capital, yet he felt no wiser for what he could potentially be leading his men into. It was possible that the transmission had come from another battalion. Perhaps a platoon from General Kenobi's or General Held's battalions were in the area and had made the report. It was possible, wasn't it?

That idea seemed far-fetched. Why would Kenobi's or Held's trooper report in to General Krell? That made no sense. The whole thing was perplexing, setting Rex's level of alert even higher than normal.

But his troops would never hear the doubt in his voice or sense it in his movements. As always, their captain proceeded with certainty and collectedness. Things could be falling apart around them, but they could always count on their captain to be the rock to which they could cling and draw strength.

That might have been the reason, on this mission, that Rex kept Kix close to him. He'd considered leaving the medic behind to continue helping with the wounded in the medical station, but he'd discarded that idea fairly quickly. If anyone's world was coming apart at the seams, it was Kix's; and Rex felt certain that the best place for the medic was at his side, thrown into the thick of things where his mind would not be able to wander among other, more recent and distressing thoughts. And this time, if Kix wanted to go to aid of the wounded on the field, Rex would not stop him.

With all these things in mind, Rex turned to Sixer, who was following immediately behind him and using a long-distance scanner. "Picking up anything?"

"Nothing, Sir," came the reply. "No movement at all. Not even any sounds. But something about the atmosphere on this planet . . . all the fog, it's still interfering with the scanner's reach and accuracy. I wouldn't want to depend on these readings. Our best defense will be our own eyes."

"I just don't have a good feeling about this," Rex sighed. "Make sure the men don't stray too wide. I feel like we're walking into a trap."

"Will do, Captain." Sixer fell back and began passing on the word. Two of the first troopers he told were Tup and Dogma.

"I wouldn't want to get separated in this murk," Tup stated. "I feel like I've already spent enough time wandering around in darkness."

"Well then, pay attention to where you're walking," Dogma replied rather coarsely. And no sooner had he finished speaking than Tup shot an arm out across his chest.

"Watch out, Dogma!" He warned, stopping his squad mate in his tracks. He sprang carefully over a thick vine running across their path. "I saw that thing attack Hardcase. It'll chew you up and spit you out." He leaned over and picked up a rock. "Here, watch." He hurled the rock at the flesh-eating plant's closed maw, eliciting an immediate and violent reaction of gnashing teeth and thrashing vine tentacles.

Dogma was repulsed. "Eew," he grimaced distastefully, sounding like the Shinie he was. He was glad Tup had been with him to warn him of the danger; but he would have been just as happy not to have the demonstration of saliva-draped razor-sharp teeth snapping angrily at the disturbance. "Gross!"

Tup smiled. The moment had reduced Dogma to his most basic: a fresh-faced, newly minted trooper whose sense of wonder and disgust both had equal power to move him. This was the best friend, the battle buddy, the brother that Tup loved, despite the stubborn perfectionism.

But the comforting sense of accomplishment was short-lived.

Suddenly, the air around him—around all of them—was filled with the white-blue blaze of blaster fire. Men were going down left and right. Tup wasn't sure if they were dead or injured. He didn't have time to check. His first order of business was to take cover. Ramming his shoulder into Dogma, he knocked them both into the relative protection of a cluster of tree trunks.

"We're under attack!"

Tup wasn't sure who had shouted the obvious, but he yelled back, "Where's the enemy?!"

"I don't know! I can't see anything!" That was clearly DB's voice.

Rex had also taken cover behind the formidable trunk of another tree. "Get those mortars up here!" he commanded, motioning his men forward. As he looked back, he saw Kix hunkered down and firing with care and precision. There was a dead or injured trooper right there at his feet, yet the medic was busily engaged returning fire instead of tending to the fallen man. It could be the man was already dead, and Kix knew that. Or, Rex hoped, Kix was coming back to his senses, realizing that his own survival was more important at the moment, that a dead medic would be of no help to anyone.

At least ten troopers with mortars lined up their launchers. They did not wait for the command to fire. As soon as they were in place, they pulsed the igniters and sent their munitions hurtling towards the darkness from which the enemy fire was emanating. Flashes of light marked their impact, and at this close range, the ground could be felt shaking.

Rex turned to the men nearest him. "Anyone have visual?"

Kix adjusted his night vision to increase range, even while losing clarity. "Negative. It's too dark," he reported. But then something shadowy appeared in the distance. Another adjustment to lessen the lower end of the ultra-violet spectrum, and he was able to make out with a fair degree of clearness, the shapes of several men coming up over the berm directly ahead, roughly a hundred meters distant. "Wait! I see them!" The outlines were clearly armored – clone armor, although no distinctions as to insignia or colors could be made. Everything was cast in shades of night-vision green. "They're disguised as clones alright!" he announced.

Rex's men began to surge forward, and he found Kix once again at his side. "Whose armor are they wearing?" he asked. "Were you able to tell what unit?"

"No, Sir," Kix replied. "Too murky. But they're headed directly towards us – moving fast."

As if to demonstrate that Kix's observation was, indeed correct, quite abruptly, dozens of figures began to materialize from the swirling mist. And they were within a stone's throw of the 501st troops. A firefight that had been against an unseen enemy now began in earnest, the combatants face-to-face across distances sometimes less than the width of a gunship.

Near the leading edge of the action, Double Barrel was blazing forward with Ajax hard on his heels. DB was covering left while Ajax covered right. They weren't even looking for targets as much as simply spraying the woods as they ran.

Ajax shouted above the din. "We have to find a place where you can—where you can do your thing!"

"Are you fekking crazy?!" DB replied. "If we stop running, we'll be sitting womp rats!"

"We can use the eagle to see how many –and where they're hiding!" Ajax persisted.

"I'll get my fekking head blown off!"

"We have to find a place a little way's off! And I'll keep guard! I don't let anyone near you—"

"That's osik, Ajax! There's no fekking way in hell I'm going to stop and let that—"

Suddenly, Double Barrel tumbled down to the ground.

Ajax, fearing he'd been hit, dropped to one knee beside him. "DB?!"

DB looked dazed and . . . frustrated. "Oh, fek and all . . . "

"Where are you hit?"

"I'm not hit," came the mumbled, woozy response. "He went. He just . . . on his own, he went." He accepted Ajax's help into a sitting position. "His will is stronger than mine . . . damned, fekking bird. Whose body is this anyway? It's mine. He can't—he can't just up and pull this kind of osik with no warning," he groused.

"Well, come on, then," Ajax said, secretly satisfied that the eagle had decided to take matters under its own wings, so to speak. After all, DB could be very stubborn and petulant at times. "I'll get you to someplace safer than this." He got DB to his feet and led him, like a drunken man, further away from the sounds of battle. Setting him down, he went straight to the point. "We need to know how many are out there, and where they're at."

"He knows what to do, Ajax," DB replied groggily. "He's more fekking intelligent than any of us."

Every thought of the failed execution had been driven from Dogma's mind. There was no room in his thoughts for anything but killing the enemy and staying alive.

Shortly after the close-quarters fighting had commenced, the markings of the compromised platoon had become clear.

The gold colorings could mean only one thing.

The 212th.

Commander Cody's battalion.

Which platoon remained a mystery, but at least it stood to reason that, with the 212th also advancing on the capital, it was certainly possible that one of the platoon's had been ambushed, providing the armor and equipment now being used by the enemy.

To Dogma, how they came upon the armor and equipment was irrelevant. This was the enemy, and they deserved no quarter. He had already gone through one charge pack and was swapping it out when he suddenly noticed that Tup was no longer anywhere near him.

He had been there only seconds ago, and now Dogma feared the worst.

And if Tup were gone . . .

No, no time for those thoughts either.

How, he wondered with self-recrimination, was it possible for such thoughts to even enter his mind when he was in the middle of a fight for his life?

It was . . . very un-clone like.

It was not how he saw himself. It was not how he portrayed himself to others. It was not how he wanted be.

And he was sure, that if Tup knew what soft thoughts were going through his mind, it was something his squad mate would never let him live down.

"This is crazy." Rex could not get past the feeling that nothing made sense here.

Nothing!

Here he was with his men faced off against Umbarans disguised as clones. And yet, there'd been no attempt to use the ruse to the enemy's advantage. The Umbarans had began firing while still at a considerable distance. Why had they not used the disguises to get closer to the 501st troops before opening fire? There'd been no ambush, no trickery. This battle had shaped up like every other battle thus far on this forsaken planet.

And although it was conceivable that the 212th had been operating in this area and fallen prey to the Umbarans, that still did not answer the question of why the trooper reporting from the 212th contacted General Krell instead of General Kenobi. Unless that trooper himself had been an Umbaran in disguise.

No, that voice had definitely been the voice of a clone.

But voices could be faked.

Rex's sixth sense had always served him well, and it had not taken but a few seconds after recognizing the 212th's colors, for him to attempt an open communication to Cody. Radio discipline be damned, he needed to find out if Cody was aware of what was going on.

But communications were still jammed. He was barely even able to reach his own men via helmet or wrist comm. The connections were intermittent and filled with static. The only reliable method left available was a raised voice and hand gestures. The crudest measures for what was shaping up to be the crudest battle.

There were at least a hundred of the enemy scattered throughout the wood, all of them wearing clone armor.

"That's too many for a single platoon," Double Barrel said out loud as the eagle continued its invisible surveillance.

Ajax concurred. "That's company size."

"But if only a platoon was attacked, then this doesn't make any sense," DB deduced. "That would only be 30 suits."

The eagle soul suddenly swooped low and alit on a branch, its delving eye trained on a huddle of three figures near the rear of the action. They seemed to be trying to come up with a new strategy.

"Why are you perching?" Double Barrel asked, irritated. "You're supposed to be scouting out the enemy."

He then saw the reason for the bird's concentrated attention.

One of the three figures had removed his helmet.

Rex felt as if he were surrounded on all sides by complete and utter chaos. Unlike earlier attacks, which had been head-on assaults, this time the Umbarans had circled around and were coming at them from every direction. No sooner had the captain directed his troops towards one vector than trouble arose in another.

This was definitely more than a platoon-sized element.

And that bothered him.

"Captain, wh- re- ou?" Rex thought he could make out Tup's voice coming through the scrambled communications. "—sustain—vy- cas—ties."

"Heavy casualties." Rex could hear the unspoken part of the plea for help. He knew he had to do something. Looking back where he'd just come from, the ground was littered with bodies. At this rate, he'd lose what remained of the two companies he'd brought out with him. He needed to get his men out of there.

Glancing about for any feasible retreat route, his eyes fell on something odd. Something that sent a chill up his spine, even though he had no reason why it should.

In a small clearing, the bodies of two dead troopers lay, one on top of the other. The body on the bottom was face-up, bent back over a boulder that served as the funeral bier for both figures. The head-back posture exposed the under-jaw and neck; but even with his night vision, Rex could not see clearly enough to know if the alarms going off in his head were warranted. He needed a closer look.

He dashed into the clearing, feeling confident that his imagination was getting the best of him. This place had taken a toll on everyone, and he was no exception. His eyes were playing tricks on him.

But as he drew nearer, his certainty began to waver. The body on top was wearing 501st blue, and Rex abruptly pushed it aside and to the ground. It might have been a callous move, but it was driven by an ever-increasing uneasiness creeping up Rex's throat. The last thing he wanted to do was see if his fears were accurate; yet it was precisely what he had to do.

The second body was in 212th gold.

The exposed neck . . . this was no Umbaran.

He already knew the answer as he gently removed the helmet.

The dead face that revealed itself, wearing the glossy-eyed stare of oblivion, was a face Rex recognized only too well. It was his own face. The face of a clone.

Of a brother.

And even though this was what he'd known was coming the moment he'd entered the clearing, he leaped back in horror. "What?!" he gasped. His body suddenly felt too heavy to move by any natural means. It took a supernatural effort, something beyond himself, to get him backing out of the clearing. To his left was another fallen trooper in gold-striped armor. This time, Rex fairly yanked the helmet off.

His voice caught in his throat for a moment before erupting in an anguished cry. "No . . . no!"

In that instant, every notion of caution went up in pieces. In the ghastly light of his gruesome discovery, Rex felt as if the very universe itself was slipping away from him. If he didn't stop the carnage now, he would never have another chance. Everything they had been fighting for on Umbara was undone in this one moment. The nightmare of reality shot a burning ember through his brain, and he ran out into the open, heedless of the danger, waving his arms and shouting like a wild man.

"Everyone, stop firing! We're shooting at our own men! They're not Umbarans! They're clones!"

He ran past Tup and Kix, who both pulled up their weapons. What was the captain screaming about? Had he gone mad? He was running in the open, an easy target. Could it possibly be that their indomitable captain had finally cracked?

"Take off your helmets! Show them you're not the enemy!" Rex continued running forward, removing his own helmet. "They're clones!"

He could almost feel the scores of sights drawing a bead on him. Either his words would be heard and understood, his face would be recognized, or he would be dead in a matter of seconds. "Everyone, stop firing! Cease firing! They're not Umbarans! They're clones!" In a final desperate play, he dove forward into the nearest 212th-clad trooper, taking the man down and snatching his helmet off. He hauled the man to his feet and whirled him around to show his face to the others. "Look! We're clones! We're all clones!"

It was a moment that would be forever fixed in Rex's memory, embalmed in the darkest corners, never to be exorcised.

The sound of blaster fire ceased. In the ensuing silence, only the moans and cries of wounded men could be heard. Men on both sides began removing their helmets, revealing, indeed, that they were all clones.

Rex heard the gasps of shock and horror. But none of that could compare with his own agony. As the men of the 501st and 212th moved to stand face-to-face, as if to assure their own eyes that they were not being deceived, Rex released the man he'd been holding, who dropped to his hands and knees with a cry of desolation.

Rex went down beside him, bemused and unable to form a single coherent thought. The enormity of what had just happened was too overwhelming. He needed to collect his wits, to retreat from the grisly truth that he and his men had been set up. Set up to kill other Republic troops. Clones. Brothers. He raised his hands to his head, fearful that the pain might destroy him then and there, for it was such an intense torture that it went beyond psychological to physical. He felt it in every inch of his body.

He had done this to them. He had ignored his misgivings about the transmission. He had believed Krell even when he'd not trusted him. He'd followed orders – every fekking order! He'd held his battalion together under the worst of circumstances. And for what? So that he could lead them to kill and be killed by their fellow troopers – all because he'd not heeded his own intuition. The dissonance threatened to tear him apart.

"Captain Rex."

He lowered his hands and glanced over at the trooper he'd practically had in a choke hold only seconds ago. The face and hair were unremarkable – the standard clone template with no adorning tattoos or colorations. But just at the top of the armored breast plate was a small diamond-shaped design, particular to one clone. Rex recognized it immediately.

"Zinger . . . what—what are you doing here?" Rex hardly recognized his own voice.

"My ship got shot out from under me," Zinger replied. "Both me and Three-Point are down here. They needed men on the ground, infantry, so we've been filling in since we lost our ship."

Rex began corralling his composure. "Where's the commander? Where's Cody?"

"Back with General Kenobi," Zinger replied. He started to his feet. "I—I have to find Three Point. He got out ahead of me, and I . . . I have to find him."

"Go look for him," Rex nodded. "I'll, uh, I'll get things moving here."

He pushed the pain of guilt down, only to find that the emotion bubbling up to take its place was not something he wanted to contend with either. He could better handle fear. He could better handle sadness. He could better handle just about any emotion . . . other than anger.

Dogma saw Tup approaching out of the corner of his eye; and despite the horrific events that had just taken place, he could not help but feel that things had just gotten a little less daunting now that he knew Tup was alive and okay.

But Tup looked terrified. Terrified at the idea that he himself may very well have fired shots that had killed his own brothers.

For the past several minutes, the act of gathering the dead and the wounded had been going on. As Tup had gone about helping where he could, he'd felt as if something were filling up inside him. There was too much unnecessary death. Too much disbelief that such a mistake could be made honestly. He knew some of these men, and now they were dead.

Rejoining Dogma, he could barely bring himself to make eye contact. "This—this can't be happening. What have we done?"

Dogma, to whom the outward appearance of collectedness was of utmost importance, turned to Rex, who was kneeling down, taking in the identity of yet another dead trooper. "I . . . don't understand. Why did these troopers attack us?"

Before Rex could answer—not that he had any feasible explanation, and the only explanation that came to mind was one he was not yet ready to commit to—Kix came hurrying from the forest behind him.

"Captain! I found the platoon leader," he announced, out of breath. "It's . . . Waxer. He's still alive."

Both Rex and Dogma followed Kix nearly two hundred meters through the forest. When they arrived, it was to find Waxer, one of Cody's most veteran and dependable soldiers, sitting awkwardly against a rocky outcropping, being tended to by another member of the 212th.

Rex could see right away that he was dealing with only a matter of minutes – perhaps second. One side of Waxer's lower body armor was blackened, ripped apart, melted. Rex recognized the injury as a likely mortar hit. The amount of blood pooling on the ground was nothing a field medic would be able to fix.

Rex's heart sank at the sight. It struck him that Waxer would go out just as he had lived – quiet, unassuming, dedicated to his unit, and notoriously soft-hearted. Waxer had found himself, quite reluctantly, in the spotlight after he and his squad mate, Boil, had taken a small Twi'lek girl into their care during the battle of Ryloth. Boil had needed some convincing, but Waxer had known from the start that he would be the one to prevail. His humble demeanor always won the day, and Ryloth was no exception. Since that battle, he had worn an image of the little girl's face on his helmet, to which Boil would constantly react by ribbing him, "Why do you want to wear a tail-head on your bucket? That's not very threatening." But Waxer had always smiled and shrugged it off. He didn't need to look threatening, as long as his aim was lethal.

He was well-known and well-liked.

And in a very short time . . . he would be gone.

Rex reached down and removed his helmet. "Waxer."

The injured man drew in a sharp, painful breath. He could not hold his head steady; his vision would not focus, yet he knew the man before him. There was no mistaking Captain Rex for any other clone in the Grand Army.

Rex knew there was no time to waste. "Tell me who gave you the orders to attack us."

Through each breath, Waxer struggled, but he answered coherently, "It was General Krell. He sent us to these coordinates to stop the enemy. We thought they were wearing our armor, but . . . it was . . . " His eyes grew wide for the briefest of moments, as if he were seeing something beyond sight, as if the recognition of finality was flashing before him. A single tear broke from his eye and traced a lonely path down his cheek. "It was you."

Those were his last words.

Hunkered down in front of him, Rex felt another fresh wave of grief. But then the dreaded anger began to push down every other emotion.

"Captain," the other 212th soldier spoke up. "The orders came from General Kenobi, but they were based on what General Krell told him. I was there, working to get the communications through. General Krell lied to General Kenobi." When the trooper removed his helmet, Rex was again relieved to see that it someone he knew. It was Moog. "You know Waxer would never take orders directly from General Krell. He'd follow the chain of command. But it was General Krell who sent us here based on lies."

"But you came out here with more than a platoon," Rex pointed out, keeping a tight lid on the raging inferno building within. "Who's the company commander?"

"Waxer was in charge," Moog replied. "We've taken heavy losses. General Kenobi put together the remnants of several companies just to make this one."

"Are you able to contact General Kenobi?' Rex asked.

"No, Sir. We've been jammed since setting out on this mission," Moog replied.

Rex considered for a moment. He knew what he was going to do. He just had to be careful of how he went about it. "Find whatever senior 212th officers are left," he instructed Moog. "Have them report to these coordinates at 2235. That's ten minutes."

"Yes, Sir," Moog replied, but before leaving, he turned his gaze back towards his fallen platoon leader. "Is there—is there somewhere we can take him? I don't want him left out here alone."

Kix stepped forward. "I'll take care of that, Moog," he assured him. "I give you my word."

Rex then turned to Dogma. "Find my officers. Same time and place."

Dogma, seeming to have forgotten about any ill feelings towards his captain, nodded sharply. "Right away, Sir!"

As Moog and Dogma set off, Rex watched as Kix knelt down beside Waxer. Then, much to his surprise, the medic hoisted him over his shoulder, the blood from the gaping side wound still pouring out, streaming over the medical emblem on Kix's shoulder guard and dripping onto the chest and back plates. It was gory and gruesome.

Rex touched Kix's arm. "You okay?"

Kix, seeing his captain's expression, spoke evenly. "I'm used to being knee-deep in blood, Sir. This is what I need to do. I won't leave him out here for the scavengers." A pause. "He'll belong to the mortuary team soon enough."

It was a wrenching statement. And nothing more than the truth.

A truth Rex had to overlook or it might leave him paralyzed into inaction.

"I want you back here for the officers meeting," he ordered. "We've all got a lot to consider."

"I'll be here, Sir," Kix replied. "Just . . . promise me we won't let Krell get away with this."

Rex only nodded. He had no promises to give.

There were few scenes that had the ability to stun or unsettle Rex. But in the past twelve hours, he'd faced enough of them to last him a lifetime.

He was facing one more now. It was not a horrifying or frightening scene. It was not evocative of sadness. It was puzzling, peculiar, unlikely.

Double Barrel, an irrepressible soul among souls, was sitting on the remains of a blasted tree trunk. His helmet was off, his face buried in his hands. Down on one knee in front of him was Ajax, one forearm resting atop his friend's knee.

Rex had never seen DB so grief-stricken. The sniper had always been a caring sort, feeling the deaths of those close to him in the same way that most fellow troopers mourned the deaths of their comrades. But he was not the type to linger in sadness. To see him now, clearly distressed with Ajax attempting to console him, Rex was perplexed.

He might have expected to see such distress if Ajax had been killed, for Ajax was DB's closest friend, the bond between them one of the strongest Rex had ever witnessed. But Ajax was right there, very much alive. So, what was behind this display of uncommon anguish?

Rex approached Ajax. "What's happened here?"

"He . . . found out too late," Ajax replied.

"Found out . . . "

Ajax again answered. "That they were clones."

Rex hunkered down beside Ajax. "We all found too late, DB. We were all tricked."

Double Barrel shook his head, face still in hands. "I should have sent him sooner."

Rex looked to Ajax.

"The eagle saw that they were clones," came the explanation. "But by the time he found out, the battle had been going on for a while. A lot of men were already dead."

"I didn't want to use him," Double Barrel moaned, at last raising his head and looking at his hands as if he were hoping to find some kind of forgiveness there. "I didn't want to use him." His voice was trembling. "If I had . . . we could have ended it sooner."

Rex shifted to sit next to him. "None of this is at your feet, DB—"

"He finally just . . . went on his own," DB said. "I wasn't willing to send him out, so he—he did it on his own."

"DB—"

"I didn't want to rely on him . . . " Double Barrel shifted his gaze to Ajax, as if to draw strength. "He's always there, he wants me to use him, but . . . fek, I just didn't . . . I didn't want to. I only wanted to depend on my own . . . "

"You had no way of knowing," Ajax insisted. "There was no reason to doubt what General Krell had told us." Even as he said the words, Ajax knew how absurd that statement was.

Double Barrel called him out on it. "No reason? We had every reason to doubt him! He's been playing us all from day one! He doesn't give a single damn about us and whether we live or die. He may be a Jedi, but he—he's a demon."

Rex drew in a deep breath and decided this was as good a time as any. "General Krell orchestrated this whole thing. He set us against the 212th, and he gave them the same false intelligence he gave us. He planned this whole thing, to make us kill each other." A pause, as he lowered his eyes. "You're right, we did have every reason to doubt him. Me, especially. I knew something didn't sound right about this whole thing. But I didn't listen to my own warnings. If anyone's to blame for what happened here, it's me. "

Double Barrel turned an incredulous eye to his captain. "You, Sir? You're the only one who's done everything right."

"No, DB, I haven't," Rex replied. "But that's all about to change. From here on in, no more mistakes." He stood up and put a hand on DB's shoulder. "And we're all moving ahead together. Stop blaming yourself." He straightened up and looked to Ajax. "And it's about time he realized that the eagle isn't just a part of him; he's a part of this battalion now. He gives us an advantage, and if he's willing to make himself available to us, we need to use him."

"Understood, Sir," Ajax nodded. "He'll be alright. He just needs a little time." He waited until their captain had walked away. "You caught all that, right? If Captain Rex isn't blaming you, you shouldn't blame yourself." He paused. "And you need to stop seeing the eagle as something separate from yourself. Remember what the Doma said when the eagle saved you, she said that whatever parts of your nature were also contained in the eagle, that his soul . . . amplified those things. He just makes you stronger."

"I don't feel stronger."

"You may not feel it, but I see it," Ajax replied. "We all do."

The shock had not abated, not worn off. The rage being held in careful check was apparent on every man's face. As Rex strode in front of them, he knew he was about to risk not only his own life, but the lives of every trooper who would choose to follow him. This had to be a voluntary decision on the part of each man. He would not force them to go along with him. He wasn't even sure exactly where he was leading them. This was something he never imagined; it had never been in the range of possibilities.

But he was facing it now, and he had to make sure that if he were going to bring any men along with him, it was of their own volition.

"We all know who's responsible for what happened out there," he began, giving no indication of the turmoil within his own mind. His soldiers would never know the struggle going on within him. He was standing there, addressing not only his own officers, but also officers who belonged to Cody. And even as he prepared to move forward, he could not stop thinking about the commander and how he would have handled the situation, had he been present. More than anything, at that moment, he wanted to see Cody. He wanted his wisdom, his unshakable calm. He wanted to know that his friend, the man closest to him in the universe, would still be there for him when this was over.

He went on. "What we don't know is why. Something has to be done." He was careful to regulate his tone. The officers before him needed to know that he was not going into this hot-headed. "What I'm proposing is highly treasonous. If any man chooses to opt out, do it now."

There were no takers on his offer to step away. Every officer was in, as he had expected. They were, after all, with the exception of Kix, officers in the two finest units in the GAR.

"From this point forward, we are entering uncharted territory," he announced. "My orders are, we arrest General Krell for treason against the Republic."

He scanned the faces looking back at him. They were all willing to take the risk.

"Go back to your men," Rex instructed. "Give them the same option. I don't want anyone taking part if they don't want to. I need one hundred percent loyalty and one hundred percent commitment. We may all end up being court-martialed ourselves." A pause. "Assemble your men and be ready to move out at 2245."

As they headed back to their platoons, Rex called Kix back. "When we get back, I want you to go with me to free Fives and Jesse."

Kix nodded.

"But I'm not taking you when we go to arrest Krell," Rex went on. "I need you to go to Major Hypes and tell him what's going on and stay there in the med center. If this doesn't go well, I want him to do everything he can to protect our wounded and get word to General Kenobi about what's going on. And we're going to need every medic we can scrape up."

"Yes, Captain."

"I just . . . I can't believe a Jedi would do something like this," Dogma frowned. "There has to be a mistake."

Tup sneered, "The only mistake is that we followed him as long as we did."

"But I was there! I saw the transmission—"

"It was a fake, Dogma! It wouldn't be hard for him to make something like that and use it to fool everyone," Tup pushed back.

"But why? Why would he do that? It doesn't make any sense—"

"Why are defending him?!" Tup burst out. "You saw what happened out here! This was no mistake, Dogma!"

Dogma sighed heavily. "I'm not defending him," he said. "I just . . . we need to make sure that he really did what the captain's accusing him of doing. If we're wrong, we're committing treason!"

"We're committing treason anyway. Didn't you hear what the captain said? What, you want to go back and ask General Krell? You want to ask him if he arranged for us to kill each other? You're being—you're being—fek and all, Dogma, you can't really believe that he didn't plan this whole thing!" Tup was incredulous, and he found himself growing angry with his squad mate.

"We have no proof," Dogma pushed back.

"We have the word of fellow troopers," Tup declared. "Commander Cody's men. Waxer and Moog, for fek's sake! Are you going to doubt them now, too?"

Dogma looked down, troubled. "No, I—I don't doubt them, but what if they're . . . what if they're mistaken?"

Tup shook his head. "I give up. I give up. You need to decide if you're coming or not. But let me tell you this – if you decide not to come and you try to warn General Krell, I'll make sure I'm the one to stop you."

Dogma frowned. "I'm not going to warn him," he replied. "I'm in on this. I may not think it's a good idea, but . . . I'm in on it."

"Are you sure? You heard what the captain said. He needs only men who are one hundred percent dedicated to this course of action," Tup reminded him.

"I told you, I'm in on it," Dogma assured him, sounding irritated.

"Okay, then," Tup nodded. "Just don't do anything stupid."

"I never do."

**So, we see Zinger and Moog once again. I like to get the original gang all together! And I also wanted to expand on DB and Ajax and their friendship. I just love portraying male bonding!