CHAPTER 17: KELIA LOS'EAN

Aboard RSD Kestrel, Hyperspace

Kelia closed her eyes as she knelt in her personal quarters at the foot of her bed, deep in thought. A hardcase large enough for a suit of battle armor sat before her. At her side a datapad glowed a faint blue, casualty reports slowly scrolling past in one window, with an equally slowly ticking list of Clones that had been confirmed to be de-chipped in another.

Under ideal circumstances I'd only be looking at one of those… She opened an eye and glanced at the datapad, frowning as she undid the latches on the hardcase with a soft click.

Order 66 cut deeply. I don't need to be a Jedi to feel the tension in the air, especially since most of the fleet doesn't know the full details about the inhibitor chips or Palpatine. With Jural pretty much sidelined by shock and Kev still about as 'respected' as he was before all this, someone has to raise morale and restore some semblance of unity before we dive into the gullet of the proverbial Sarlaac at Mustafar.

With a sigh, Kelia lifted the lid of the case, the light glinting off the black visor of a snouted grey and violet helmet.

"Well, time to put my skin on… And pray to the manda that my plan works."

o.o.o.o.o

CT-7007 "GRATH"

CT-7007, Sergeant "Grath" of the Kestrel's attached regiment, awoke in an extremely loud sickbay. Last thing he remembered, he had stood in the corridor leading up to the bridge's turbolift, shooting his blaster at a group of traitors… A group that included none other than Lir Sey'les.

As with other Clones, he had been compelled by an inhibitor chip to execute Order 66. However, unlike the other Clones, he had a grudge even larger than that compulsion. Grath had been there on Murkhana nearly two years ago, and Sey'les had been his commanding officer, with their direct action team being attached to the 12th Army, under Wilhuff Tarkin.

Shortly after taking control of Argente Tower, Tarkin had executed Contingency Order 37 ("capture of a single wanted individual through mass arrests and executions") and took the entire staff hostage. For what had seemed like days but was really no more than an hour, Republic forces thereby had executed hostages in groups to compel the remaining Separatist leadership in hiding to surrender.

In the middle of all this bloodshed, Lir Sey'les had seemed to develop a guilty conscience. She had suddenly admitted to Grath that she was a traitor, part of some Bothan SpyNet plot to entrap Tarkin in a crime against the Galaxy, and get him in trouble with the Jedi. At that point, another being in the chain of command, an Ardennian named Razal Wulf, had relieved Sey'les of duty. Then, for reasons which, in hindsight, even Grath had not understood, DAU Team Muun had all gone to Argente Tower to confront Tarkin.

The fratricide that had ensued resulted in not only the deaths of three of Grath's surviving batchers and the team's Rodian medic, but left Wulf with a crippling brain injury at the hands of a psychotic ARC Trooper named Buzz and ended with Tarkin, along with Sey'les and Itoll Oc'skar, another Bothan in Team Muun, hauled back to Coruscant in orange jumpsuits by the Jedi. The entire affair had been a blur of events that made no sense even if he wanted to think about it.

That was the last Grath had heard of Lir Sey'les before being transferred to the 608th Mobile Regiment, and it had stayed that way until rumors began to float that a Bothan by the name of Lir Sey'les had joined Kestrel's crew and was somehow linked to all of this renewed madness.

"You are awake, excellent," said a small hovering droid with a head that looked a bit like his belt detonator. An AZ-series medical model, the kind he'd seen hundreds of times during routine check-ups on Kamino before the war. "Look into this light for me."

Grath obeyed at first, his eyelids constricting slightly as the harsh beam of the AZ droid's glowrod passed over his eyes. Then his attention was jolted away from the glowrod.

"Good soldiers follow orders," mumbled a Clone, strapped down to a stretcher, being pushed in through the doorway by two non-Clone Navy security troopers. "Good soldiers follow orders! GOOD SOLDIERS FOLLOW—" He groaned in pain when the ship's Captain, Jural Dan'lya, jabbed a needle into his arm. For a moment, the Clone protested, but then fell quickly asleep.

Fixating on the scene, Grath continued to stare, completely mystified, while the Captain and a nurse wheeled the Clone across the room as the security troopers left. Dan'lya did not appear to be in good shape herself. Her hands jittered in a barely controlled manner while her uniform was torn and pocked by scorch marks and some of her fur was matted with blood.

"What's going on?" Grath finally asked.

"You have had minor neurosurgery to remove the inhibitor chip from your brain. We are now at over fifty-nine percent chip removal for the entire fleet!" the droid said proudly. "Now would you please look into the light."

Once the glowrod beam extinguished, Grath looked to his left again, surveying the medbay. Dozens of patients, all Clones, were in varying states of recovery. Some were chatting animatedly with one of the surgical droids, others seemed groggy and were barely awake, and others still were fast asleep.

"Do you still feel a compulsion to shoot any Jedi within sight?" the droid asked cheerily.

Grath thought about the question. More memories flooded back. Kestrel had gone to Ponemah Terminal, then to Nkllon to expose some sort of secret.

Inhibitor chips? Compulsion to kill Jedi?

That explained some of Grath's feelings, but he still wanted nothing more than to shoot Lir Sey'les.

A note of concern was now betrayed by the droid's voice after such a long pause. "Are you alright?"

"Yes, I'm fine," Grath lied. "Just a bit tired."

The droid hovered a bit higher at that and rotated. "That's very understandable. I suggest you retire to your quarters and try to get some rest. We have fewer than four hours until we arrive in the Mustafar System. There has also been a scheduled assembly in the main hangar within an hour, on the Commodore's orders."

Grath wondered why Kestrel was now on the way to a Separatist system when, last he heard, the Separatists were on the offensive all over Republic space. Before he could ask, however, he heard a commotion at the entrance to sickbay.

"There are no animals allowed in sickbay," said a MD-series medical droid in an amplified voice, the humanoid machine's manipulators pressed against the surgical gown shrouding its legs.

The voice that replied caused Grath to jump in startlement. "Veryk is not an animal."

"Unless my bioreadings are mistaken—"

"LOOK!" Sey'les snarled loudly, jabbing a finger into the middle of the medical droid's chest, "VERYK WAS IN HERE EARLIER!"

Transfixed, Grath stared at the Bothan. At first, he felt outraged when he saw the Republic uniform she had absolutely no business wearing. Next, panic set in.

Did she come to the conclusion that I was a possible loose end? What is she doing here?!

By this time, the strange animal, a purple weasel-looking thing had begun squeaking. The entire room's attention was fixed on the loud squabble erupting in the entryway. Even the AZ, whose job it was to keep an eye on Grath, had rotated in mid air and was now facing the other way.

Sitting up straighter, Grath surreptitiously reached over to the medical tray sitting beside his bed and discretely grabbed one of the instruments, a surgical vibroscalpel capable of slicing through the tissue of even the toughest lifeforms. No one seemed to notice, but Grath tensed when the medical droid relented, allowing Sey'les to walk through the doorway, weasel in tow.

She stood there for a moment, staring back at the Clone. "Grath, it's… well, it's been a long time," she finally managed.

Gripping the scalpel under the covers, Grath was shaking with anger and fear. "If you knew what was best for you, ma'am, you'd stay the kriff away from me!" He surprised himself by calling Sey'les 'ma'am' like he always used to.

Sey'les flinched slightly, but stood her ground. "I regret a lot of things, but you can't keep hating me—"

"THE HELL!" Grath screamed. "WHY IN THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL?!"

Her ears drooped slightly, but otherwise, she maintained an infuriating calm. "Grath, lower your voice, please. You sound like a crazy person. If you can't stop…" She trailed off as the weasel snaked its way around her shoulders chittering loudly. "Veryk, I think I can handle it myself. I knew him for a whole year, and it's… well…"

It took Grath a moment to figure out that Veryk must be the name of her weasel. "Ha!" Grath snorted angrily, still gripping the knife defensively under his bedsheets. "Ironic insult from someone talking to an animal."

"Ensign, I can't help but notice that you are distressing my patient," the AZ said to Sey'les. "And your animal may cause some of the other patients to have an allergic reaction. I am going to request—OH MY!"

The weasel sprung from Sey'les's grasp, crossing more than two meters of air before landing on Grath's lap. The Clone nearly fell out of his bed from shock. Fighting the urge to stab the blasted creature, Grath maintained his grip on the scalpel, but found himself trembling with rage again. It was so much like Sey'les to bring an animal into the medbay. It was so much like her to completely ignore the boundaries of someone who hated her guts and just expect everyone to like her.

Grath began formulating a simple plan. When Sey'les stooped down to retrieve her pet, he would stab her. Sure enough, not a second later, she stepped forward. He sat up straighter, preparing to spring into action, but suddenly the infernal weasel jumped onto his chest! It must have weighed forty kilos, and Grath found himself somehow pinned onto the bed.

He opened his mouth to scream but couldn't. Paralyzed, all he could do was gasp for breath while staring up at the ceiling, until that view was obstructed by a weasel's face staring down at him. Before Grath could even come to grips with the fact he had been pinned down by a small purple critter, a wave of shocking awareness washed over him.
Every beat of his heart reverberated in his ears. Every gasp of air felt like a trillion grains of sand, flowing down his throat, banging off walls of delicate slippery tissue. Grath suddenly beheld how strikingly squishy and liquid he was. A pang of pain erupted from the small incision on the top of his skull through which his inhibitor chip had been removed. The awareness was so overwhelming, it became impossible for him to focus on the weasel, Veryk, staring into his eyes. For a moment, Grath feared he was going completely mad, and to make matters worse, he was acutely aware of the liquid adrenaline oozing its way out of his kidneys.

{"Don't fear it,"} a voice, or perhaps just a disembodied thought, echoed in his mind. {"Don't fear it. You need to understand."}

The voice felt patronizing, but Grath was so confused by what was happening that he couldn't feel the buzz of outrage. Squishiness… All the squishiness of his body was so distracting.

{"Yes, you are a human in an organic body. There are others nearby. What are they feeling?"}

Grath wasn't sure how to ascertain what others were feeling, but he tried to perceive them, and gasped again. The weasel standing on his chest was squishy and organic, but also glowing with energy to such an intensity that it felt like looking at a sun.

{"Not me. Who is standing to your left?"}

Shifting his focus in that direction, Grath sensed who the voice was referring to. Lir Sey'les. He could sense no hostility at all from her, and like him, she was extremely confused. That realization instantly caused his rage to subside a bit, but then, at a deeper level, the Clone could sense that Sey'les genuinely felt remorse and was downcast over the fact he felt such hatred towards her. Grath continued staring at her, expecting, with this newfound power, to uncover some evidence of a conspiracy or a plot the Bothan was hatching. Instead, he found himself somehow reaching even deeper. At this new level of existence, her essence was strangely… distorted. As if something external had damaged her, tearing at her soul and leaving behind a mess of scars and slowly healing flesh.

At first, Grath couldn't understand what it was he was staring at, until he reflected on himself. The damage to his own essence had a different shape than that of Sey'les, but a large part of it seemed extremely similar—as if it had been cut into by the same tool. Grath had never been Force-sensitive, and it took him a few moments to realize that he was also perceiving Sey'les's emotions. Beneath the veneer of annoyance, from her he could sense fear, trepidation, and something that was difficult to put in human terms, but closest to disappointment. Disappointment that Grath hated her so. The Bothan cared a great deal about being liked by everyone, and being despised by someone she used to work with over something she viewed as her own fault was soul crushing.

Grath came to, or rather, suddenly lost his Force sight as quickly as it had come. The purple weasel was now in Sey'les's left hand, being held in mid-air by the scruff of his neck.

"Veryk is an emotional support Savrit Cat," Sey'les growled, nose to nose with the AZ droid, who seemed to have become even more irate when Grath hadn't been paying attention.

"Emotional support!" the droid scoffed through an amplified vocabulator, pointing a hand in Grath's direction. "CT-7007 is crying!"

Grath stood up from his bed, and several electrodes that had been stuck to his skin and hair with adhesives ripped out painfully. The Clone took two steps forward, then reached his arms around the diminutive Bothan.

Sey'les gasped in shock, recoiling. She clearly expected an attack, and it took a second or two for the tension to leave her body. Snout contorted in an expression of bewilderment, she finally hugged Grath back. "Uh… There, there."

Behind her, the AZ-series medical droid reached out a claw and grabbed the scalpel that was still in Grath's right hand. The Clone didn't even seem to notice, and continued sobbing.

o.o.o.o.o

LIR SEY'LES

When she departed sickbay, Sey'les was still more confused than ever, but the thought of Veryk manipulating sentient beings to like her was quite disconcerting. What if others only like me because Veryk makes them? "Did you make Grath like me?"

This time Veryk had opted to run on the ground on all fours near Sey'les's feet, rather than having the Bothan carry him. {"I have told you at least a dozen times. When you speak aloud to me, it makes you look quite mad. You can communicate telepathically and no one knows anything is amiss."}

Sey'les frowned and stopped walking. She stooped down in the corridor on one knee, getting at eye level with her Prophet. "You are trying to change the topic."

{"A Prophet does not try. A Prophet does,"} Veryk said, his mind-voice carrying a note of impatience. {"I foresaw that Grath would try to kill you on Mustafar. Of course, I wouldn't allow that to happen, but the attempt on your life would leave you… How do I put it?"}

Turning away, Sey'les shut her eyes tight. Again her thoughts went back to Grath hating her, but now it cut even deeper. She could understand why Grath would blame her for some of what happened on Murkhana, but she couldn't understand the hatred. After all, it was Tarkin who had started the firefight, and she was distraught after losing so much of her squad. Wulf, with whom she'd had an intimate relationship, had been shot in the back of the head. While he'd survived, Sey'les had not seen him since.

Even though it was a hypothetical future which had not actually unfolded, the disclosure caused hot tears to pour from her eyes.

After everything we've both been through, how could Grath then try to kill me?

{"It's not your fault,"} Veryk said soothingly.

Another gurney slid by, pushed by two Clone security officers. The doors to the medbay opened with a hiss and the gurney disappeared around the corner.

Sey'les started walking away. She wasn't sure where she would go, but anywhere away from Grath. She could sense his presence still, and it made her feel sick.

{"Stop,"} Veryk commanded. {"There are things you need to understand."}

An overwhelming compulsion to stop moving came over her, and she stopped in her tracks a few meters away. If anything though, Veryk's use of his powers to manipulate her made her angry. "UNDERSTAND WHAT?!" she snarled, balling her fists. "GRATH WANTED TO KILL ME, AND YOU LET ME HUG HIM!"

{"Calm down… Not so loud,"} Veryk urged. Thankfully, the hallway was empty at present.

"Understand what?" Sey'les repeated, this time in a scoffing hiss.

{"Sometimes, beings build idealized versions of other beings in their minds. Old friends or lovers they haven't seen in years… They imagine these people to be exactly like they were thirty years prior, or perhaps they forget what their old friend was really like. They forget all the unpleasantness and fill in the gaps. Even Prophets like me are not immune—"}

"So Grath was idealizing me?!" Sey'les asked, absolutely incredulous.

{"No, but the opposite can happen too. Sometimes beings fill in the blanks with only negative imagery as to what an acquaintance is like. Over the last two years, Grath imagined you to be a dastardly villain—A SpyNet spook who intentionally set up everyone to be killed. Someone who felt no remorse—"}

"But that's not true at all!" Sey'les protested.

{"Yes, which is what I showed Grath. The truth. I didn't make Grath like you. I didn't make Grath do anything. I used my powers to show Grath how you feel, and Grath felt guilty about hating you for all of those years."}

Somehow, that made Sey'les feel a little better. A sense of relief she didn't quite understand washed over her—it went something like Veryk didn't need to force Grath to like me. I am likable after all. But still the Bothan felt much worse than she had before she stepped foot in sickbay.

Wiping the tears out of her eyes, she finally managed, "You are a terrible emotional support animal."

A chortle of cackling laughter erupted in Sey'les's mind, accompanied by an audible chitter from Veryk. {"I see you are finally developing a sense of humor."}

"I wasn't joking," Sey'les said in a deadpan.

{"I truly am sorry,"} Veryk said, approaching Sey'les before nimbly clambering up her leg. {"Some revelations just have to be made."}

For a while, Sey'les stood there, staring despondently down the hallway in Grath's direction. It was an impossible array of unexpected emotional baggage to come to terms with in a short period of time, but she no longer felt like fleeing. On the other hand, there was something about Veryk's presence and squirrely movements that told her that Veryk now wanted to leave. After turning, she began aimlessly walking to nowhere in particular.

{"We should go to the bow of the ship,"} Veryk said with his typical surety. {"There is much you need to discuss still with Commodore Los'ean."}

{"I need to discuss?"} Sey'les asked back, now speaking telepathically through the Force. {"We've spent an incredible time talking, briefing, discussing, planning. It feels like that's all we do."}

{"The future is becoming clearer to me, at least the immediate future,"} Veryk explained. {"And Bendu sees it to a degree of exactness now,"} he added.

At the end of the hall, Sey'les reached a turbolift junction and stepped inside the closest one. The hum of magnetic levs and ventilated circuitry was the only sound that could be heard as they continued their telepathic conversation.

{"You can hear Bendu now?"} Sey'les asked curiously. She felt a gentle pressure under her chin and looked up to the roof of the lift. Where durasteel should have been, there was an open wormhole with a starry background.

Snout hanging open in surprise, she wondered, how did I not notice that?

{"Our fight at Mustafar, it seems, will not go well. Once again, those beyond the veil are witnessing our deaths again,"} Veryk explained.

The wormhole vanished, and the blue light it had been casting all over the turbolift stopped and the interior was engulfed in total darkness. Sey'les swallowed, trying not to panic in the pitch black.

"Our deaths again?" Sey'les finally managed to croak.

{"We died once already in the Athega system. Halfdan and the Loth-wolves changed the course of history, convincing the droids not to destroy us. They are working tirelessly to shift the tide to our advantage, but our Eriaduan adversary has had a six hour lead on us, and he is a very talented investigator. He keeps seeing through our tricks."}

"Tarkin?"

{"Indeed,"} Veryk purred.

At that moment, the turbolift doors opened, and Sey'les blinked in the white light that seemed almost blinding. Rubbing her eyes, she took a step out and was surprised to find herself in a sea of Clone and non-Clone personnel.

{"We are going to have to wait a little while before discussing this with Kelia and Morai."}

"Wait for what?" Sey'les asked, stepping into the hallway and following the crowd of people. Much shorter than the Clones, she found her whiskers brushing up against Clone tunics and chestplates.

{"For Kelia to finish her silliness."}

"Silliness?" Sey'les growled.

{"You're going to have to speak with the Force. Savrit Cat ears are not as good as Bothan ears, and it is far too loud to hear you!"}

{"Silliness? Veryk, I don't—"} she started, then shook her head in bewilderment. The crowd pushed her through the doorway, spilling out onto the hangar deck.

As the crowd thinned, it became more organized, with Clones in shiny armor standing in neat square formations of platoon sized elements while Navy personnel, Clone and non-Clone alike, wearing utility jumpsuits and officer uniforms mingled in their own formations. Quite out of place wearing a gray-green working uniform, Sey'les awkwardly stepped into an empty gap towards the back of the nearest formation.

Next to her, a Clone snickered. "Sir, do you want to stand at the front? You're a little short."

Keeping her eyes caged forward, Sey'les ignored the comment. Exhaling, she relaxed, then stiffened, wiping any expression of emotion off her face. That pose lasted all of three seconds.

Kelia emerged, standing atop a repulsortank, and Sey'les only knew it was Kelia from her presence in the Force. The Commodore was not wearing any sort of Republic-issued uniform at all, barring her rank plaque. Instead, she was clad from head to toe in a suit of expressionless form-fitting Mandalorian battle armor.

o.o.o.o.o

KELIA LOS'EAN

Standing atop the roof of a squat and sleek TX-130 fighter tank with her hands on her hips, Kelia scanned the flight line as the last stragglers marched in, a roughly even mix of Clones and non-Clones, the latter ranging across a wide array of species. From across the ship's various departments organized into four blocks twenty beings deep and six wide, nearly four-hundred-eighty beings assembled before her for an event that would either save everyone left in the fleet…

Or condemn them all.

There was a nervous energy in the way the crew shifted and murmured while at attention, not just because of mutual distrust between the Clone and non-Clone personnel, but because none of them had ever seen Kelia as she was now.

Clad head to toe in form-fitting violet-trimmed beskar'gam bristling with mounted weaponry (armor that admittedly hugged her curves substantially more tightly than when she'd last worn it), the only indicator she was a Republic officer being the rank plaque on her breastplate, a black visor obscuring her eyes with the rest of her face hidden behind an impassive snouted helmet. With such a dramatic shift in appearance, her figure had gained an imposing air to it.

At her sides, standing on the tank's sponsons, were the four members of Rider Squad, their DC-17m rifles holstered on their backpacks. Several astromechs, Prowler 1000 probes, and service droids hooked up to mobile servers and transmitters were clustered all around the vehicle, sending the broadcast to the entire fleet at her order.

Exhaling, Kelia clasped her hands behind her back before beginning to speak. "I assume there are many questions as to why we're doing this? Well, shut up and listen."

The assembly went quiet as she turned on her heel, pacing around the tank's hatch. "What I am about to tell you all was considered confidential for your own safety up until less than twenty minutes ago, after I opted to deem this judgment irrelevant in the wake of Order Sixty-Six."

An astromech's holoprojector flared to life as Kelia tapped on her wrist-comm, displaying the hooded, shadow-faced figure from data Scirocco had provided, eliciting a few mumbles from the crowd. "This individual is the one who initiated the Contingency Order, relayed to us via the Separatist warships we were engaged in combat with."

That drew a more substantial reaction, as numerous beings turned to each other, discussing the information in hushed tones. Before it could go further, Kelia continued. "Our data experts have since reconstructed the individual in question's face based on the existing image of their jawline and nose. The result was known to us in command, but no less shocking to be personally confirmed."

Inhaling, she tapped a button on her wrist, and then watched the uproar begin as the face of the dark figure fizzled and resolved into that of Supreme Chancellor Palpatine.

"That's impossible!"

"It's a Sep trick, don't-"

"How do we know you're not doing this to-"

Kelia's foot slammed down onto the tank's roof, a heavy metallic clang filling the air and drowning out the furor. "I DID NOT GIVE ANY OF YOU PERMISSION TO SPEAK! NOW SHUT UP, STAND AT ATTENTION, AND LISTEN!" She snarled, helmet sweeping left and right as she stared down the now cowed personnel.

Sighing under her breath, Kelia continued, dialing up her helmet's loudhailers to drown out further interruptions. "During the course of our 'surprise deployment', we have both been handed and discovered critical evidence that reveals Supreme Chancellor Palpatine and Count Dooku have been colluding since at least the beginning of the war, very likely the entire Separatist crisis! Among this evidence was the illicit transfer of Clone Trooper Kix of the Five-Oh-First to Dooku's custody by a Special Unit of Clone Commandos that seemingly exists entirely off the books and presumably answers solely to the Supreme Chancellor!"

As she spoke, the holovid that Halfdan had provided her appeared in the air behind her, courtesy of another astromech. As it played, the Clones in the crowd beneath Kelia almost universally reacted with barely controlled rage at the treasonous Commandos.

Pausing for a moment to let it all sink in, Kelia continued, her voice now an octave or so lower. "Now, why would Dooku or Palpatine, the two most powerful men in the galaxy, care about a lone Clone Trooper? The reason is simple, Kix learned about the true nature of the inhibitor chips implanted in almost every production Clone Trooper, to force compliance with the contingency orders that would enable Palpatine and Dooku to overthrow the Republic and replace it with a totalitarian empire of their own design."

A hologram of an inhibitor chip flickered into being behind her as she swept her gaze across the crowd, a Prowler bobbing in front of her, transmitting everything. "While the exact nature of the chip's function is still being deciphered by Kestrel's medical staff, what I do know about them is that they override any will the Clone has to disobey the order by sheer, brute, force. This forces them to adhere to all aspects of the Order, including murdering their own comrades and brothers who refuse to comply, as happened throughout the fleet when everything went to hell. Resistance, such as it is, is swept aside in the name of blind obedience."

Many non-Clone crewmembers in the crowd shifted uneasily, and it was then Kelia realized they generally either had no idea Clones had deliberately slain each other in the chaos or had refused to entertain the idea because it didn't fit this infant prejudice festering among them.

Sensing opportunity, she twisted the knife, to further drive the point home. "The Clones are innocent in all this, reduced to nothing more than blasters pointed at the enemies of Palpatine's dreamed regime through no fault of their own. By misdirecting your anger, you only further his aims!

"I do not know about any of you, but I for one place all blame for what happened in Athega solely on the man who betrayed us all from the very beginning. The man who orchestrated this entire war. A war that has for many of us killed our friends and family wholesale, cost the lives of billions of others, and left countless worlds in ruins for the sake of greed! A man who tried to turn us against each other in a panic because we discovered the extent of his plans! Has he succeeded!?" Kelia shouted, her voice rising to a full yell as pent up rage at the Chancellor boiled over.

"NO MA'AM!" The crew shouted in unison, fury boiling in their veins as the target of their ire shifted from each other, to the man who bore ultimate responsibility.

She nodded, smiling behind her helmet's snouted faceplate. "Good! Because right now he thinks he's winning, that we're nothing more than pawns to be swept away. Well I'm going to tell you all right now that he's dead shabla wrong!"

Cheers erupted from the crew as Kelia put to words the emotions they'd been allowing to fester since Order 66, now given a new outlet and a direction, earning a soft smile from her as she studied them.

She gave a subtle nod to Garen, and the leader of Rider Squad gestured for his brothers to follow him as he hopped off the TX-130's left sponson. "As of now, we are en-route to the one location in the known Galaxy where we can stop Palpatine and Dooku dead in their tracks, but it is currently under siege by forces loyal to the treasonous Chancellor. They will have no compunctions about working together. So, I have a test for you all to make sure we can do the same."

One member of Rider Squad stood in front of each block of personnel, hands clasped behind their waists as Clone Flight Crewers and non-Clone technicians brought out several speeder carts from a nearby hangar and began handing out armored chestplates and bracers to the confused crowd.

"Ma'am? If I may… What's the reason for this?" Kelia heard Lieutenant Commander Mornstead of the fleet's direct action operatives ask as he began slipping on the armor.

Behind her helmet, Kelia's lips twitched into a smirk. "A good question Lieutenant Commander. Tell me, how many of you are familiar with Dha Werda Verda?"

"The ancient Taung war poem?" someone with a heavy Core World accent asked from the crowd.

Kelia nodded as she walked down the front of the TX-130, using its sloped armor as a ramp. "That's one aspect of it. After all, the Taung would later go on to become the first Mandalorians, and down the ages, during the Neo Crusades, would create a war chant in hopes they would be remembered by their successors, no matter what species they were.

"In turn, the descendants of the Zhell would later form what we now know as the Republic! Through the Clone Army, these ancient enemies have been united as one, now facing an existential threat to the existence of both cultures born from them!"

Stepping off the tank, wincing when her codpiece dug into her pelvis as her feet hit the deck and promptly exhaling to let the burst of discomfort pass, Kelia strode forwards before stopping between Garen and Blade, crossing her arms under her chest. "As a gesture of this unity, and a symbol of our defiance to Palpatine, this assembly shall now conduct the traditional Mandalorian war dance associated with the Dha Werda Verda chant."

Confused exclamations died out the moment Kelia slapped her wrist bracer against Blade's backpack and shouted. "The dance is simple! As the song continues, you shall mirror the movements of your compatriots to your sides! Trust and timing are as paramount as they are in a bayoneted rifle drill! Treat this no differently! Do not think about whether you shall be hit, just trust in your rhythm and the rhythm of your comrades!"

Rider Squad began chanting before any further interruptions could occur, loudly clacking bracer armor against chest and back plates as they turned in unison with Kelia. "Taung! Sa! Rang! Broka! Jetiise! Ka! 'Rta!"

Kelia's voice joined into the growing chorus as the assembly began mimicking the motions of the experienced Mandalorians, a pre-recorded basic version of the chant playing over loudhailers and giving all a beat with which to follow.

"The ash of the Taung beats strong within the Republic's heart!"

"We are the rage of the warriors of the shadow!"

"The first noble sons of Coruscant!"

"Let all those who stand before us light the night sky in flame!"

"Our vengeance shall burn brighter still!"

Scanning the assembly as she turned with Garen and Blade, Kelia smiled and laughed as she saw the crew, though fumbling with some movements, staying with the beat as much as they could, the loudhailers now drowned out by nearly five-hundred voices chanting in unison, the clack of plastoid on plastoid becoming a drumbeat that quickly ascended to thunder.

"The gauntlet of Coruscant strikes without mercy!"

"We are the rage of the warriors of the shadow!"

"The first noble sons of Coruscant!"

"Let those who stand before us light the night sky in flame!"

"Our vengeance shall burn brighter still!"