One
There was no going back.
Not now.
Commander Fox was on autopilot, directing units to lock down the Senate building.
He strode through the familiar corridors with purpose.
His men, all looking to him to make sense of what they had just been ordered to perform.
Execute Order 66.
Eliminate the Jedi.
The commander however had a bigger agenda; keeping the politicians and all off world dignitaries safe.
He was methodical, efficient; and completely ignorant of the drama unfolding in the building opposite.
The Jedi Temple.
But once the two Senate towers had been secured his attention was directed to the smoke now billowing from the historic building.
"Lieutenant."
"Sir?"
"Grab a unit and rendezvous with me in 5 at the entrance to the Jedi Temple."
"Copy that sir," Vail replied and turned to gather the men.
'What have we started?' Fox muttered under his breath as he stared through his macros, 'what have we done?'
.
Jesse moved forward slowly.
The carnage had continued to another room and finally all was silent.
Crawling along the floor, each rasping breath brought another fresh wave of insurmountable pain.
Tears now blurred his eyes, but he had one focus as he continued to claw his way over the dead.
A red symbol.
One any trooper would sigh with relief at the sight of on a battlefield.
But this time, the medic was the one in need.
Kix was lying on his side. His helmet had come slightly ajar and Jesse carefully removed it, all the time praying to whichever God that would listen that his best friend had survived.
His face crumpled and he sat back on his haunches, rocking slightly at the sight of his oldest friend.
Deep down Jesse knew the wound was fatal.
Skywalker was the best at wielding the sword and he had witnessed enough over the course of the war to know a lethal blow when it was delivered.
His eyes were closed and Kix for all intents and purposes just appeared asleep.
Calm.
Finally at peace.
The molten plastoid in the middle of his chest the only indicator that he had been struck.
The irony that Kix had survived the war, and the mental anguish that had accompanied it, only to die defending his captain from the man they blindly followed into battle was too hard to bear.
A noise escaped Jesse's damaged throat, one of heartbreak as he leaned forward and struggled to move Kix onto his back.
It hurt too much to cry; even the simple act of mourning had been denied him.
There, Jesse lay down mute next to him, resting his head in the crook of his dead brothers shoulder and closed his eyes, willing his life to end as well.
.
"Move it men," Fox broke into a run towards the Temple, "I want a Guard at every level, is that understood?"
"Copy that commander."
Fox had made it his business to tap into the HQ list of deployments.
Torrent Company?
The 501st had been ordered to the building, but he hadn't even thought about the logistics of Skywalker leading them on a trail of terror.
Skywalker was Jetii after all.
He stopped as he crashed through the internal doors, before he leaned down and pulled a Rodian Initiate over, checking for life.
That's when they both saw it; Vail looked up at him in question, neither of them speaking.
A blaster burn to the chest.
A soldier had killed this Jedi Youngling.
They had all heard the order when it was given.
Truth be told, Fox was glad that his men were in the Senate building and there were no Jedi around to execute.
Could he have done it?
He would never know.
He swallowed hard and continued through the building until he found himself on the third level and at another closed door, the Jedi Nursery. He stopped; the smell of discharged blaster pungent and steeled himself for what lay behind the enormous doors. Anger then spurred him forward as he growled and pushed one open.
He was too late.
Vail barged past him, his eyes drawn to the two soldiers with cerulean markings on their armour as Fox stood motionless.
.
The commander methodically checked each child for signs of life.
He needn't have bothered.
Torrent were known for their marksmanship and he knew that he would find no one alive.
Three younglings had huddled together, their hands still interlocked as they awaited their imminent death. He removed his helmet and crouched down low inspecting their tear streaked faces.
How could this happen?
His chest began heaving as he breathed through the realisation of what Skywalker had done when he noticed a lone figure in the centre of the room.
Lying on her back, her legs twisted underneath her was the people's Representative for Oriis.
"Ah no," he said a little too loudly as he moved over to her, "no, no, no," he continually repeated as he knelt down next to Skylar Gem.
.
"Just keep your bucket on closed comm to me and aim high of each target. You got that?"
Coric's heart was racing at what he had just witnessed in the Jedi Nursery.
Rex? Kix? Both gone? A member of the Senate dead and the children; all the children. His captains last words kept repeating over and over again in his mind. 'You know who this is,' Rex had said. 'You know who this is?'
What did he mean, was the child his?
The words kept coming no matter how hard he tried to block them out. He was also aware of how Whisk and Didge were both struggling to physically act out the order that they had been given. He knew he had some responsibility in amongst the mayhem to keep an eye out for them.
Whisk was a medic after all.
The two newer recruits to the 501st dropped behind Coric and followed his order. Aiming high of the targets meant they were not responsible for any deaths.
Appo, on the other hand, hadn't missed a beat, along with the remainder of Torrent.
No one else was talking through internal comms.
They simply followed on behind Skywalker as the onslaught continued.
Some of the Younglings had even tried to put up a fight, raising their light sabres in self defence against the trained assassins. Coric's heart sank every time he saw a futile attempt.
They were outnumbered, and Skywalker himself would have had trouble against the sheer volume of weaponry.
They were the peace keepers after all.
Unaware of the order given, most of the Jedi and Padawan were caught defenceless.
"Keep up Whisk, leave them alone," Coric noticed the medic stop and bend down to check on one boy, "we just need to see this one through."
Coric was desperate to get them back to base; there he could try and make sense of everything.
The noise was the worst.
Screaming from the victims and yelling from the soldiers.
Then silence.
Another room.
More dead.
Continually moving, continually killing.
.
Olphina had told him that Gem was in the Jedi Temple that day.
"She's Force sensitive Fox, so is the child," she had wailed as he told her what the order had said.
As it turned out, Olphina was justified in her concern.
Fox always had a soft spot for the young Oriian. He had done so from the minute he met her two years earlier.
She had survived a fatal crash that had killed the pilot and her father, then successfully treated a critically injured soldier before being discovered by an elite group of 501st. There she had met her dashing captain and together they re wrote history, ending the reign of two of the most detested Darthomir warriors.
Their love had challenged the establishment that had produced all of them, but none more so than CT-7567. A passionate affair, followed by a hasty marriage and culminating in the birth of a child; a child that symbolised a future, something denied every soldier by simple birth right. They were commodities after all, mass produced to fight an impossible war against machines.
But some men had sought out relationships and had secretly enjoyed a life outside the army, of which the commander was one.
Fox also had a soft spot for that child.
He had never spoken to the captain again after the incident with ARC trooper 5555, but there had been a time when he raised an eyebrow at Rex one morning during a briefing at HQ.
Both men look tired from lack of sleep.
The child had cried well into the night, the noise not going unnoticed by his senator in the adjacent apartment. Rex had guessed what he was alluding to and had smiled.
It was what Fox admired most about the captain; even though he was assigned to the most infamous unit in the Grand Army of the Republic, Rex never lost touch with his humanity, making him not only highly revered, but a good commanding officer to his men.
On a few occasions Piia had been brought into Olphina and together they had occupied her as Gem was engaged elsewhere. Sitting on the floor with the infant, Fox had dangled a small doll over the baby's head, all the time smiling and laughing at the innocence of youth.
But now, everything had changed.
Innocence was lost, or so it seemed, in one foul act of deception by the Chancellor.
They had all been used.
Every trooper bred to serve alongside the Jedi were now being utilised in an act so evil it defied all intelligent thought.
Why?
As he looked down at the blank, expressionless eyes and the halo of dark hair Fox grieved for the loss of life and of that innocence.
Everything suddenly became so complicated, and for the first time, he felt scared.
Commander Fox had raced against time, but this time, he was just too late.
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