"Kix?"

Maybe she had misread the numbers. Maybe one of those sixes was an eight. Ahsoka peered closer, but neither was. The sequence was, without question, Kix's CT number.

And then she realised that escaping had just become rather more complicated. There was no question, of course, of simply leaving Kix here. The 501st never left its men behind if there was another option. High Command would never sanction a return mission to retrieve one clone, and that meant that their only option was to take the stasis pod with them now, somehow.

"Obi-Wan!" she called, and her grandmaster hurried over.

"What is it?"

She pointed to the pod. "It's Kix. One of our—one of the 501st's medics. Rex says he disappeared before the siege of Mandalore. Obi-Wan—"

I'm not letting go of this. Kix deserves better than to stay stuck in here until someone finally decides to thaw him out in Force-only-knows how many years.

Obi-Wan's hand went to his chin. "It's going to make our escape considerably less covert. We might have to risk conspicuous Force use."

If they were able to get away quickly, that might not be a problem, even if the Kaminoans reported it to the Empire. Then again, if they were delayed, or if there happened to be Imperial forces in the system, or a nearby system, things could become rather unpleasant.

"I know," Ahsoka said. "We can't just leave him, though."

Part of him wanted to argue that nor could they risk being caught by the Empire. Although the prospect of death did not frighten him overly much, there was enough in his life to give him a vested interest in preserving it until the natural end of his days. More importantly, however, he wanted to keep Ahsoka out of the Empire's eye for as long as possible. She was relatively safe, at present, hidden behind the name of Fulcrum, her own name not on the Imperial lists for kill or capture. For the Rebellion's sake, and for her own, it should stay that way. He loathed to think of the bright young woman falling into Vader's grasp, either to die by her former master's hand, or to be tortured in an attempt to turn her to the Dark, to make her an Inquisitor, or even an apprentice.

Guessing at least part of what he was thinking, she gave him a chiding look.

"I'm not a youngling anymore, Obi-Wan. I know the risks. But I was Kix's commander. I was responsible for him, for all of the 501st, and I left them. If I had stayed…. It's too late, now, for everyone else, but we can still help Kix."

Obi-Wan relaxed his shields just enough that the Force whispered something like pride as his grandpadawan met his eyes with a firm and level gaze. Her padawan brashness had been tempered into a quiet composure that covered a core of durasteel conviction. She was compassionate, selfless in the face of duty. Strong, but never hard; gentle, but never frail. She had left the Order, yet she was a Jedi in all but name.

He was presently snapped from rumination by the sound of her voice. "Obi-Wan?"

"Oh, yes. You'd better contact Rex, then, and tell him there's been a change of plans. I'll go see how Artoo is coming along with our new friend."

When Rex answered, Ahsoka could hear the sound of blasterfire in the background.

"Commander! I thought you said you were almost out!"

"I'm sorry! We ran into some… er… complications. It's going to take us awhile longer."

"I'm not sure how much of a ship we're going to have left! What's taking you so long?"

"We found a clone in stasis. Kix. We're going to try to—"

"Did you say Kix?"

"Yeah. We're getting him out, too. Get off the ground if you need to, and I'll comm when we're free."

"Copy that. Force be with you, 'Soka."

Across the room, AZI-3 was just starting up again, Artoo having finished his data restoration. He scanned the room in evident perplexity.

"My programming informs me it is not the typical behavior of organics to dwell in storerooms. Why are you in here? Are you also slated for decommissioning?"

"We're trying to avoid it," Obi-Wan said. "We were wondering whether you might be able to help us escape from this city."

AZI made a gesture of distress. "My programming requires that I provide aid where possible, but I would be decommissioned again for certain, and I'm afraid they would make it permanent this time. Have you ever been decommissioned? It isn't at all pleasant."

"So you were decommissioned for helping someone?" Ahsoka asked.

"Yes. There was a clone with a name. Five-s."

"Fives?"

"He persuaded me that my programming allowed me to help him. You know Five-s?"

"Yes—well, we did."

"You do not anymore? I did not think that organics' memories could easily be wiped."

[They can't], Artoo said. [5S was decommissioned.]

"Oh." AZI blinked sadly. "I am sorry. It seems my assistance wasn't enough."

[Not your fault. Chancellor is a nasty little kark. Help us get out, so we can take him out.]

AZI cocked his head. "Although my programming forbids me to do unnecessary harm, there is a certain appeal in that idea. Would it be unnecessary harm?" he mused. "If he decommissioned Five-s…."

[Absolutely necessary. Taking out that sleemo will help an infinite number of people. This complies with your programming.]

After a few moments of consideration, AZI said, "That's very true. And if you did know Five-s, I think he would appreciate if I helped you. But, as I do not want to be decommissioned again, I must ask for something in exchange."

"That's only fair," Obi-Wan said. "What exchange do you propose?"

"I want you to take me with you. I won't be any trouble! If you are worried about transporting another passenger, I am quite small, as you see, and I can be very useful, besides."

"Of course we'll take you with us!" Ahsoka exclaimed. "You didn't think we were going to leave you in this closet to rust, did you?"

AZI raised his hands in a sheepish shrug. "I thought it best to be sure. The Kaminoans have little regard for droids."

Artoo expressed his thoughts on that matter in the form of a raspberry.

"We have an arrangement, then?" AZI asked brightly.

Obi-Wan nodded. "Yes. Do you think you would be able to create some kind of diversion?"

[Explosions are always good], Artoo added.

"I have not had very much experience with diversions, but I do remember an explosion incident some time ago, when a compressed gas cylinder was exposed to too much heat in one of the labs. With assistance, I could replicate the incident, perhaps even on a larger scale! Provided, of course, that appropriate steps are taken to minimize casualties."

Explosions were good, AZI soon learned. That is, explosions were effective.

The two droids made their way to the labs unbothered. They passed several Kaminoans on their way, but none paid them more than a passing glance. There was nothing remarkable about AZI, nothing to distinguish him from other med droid of his series, which were common enough in the research institute. As an astromech, Artoo was more out of place, but AZI's chaperonage was apparently sufficient to put him above question.

With a trifling bit of computer slicing, they were able to access the labs and storerooms. After finding a lab currently unoccupied by organics, a number of gas cylinders were arranged in positions calculated to do the most damage. Several were set up near flammables storage, while others were placed near chemical cabinets and walls likely to be loadbearing. Heating devices were placed near the cylinders, and the droids retreated, quite satisfied with their work. AZI, abiding by his programming, pressed the hazardous spill evacuation button on the wall before following Artoo up into one of the maintenance tunnels.

The explosion, several minutes later, was an admirable one, shaking the tunnel they were in so it felt as though a Venator had surely crashed nearby.

Ahsoka's comm chimed.

[Done], was Artoo's message. A few minutes later, there was an impressive boom from some ways in the distance. On cue, she opened the storeroom door, Obi-Wan enabled the stasis pod's hover function, and they guided the pod out into the hall. They navigated their way back to the turbolift shaft, interrupted only once by a party of guards. There were too many to dispatch with stun blasters without being shot themselves, so Obi-Wan resorted to a mindtrick. It worked on half the guards, who turned and ambled away down the corridor. The rest, eyes narrowed, raised their blasters.

"Try again, Obi-Wan!" Ahsoka said. He threw her a skeptical glance, but repeated the Force suggestion, and she drew on her last reserves, adding her own suggestion to his. It was enough to persuade all but one of the guards, who just had time to look mildly impressed before he received a stun bolt. Ahsoka was hard-pressed not to imitate his downward slump, as the world wobbled before her, and she wanted nothing more than to lie down and let her eyes drift shut.

"Ahsoka!"

Right. Escape. They just had to get out of here, and then she could spend the whole return trip napping. She pinched herself, shifting from foot to foot as Obi-Wan forced the turbolift doors open.

"You first," he said. "I'll guide the pod in."

"Wait." She reached into one of her pockets and pulled out a thermal detonator. "Take this. You'll need to throw it if the lift starts to come down."

"You are aware, of course, that blowing up the lift will rain rubble on our heads?"

"I figure we have a better chance of surviving that than we do getting smashed by a moving lift. Hopefully, we won't need it in the first place, but it's good to be prepared."

She lit one saber, holding out it out over the abyss to find footholds, and began her descent. It was a tricky business, as she didn't dare lean into the Force to guide her hands and feet, lest the peace of meditation should lull her to sleep, and so she went very carefully, saber in one hand, extended downward to reveal the next foothold.

Obi-Wan started down as well, pulling the stasis pod after him with the Force, trying to convince himself that Ahsoka's questionable contingency plan was better than no contingency plan at all, and wondering whether he had been premature in his earlier, favorable assessment of her. Perhaps not. Really, she was only proving her place in their lineage, with such plans as this.

Fortunately, there was no need to test the efficacy of the turbolift deterrent, and they neared the bottom of the shaft without incident. Ahsoka alerted Rex to be ready to fetch them "somewhere under the city, we're not exactly sure where," and then she activated another detonator, which she dropped into the shaft. It struck bottom in a burst of light and heat. Once the temperature was bearable, she and Obi-Wan continued down toward the jagged hole through which could be seen grey, rolling waves.

Their ship came in sight, the ramp extending as it hovered some ways below the hole. Ahsoka dropped, buffeted gently by the wind—or perhaps by Obi-Wan, guiding her with the Force—and immediately had to flatten herself against the ramp to avoid blasterfire from two Kaminoan ships coming up behind. She was up again in a flash, however, dashing inside the ship, resisting the instinctive urge to draw her sabers. Obi-Wan dropped to the ramp a moment later, taking cover behind the stasis pod, and hustled inside as the ramp began to retract.

Ahsoka sagged against a bulkhead. She wasn't quite done, though.

"Artoo?" she said into her comm.

[Almost there!]

A few seconds more, and two metallic shapes shot in though the narrowing hatch.

[Made it! I'll fly. Commander_2 will want to see Medic, make sure in working order.]

So saying, Artoo rolled off to relieve Rex of piloting duty.

After Rex and AZI took the stasis pod off to the ship's small medbay, Obi-Wan collected Ahsoka, who had slid down to sit on the floor of the cargo bay, slouched against the bulkhead in the same spot she had claimed upon entering the ship.

"Bed for you, I think," he said, nudging her shoulder with his knee.

"Huh?" She stared blankly at him through bleary eyes.

"Come." He held out a hand and pulled her to her feet. "You may be young, but you're still going to regret sleeping in that position. Let's get you somewhere more comfortable."

She allowed herself to be shepherded to the cabin, where she tumbled into one of the berths and buried her face in a pillow.

"What in the name of the Force did you do in there?" Obi-Wan asked, watching her with concern.

"Found a new way to use the Force," she mumbled into her pillow.

"Indeed?"

"Yeah. You gonna let m' teach it?"

So she had been serious, when she suggested that she might help if he chose to rebuild the Order.

"I'm not sure I should, if this is what it did to you. What precisely did you do, anyway?"

The only reply he received was a soft snore. A question for another day, then. He carefully removed the lightsabers from Ahsoka's belt, laying them on the floor under the berth, and tucked a blanket over her. Picking up a datapad, he retired to another berth, where he began to write up a report on the mission.

Waking up, Kix felt cold, and stiff. His joints, aching as though he hadn't so much as shifted in days, protested the slightest movement, and a chill seemed to have settled in his very bones. The world was too bright, the light like daggers in his eyes. He squinted, raising a hand to cover them.

"Osik!" someone exclaimed quietly from nearby, and a moment later, the light dimmed. It was still too bright, but at least not quite as excruciating as a moment before.

"Sorry, vod," said the voice, which unmistakably belonged to one of his brothers. As his eyes adjusted, Kix made out the shape of the speaker, standing just a few feet away. The light glinted off his short, blond hair.

"Rex?" It came out as a croak.

"Right here, Kix'ika." Rex sat down on the edge of his bed—oh, he was in a bed, in what appeared to be a medbay… in… he had absolutely no idea. They could be in space or on some world, for all he knew.

"Where are we?" Kix asked.

"Hyperspace. Heading home to the base. Kix—" There was an odd strain in Rex's voice, and the look on his face—Kix knew that look. It was the look his vod'e used to bring into the medbay after a battle, when they searched for their batchmates or closest friends, even though they had heard the worst. It was the look they had when they found one sole survivor. If Rex, second-in-command of the whole 501st, had that expression…. Even after Umbara, he hadn't had it.

Kix held out his arms toward Rex, ignoring the stiffness in the joints.

"Are you sure?" Rex asked, uncertainly. "I don't want to hurt you."

"I've been in stasis, bacta, di'kut. Now, come here, Rex'ika."

Still unsure that it was wise, but ultimately trusting the medic to know, Rex "came there," hugging Kix as tight as he dared, while the latter returned the embrace with surprising solidity for someone who had just woken up from almost seven years of cryosleep. Through a valiant effort, Rex managed not to go completely to pieces—Kix didn't need that, especially not right after waking up. It was difficult, though. Wolffe and Gregor were good comrades, and all the clones were his vod'e, even Fox (he supposed), but Kix… Kix was Torrent. He was family, in a way that few outside Torrent could ever be.

Kix, meanwhile, found that Rex's hug was that of a man clinging to a piece of his ship's wreckage after downing in a stormy sea—and he did not like that one bit. He didn't want to think about what might have happened to make Torrent's levelheaded ori'vod cling so to its medic.

By the time Rex finally eased away, Kix's eyes were adjusted to the light. There were new lines on his brother's face, creases that none of the clones had worn before. Even with their accelerated aging, he shouldn't look that old unless—

"Rex—how long has it been?"

Rex hesitated before meeting his eyes with a sigh. "Coming up on seven years, vod."

"Seven… osik." Seven years, and that look in Rex's eyes.

"Did we lose?" Kix asked, barely above a murmur.

"We're still fighting, in a manner of speaking."

Kix frowned. "Kenobiisms don't work on me. I know you're trying to hide something."

Another sigh, this one wearier, as Rex braced himself. "The war's over. Fives was right. The chips—it really did go all the way to the top. The Chancellor—"

"I know. I found out about the orders on the chips. That's how I ended up as the Seppies' guest."

"That's not all, Kix. The Chancellor—he was dar'jetii. Sith. There's no Republic anymore, and no CIS—just a great karking Empire that's a thousand times worse than either."

"He used the order."

"Yeah." Rex pointed to the small scar above his temple—it was neat and precise, clearly not the work of shrapnel or blasterfire. "Still don't know how I managed to fight it long enough to warn the Commander. She made sure my was taken out. The rest of us…." He shook his head. "It wasn't their fault. They didn't deserve to die, but the ship was crashing, and we—we couldn't help them all. Any of them. Couldn't have them in the ship with her."

"The whole 501st?"

"Half of it. The other half… we don't really know what happened to them." Beyond a certain point, but no way in the galaxy was he going to tell Kix about the march on the Temple right now.

"Did anyone else make it?"

"A few. Wolffe, from General Koon's unit… Gregor, from the 212th… we've found a few others… Fox took a whack to the head awhile back, got a concussion, and broke his chip. Any deserters probably came out of it unscathed, with no one to give them the order. Some of the Imp troops we've captured have been vod'e, too. Wolffe, Gregor, and I have a side-job going, trying to find and help anyone we can. Doesn't always work. Some… what they did wasn't their fault, but it never sinks in."

"And this is what we fought for," Kix said in disgust. "Haran of a galaxy to wake up to."

Rex moved closer, to drape his arm around his brother's shoulders.

"Yeah. Sorry about that. Maybe we should have waited to thaw you out until we'd taken down the Empire."

"I'd rather help you take it down, thanks. Who's we?"

"Bunch of former Republic senators and other political figures, the Commander—"

"She came back?"

"In a way. Don't think she meant to stay, but then Order Si—the order went out, and we stayed together, found our way into the Rebellion. She's on the ship right now, along with Kenobi."

For a moment, Kix enjoyed the knowledge that there were other familiar faces around them—until he thought back over Rex's slip of the tongue, and saw the scar on his temple again. He tensed.

"Rex—this chip. Get it out of my head."

"There are medics on the base who know how to deal with the chips. They can get it out as soon as we get back to Yavin."

Kix did not want to wait a couple of days. He didn't want to spend any longer than necessary going about with something that was practically a bomb inside his head. Particularly when there were two Jedi on the ship with him.

"Sedate me, then. I don't want any chance that this thing will go off when I'm around the Commander or General Kenobi."

"Oh, that won't be necessary." A small med droid drifted over.

"What do you mean, Azi?" Rex asked.

"I can remove the chip. Yes, I am much more confident in my abilities in that department, since Five-s survived the procedure. Tup did die, but Five-s said it wasn't due to the removal of his chip. Therefore, I have successfully removed two chips. It is likely that I will also be able to remove yours without issue."

"Well, that's quite the recommendation," Kix said wryly. But he acceded to Azi's proposal—with a bit of relief that he had had that remark about the requisite quality of a good droid tattooed on the opposite side of his head from the location of the chip.

Fifth Brother found First Sister alone in one of Fortress Inquisitorius' training rooms, moving through a vicious kata. She glared at him for interrupting her practice, but her irritation dissipated slightly when he said,

"First, there has been a possible Jedi incident reported on Kamino."

"Oh?" she asked, interested. It had been a while since a Jedi sighting had been reported by anything vaguely resembling a reliable witness. Most reports were from people who had never actually seen a Jedi in their lives, and wouldn't know a Jedi if they were to run headlong into one.

"It seems," Fifth told her, "that an unauthorized individual accessed the room where they keep their computer mainframe, without disturbing any security measures. A number of Kaminoans are also reporting hazy memories around the time of the break-in."

"Consistent with a Force suggestion. Are there any security vids of the intruder?"

"Yes. Several intruders, actually, but the vids never caught them using the Force."

"That doesn't mean anything. They probably disabled nearby recorders beforehand. Show me the vids."

There were four individuals in the vids: a med droid, an astromech, a middle-aged man, and a young Togruta woman. First paid little attention to the droids—they were easy to disguise, and there wasn't much way to tell two droids of the same series apart after a paint job or a few other cosmetic adjustments. The man, too, she glanced over with only passing interest. His dark hair and beard were greying, his shoulders slightly stooped, but he carried himself with an air of alertness, ready to leap into action at a moment's notice. Just a run-of-the mill individual of the pirate-mercenary-bounty hunter type. The Togruta, however—

The stripes on her lekku and montrals were the wrong color, and her facial markings were different, but that didn't concern First. Skin could be painted or dyed, after all. Posture and motion were significantly more difficult to keep disguised, and the Togruta's confident stance was familiar, as were her patterns of movement.

"Ahsoka."

"Shall I bring this to Lord Vader's attention?" Fifth inquired.

"No." First stared into the holovid with an intensity that Fifth found just a trifle disconcerting. "I want to deal with this one myself."