Brothers in Arms

(Veterans' Day, 2011)

Life is cheap.

Or so they say, but perhaps the sanctimonious author of this pronouncement had never done business with the Kaminoans. The base unit price for a single non-enhanced clone trooper was roughly equivalent to a year's pay for manual laborers on many of the system's nearest neighbors; and that price did not include the cost of training, food and board for the seven to ten formative years, or the heavy cost of weaponry and the patented clone armor, based on Mandalorian designs drafted by Jango Fett himself. In short, in the case of the Republic's Grand Army, life was not cheap.

Hence the various cost-cutting measures, some looked upon as heartless and cruel by outsiders who never bothered to tally the number of victories in the Rim Sieges against the fast-dwindling revenue to Republican coffers. To those who did the math, such expediencies were simple necessity. Clones had no families to demand pensions or indeed to attend an elaborate funeral. The Republic saved on expenses there, to be sure; the troopers' own ritual observance in the case of their brothers' death was restrained, and brief. And cost little. No graveyards, no memorial shrines, nothing to tax the overstrained budget. The men were housed and fed with a minimum of frills. And, since their armor alone was worth a small fortune, the Army saved extra money by recycling the salvaged equipment of fallen troopers. Some of the newest units were outfitted exclusively in the old scarred battle armor of their dead comrades and forebears. It worked.

CT-222557 and CT-969041 were wearing recycled armor when they were captured. Among the men, among the battalion's finest and most veteran warriors, such a thing was known to be bad luck. Wearing the kit of a brother who had been slain was the worst possible luck a trooper could ask for. But they obeyed orders, and when the requisitions officer handed them the "refurbished" gear, they dutifully accepted it, labeling it with their own serial ID numbers and donning it without a sound of protest. The rest of the men in their unit would have said it was the armor that got them caught. Only sheer, blind, awful bad luck could explain how two recon scouts, having penetrated deep behind enemy lines without attracting the notice of a single Seppie droid or scanner array, could suffer the indignity of having their cover blown by the native wildlife. The yrrbu which sounded the alarm and eventually brought a droid squadron down on their heads was a staid, oblivious creature by most accounts, not territorial and not easily spooked. It was almost as though the stupid beast had done it on purpose, under the influence of some subtle, invisible power which momentarily bent its pliant mind to its own obscure purposes.

Clones are a stoic lot. Their motto is fight first, talk later, in contrast to their Jedi Generals, who are rumored to abode by the inverse principle of talk first, fight later. Of course, the interminable war had done much to blur the line of distinction between the two sets of tenets, so much so that the Jedi were no longer thought of as peacekeepers so much as harbingers of war. In any case, the habit of silence was deeply instilled into CT-222557 and CT-969041 by virtue of their training, and bitter experience had drilled it yet more deeply into their psyches. It came as no surprise when the pair refused to identify themselves, refused to answer any questions, refused to offer so much as a single insult or remark to their captors as the droids surrounded them, divested them of weapons and comm. equipment, bound their wrists in electro-cuffs and loaded them into an armored prisoner transport.

Only when the lumbering repulsor-vehicle was well under way, bumbling slowly across heavily overgrown terrain, was the silence inside the dark, stale compartment broken.

"Wonder how long this kriffing piece of junk will take to get there?" CT-969041 grumbled. With his hands securely pinned behind his back, he couldn't take off his helmet. His voice came through muffled.

"Patience, Hothead," CT-222557 advised, leaning against the hard panel of the transport's side. I'm in no rush to arrive at the internment camp. It won't be pleasant when we do."

"So lets' get it over with," the impatient clone snapped back. "I hate waiting."

CT-222557 shook his head at his less experienced comrade. "Always ready to jump in feet first, brains second," he chided.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say, Scruff," the second trooper drawled sarcastically. A jolt in the decking sent him tumbling across the close space, sliding over the suddenly tilting floor into his brother. The transport keeled over, slewed wildly to one side and then rolled with a crashing series of jolts and impacts down a steep incline, coming to rest with a groaning of metal and a hiss of busted pressure valves. The repulsors whined and died.

Inside the dark hold, the two prisoners pushed to their feet, and stared at one another.

"Did you do that?"

The clone nicknamed Hothead gave a soft snort. "No. Idiot droids can't even drive a tank like this without plummeting down a ravine. Stupid Seppie chiszzk. With any luck they all got scrapped in that crash."

It was an empty hope. Moments later the competing sounds of native wildlife and blasterfire confirmed that the droids had not in fact been scrapped. Once the external threat had been dispatched, the droids wasted no time in prying open the hatch and forcing their captives out into a sludge-crusted riverbed, now in the hot season little more than a slow moving flow of mud. The transport was mired deep in this slime, the drives mangled and punctured by the fall.

"Get out and start moving," one of their captors ordered in its warbling mechanical voice. It thrust a crudely shaped hand across the riverbed and up a steep incline on the opposite bank.

Hothead looked at the stretch of waist deep-slime and mud. "Wish I could jump over that," he muttered.

"Well, you can't," Scruff told him severely. "Shut up and start moving, like our gracious host suggested."

CT-969041's next remarks were, mercifully, confined to the privacy of his helmet.

Clones are a hardy lot. Physical conditioning begins for them in early childhood; some might say even before then. CT-222557 and CT-969041 were no exceptions to this rule. The mud was disgusting, and the march uphill amid treacherous footing, but they didn't stumble, or lag behind. The mindless automatons shepherding them along this rough path found the going more difficult than the two humans did. Their broad flat feet were not perfectly adapted for the uneven ground and their power cells were badly depleted by the continuous exertion. Within an hour of rough hiking, they had noticeably slowed.

"Huh. They're gonna go flatline on us," Hothead observed hopefully.

"Don't be so sure," his compatriot warned.

"Could probably take a few of 'em down," the aggressive young clone suggested. "Thin the ranks."

"Without weapons? With your hands behind your back?" Scruff retorted. "You're a bit overconfident…rookie."

"Okay, grandpa."

All too soon the stamping of their escort was complemented by the racket made by a second patrol, coming to meet them. This droid contingent had greater numbers, and sported the additional benefit of an independently programmed captain, his special status designated by a bold yellow swatch on his chestplate. The leader's head swiveled to regard the two captured clones. "We will take the prisoners back to the camp," it informed the previous set of guards."Wait here for a relief unit."

"Roger, roger, roger that," the failing droids chorused, in discordant tones.

CT-222557 and CT-969041 were not permitted a say in the matter. Two dozen blaster rifles were trained on them, and they were peremptorily commanded to "keep marching, Republic scum."

The terrain became easier on the descent. Here, between the swell of two heavily forested slopes, a small clearing had been carved by explosives and heavy machinery. A cluster of heavily fortified buildings lurked at the bottom of this valley, like a predatory beast waiting for other creatures to fall into its trap. A crackling energy barrier, strung between massive pillars set at regular three-meter intervals, surrounded the entire stronghold.

"Well, we located the secret base and the interment camp," Hothead muttered. "That was easy." He slid and skidded down the sharp slope leading to the Separatist outpost, a droid's rifle barrel prodding at his back the whole way.

Scruff slithered down behind him. "I hate it when you say that."

For a long while they lost sight of the compound, their route dipping below the line of trees and cutting a winding path down the near side of the hill. Droid piloted STAP's whizzed overhead in pairs. The leader of their escort called in his report and was directed to a specific checkpoint in the energy wall.

Here the sizzling tongues of white fire arced and shuddered between their generator posts, creating a moving barrier some four meters high. A pair of sentries stationed at one section halted the patrol and consulted briefly with its captain before deactivating the stretch of fence. The guards and their captives were ushered through, and the barrier snapped back to life behind them.

Hothead drew in an angry breath as they were shoved forward. Inside the perimeter, stretching to either side of a rough central aisle or road, were pens, enclosures wrought of twisted wire, much like the kennels used to house ferocious hunting akks and other such animals on primitive worlds. Crammed into these rude cages, scores together, were the natives. Their fingers clawed at the mesh, and their haggard, hopeless faces watched the robotic procession as it passed, empty eyes following its progress with a curiosity long since scourged of any emotion but fear.

"Hothead," the more experienced clone warned his friend.

"Kriffing Seppie boshuda, " his brother ground out. "I'll scrap em all, and I'll shove their kriffin' circuits up Dooku's –"

"Hothead!" CT-969041 barked. "You aren't helping anyone with your anger."

"Why aren't you angry? Do you see what those vaping droids have done to these people? I can't take it – I'll kill 'em."

Scruff merely shook his helmeted head back and forth in patent disapproval. Hothead was having great difficulty tearing his gaze away from the extensive prison camp. It was almost as though he could feel the terror and despair of its denizens in his own bones, like seeping poison.

"Halt," the droid captain ordered, and they were hustled into a low-roofed building, a dank and windowless box occupied by several more drone battle units and a wall of scanning devices.

""Process them and place them in cell block alpha 3," the captain instructed the new set of droids. They saluted, blunt hands tapping against their narrow, conical heads. An additional six were left behind as guards.

Clones are not, as the name might suggest, completely identical. From one genetic template, an astounding variety of mutations and variations can be evoked with slight alterations in conditioning and embryonic environment. Added to these are the quirks and scars of personal experience, which underline or soften innate character traits, and of course the artistry of personal choice. The troopers even differentiate themselves with intricate tattoos or shaving patterns, hairstyles and such minor details of grooming as their strict discipline permits. Like snowflakes, like moments in the river of time, no two are exactly alike.

The droids were not programmed to notice such subtleties, or to appreciate their implications. They simply went about their business with the same dull efficiency that marked all their actions. They stripped the prisoners of their helmets and armor, rudely shoved them through the scanning fields, and entered the relevant bio-data into the computer banks. Hence CT-222557 and CT-969041 were duly scanned and registered as two human males, in peak physical condition, of slightly different maturity in their aging cycle. The scanner, which had been calibrated to catalog the native population currently held in the camp, calculated a fifteen year gap in ages between the two clones; but this discrepancy was attributable to the weird effects of growth acceleration. The troops appeared to age faster than normal men at a cellular level – a peculiarity of their unorthodox manufacture. The differences in hair and grooming which their two captives might have adopted, the variations in eye color or musculature, the impalpable chasm between their two temperaments, might as well not have existed. A clone is a clone. Human, male, prime of life. Republic loyalists. Cell block 3.

"Get in there, Republic scum."

The cell was nothing more than an empty alcove hewn of durasteel and sealed with a low-frequency energy shield, glowing a weary red. No amenities to speak of, no pallet or blanket. The men were harshly jostled into the tiny space and left alone, clad only in the standard grey unisuit of the Republic Army, hands still fixed behind them in binders.

"Nice," Hothead remarked when their tormentors had tramped off to their habitual duties. "I was expecting much worse."

"Oh, I'm sure our friends won't disappoint," his brother replied, darkly.

Clones are a determined lot. This escapes the notice of many, overshadowed as it is by their famous proclivity to obey any order without question. Somehow this docility – bred into them by their Kaminoan engineers – is mistaken for timidity, or for weak-mindedness. But the fact is quite contrary. A cursory examination of the ARC squadrons, for example, will reveal that the clones as a whole, and certainly the officers and more specialized members of their vast clan, retain more than a little of the great Jango Fett's unconquerable will. Clones are obedient; clones are steely in spirit. This may be a paradox, but if it is one, then it is a paradox echoed within the ranks of the Jedi Order itself, for the same traits mark the soldiers' Generals. What this means? Many things, but among them this: a clone does not break easily under interrogation.

The droids assigned to the prisoners in cell block alpha 3 found CT-969041 a most uncooperative informant. He supplied them with no useful knowledge beyond several inventive epithets to which they had not yet been exposed, and duly stored away in their databanks under the categories: humanoid vocabulary, idiomatic expressions, insulting. Their demands to know the present whereabouts of his battalion and the extent of their armaments were met with successively more enthusiastic deployments of this vocabulary, despite the rapidly ascending levels of pain to which he was subjected . When the recalcitrant clone eventually lapsed into unconsciousness, the droids dragged him back to the cell and dumped him on its hard floor.

"Hothead. Hothead!" his brother urged him to wake up, unable to do more than kneel by his prostrate form, a deep frown of concern stamped on his features.

"Uuuuungh…"CT-969041 responded.

"Hothead. Are you all right?"

The abused trooper smiled lopsidedly. "Didn't tell 'em a kriffing thing."

"Must you leave everything to me?" his companion sighed.

"Sorry," the abused clone groaned, managing to turn over halfway before vomiting on the cold metallic floor.

His brother stood, facing the foursome of heavily armed guards who now returned to the cell. He did not look happy.

"Your turn, scum," their leader droned.

"Lovely," CT-222557 muttered as they led him away.

Clones are not machines. This may seem obvious, but in so many ways those who depend upon them for protection , for the thankless task of fighting a war nobody else wishes to undertake, for absorbing the inevitable casualties by the thousands, the hundreds of thousands, regard them as fleshly counterparts of the robotic militia the Separatists so ruthlessly pit against them. But they are not the same; despite their seeming uniformity, their precision training, their conditioned responses, their removal from so much of human life, they are men. Men whose deepest motivations cannot be formulated by an algorithm. Men whose final decision in moments of life and death can never be predicted with mathematical precision. They live, they choose, and they sometimes behave in ways unexpected. Otherwise, what would be the point in torturing them for information?

The droids did not expect to encounter any greater success with CT-222557 than they had with his counterpart. But they tried anyway, exacting punishment somewhat more severe than that they had used the first time round. And lo and behold, it worked. It worked because humanoids are not uniform, and are not predictable. Before they had quite finished with the clone known as 'Scruff', they found themselves serendipitously in possession of his battalion's coordinates, and just enough information to enable a full-out ambush assault on that position. If they were capable of feeling glee, they would have danced and thrown their hands in the air. As it was, they simply hurried up to the control center to relay the precious tidbits to the tactical droid in command of the entire operation.

They dumped CT-222557 back inside cell alpha-3 for safe keeping. There might be some last scrap of usefulness to be dredged up out of the captives before they were scheduled for termination.

It took Hothead a long while to revive his ailing brother. "Hey. Hey," he murmured. "Scruff. C'mon. Talk to me."

Scruff stirred, rolling into a half ball, fingers curling against the cold floor. "Kriff…" he breathed out, with difficulty.

Hothead blanched a little. His companion practically never indulged in obscenity, unlike so many of the troopers. It was a peculiarity of his. "Hey. It's all right." He grasped the other man's shoulders tight. At least they had been relieved of the binders for a short while. "It's over now. C'mon. You're scaring me," he warned, as an afterthought.

CT-222557 shifted onto his back and gazed – slightly unfocused – up at the young and reckless soldier leaning over him. "Should have been your job," he grunted, with a feeble grin.

"Did they get anything out of you?" Hothead demanded.

Scruff closed his eyes. "Oh, this and that. Enough to launch an attack."

His friend leaned back against the hard wall, arms crossed over his chest. "So now we wait," he said, grimly.

Clones are a shrewd lot. Accustomed to the mercurial currents of battle and wartime strategy, they know well how to make fast inferences from the slightest clue or signal, how to assess a situation for its hidden meaning, how to guess when danger is near at hand. These are survival skills; these are the wisdom funds of warriors. CT-222557 and CT-969041 might be confined to single unadorned cell block in an outlying building, but they were able to put together the snippets of information they observed or overheard.

Thus, when the tactical droid in charge of the entire operation called down to the prison block in the equivalent of cybertronic rage, they knew that something had gone very wrong with the planned assault.

"Who was responsible for interrogating the prisoners?" the boxy-headed stategist demanded of its far less sophisticated minions.

The captain of the guard saluted, raising a metallic arm to its head, facing the shimmering blue hologram. The prisoners could not see the tactical droid's faceplate from their angle, but the conversation was clearly audible. "I was, sir."

"The data you provided has resulted in a Republic ambush on our forces. Casualties are extremely heavy. You sent us into a trap."

"Thought that hopped up pile of scrap was supposed to be the tactical unit," Hothead muttered sardonically.

"The prisoner lied," the hologram continued, implacably.

"That's impossible, sir. The neuromonitors showed no discrepancy. He was telling the truth. Our equipment is newly upgraded." The poor captain was shaking in his welded boots.

"Then he has found a way to circumvent the equipment. Those prisoners are Republic infiltrators. Bring them to the command deck at once."

"Roger, roger."

"Here we go…" Hothead said, cracking the knuckles of his left hand.

"I wish you wouldn't do that," his companion amiably groused.

"Just gettin' ready for the fun."

The energy barrier disappeared and a six-droid escort pointed blaster rifles at the pair. Within minutes, they were again shackled and marching across the compound to the tall operating tower at its center. "Keep marching, Republic scum." A rifle's butt jabbed Hothead in the ribs as he slowed near the interment camp, where the starving natives stared forlornly at the small parade.

CIS Tactical units are a far cut above the standard battle units assigned to their command. They outshine the heavily armed SBDs, the pilot programs which comprise the artificial intelligence of vulture and hyena fighters, and even eclipse the complex processors of their commando-model colleagues. They are the smartest non-living thing the Confederacy has in its arsenal. Accordingly, they are provided with superior optical-recognition templates. When the droids escorted in the two clone prisoners, TX445's photoreceptors locked onto the captives with a hungry gleam. He was equipped to see far more than : humanoid, male, prime of life, republic uniform. What he saw disturbed him, and set his central processor into frenetic life. These were most certainly not run-of-the-mill infantry. He was actually provided with a special file and ID match for these sorts of individuals.

"Execute them.," he barked, before the small group had even made its way to the upper dais of the command deck.

All six of the units surrounding the prisoners turned and opened fire on them at point blank range. All six missed.

Jango Fett, the infamous bounty hunter from whom all clones originally spring – from whose genetic framework the entire army is explicated like the parts of some immense orchestral work – was a peerless fighter. It was thought that none could take him down, until Jedi Master Mace Windu relieved him of his head in the dusty arena of Geonosis. Fett was a master of hand-to-hand combat, and specifically oversaw portions of the clone training program in this area. Some of his best, least altered replicas, came close to his legendary skill, and became legends in their own right among their brothers and commanding officers. Who knows where CT-969041 and CT-222557 learned to fight, or in what gruesome encounters those skills were honed and tested; but it is certain they would have done Fett proud. For speed, agility, and sheer lethal accuracy, the pair of them might have rivaled a pair of cornered Jedi.

Hands bound behind their backs, the two prisoners miraculously avoided a hailfire of shots aimed at them, rolling, diving, leaping and twisting in the most stunning display of acrobatic skill. Flying kicks deprived a few droids of their heads, the spindly neck supports breaking beneath the impact. The control consoles provided cover. Weapons were slammed out of hands, droids fired on one another in mutual suicidal enthusiasm, and some of the equipment panels exploded in flames. One of the troopers found the blast shield controls and sealed the deck off. TX445 swiftly calculated that escape was impossible. He seized a fallen weapon off the deck and leveled it at CT-222557's back.

The shot went wild as he was jumped from behind by the other prisoner. Snarling, Hothead kicked the tactical unit into the nearest computer bank, twisted round, pulled something free of the circuit board with his right hand, oblivious to the electrical current which should have sent a devastating jolt up his arm, and thrust the tactical droid's head into the opening.

The resultant power surge shorted out half the deck. CT-222557 cleaned up the rest of the battle droids, contemptuously kicking aside a few spare body parts which littered the hard, textured decking.

"Okay," Hothead muttered. "First things first." He found the binders' electromagnetic key lying discarded in a corner, and released his brother, who returned the favor. Chafing at their wrists, they surveyed the scene before them.

"We'd better hurry," Scruff pointed out. "Reinforcements will be here any second." He nodded toward the blast shields. A laser-cutter would make short enough work of them.

"Right." Hothead leaned over the central control kisok. "Got it. Prison alarm and gate system, deactivated. Automated security, deactivated. Guard units – stood down. Pulsar fence – deactivated. Communications…hm…okay, got a beacon set up. That should bring our folks over here in a hot hurry." He straightened and looked at the mess with a sigh of regret. "Damn pity we didn't bring any explosives."

"I prefer understated," Scruff replied, reasonably.

"I don't." Hothead wrenched the tactical droid out of the paneling in which it was half embedded, and kicked the blackened remains of its head across the room.

"So I see," his brother said.

Clones are a compassionate lot. The image of the heartless automaton, the blank void encased in sterile armor, is an unfortunate effect of ignorance and propaganda. Clones are men, and fiercely loyal to their brothers. From this visceral humanity springs the possibility of empathy, and from there, compassion. A man – even one designed and engineered to be a machine of war – is still a breathing, feeling being. He cannot help but feel some degree of pity for the plight of others.

And so it was that CT-222557 and CT-969041 were among the last to exit the Separatist compound, trailing behind the slow-moving crowd of released prisoners, wearily bringing up the rear, walking side by side in the dust cloud kicked up by the endless traffic.

Republic forces had arrived en masse at the secret outpost within an hour of their beacon signal's first flare, quickly compounding their victory at the pre-planned ambush site with another. The interment camp was swamped with armor-clad men, scoured of droid patrols, and emptied of its captives. Transports were brought in shifts to ferry the ailing natives back to their homes – or in the case of the dispossessed, to emergency refugee camps. Many of those within were discovered to be too weak or ill to move on their own. Hothead and Scruff insisted on helping the relief effort, carrying each of these out one by one, and carefully checking every nook and cranny of the reeking prison yards to be sure none were left behind.

At last, as the straggling company thinned and was loaded onto the waiting transports, the two of them were left alone. A solitary gunship remained behind to retrieve them. Its blast panel slid open to admit the tall, silver haired figure of Jedi General Ki Adi Mundi, his peaked skull and carven features lending him an air of serene and dignified wisdom. His eyes sparkled with genuine warmth as he greeted the dusty and bedraggled pair. "We are much indebted to you," he said. "The Separatists came directly to the coordinates we ageed upon. And your work here was beautiful."

Hothead grinned saucily. "Hope there's a reward for all this."

General Mundi raised one eyebrow, though not without amusement. "I thought duty was its own reward," he suggested mildly. "Did you have something specific in mind?"

Hothead's smile widened. "How 'bout you promote me to General, huh?"

The Jedi bowed his head gravely. "Indeed," he responded. From his belt he took the gleaming silver hilt of a lightsaber, and handed the weapon to Hothead with a sober expression.

The trooper's hand closed around it with satisfaction. He jerked a thumb at his brother. "And Scruff here might make a good second in command. He takes orders well."

General Mundi chuckled.

"Only in your mind, my young friend," Scruff replied, gravely accepting a second saber from General Mundi. He looked at his companion severely. "And next time, you are the one who gets to break under interrogation."

"I don't know, master, I thought you pulled that off with style."

"What would you know about style, may I ask?"

"Shall we, gentlemen?" General Mundi interrupted the playful banter. He led the way into the gunship's dim bowels, and Anakin Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi followed him, gracefully stepping up onto the deck side by side. The ship lifted off, leaving nothing but a eddying swirl of dust in its wake.