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After the postmortem briefing on the Christophsis campaign concluded and the command staff allowed to disperse, Appo did not leave with the others, but stayed behind to talk to Rex.
“Captain, do you have a moment?” he asked, standing at attention and waiting until Rex nodded to continue. “I noticed an error in the flimsiwork and I’d appreciate your assistance in fixing it. Specifically, it relates to Sergeant Slick -“
(when the GAR’s most blindly obedient clone starts following in the footsteps of its first clone traitor, the galaxy starts to change)
chapter under the cut
There was, Appo had discovered, a place beyond fear.
Beyond terror, beyond doubt. The worst had happened - or something that at present felt like the worst, but probably wasn't because the universe always had a still-nastier ace left to play - and with it came a sense of calm. It would be wrong to describe it as peace, as it bore only the most superficial similarities to that true sweetness; it was only as akin to it as death was to sleep. That calm - the false calm of the eye of a storm, perhaps - provided a temporary sense of control, a surety in one's self, a beautiful and terrible clarity in which the path forward was abruptly clear and following it easy. It allowed and enabled heroic acts, even or perhaps especially those of self-sacrifice.
Appo wouldn't put it past the Kaminoans to have programmed it into clones deliberately.
Still, artificial or natural, the feeling was real.
Organize your thoughts, Appo. Make it simple.
In short:
The General, an authority, had discovered their plan -
Inaccuracy. Rejected.
The General, an authority, had discovered Slick. Discovering Slick did not necessarily equate to a discovery of the plan. However, lying to a General was impossible - quite difficult -
Inaccuracy. Rejected.
Focus, Appo.
Appo had lied to Generals before, and quite successfully, too. He could attempt to do so here, but the risk of getting it wrong was too great. Without a distraction available, the General would insist on answers, and while Appo might (maybe) be able to answer cogently, there was no guarantee the others would be sufficiently capable of backing him in a lie. Not out of lack of faith - Appo rather thought he could count on all the clones present in the room to support him, which was both a surprise and a sign that his list really did need to be updated - but rather simply because clones were notoriously poor liars, except when telling the truth. A single weak link among them would give it all up. Anyway, there was insufficient opportunity to coordinate an agreed upon response with the others present. Most people took anywhere from ten minutes to an hour to recover from a stun shot, but Generals in general usually clocked in at the three to eight minute range. Barring unusual circumstances, General Skywalker was typically even faster.
Moreover, even a successful lie was simply not worth the risk. Right now, the General was predisposed to believe Appo, treating him as the reliable source he had always sought to be (excluding some omissions). A lie would squander that trust and win them nothing but a small amount of time that would be insufficient to solve any of their problems - and that was if it didn't fail, as it most likely would.
No, they could not lie.
Therefore, the only course of action was to minimize the harm that came with telling the truth. With that goal set, the path forward and the immediate next step became clear, almost laughably obvious.
The Coruscant Guard could not be blamed.
The plan and the blame were the 501st's, and no one should take the consequences due for it but them. Slick and Appo, Appo and Slick - them, and no other. It was Slick who had lit the fire, Appo who had spread the accelerant; the Guard had at best done nothing more than stay out of their way. If there was punishment to be had, it should come to them and them alone.
Certainly not to Thire.
Certainly not to Fox.
(Boba was arguable.)
With that clear path in mind, Appo did not bother to join the frantically whispering assembly of Slick, Fox, Thire and Boba - though why they were whispering, he had no idea. Thire had immediately ordered a complete clearance and shutdown of all comms, records and personnel entry to the hallway in question, and never mind how suspicious it would look to General Vos later on. They could have yelled their lungs out without anyone hearing them, even if they'd really been trying. Either way, though, there was no point in trying to talk to them. It wasn't necessary.
Talking to the General was necessary.
Appo went over to General Skywalker's supine body, squashed the habitual The Jedi is vulnerable, kill him! now! and waited.
He did not wait long.
"No need to worry, sir," Appo reported, even as the General snapped out of an apparent stupor into sudden action, lurching to his feet with his lightsaber flying into his hand as he settled into the prelude of the first form of his preferred fighting style. "It's all under control."
He did not anticipate that his words would act as anything other than empty noise, a buffer to stall the way between the General and imminent (if probably justified) violence. To his surprise, however, the General actually listened: he straightened up out of his attack posture and even briefly lowered his lightsaber, before seeming to abruptly remember that he hadn't received an answer about anything.
"What happened?" he demanded. "Someone here stunned me -"
"That was Boba, sir. It's been confiscated."
"Boba - Boba Fett?!"
Oh, right. The General hadn't known about that, either.
"What's he doing here? And Slick! Slick's here - Boba's here - wait. Is Boba's dad here, too?"
Slick choked audibly. Boba grimaced volubly. Appo suppressed a sigh: had these two really managed to hold off a Jedi investigator? One of them clearly had a Jedi's luck.
"No, sir," he said, and decided to stop while he was ahead on that one.
Unfortunately, that left a gap that someone else, someone clever, could exploit.
"Sergeant Slick and Boba Fett were both remanded into custody on Coruscant after their arrests," Fox said. His voice was steady and unhurried, even smooth. Reassuring. Convincing. Fox had charisma, when he chose to use it, and if he wanted to he could wield it as efficiently as any General with their lightsaber. He would do it now, given half a chance.
Appo had no intention of giving Fox that chance.
Floating securely in his sea of clarity beyond panic, Appo knew what Fox was doing, and it was wholly, completely, and utterly unacceptable. The Kaminoans had like as not bred sacrifice into their bones, all clones all alike, but Appo would be damned if he let Fox throw himself under a speeder that Appo had already earmarked for himself.
"It was during my time with the Guard that I met with Slick," he said, fitting his words in as if they belonged in the story Fox had been about to weave rather than an undermining of it. "We agreed to work together on a flimsiwork project, which has led to their current status."
The General actually did lower his lightsaber at that point.
"Flimsiwork," he echoed, looking baffled. "Flimsiwork…you know torture isn't approved of in the Republic, right? Especially if he was already in prison."
The joke, such as it was, fell flat.
In fairness, the General was still staring at all of them with wide hurt eyes that looked as though something had shaken loose in his understanding of the world, and as if he half-suspected that they had done it to him on purpose.
But that was General Skywalker for you, Appo thought to himself with an incongruous burst of affection: not effortlessly witty, no, just a little too emotional to pull off General Kenobi's insouciant flair no matter how he tried. But he was sincere. Sincere and genuine, as poor a dissembler as any clone, and that was better. He was far better off making inspirational speeches about how much he cared for his people than he was at the dry, distant and aloof persona he sometimes sought to adopt.
Strange, the things one thought of right before the end.
They're going to kill you hurt you tear your apart -
Yes, yes, of course they were. And it would be fine as long as Appo could ensure Thire and his boys were kept out of it.
"Sergeant Slick voluntarily agreed to accept the assignment," Fox interjected, once again trying to seize control of Appo's narrative. Stupid self-sacrificing overly kind bastard. Didn't he know that as Thire's best friend, there was no way Appo could let him go down for this? "Boba consented to support him. The project they're working on is highly sensitive -"
"The Coruscant Guard accepted my request to supervise the project with less than full information regarding its content," Appo interrupted. It was true, too: neither Fox nor Thire had learned the full extent of the plan until later. "General, responsibility for their presence here is wholly mine. I will –”
“Can’t we just kill him?!” Boba interrupted. He looked upset, though it was hard to tell if it was due to the nature of the conversation or just because his requests to have his stunner returned had been denied on the basis of his being too much of a dumbass for weapons right now. “It’d be better for everyone! For us, for everyone we’re going to help…even that girl he’s stalking!”
“Stalking?!” General Skywalker reared back as if he’d been slapped. “What the – I’m not – how dare you?! I would never hurt Padmé!”
“Yeah? That’s not what I heard,” Slick said. He was upset, too, in that viscerally clear manner of his that left no doubt that he was upset about the General specifically. “You were just talking about how you were going to force her to be with you even if she didn’t want to.”
“I never said that. I didn’t! All I said was that I needed to fight for her –”
“It’s not fighting for someone if you’re not welcome,” Slick said snidely. He was glaring as if he’d forgotten that the General could cut off his head with the lightsaber that was still in his hands and face no consequences for it. “Pretty sure that’s usually called ‘an invasion’.”
General Skywalker was glaring back as if he, too, had forgotten. “You don’t understand,” he said. “You don’t – you don’t know us. Me and Padmé, it’s different. We’re different. We’re –”
“You’re not anything according to her.”
“You don’t know that! You weren’t there! You didn’t – the way she said it –” But the General was faltering now. His earlier confidence had been shaken, his mania subsiding into the lack of surety that was more typical of his behavior in every arena but physical combat. Appo couldn’t tell if it had been the shock of the stunner or Slick’s scolding, but even he could tell that General Skywalker no longer believed in what he was saying – no matter how much he wanted to. “I’m saying it wrong. It made sense earlier, the first time, but this time it’s just…I’m saying it wrong.”
Appo sympathized.
He didn’t agree with anything the General was saying, but he sympathized with his frustration.
“If you’d been there, you’d see it my way.” The General wasn’t even arguing any longer. He was all but begging, looking at all of them as if they could tell him that space wasn’t dark and vacant, and also make him believe it. “If you’d been there – if you’d heard what I heard – you’d understand. You’d see. You’d agree with me –”
“Actually, the 501st’s betting circles are essentially unanimous about your relationship with the Senator being permanently over,” Appo said. He didn’t mean to be unkind, but these sorts of things had to be shut down quickly and thoroughly. Allowing someone to continue to maintain an unrealistic delusion had no good end – and unlike Slick, the 501st had been present for the entirety of the relationship collapse. “But if it makes you feel better, they don’t agree with Boba, either. The odds on the whole thing ending up as a murder-suicide are down to 80/1.”
The General stared at him.
Actually, everyone in the room was staring at him. He wasn’t sure why. Did they think Appo didn’t gamble or something? That would be absurd. Everyone on a starship gambled, and clones more than most.
“The – they think – that I –” The General was stuttering in his horror. “You all think I – I wouldn’t. I’d never. I would never, ever, ever hurt Padmé!”
The odds had actually only identified General Skywalker as the would-be murderer three-quarters of the time, since the Senator had her own temper, arsenal, handmaidens, and a plethora of devoted fans on the Resolute. Still, before Appo could explain, Slick snorted loudly.
“Never, huh,” he said with a sneer. “Never, ever, ever. I bet you even think you’re telling the truth. You’d never hurt her. Just like I never thought I’d betray my brothers.”
General Skywalker flinched.
“That’s you,” he said. “Not me. I wouldn’t hurt her. Never. I wouldn’t.”
“Of course you wouldn’t want to,” Slick said scathingly. “You think you’re doing it all for her, don’t you? That’s how it starts. First you think you’re doing what’s right. Then you know you’re doing something wrong, but you tell yourself that it’s all right because it’s for the right reasons. Then you start getting defensive. Why doesn’t anyone understand? Why don’t they trust you? Can’t they see that you mean well? And then you get angry. Because you’re just trying to help them, and they just aren’t listening…”
He laughed. It was a horrible, jagged sort of sound, full of glass edges aimed inwards to rip out your guts, and Appo remembered again that he really didn’t like being able to so clearly interpret Slick’s emotions.
“But yeah, sure, it’s me, not you. Just me, Slick, Slick the traitor. Well, guess what! I only turned traitor in the first place because I wanted to save my boys. Because I love my brothers. And where did that get me? Chopper still won’t look at me. Jester pretends it never happened so hard that he can’t be reasonable about it, and the other three are somewhere in the middle – and as for my brothers that I loved so much, how many of them are lying dead back on Christophsis because of what I did? Because of intel I leaked?”
He took a step forward, and General Skywalker took half a step back, his lightsaber now so loosely held in his hand that it was on the verge of falling.
“I used to hate Rex and Cody for arresting me,” Slick said. His eyes were fixed on the General, and his expression was fierce aggression and self-loathing in equal measure. “Now I know that I’m lucky they did before I really did frame Chopper for my crimes. Before he ended up in the rat cage instead of me, before I got the whole 501st killed, before my boys could face the horrors I had in store for them, and all of that shit because I couldn’t accept that their wants mattered more than what I wanted for them. No matter how good a thing is, it’s nothing but a burden if it’s unwanted. I had to go to prison to learn that, and even now I keep on very nearly forgetting. And you say it’s just me?”
He laughed again, and this time he jabbed a finger straight into General Skywalker’s chest.
“It’s not just me,” he said. “It’s you, walking right after me. And I hope for your sake that someone stops you, too.”
The General was still staring. His eyes were still wide and hurt and horrified, and there was now nothing left of the absolute certainty that had motivated him before.
Finally he swallowed.
“Save your boys,” he said. “Save them…from what?”
“From you, obviously!” Boba burst out before Slick could answer. “That’s why we’re going to save them! All of them!”
“What? Save who? From what?”
“The clones, you slaghead! We’re going to save the clones from being slaves of the Jedi.” Boba’s expression was as fierce as Slick’s, and he jerked his thumb towards his own chest in an inverted echo of what Slick had just done to the General. “And when the clones are all free, then I’m going to go and free all the rest of them too! No one should be a slave!”
Appo had not had any real expectations about how the General would respond to finding out about the plan, not beyond his terror and fear at the expected punishment that he thought would be inevitable. Even so, he wasn’t expecting the General to react to Boba’s grand proclamation by abruptly sitting down, a clatter of armor and thud of cloth as he fell like a puppet whose strings had been cut, as if his legs had suddenly decided they could no longer support him. Even his lightsaber had fallen, clattering to the ground and rolling under a nearby vent, completely forgotten.
“That was my dream,” General Skywalker said.
…what?
“Freeing the slaves,” the General continued. His face was turned towards Boba, but his eyes weren’t focused on him at all. “I was your age. Younger. That’s why I wanted to be a Jedi in the first place.”
He pressed his hands to his eyes to hide the sudden wetness.
“I wanted to free my mother,” he said, and his voice was wet, too. “Her and everyone else, all the people I knew back on Tatooine. I was going to go back to free them…but I never did. I didn’t go back, and she died. She was killed before I ever got the chance to see her free.”
Had anyone else known that General Skywalker’s mother had been a slave?
Appo glanced around, but Slick, Thire, and Fox all looked as dumbstruck as he felt. Apparently Appo really should have taken up General Nu’s offer to learn more about his own General when he’d been back at the Temple, rather than focusing just on Doom’s…
Also, since when did Jedi have mothers? Appo had always gotten the impression that they didn’t. Not biologically, of course, since the Generals were all natborns, but most of them acted like they were every bit as creche-raised as clones, coming from nothing and having only each other. It seemed a little unfair for the General to suddenly pull a mother out of his back pocket now, suddenly more like Boba than he was like them.
“And my dad died before he ever got paid. So what?” Boba said, indifferent and selfishly cruel as only a cadet could be. “They say my dad was a slave once, too. But he still sold himself to Kamino for the chance to be really free, and he never got that. All he got was me, because Mace Windu killed him before he could get what he was owed. And you know what, that was the worst thing that’s ever happened, ever, but unlike you none of that means I’m going to give up!”
“I didn’t give up,” the General protested, pulling his hands away to reveal eyes that were reddened and cheeks that were wet. “I had to be trained as a Jedi first – and anyway, there’s a war on now! I had to focus on that first!”
“Of course you did,” Fox said suddenly, and his tone made it clear that he’d just realized the same thing that Appo had. “Of course you did, General. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do both, right?”
Appo met Fox’s eyes from across the room. It was very brief, little more than a check in, and Fox glanced back, then flicked his own gaze over to Thire, with Appo following shortly behind. It was barely anything, none of them wanting to give anything up or be too obvious about it, but those few moments were enough to make Appo aware of the utterly bizarre sensation that he, Fox, and Thire were all thinking the exact same thing at the exact same time, all of them somehow logical processing machines all functioning in perfect parallel.
For all that clones were identical in genetic make-up and flash-training background, all of them meant to march in time to the same set of regs, it was rare that any group aligned perfectly; that was why they had to be trained so thoroughly to work together. Appo in particular had always found it quite difficult to match his own aberrant thought processes to anyone else, his mind following different paths even when their conclusions reached the same ultimate result. Even Thire, who loved him better than anyone else, often couldn’t understand him without needing to ask for an explanation, and Appo was the same in return. Moreover, the divergence had only gotten worse after the peacekeepers: even the ones like Gree, clones that had been more similar to Appo than to the others, couldn’t or wouldn’t understand him then.
And yet.
At this precise moment in time, Appo felt sure that all three CCs in the room were having the same thought.
General Skywalker was gettable.
Maybe this didn’t have to be a scene of confession and punishment, each of them competing to make the final sacrifice for the others. Maybe, if they all brought the full collective power of their experience and talent and training in strategy and tactics to bear on solving the problem, maybe this could be a recruitment instead.
They just had to be very careful with what the General learned, and when.
“What do you mean?” the General, privy to none of this weird mental merger, asked. His own gaze had shifted over to focus on Fox, who seemed almost excited by the intensity of it.
“Slaves,” Fox said. “Clones. Sure, we’re not slaves in the traditional manner, bought and sold and – and implanted with slave chips.”
The break in his voice there had been impressively minimal.
“But that still doesn’t mean we’re free. You’ve heard the Senate debates, haven’t you? We’re not citizens of the Republic, we don’t have rights under the laws of the Republic. We’re all copies of one man, and that one man volunteered, while the rest of us aren’t considered sentient enough for our opinions to count. We were made to support you, General, you and the rest of the Jedi, but what if that wasn’t enough? What if there was a clone that didn’t want to fight any more?”
“A clone trooper can only be at their post, dead, or missing,” Appo said. “We discussed it once, sir, if you’ll remember. About Sergeant Slick? There’s no other option. A clone trooper has to obey orders or they aren’t worth anything, and the first order, before any other, tells us that we must serve.”
“But what if that wasn’t true?” Fox pressed. “What if there was another option? What if a clone could say no? If a clone could leave the GAR without being a deserter. If a clone could decide to go and live a quiet life, a life of their own choosing…that wouldn’t be so wrong, would it?”
“I – don’t you want to fight?” The General asked. “I mean – I thought –”
“Of course we do,” Fox said.
“Yeah, because we’ve been brought up to think nothing else,” Slick said. “No one’s ever offered us another choice before. Right now, if a trooper decides they don’t want to fight anymore, the only option they have is to die.”
General Skywalker looked stricken all over again.
“Generally speaking, most troopers genuinely want to serve, and find meaning in their service,” Appo said. “We have no interest in interfering with that, nor in damaging the Republic’s ability to defend its aims. We’re good soldiers –”
Are you really? Good soldiers follow orders.
“– but it seems to be in the general interest to ensure that the oversight regarding the lack of options for clones is repaired.”
The General was nodding.
The General was nodding. He was agreeing! He was with them!
Of course, they hadn’t gone into any actual detail yet, and they’d already seen demonstrable evidence that General Skywalker could convince himself into believing something without genuinely committing to it, or at least being susceptible enough to reason to be capable of being talked out of it. They hadn’t even started to explain the bit about the money – and that was assuming a former slave (freeborn child of a slave?) that had subsequently joined the Jedi Order in a student capacity had any more understanding of the concept of “retirement” than a clone did. And there was always a chance he might object to the illegality of it all…
“You should come with us,” Thire said abruptly. He hadn’t spoken until now, but that had been no surprise: Thire had a tendency to go mute under tremendous stress, losing his voice even though he did not lose any of his lethal capabilities, and it was at its worst when the stress was interpersonal. He didn’t have Fox’s ability to compartmentalize and keep talking, smooth and convincing even as he fell straight into despair, and unlike Appo his thinking was too normal to create massive uncertainties and misunderstandings that could be exploited later. Thire was just Thire, wonderful and glorious and brilliant in his own way. “We were just about to go try to find the contract. The clone contract, I mean, the one the Jedi entered into to make us. Surely that would show that we weren’t really meant to be slaves.”
Brilliant.
Brilliant.
They had to strike while the plasma was hot, before the General had a chance to calm down and think better of what he was agreeing to.
After all, the General was almost certainly not of high enough rank to be able to legitimately access a document as undoubtedly classified as the clone contract. They would have no choice but to break in and steal the information. And if the General participated in an act like that, then even if he later balked when he found out about Appo’s money collection or his Mordageen citizenship scheme, it would no longer matter. It would be too late for him to back out. He had already violated the Jedi code by marrying the Senator – another violation would surely count against him. Blackmail, while unsavory, would be on the table as a possibility.
“Master Obi-wan knows more about that than I do,” General Skywalker said, rubbing his nose. “All I know is that he found Kamino when he was looking for Jango Fett – did you know he tried to assassinate Padmé? Anyway, then my Master nearly got himself killed and Padmé and I went to Geonosis to rescue him…and after that it was the war, and no one’s had time to talk about anything. I don’t know. You think there’s a contract somewhere?”
“There has to be,” Appo said firmly. “It’s just like processing part orders, sir. There’s always a paper trail.”
“I don’t like you comparing yourself to machine parts,” the General said nonsensically, but for some reason everyone else in room started nodding. “But I guess it makes sense. You really think it’s an oversight? The clones –”
“I think it’ll be very educational to know what the contract actually says,” Fox smoothly overrode him. “What exactly the Jedi ordered and wanted when they made the order. Don’t you think it’s worth knowing that?”
That it would also reveal exactly how deep Count Dooku’s involvement in the creation of the clones went was not mentioned. Fox had been the best in their strategy class for a reason.
“I guess so,” the General said. “And I mean, if you want to know it, you should, right? It’s about you, after all…I wish Master Obi-wan had just told me all about this stuff, so that I could tell you. He never tells me anything.”
Appo resisted the urge to point out that no one was entitled to know something classified as need-to-know only, particularly when their rank was not high enough to actually need to know. There would be time for a discussion on the importance of hierarchy later, after General Skywalker had agreed to join them.
They needed the handle on him. He couldn’t be allowed to punish the Guard. He couldn’t -
“You know, actually, I have a better idea!”
General Skywalker beamed at all of them.
Fox only arched his eyebrows with an expression of inexplicable (and slightly disturbing) fondness on his face. “Oh?” he said. “What idea?”
“I can tell the Chancellor about it! He’s got so many war powers. If it’s just an oversight, he could just do an executive order to fix it –”
“No!” Fox blurted out.
The General frowned. “Why not?”
Because then they’ll see you. They’ll all look at you, and they’ll know you to be defective. Tarkin’s probably already gone to report you to the Chancellor, and if he hears any more about you now, he’ll be the first one to order your decommissioning –
Intrusive thought. Rejected.
Consider it logically.
General Skywalker liked the Chancellor, but Fox and Thire didn’t; this was only natural given his authority over them. The Chancellor had approved the decimation of the Guard at the behest of his advisors, which had not been a wise use of that authority. The Chancellor was friendly with Captain Tarkin, or so Tarkin claimed, and Tarkin did not like clones in general or Appo in specific. The Chancellor was the supreme authority to which all clones reported, including Appo, and Appo couldn’t bear to have someone like that looking at him –
That wasn’t very logical.
None of those reasons were valid reasons not to proceed. None of those –
“Oh, we couldn’t possibly tell the Chancellor,” Thire said.
Appo turned his head to look at him, and Thire’s expression was so calm and placid and innocent that Appo immediately identified it as him about to play a wicked trick on someone, the way he had once done to the trainers back on Kamino, the ones he’d disliked.
“In fact, I’m surprised you’d even suggest it, sir,” Thire continued. “I thought you liked him.”
General Skywalker blinked. “Of course I do,” he said. “He’s a good man…what do you mean?”
“Well, sir, the Chancellor’s under investigation right now,” Thire said, still innocent as a freshly uncorked tubie. “I’m sure none of it will go anywhere, but there’s so much pressure on him already, isn’t there? All that politics. You wouldn’t want to drag him into some sort of unnecessary trouble when he’s already so stressed, would you?”
Huh. Thire really didn’t like the Chancellor. Appo hadn’t known that.
“Oh,” the General said, completely missing Thire’s clever use of questions to avoid actually saying anything. “I hadn’t thought about that. I guess you’re right. Padmé’s always telling me that I never think about the political angle of anything…I guess this means I can’t tell her, either?”
“That would be unwise,” Appo said, deciding not to point out that the Senator had told him not to contact her at all.
“We’re trying to limit the circle of people in the know,” Fox said. “It’s a complicated subject, and there could be implications for trooper morale. We should go to the Temple first, find the contract. Assuming it’s not a complete bust, you could think about who you can share it with. Someone like…hmm…how about Rex?”
Appo flinched.
Rex must not find out. If Rex discovers, he will ruin.
That wasn’t necessarily true. Appo was biased; he had never gotten onto the same track of thinking as Rex. Rex had never understood anything that Appo had wanted. He’d resented him for being the CC looking over his shoulder. Surely if General Skywalker, who Rex respected, told him about it, Rex wouldn’t object to it. Rex wouldn’t hunt it down. Rex wouldn’t rip it apart and say it wasn’t important and punish everyone involved – and Rex probably wouldn’t have done that even if was Appo he found it out from. He’d been trying, hadn’t he? He had. Rex had been making an effort to be kinder, to respect Appo’s opinions, to listen to him. To tell him he appreciated him. There was no reason to think that he would destroy the plan just because. There was no reason to think that he would try to punish Appo just because he was Appo’s direct authority, because he was the one responsible for Appo, because he was the one –
If you do not do it, one of us will, but we must make it worse to accommodate for your worthlessness. Watch. Watch me hurt them. Because of you. Because you are always you.
Why must you always be you?
You’re the one who brought the rest of us down.
Your fault, your idea, your stupid rotten ideas – if only I’d realized earlier that you were going to be like this, I’d have reported you long ago, and maybe they would’ve fixed you already!
Thire had punched Lock for saying that, Appo remembered distantly. Even though he’d never had any problem with him before, he’d hit him, and he’d hit him with intent to hurt. Thire was good at hurting people, when he wanted to. Zak had tried to help Lock, shouting that he’d been right and Appo wrong and Thire just stupid, and they’d been tangled up into a knot of pain that Appo had caused until Doom had torn the three of them apart. Literally: he had thrown each of them into a corner, and that had been the last Appo had seen of them because he couldn’t stay a moment longer in that room, in the chaos and havoc he had wreaked upon them. He’d thought it was better to leave them to recover in peace, without him, while he went onwards to his next destination. While he marched onwards, numb and unknowing, to the peacekeepers…
Appo didn’t like to think about the peacekeepers.
You were not meant to be safe. You were meant to be brave.
“– wish I knew why he was avoiding me,” General Skywalker was saying. Complaining? He sounded like he was complaining. “It’s not really like Rex, you know? I mean, actually, do you know? I don’t know how well you know Rex…”
“Not very well,” Fox agreed cheerfully. “Mostly by proxy. Cody talks about him, sometimes. Do you need help finding your lightsaber?”
“My – oh, right, no. I’ve got it.”
The General held out his hand and the lightsaber slithered out from under the vent, flying back to his hand.
“So we’re going, then?” Boba asked eagerly.
“We are going,” Thire said, perfectly pleasant, and for some reason Boba shut his mouth so hard it clicked. “You and Slick are staying here to continue filing. Possibly forever.”
“That’s right,” Slick said hastily, putting his hand on Boba’s shoulder. “Forever filing, that’s us.”
“Wait,” General Skywalker said, even as he trailed thoughtlessly after Fox, who had purposefully started marching towards the speeder hanger. “You’re saying it’s actually a flimsiwork project?”
I'm not part of the star wars fandom at all and only have vague recollections of the films... You recently reblogged a post about Vader and his work wife and I was like "OH!!! It's my favourite guy Appo from my fanfiction!!!!" instead of the other way around, because I've been reading your ongoing work abt Slick, Appo and fix it. I also only recently got onto the Star Wars wiki and learnt about the clones switching sides because of the chips. Your influence.....
Awwww, I'm delighted!!! I'm very glad to lead people down the path of new fandoms and side characters they may not have cared about before :)
I'm also extra proud of this fic, too, so I'm really happy to hear that people are enjoying it even mostly canon blind.
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I'll (maybe) post a full review of Star Wars: Master of Evil later because I only have about a hundred pages to go, but for now, please enjoy these snippets of Vader and his work wife, Commander Appo.
if you want me to consume a new media you MUST catch me at the exact moment when the stars are aligned and the air pressure is equal to the current degree of the sun’s peak against the horizon and all the cosmic energies are perfectly unified (aka my old interest is fading out) or i will nod and say “im adding that to my list!” Knowing theres no chance i will check it out
“unless its a book!” “unless you tell me it has gay people in it!” “this but only for live action shows” “theres a good chance i’ll get to it eventually” no wrong this post is not for you this post is ONLY for bitches who could have a treasured friend recommend them something that sounds grown in a lab to be your personal catnip and, with no choice in the matter, immediately know it will never be the right time to watch/read/listen to it
After the postmortem briefing on the Christophsis campaign concluded and the command staff allowed to disperse, Appo did not leave with the others, but stayed behind to talk to Rex.
“Captain, do you have a moment?” he asked, standing at attention and waiting until Rex nodded to continue. “I noticed an error in the flimsiwork and I’d appreciate your assistance in fixing it. Specifically, it relates to Sergeant Slick -“
(when the GAR’s most blindly obedient clone starts following in the footsteps of its first clone traitor, the galaxy starts to change)
chapter under the cut
Freedom was a joy that never faded.
Slick had had that thought every single morning that he left Guard HQ to go eat his breakfast outside, and he had yet to get tired of thinking it. Dinner he usually took in the mess hall the Guard used, luxuriating in the regular routine and sometimes overwhelming presence of his fellow clones, and lunch was more often than not done at his "desk" in the Hall of Records, accompanied by the cheerful bickering of his boys, Appo's Aurek squad, and Boba, but breakfast?
Breakfast was just Slick, the polluted skies of Coruscant, and the several million sentient beings stuck in traffic or one of the dizzying array of skyscrapers that littered the skyline.
Freedom.
It was nice.
It wasn't real freedom, of course. Slick was out of the rat cage, yes, but he was back in his previous position of living and dying at the will of the GAR. His unique status meant that he didn't have to endure Senate duty or bodyguard duty or even prison patrol, but he was still, to borrow Appo's words, 'at his post'. So he wasn't truly free.
But it was still nice.
Slick ate his breakfast rations in a nice little open space abutting one of the skyscrapers, a scrap of platform containing nothing but a few artificial trees adding some green, a giant holo projector above his head displaying a news scroll to the crowd passing by in their speeders – currently it was reading NABOO SENATOR RELEASES BOMBSHELL REPORT ON MEGACORP CORRUPTION, ACCEPTS APPOINTMENT TO HEAD CHANCELLOR INVESTIGATION, which Slick supposed explained what Cordé was currently busy with – and a lovely breeze that Slick was currently using to help wipe away the remnants of his hangover.
Not that he had much of one. Clone physiology didn't really suffer too much damage from alcohol, and anyway Slick had left the party early to babysit Boba, who'd started off fighty and ended up sobbing, as anyone might've expected. Maybe cadets really shouldn't be allowed to drink. What did Slick know, anyway? It wasn't like alcohol had been available back on Kamino in anything but theory, and certainly not natborn castaways that were easily ten times better than anything the best illegal sill could produce.
Still, early exit or not, yesterday's party had been fun. Even if it had started with that highly distressing conversation about Prime - Prime and the Separatists, Count Dooku, and the Jedi, all wrapped up in a tangled knot that gave Slick a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach just thinking about it.
In the occluded sunlight and smoggy air of Coruscant, which was still better than the optimally balanced conditions of the rat cage, it was easier for Slick to think about it. Any of it, really. To admit that he probably really had misjudged the Jedi, at least a little, and that even if he hadn't, his immediate problems were still mostly his own fault. Even if Ventress had prompted him to blame the Jedi and continue to blame them, and even if the Jedi were worthy of blame for engineering or at minimum accepting an army meant to be discarded, none of that changed what Slick had done, and why, and his responsibility for it. He was a person, a sentient being, and he had to own what he did, what he'd chosen to do, and the consequences that flowed from it.
Not even the most certain and righteous of rages could excuse him from that.
Slick was a person.
He liked that a lot more than the wounded beast he'd been with the Dark Side.
It helped having his boys around. Maybe it hadn't at first, and Slick still grimaced to think about how poorly he'd behaved with Boba, who was sad and lonely enough already without Slick adding trust issues to the pile. Luckily Boba had forgiven him, seemingly genuinely, and bounced back from it, even if he still sometimes seemed to have moments of uncharacteristic hesitation stemming from Vos's interrogation. And it helped even more seeing Boba interact so much better with the boys, all of them chattering like monkey-lizards. Usually about the stupidly dubbed Project Muk-muk, but also just in general. Processing flimsiwork left a lot of time for chatting, something Slick had previously seen as a downside (it remained unbelievably boring in comparison to combat) and now treasured more than money.
Well. Maybe not more than money.
Appo's report yesterday, however abbreviated, had been thrilling. The plan was working! They were building funds, getting money into their hands – real money, credits and numbers in a proper Banking Clan certified account. Soon they would have enough, surely. Surely there had to be some number that the Republic would accept for the clones. Surely…
Of course just having money wouldn't be enough, not while the war was still pending. Slick's boys had been very clear about their desire to continue their service as long as there was still fighting happening, and as hard as that was to swallow Slick had no choice but to accept it. Better that his boys, and Appo's, get to choose what they wanted, whether to stay and fight or leave it behind – better that it be their own choice, freedom within freedom, and not something that had to happen, like those poor twice trampled low-morale survivors that needed to be snuggled out to Mordagon right away to keep them from killing themselves. Fox had gotten very excited about that when Appo had fleetingly mentioned it, though with no details, of course, since the party had started and uninitiated members of the Guard had started joining. He'd said something about existing efforts to preserve that category of trooper – something about commanders agreeing to approve retransfer orders again and again to try to keep that type as far back from a front as possible –
Cody was probably involved in that.
Sitting in sunlight, calm and full of the knowledge that all his boys and Boba were safe below nursing hangovers, Slick allowed himself the pleasure and pain of thinking about Cody. Of missing Cody, of missing what they had. Of wishing that he'd been brave enough, or honest enough with himself, to have gone for more, to have taken the chance to see if Cody might have accepted more.
Oh, Cody. Cody Cody Cody Cody -
When he'd had his fill of dreams, Slick packed up and went back down to Guard HQ.
The halls were as busy as always – the Guard never really rested, and Slick had seen the brutal work schedules they had to prove it – but he knew that a solid number was probably off sleeping the sleep of the just in the barracks. Decompressing however much they could from their terrible assignments, which were as dangerous as any front but far less gratifying.
Slick didn't really fit in here, not like the way he had back with the 501st.
He wasn't really one of the Guard, no matter what his ident chip currently read, and both he and they knew it. But they treated him well enough, respected him for voluntarily taking up the red-and-white, so to speak, even if both sides knew it to be both temporary and a fake. The rank-and-file Guard didn't know why Slick was doing what he was doing, but Fox had ordered it and the other Guard commanders had endorsed it, and that was good enough for them.
For no particular reason, Slick turned his feet towards the inside rooms. He didn't have a real destination (his room was off the table, since Boba would shoot anyone disturbing his sleep) and it wasn’t time to start working, so there was no reason not to let himself drift around, driven by nothing but instinct, looking for nothing, seeking nothing…
“Permission denied, Appo,” Fox said. “You can’t leave this conversation until we’re done bonding.”
…but certainly willing to find, if something interesting came his way.
Slick immediately dropped all other thoughts and creeped over to eavesdrop in the hope of getting some good gossip.
“Bonding,” Appo echoed. He sounded highly dubious.
“That’s right. You’re Thire’s friend and I’m Thire’s friend, in equally important but notably very different ways. That means we’ve got to get along, and that means bonding. Like the squad cohesion exercises back on Kamino, only without anyone tricking you into thinking someone’s dead. Now, where was I?”
Fox was presently slouching at a desk next to Appo, whose perfect posture and dead-neutral expression in no way concealed his intense desire to exit the situation, probably by throwing something – either himself out a window or a chair at Fox’s head, whichever worked better.
It was obvious that Fox knew it, too. Knew it, and based on what Slick could suss out, thought it was absolutely hilarious.
“You were asking,” Appo said, long-suffering, “what was wrong with you.”
“Oh, right,” Fox said, and slouched even more in anticipation of a good time. He was such an unparalleled asshole. He didn’t even enjoy slouching; he was obviously only doing it because he could tell that it was winding Appo up not to be able to tell him to stop. “Well, it’s a valid question. I mean, come on. I’ve joked about it before – everyone’s joked about it before, including Thire – but my thing for that specific combination of intense competence and extremely pathetic neediness might really have gone too far this time.”
Appo fixed his gaze on the wall above Fox’s head and visibly tried to will a self-directed missile strike into existence.
“Bad enough Cody,” Fox carried on – which, what? What was that about Cody? “His pathetic’s mostly hidden under a veneer of professionalism. But karking Skywalker? I’ve met drowned rats with more emotional stability.”
Slick choked. Skywalker? Skywalker???
“Great fighter, though,” Fox mused. He was losing the battle against smiling: maybe he was just trying to wind Appo up again? Or was he serious? It was genuinely impossible to tell, even for Slick. Maybe even Fox didn’t know. “You know, he’s helped the Guard out a few times when he’s been back on Coruscant, in his own time. Mostly because he doesn’t want to be arrested for his illegal freestyle racing, but if he hasn’t figured out that that’s not our jobs then I’m certainly not going to tell him. Stupidity’s not a crime. And you’ve got to admit that he pilots beautifully. Watching him squeeze through tight spaces –”
“Please don’t elaborate,” Appo said.
Slick, who was trying his utmost best to not die of laughter, agreed. It was now clear that Fox was just using this to mess with Appo, but disturbingly Slick was also starting to get the sense that deep down inside it might be based on a kernel of truth to some degree, which…no, Fox. No. Not Skywalker.
Something really was seriously wrong with Fox if he looked at the 501st’s walking trashfire of a General and decided he might be, even in pure hypothetical theory, into that.
Like, sure, if you just kept it strictly on an aesthetic level it would be another thing altogether, anyone possessed of sexual urges in that alignment could probably understand it, but the whole package? Really, Fox? Really? Had he somehow missed all of Appo’s updates about the Senator Amidala debacle?
“One could say that he’s straight up my preferred hyperroute,” Fox continued mercilessly. “You know, my type: a wrecking ball secretly yearning for affection. An AT-TE that just wants to be loved. Like if you equipped a feral tooka with DC17s –”
“Why would anyone do that.”
“Because they’re cute and deserve to destroy things.” Fox heaved a wistful if deliberately performative sigh. “I bet I could find something nice for Skywalker to destroy.”
Appo squeezed his eyes together.
Slick stuffed his hand into his mouth to muffle the laughter.
“Did you see him crying on my shoulder last night?” Fox said, managing to make it sound like he thought it was adorable rather than an appalling thing to do with someone you barely knew. “He was so miserable. Going on and on about how he’s messed up his multivehicle pileup of a life, sobbing and wailing and ugly with it – like a wet rag full of snot and insecurity.”
Was that supposed to be appealing?
“I wanted to pet his hair and tell him to keep right on crying. I was sort of feeling it, you know?” Fox made the mistake of glancing at Appo’s face and had to hastily turn away before his deadpan faux-seriousness cracked. “So anyway, you can see the problem. What does all that say about me?”
“Fox,” Appo said. “Is there anything I can do to make you stop?”
“No.”
Appo sighed.
Fox stood strong: he didn’t cackle, didn’t even crack a grin. But oh, he wanted to.
“Fine, then,” Appo said, dull voice somber as a funeral, and turned his gaze straight onto Fox. “You’re kind.”
Fox startled, his smug glee disappearing instantly in the face of shock. “What?”
“You asked what it says about you. It says that you’re kind.”
Fox wrinkled his nose. “You’re wrong. I’m not kind.”
“You want to love someone who desperately needs love. What’s not kind about that?”
Fox gaped at him.
“You enjoy being needed, but too much need ends up feeling like a burden. You get enough of that every day, so you don’t want to deal with it in your off time, too. As a result, someone who can keep up with you in terms of ability – which is rare enough – but who nevertheless has a deep, profound, vulnerable need for your emotional succor is your ideal.” Appo stared straight at Fox. “It’s not really that complicated.”
You’re not that complicated, he meant. Quite obviously.
Well shit, Slick marveled to himself. Did we know Appo could do that?!
Fox certainly hadn’t.
“How – since when – are you –” he started, then paused and frowned. “Appo. Serious question. What do you think about Thire?”
Slick winced before he could think better of it. Fox was a braver man than he was.
Appo frowned. “What about Thire? Thire is – Thire. He’s perfect, of course. But that’s not the same at all. Thire is just easy to love.”
…really, Appo? What was wrong with these people?
Fox, equally appalled, opened his mouth, then closed it again when he realized there was nothing to say. Certainly nothing that wasn’t the sole providence of Thire, anyway.
“On second thought, this is terrible,” he said, quite seriously. “We should stop.”
“But Fox,” Appo said, still staring Fox straight in the eyes. “I thought we needed to bond.”
Slick snorted loud enough to immediately blow his cover.
“Get in here, asshole,” Fox said, spotting him at once and waving him in. “Tell me, did you know Appo was secretly a jackass?”
“He’s a Jango clone,” Slick said, letting himself in and closing the door properly this time. “Of course he is. The only reason you even briefly imagined that he’s not is because the flimsiwork makes everyone think he’s boring, and because you spend too much time with Thire… I take it the party heated up after I left? Why was Skywalker even there?”
“The General needs someone to process his divorce papers discreetly,” Appo said. “While in a moment of guilt-induced catharsis he confessed the fact of his marriage to General Kenobi, that is only relevant from an emotional support perspective. The official rule of the Jedi Order still requires preapproval prior to marriage, which General Skywalker did not obtain, and it would be much easier for everyone involved if the marriage simply ceased to exist before anyone else found out about it.”
Slick just bet it would. He snorted again, shaking his head – sure, it would serve Skywalker right to have to face a consequence for once, but what did he care? It wasn’t any of his business.
Anyway, he was working on trying to let his grudge against the Jedi go, and Generals Skywalker and Kenobi in particular. His hatred was only clouding his thoughts, and Slick had decided that he didn’t like anything that messed with his ability to think clearly.
Alcohol didn’t count. Obviously.
“I’m surprised Vos even let Skywalker come in here,” Slick said instead. “Hasn’t he been sticking to the Guard like a piece of space trash barnacled onto a Venator’s hull?”
“They wash those off,” Appo said, unhelpfully.
“Vos got distracted,” Fox said, more helpfully. “First with the whole Chancellor thing, and when that died down, he got sidetracked hunting down rumors of a powerful Force-using vigilante that has devoted themselves to protecting the Guard in the Coruscanti underworld.”
“You’re still sore about that, huh?”
“While I appreciate the assistance, I don’t need some karking General wannabe’s help to protect my troops,” Fox said, pleasantly. “If they actually wanted to be useful, they can answer to me.”
Personally, Slick thought that siccing Vos on whoever-it-was seemed like a bit of an overreaction to what seemed to be nothing but support with no strings attached, but he wasn’t going to say that to Fox’s face. Anyway, the last few Guard that had come in bearing tales of the vigilante had specified both that they had not seen the vigilante’s face at all (typical) and that they had observed said vigilante using a red lightsaber or maybe two (very not typical), so Slick supposed he could see why Vos might interest himself with it. Barriss had said something about him being able to track down a trace of the Dark Side through a maze blindfolded or something like that…
“Anyway, Vos did apparently corner Skywalker for a quick ‘chat’,” Fox said. “Skywalker told me about it last night. Not sure I’ve got the whole gist of it, since we’d both had quite a lot to drink by then, but there was something about Vos getting the idea from some chart or another that there’s something suspicious about the 501st’s movements and wanting to ask some questions. Skywalker enjoyed it about as much as Boba did.”
“How can there be anything suspicious about the 501st’s movements?” Appo asked, visibly baffled. “We just follow orders.”
Fox held out his hands in a ‘I don’t know and I don’t care’ gesture.
“Since you’re here, though, we should talk shop,” he said. “Appo, I meant to ask you last night, before we got distracted with all that Prime stuff –”
Slick felt the absurd desire to suddenly scream that it wasn’t just stuff, it was important, it might be the most important thing they’d ever learned – except of course that was stupid, because of course it wasn’t. It was interesting, sure, and the Seppie connection more than a little dubious, but Prime was already dead and all of this was just history. Sure, Slick felt unreasonably strongly about it, but that was probably just because he’d been playacting Jango so long that he sometimes felt like he really knew the guy.
“– but it’s really been killing me. How did you pull off Lola Sayu?”
“What do you mean?”
“The Citadel defenses! I heard all about the story you spouted to trick the Generals, but obviously Prime wasn’t actually there, and Bossk said you were the one that sliced the Seppie’s system wide open.” Fox jabbed a finger forward. “You. Not him, not Prime, not anyone else. How’d you do it?”
“Oh, that,” Appo said.
“Oh, no,” Slick said, because Appo’s ‘Oh, that’ was almost always the predecessor to what was inevitably the single craziest thing he’d ever heard a clone say, ever. “No, ignore me, go on. What’s ‘oh, that’ about it?”
“I didn’t slice the systems,” Appo said to Fox, completely ignoring Slick as requested. “I just logged in with the passcode Slick gave me.”
“You what?” Slick asked.
“You what?” Fox asked.
“Passcode I gave you?” Slick demanded. He’d expected crazy, sure, because this was Appo, but how did he somehow get involved? He hadn’t done anything! He’d been in prison the whole time! “What passcode? When’d I give it to you?”
Now Appo was the one to give Slick a strange look, as if Slick was the one being ridiculous here. “The one you gave me,” he said again, slowly, as if Slick had somehow missed it. “For Prime’s account. From Ventress?”
“And it got you into the Citadel?! How?!”
“User error,” Appo said implacably. “User error and poor security hygiene. People reuse passcodes all the time, no matter how many times they’re told not to.”
Fox made a sort of half-choked coughing sound that suggested that he was imminently about to review his own passcode use, and maybe check all of the main Guard terminals for it, too.
“I thought there was a chance that the passcode Ventress used on Slick would be one she had used elsewhere,” Appo explained. “It turned out that I was right. Fortunately, Ventress was highly ranked within the Separatist hierarchy before her death –”
Slick startled as if electrocuted: “Ventress is dead?”
“It hasn’t been confirmed, though nobody’s seen her for a while,” Fox said. “General Kenobi reported that she got fired on by her own people during the battle of Sullust a little while ago –”
“Oh, that,” Slick said, relaxing again. “Right, I remember now. Dooku stabbing her in the back. Didn’t work, though, right?”
“I don’t recall saying any of that,” Fox said. “But as it happens, scuttlebutt has it that General Kenobi himself doesn’t think she’s dead, and that’s good enough for me. Generals are said to have feelings about these sorts of things, after all.”
“If you want to hook up with a General, you’re going to need to stop talking in hypotheticals,” Slick told Fox with a grin even he could admit was slightly manic. “Generals do have feelings about things. And clearly you have feelings about their feelings –”
“Why have I not shot him yet?” Fox asked Appo, who looked at him blankly.
“Because you like him,” he said.
“…right. Thanks, Appo.” Fox gave Slick a glare. “I was just on the verge of forgetting that.”
Slick held up his hands in surrender.
“Anyway, that’s karking fantastic,” Fox said, redirecting his attention back to Appo. “It hadn’t occurred to me at all. I bet Ventress had General-level access at least. The things we could do with that…”
He was all but licking his chops at the thought of it.
“Pity you used it up so fast,” he added, not without a touch of real regret. “Not that the Citadel was a bad place to use it, of course. You saved Cody and the Generals and maybe all of Coruscant by keeping the Nexus route out of Seppie hands. But still…!”
“Why are you speaking as if the passcode is no longer useable?” Appo asked curiously. “I had Bossk destroy the computer beyond recovery after I finished with it, and Lola Sayu is now in Republic hands. There is no reason for the Separatists to know that we utilized a passcode rather than slicing in.”
Fox’s eyes lit up. “Well, then, that’s different! We’ve got to come up with some way to use it to get info that doesn’t let on where we’re getting it from – something really clever –”
“SLICK! I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE!”
“Oh shit,” Slick said, and tried to hide behind Fox before he realized he had no idea why Thire was after him. Then he realized that it didn’t matter the reason, he was going to hide anyway. No, wait, forget Fox, Appo was here, that was the real safety –
“Go away,” Appo informed him. “Stop grabbing at me.”
“Some help you are,” Slick said. “Save me, damnit.”
“There’s nothing to save you from. Thire just wants to talk,” Appo said.
Yeah, Slick was doomed.
“Hey, Slick,” Thire said, very pleasantly, as he marched into the room in near full kit. “There you are. I just want to talk.”
“See?” Appo said.
Slick was doomed doomed. Even Fox looked mildly concerned.
“A really funny thing just happened,” Thire said. He did something with his mouth that was presumably meant to resemble a smile, but mostly made Slick want to run away. He totally understood why some species used bared teeth as a threat gesture now. “Did you know, a news story just bumped the Chancellor scandal from top billing for five whole minutes. Care to guess what it was?”
“…no?”
This was the wrong answer.
“All the news I’ve seen today was just about the Chancellor stuff!” Slick backed away from a slowly advancing Thire. “I must have missed the window. You said it was only five minutes..!”
“Thire,” Fox said mildly. “I missed it, too. Why don’t you share?”
He was enjoying this, the karking slagheap. Not quite as much as he’d been enjoying teasing Appo earlier, but pretty close. Slick kind of wanted to kick the bozo that’d decided Fox was better off being cheerful rather than intensely depressed, except he was pretty sure that bozo was him, and that he’d been right.
“It just so happens,” Thire said, his so-called smile spreading to a frightening degree, “that someone managed to break the blockade of Mandalore – which, let me remind you, is being currently conducted by both the Republic and the CIS – and resupply the system. Not just with one or two things, but with everything: food, medicine, weapons, the works. And what do you know? The someone being given credit for it –”
He jabbed a finger right at Slick’s chest.
“– is Jango fucking Fett.”
“That wasn’t me,” Slick said. When Thire glared at him, he raised his hands. “Honest, it wasn’t! I never said anything to imply –”
Wait, shit. Shit. There was that Mandalorian he’d punched, wasn’t there? Slick had said something stupid about taking care of his people – he’d meant clones, of course, and buying their freedom, but if the Mandalorian had thought that he was Prime, he might have thought that he’d meant Mandalore –
Thire’s eyes narrowed as Slick’s pause dragged on.
“Okay, listen, no,” Slick said desperately. “Even if I might have said something, I certainly didn’t do anything. I’ve been here practically the whole time! You can’t imagine that I managed to find a system’s worth of food, medicine, and weapons somewhere in the Coruscant underworld in the couple of hours I was down there –”
“Half a day. With access to all of Coruscant’s black market.”
“Yeah, but no money to buy any of it! I’m telling you, this was not our fault!”
“Actually,” Appo said.
Everyone immediately turned to look at him.
“Actually?” Fox echoed. His eyes were bright with enthusiasm and glee: it was still nice to see it in comparison to what he had been like before, so damaged that even shell-shock barely made a dent, even if his cheer was currently at Slick’s expense. “Appo, would you care to explain?”
“Not especially, but I will. It just so happens that earlier today I received some very rude messages from the High Kakistarch of Mordagon,” Appo said. “I didn’t really understand them at the time. It was something about clones forgetting to take payment for the black market supplies he’d commissioned them with smuggling…ah.”
He observed their blank stares. “Perhaps I should take a step back to clarify.”
Fox looked amused. “I think that would be for the best, yes.”
“The Guard division that was sent to Mordagon was getting bored –”
Thire glared at Fox as if it was his fault. It probably was.
“– and offered to take on some work. When the High Kakistarch directed the question to me, I encouraged him to give them some sort of task to occupy them, even an illegal one. At the time, I was not particularly interested in what type of task, but –”
He paused, clearly thinking back over the previous discussion, and made a face.
“In fact, now that I think of it, I can confirm that he specifically referenced sending them into Mandalorian space. He mentioned something about finding some durasteel for them, on the basis that they would go unnoticed if they were disguised as actual Mandalorians –”
Thire put his head into his hands.
Fox outright cackled.
“So you’re telling me,” he said gleefully, “that your Head Lowlife sent a bunch of ‘unknown Mandalorians’ to drop off rescue supplies to Mandalore at the exact same time that Slick here was telling tall tales about Prime helping the old home-world out?”
“That’s not exactly what I said,” Slick said weakly.
“The High Kakistarch must have failed to inform the clones that it would be necessary to receive payment for the goods they delivered,” Appo said. “The Mordageen have a bad tendency to talk around a subject, especially when it’s illegal. They’re very concerned with plausible deniability. And of course, most clones are unfamiliar with the basics of financial transactions…”
“Whereas search and rescue missions are basically daily rations for any clone, much less the Guard,” Fox said, still gleeful. “They wouldn’t even think to question it! There would be no reason to say anything…unlike Slick here, who apparently goes around telling people all sorts of things.”
“It was a misunderstanding,” Slick said. “Anyone else would’ve said the same in my position.”
Maybe.
If they’d accidentally been infected with mind-altering Dark Side.
And happened to have very specific feelings about being called a traitor to their people…
“I vote that Appo be assigned a vacation,” Thire said into his hands. “For the public good.”
Fox snorted.
Slick agreed, except – “Do I get one too?”
“You get grounded for the rest of your natural life, you little –”
“I take that His Excellency was upset?” Fox interjected.
That got Thire to lift his head, somehow looking even more incensed.
“The Chancellor,” he said through gritted teeth, “has been particularly weird about this whole Prime thing. You’d think he’d have his hands full with the investigation against him, but no. This is what’s been bothering him.”
“Displacement, maybe?” Fox suggested. He seemed to be especially tickled by the idea. “Easier to concern himself with something else than with his own circumstances…?”
“Stop trying to understand him. I still don’t like how he’s been with you –”
“Stop being so paranoid. He’s not actually going out of his way to psychologically torture me into being miserable,” Fox said firmly. “He’s the Chancellor, he can afford better hobbies than that. It’s just been an unhappy coincidence.”
“A lot of unhappy coincidences,” Thire grumbled, but let it go. “Anyway, he’s made at least three secret holocalls from his back room about it. If I didn’t know Prime was dead, I’d be trying to warn him to watch his back for possible assassins.”
Slick laughed.
He was the only one who did.
Which was crazy, right, because obviously karking Chancellor Palpatine wasn’t sending out assassins after anyone, least of all a dead man that Slick was currently impersonating…
Fox’s comm unit beeped.
He glanced down, then frowned. “We’ll have to continue this later,” he said. “General Skywalker’s just entered HQ. He’s looking for me – I’ll deal with this.”
Slick couldn’t resist dramatically blowing a kiss at him.
“I will shoot you, Slick.”
“Do I want to know?” Thire asked, looking between them suspiciously. “Appo, do I want to know?”
“No,” Appo said. “But I’ll tell you anyway.”
Slick rolled his eyes and followed Fox to the door. There was no way he was missing the chance to see this Fox-potentially-crushing-on-a-General interaction for himself.
“Fox! There you are!” General Skywalker was clearly in a good mood. He looked excited. Almost too excited, really, practically buzzing the way he did when he’d drunk an entire carafe of cafe entirely by himself (it had been a dare). “I wanted to tell you – well, I wanted to tell someone, and you were so nice and listened to me last night, and, well –”
“I’m happy to listen again,” Fox said. He sounded amused out loud this time, and his whole demeanor had softened just a little as he looked at the General. Still sharp as a vibroblade, but a nicer one, maybe.
Wow. He must really think the General was cute. What the kark, Fox?
“That’s great!” General Skywalker enthused. “You see, I’ve figured it out. I know how to fix it!”
Fox blinked.
Behind the mostly closed door, Slick also blinked.
“Fix what?” Fox asked cautiously. “Your…love life?”
“Yes! I was talking with the Chancellor – he’s such a good man – and I get it now. I know what went wrong.” He beamed at Fox. “I shouldn’t have just accepted it when she told me she wanted to end it.”
What?
“Padmé and me – we’re meant to be. I spent ten years dreaming of her, and she fell in love with me as soon as we met again…you can’t just throw away history like that. It’s not right. She was confused, that’s all. She was acting emotionally, not thinking it through.”
What?
“And now with the assassination attempts and everything, it’s even more important for us to be together,” Skywalker continued. He was bouncing up and down on his heels, still full of that restless near-manic energy, and completely oblivious to the expression of dismay on Fox’s face. “I know she said she didn’t want to see me, but she didn’t really mean it. You know? It took so long for her to decide on it. Maybe that was supposed to be a sign? Maybe she wanted me to fight harder.”
WHAT?
“And I just know in my heart that she’ll be miserable without me – worse, she’ll be dead. I can’t let that happen! Not after what happened with my – I just can’t. Not Padmé. Never Padmé. She means everything to me! I can’t let her make this mistake. Not to us. Not to herself. It’s for her own good –”
“Are you fucking kidding me?!” Slick howled, ripping his way out into the hallway before he could think better of it. “What the kark is wrong with you?!”
He didn’t have the presence of mind to be creative with his cursing.
He didn’t have the presence of mind for anything, really. He was just – he just –
“How could you say something like that?” he demanded, jabbing a finger straight into Skywalker’s chest. “Your girl, she’s a person! She has the right to make up her own mind! It doesn’t matter if you don’t like what she decided, it doesn’t matter if you think you know better, it doesn’t matter if you think you’ve got the best intentions in the world. None of your stupid excuses matter one bit because you’re not doing this for her at all!”
“Hey, what does that mean?” Skywalker demanded. “Of course it’s for her –”
“It’s for you, you selfish slagger! You can’t just force people to do what you want even if you think it’s for a good reason –”
“It is a good reason! I’m trying to save her life –”
“You don’t get to do that!” Slick screamed, and General Skywalker fell quiet, staring at him with his mouth ajar. “You don’t get to save someone who doesn’t want you to save them! You don’t get to ignore someone’s choices just because you’re scared of losing them!”
Just like Slick had.
Back on Christophsis, thinking only about keeping his boys alive, keeping them safe, and never mind what he had to do to achieve it. Never mind that they didn’t want that. Never mind that they would never have wanted him to do what he’d done – all those brothers, betrayed – dead – and all for them –
“Hold up,” General Skywalker said. He was staring now. “Are you – Slick?!”
…kark.
Slick had known, in the back of his mind, that there was a reason he wasn’t supposed to let himself be seen by General Skywalker – his General, the 501st’s General, the General he had betrayed – but he’d forgotten it in his horror at the stupid shit coming out of his General’s mouth.
And now the General was looking at him, straight at him, seeing him. Taking a step forward, reaching for Slick, and next he would –
Bzzzzzzzzt.
Slick blinked at the sudden buzzing sound.
Huh. That almost sounded like a stunner.
General Skywalker fell straight down onto the ground.
…that was a stunner.
Slick looked up to the end of the hallway.
Boba stood there with a Guard stunner in his hands – or well, he was, but Fox was already over there wrenching it out of his hands.
“Boba, what in the galaxy were you thinking?” he demanded.
“He was going after Slick!” Boba protested, though he yielded the weapon quickly enough. “What else was I supposed to do?”
“Anything! Anything at all! But not that!”
Slick, still frozen, looked down at General Skywalker’s unmoving body.
They were screwed. They were so screwed.
“Now what am I supposed to do, Boba? What do you expect me to do with a knocked out General?!”
“…kill him?”
“We are not killing him!”
They were so screwed.
They were so screwed.
They were so screwed.
“You know,” Appo said from the door. “That was oddly satisfying.”
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After the postmortem briefing on the Christophsis campaign concluded and the command staff allowed to disperse, Appo did not leave with the others, but stayed behind to talk to Rex.
“Captain, do you have a moment?” he asked, standing at attention and waiting until Rex nodded to continue. “I noticed an error in the flimsiwork and I’d appreciate your assistance in fixing it. Specifically, it relates to Sergeant Slick -“
(when the GAR’s most blindly obedient clone starts following in the footsteps of its first clone traitor, the galaxy starts to change)
chapter under the cut
Neyo was weird.
Appo was perfectly aware that he was in no position to say such a thing, being himself the sort of clone that other clones considered as unusual as it was possible to be without crossing the line into decommission-worthy divergence. Certainly he had never before dared to think such a thing about any other clone, no matter how outré their reputation might be. Take Gree, for example; quite a number of clones considered him to be “weird” due to his off-track fascinations and excessive willingness to engage in conversation on the subject, whereas Appo had always thoroughly approved of him. In comparison, Neyo's own reputation for grimness and morbidity could not be said to be particularly bizarre. It wasn’t the sort of thing Appo would ever have bothered wasting time thinking about. Certainly nothing he’d ever bothered thinking about back on Kamino.
But now that he’d had the chance to meet him again, for the first time out of training, Appo was forced to conclude: Neyo was weird.
"Yeah, I feel the same," Rex said, observing Appo's (apparently obvious) unnerved reaction after meeting the Commander of the 91st Mobile Reconnaissance Corps, which under General Windu and General Allie's joint command had accompanied the 501st in its return to Coruscant – the 501st to return Senator Amidala and take some much needed downtime before returning to the front lines, the 91st to accompany their critically important command staff to a politically important meeting of the Jedi Council (the 212st, suffering from the same issue of possessing a High General as a leader, would be following a little later after they finished pacifying Lola Sayu). "It's the way he treats himself like he thinks he should be a number, as if he really believes we're all nothing better than droids. Freaky, isn't it?"
Kix, who was aware of Appo's occasional very specific droid-related psychosis, grimaced visibly from where he was standing to attention behind Rex's back. He'd recently been promoted to the 501st's acting CMO, a much-deserved step up that for once hadn't even required the previous position to be vacated by a casualty (their former CMO had been transferred to another battalion upon request), but he was still getting the hang of the requirements of professional decorum, such as not displaying his every emotion on his face.
Appo shook his head.
"It's not that," he told Rex, deciding that now was not the time or place for a discussion of how little difference there really was between the Separatists’ droids and the Republic's clones if you thought about the way they were treated by others rather than potential interiority and innate qualities of personhood, which could itself be something of a doubtful proposition when one considered the personalities developed by droids that hadn’t been wiped in too long. "He - winked at me."
"He what?" Rex gaped openly. Apparently professional decorum had become optional at some point when Appo hadn't been looking.
Rex coughed and straightened back into his usual impassive demeanor, possibly in reaction to Appo's disapproving expression. "That is, I mean, that's rather unusual given what I've heard of him."
It was.
In fairness, it hadn't actually been a wink, exactly, but Appo couldn't think of another word to describe how Neyo's actions (catching Appo's eyes deliberately and holding his gaze, then nodding very meaningfully at him) seemed to carry implications of closeness or intimacy that in no way actually existed. This would be strange enough behavior for any clone, no matter how social, to aim towards Appo, unless they'd somehow mistaken him for someone else, but it was particularly strange in Neyo, who had always been particularly well-known among clones for being especially antisocial.
"Okay, I've got to know more," Fives said abruptly. "Echo, cover me."
Before anyone could think to stop him, he'd broken out of formation and started walking over towards Neyo, with Echo one step behind him giving all of them an apologetic shrug.
Appo was developing a headache. He glared at Rex, whose fault this almost certainly was for encouraging the two of them to take independent thinking to a fault.
Rex coughed again and ignored him, keeping his eyes fixed in a forward position that was technically correct and would therefore be unimpeachable if it weren't very obviously a cover for not wanting to own up to his ridiculous ARCs' behavior. If pressed, Appo was sure Rex would point out that as ARCs, the two of them were only affiliated with the 501st, not fully under its command, and therefore totally not any of his business to worry about.
Sadly, this was already an improvement over what his response might have been previously. Spending so much of his time acting as Senator Amidala's bodyguard had been good for Rex, at least in terms of redirecting his stubbornness into something resembling guile.
Whether it had been of overall benefit…
Appo observed Rex's expression visibly softening when he saw the Senator sweep into the hanger, accompanied by her handmaidens in full identical dress kit, and promptly looked away.
Some things were not meant for outsiders to see. And even if they could, they shouldn't look. Discretion was essential in order to maintain plausible deniability.
Poor Rex would have to deal with his impossible crush one way or another, and Appo would gladly leave him the privacy to do so.
(It had been surprisingly easy to identify it, given Appo's normal struggles to interpret what others were thinking. But no, it had been easy, as easy as it had been to see what had been happening between Cody and Slick. An unexpected development, but one that made Appo feel quite proud: he hadn't realized that he was quite so sensitive to expressions of love on a clone.)
General Windu (now in person) and General Allie were the next to pass by, conferring with each other in quiet voices. Probably about something political, so Appo promptly strained his ears to try to overhear.
"- such a radical proposal seems to me to be most unlike her, as is her strident insistence upon it. During the last meeting of the Council she even came in person to demand a hearing -"
"You'll find that that's actually quite in character for Master Nu," General Windu said dryly. "When she feels strongly enough that it's warranted."
"I suppose. But to question the legitimacy of the Order's relationship with the Senate..!"
Oh, it was Jedi business. Wholly uninteresting: Appo looked away.
He was just in time to observe General Skywalker and Commander Tano entering the exit hanger. This, too suggested strife, with Commander Tano's montrals in full stressed out Adolescent Offense as she stalked out in something near a full march, while General Skywalker weakly reaching out a hand as if to draw her back before visibly checking himself, giving up and letting it fall back to his side.
For his part, General Skywalker did not look well.
It was nothing specific, yet it was everything: the slump in his posture, the circles under his eyes, a certain overall sense of overwhelming misery emanating off of him.
This might have normally stumped Appo, but he had inside information. He glanced over at Sabé, who gave him a subtle nod: the Senator had officially broken off all relations, then, with no remaining recourse permitted. The General would submit his usual excuse to justify accompanying the Senator back to her residence, where instead of whatever usual welcome home festivities they would typically have engaged in, he would instead be packing up any of his belongings that he had left there and signing the divorce decree.
Appo's services for effective yet highly discreet filing would soon need to be called upon.
In the meantime…
"We're going to arrive at Coruscant soon," Kix hissed. "Get Fives and Echo back already!"
Appo shut his eyes to avoid seeing whatever ridiculous jig of meant-to-be-subtle motions Rex would engage in to signal that message over to his errant problem commandos. If he didn't see it, he didn't have to consider if he needed to report it. He wouldn't report it regardless, so doing the analysis at all was a waste of mental effort.
"We're back, we're back already!"
Appo opened his eyes just in time to see Fives and Echo both slide back into their places in formation. Fives looked somewhat perturbed, while Echo kept stealing glances at Appo for some reason.
"Well?" Rex asked, not turning his head. "You get an answer?"
"No. Well, not really. I mean -"
"Commander Neyo expressed his admiration for Sergeant Appo," Echo helpfully supplied. "He was highly complimentary -"
"He said Appo was badass!"
"He did not."
"That's what he meant -"
The ship exited hyperspace and came to a halt right above Coruscant airspace.
"Silence in formation," Appo intoned formally, deeply relieved for the excuse. He had the feeling that all three of them (maybe four, given Kix's expression) were about to break out of form entirely in order to ask him to specify exactly what was his relationship or history with the famous, possibly infamous, Commander Neyo.
Which was nothing.
Literally. Appo had been in the same command class, to be sure, but Neyo had been a loner even back then; he'd only ever been seen spending his downtime with Bacara, and occasionally Ponds. Even on the rare occasion when they shared a classroom or trainer, Neyo had certainly never previously demonstrated any awareness of Appo's existence. Or at least none that Appo had ever been able to detect, anyway.
Maybe it wasn’t as personal as it seemed. Maybe Neyo was just like Gree and Colt and Cody, commanders talking about Appo behind his back –
Appo really hoped not.
"Prepare for landing…"
The ship shifted as it broke through atmosphere and rapidly approached the landing pad. The vast vista of the endless skyscrapers of Coruscant became visible through the ports.
Coruscant.
They were almost there.
Appo knew it was unreasonable to expect Thire to be there waiting for him, even if he had said last time that he intended to be. There was more notice of their arrival this time, and therefore more time to prepare, but Thire was a busy man, a commander - a Guard commander, subject to the whims of the Senate as a whole instead of a single General. There was no reason to hope to see him, no reason to pointlessly invite disappointment, no reason at all - but Appo found himself hoping despite it all.
And then the hanger doors opened, and Thire was there waiting outside, shining in the light of Coruscant's sun.
Better still, he wasn't alone: he was flanked by a very familiar pair of squads colored in 501st blue. Appo's boys. All of them, every last one, all alive and well and utterly perfect.
Even Fox was there!
Wait. Why was Fox there?
Appo had the opportunity to ponder this mystery during the slow process of supervising the disembarking of their valuable personnel (Senator, Generals) and then of the 501st itself, all of them marching out of the ship lockstep in a careful cadence that in no way concealed their excitement about being back on Coruscant for shore leave. Rex had said a few words earlier about not causing trouble while there, but it was unclear how seriously everyone would take it. Especially once they got into the clone-friendly bars…
"- hope you don't mind our continued requisitioning of a few of your men, General," Fox was saying crisply to General Skywalker when Appo finally made his way over to where the Guard were waiting. "Their services have proved invaluable, especially those of Sergeant Appo."
"Appo’s supposed to be getting some much-needed downtime," the General objected. "He's pretty invaluable to us too, you know. I don't know…"
Appo intended to interrupt – he had several excellent arguments at hand regarding his willingness, availability, and necessity to the cause – but then Thire stepped forward, glowing in his red and white, and he forgot them entirely.
"Hi," Thire said. "Appo."
"It's good to see you," Appo said. "Thire."
Thire's name was so lovely. Perfectly well chosen, suiting him perfectly, a beautiful sound to linger on the tongue.
The only thing better than Thire's name was Thire himself, standing there, close enough that Appo could reacquaint himself with every aspect of him, could watch as he breathed and stood and was gloriously Thire.
"Never mind," General Skywalker said. "You can have him."
"I thought you might see it my way," Fox said. "Feel free to swing by if you need him for anything."
Appo assumed he had missed some part of the discussion in his distraction.
"I missed you," Thire said abruptly. "I grew too easily accustomed to your presence, last time you were here. It's really not the same without you."
Appo's heart felt full. Of course Thire, in all his kindness, would seek to reassure Appo of his welcome, and yet at the same time Appo had no doubt about Thire's genuine sincerity.
"My life has always felt empty whenever you are gone," Appo said.
"Right, that’s it, I'm out," General Skywalker said, looking pained. "Have fun in the Coruscant Guard, Appo."
"I'll do my best, sir," Appo replies, barely noticing his General's (hasty?) departure. "Do you need me for anything in particular, Thire?"
"I need you," Thire confirmed, then coughed. "To, uh, answer some questions we've got that you can help with. But I thought you'd want to see your boys first."
"Nooooo," Sikes groaned as Appo immediately turned to look at them. "You ruined it!"
Appo's boys were idiots, perhaps. But they were alive idiots, and that was all that mattered.
"Maybe not on the platform," Fox suggested. “We should go back to Guard HQ. I have a ride, if you’ll come this way…oh, Neyo. I didn’t see you there.”
Neyo gave Fox a frosty look that seemed to suggest that Fox had made a horrible mistake in choosing to talk to him – which was a far more normal reaction for him.
Fox, also characteristically, ignored it. “We should talk later,” he told him. “About the Cody thing. You should come by HQ.”
Neyo didn’t disagree, which suggested agreement. He just turned his head away from Fox – and then caught sight of Thire.
Oddly enough, his reaction to this was to open his mouth and say: “Hello, Thire.”
“Fuck off, Neyo,” Thire said, very pleasantly.
For some reason this seemed to amuse Neyo tremendously.
“I’ll come by Guard HQ later,” he said to Thire, as if Thire wasn’t right there and possessed of ears that enabled him to hear what Fox had just said to Neyo. “We can catch up.”
“We can also not do that,” Thire suggested. “Ever.”
Neyo ignored him, nodded at Appo (why), and left.
“I didn’t know you knew Neyo,” Appo said to Thire, who made a face as if he’d bitten into something sour. “Do you not like him?”
“I like him just fine,” Thire said grumpily. “Come on, Fox’s right. A landing platform’s no place for anything.”
Fox sniggered and cheerfully harried them all until they were firmly on their way to Guard HQ. The LAAT/I they rode on was small, but with Thire and his boys around him, there was no place Appo wanted to be, no addition required to make anything more perfect than it already was.
Well, maybe one.
"What do you think of amending the list to add Slick?" Appo asked Thire. "And maybe Boba, though it's tricky since he's still a cadet. Cadets can be very changeable…"
"A subject for later discussion," Thire suggested. "In the meantime, we actually do need to get to the bottom of what you told Boba about Prime…no, not now! Wait until we're back in HQ proper. Somewhere with soundproofing."
They ended up in one of the basement filing rooms at Guard HQ, full of humming servers and data tapes and stacks of data pads, only it had also very clearly been fitted out for a party. There were decorations hanging off the ceiling and some of the computers, and several crates of something visibly alcoholic adorned a table filled with the better rations and even some natborn treats.
One of the signs temporarily pasted on the wall said Good job on Lola Sayu, which was very nice of them. Appo preferred the one that said Welcome to Coruscant Sarge/Boss!
"Not to forestall the surprise party we're obviously about to throw you or anything," Fox said dryly, "but Thire was right about the questions. If you don't mind…"
Appo certainly didn't mind. He'd be more than happy to assist – though surely there was no harm in exchanging a few pleasantries first. By this, Appo of course meant demanding a full report from all of his boys regarding their activities since they’d left his sight, while also checking them over for any injuries. He didn't expect any, given Thire's confirmation of their well-being, but it was good to verify for himself. For their part, his squads were more than happy to share their experiences (briefly exciting followed by mostly boring), and seemed eager to check Appo over in turn, chastising him about running off on dangerous missions without them (even though it had been pursuant to orders and therefore unavoidable).
Appo was content.
Fox, for his part, permitted what was increasingly less of an introduction and more of a diversion to go on for quite some time. It was only after Rikko, last to go, had finished his virtually identical rendition of their time in the safehouse that he cleared his throat.
"Now that we've gotten that out of the way," he said. "I want Appo to tell us about –"
"Appooooo!" Boba hollered as he pelted into the room. "You're back! And safe!"
Slick followed into the room after him at a more sedate pace, grinning when he saw his boys there as well.
"I am," Appo confirmed. It was a bit pointless, since it was obvious, but his squads had insisted on him repeating the statement out loud for them several times over. He didn't have the heart to deny Boba the same inexplicable pleasure in a statement of the obvious. "But Fox wants me to –"
"Tell us how the plan is going!" Boba interrupted. "Is it working? Are we getting money?"
"We are," Appo reassured him. "Very few of the programs I uploaded have been identified or stopped – even fewer than I had anticipated in even my more optimistic predictions – and they have proven as effective as hoped. Though I would be remiss in not acknowledging the tremendous contribution from Chopper's dead account transfer program. That alone accounts for a considerable chunk of our intake."
Chopper colored in evident delight. "Really, boss? You're not just saying that?"
"Not at all. I continued running the program you initiated, and it has been extremely successful, particularly at identifying doubled accounts.”
“What’s that?”
“Boba, don’t interrupt.”
“It’s fine,” Appo said. “That's when there are two different accounts seemingly grouped under a single project name, with both being funded while only one of them is actually being used."
"How do you know they're not both meant for that project?" Thire asked.
His genuine interest was flattering, so Appo elaborated: "Typically the second account has significant funds but zero uses listed for a long period of time, even when the first requires regular inputs or is associated with money-seeking behavior, such as entering grant applications. I’ve been assuming that they’re the result of some sort of error, since they don’t seem to make any sense otherwise. To give you an example, there's one instance where the primary, or real, account is being used by a scientist working on an obscure energy renewal project using some sort of crystals…"
"Oh, I remember that one," Chopper said. "Project Stardust, right? The second account there was starting to get ridiculous. There was probably enough in there to buy a new Venator or something! And what was this scientist guy even going to spend it on? Getting more boxes of dirt shipped to him to play around with?"
Appo didn't disagree – though Chopper's guess was incorrect. There had been enough in that account to buy several Venators.
"As fascinating as this is not," Fox said, rubbing his face in that distinctively Cody-ish fashion. "I don't think I was at all concerned about the plan, thank you, Boba. I’m confident that Appo has it completely under control…"
Appo appreciated Fox's faith in him. Though it did sometimes worry him that Fox seemed to repeatedly forget all the times he'd loudly reminded himself to verify more of Appo's work in the future.
Admittedly, in their few communications on the subject, Fox had always appeared more interested in the parts of the plan related to Mordagon and his hidden Guard, rather than the fundraising element. Perhaps that could be explained as the former simply having been more relevant to him at the time. Perhaps it wasn't him being cynical about their ultimate chances of success. Even if he’d have good reason to be –
Appo firmly squashed the intrusive thought he knew was coming. No, they hadn't verified that clones could be freed through money. No, they couldn’t really test the hypothesis at this point without revealing the overall secret of what they were doing. But money moved everything else in the galaxy for natborns, so it stood to reason that it would work. It was a sound plan. It was.
"…so what I really want to understand is why he told you that Prime was working for Count Dooku."
What sort of army are you having me train for you, anyway?
A disposable one.
Right.
That.
Boba's expression fell at once, and he turned and glared at Slick, who held up his hands.
"I had to tell him," he said. "I know you don't want to hear about it, but someone should."
Appo agreed. Reluctantly. He still didn't want to talk about it with anyone, not really – would be delighted to forget about it and never let it cross his mind again – but he knew he couldn't. It was relevant, so it had to be shared. It was his duty. And Appo always had his duty, even when he had nothing else.
Anyway, Fox was the right person to tell, surely. He was of high rank, trustworthy, extraordinarily capable…it was completely reasonable to tell him. Appo’s intense aversion to doing so was his own problem, not Fox’s.
"I don't see why we have to talk about it at all," Boba said mulishly.
"We have no choice but to talk about it," Fox said testily, "because, as it happens, I’m not currently in possession of a Jedi General capable of reading minds."
"Would that be an option?" Appo asked. It seemed unlikely, since none of the Generals he knew were capable of that skill and technically the Guard didn't even have a General of their own. Still, they were on the same planet as the Jedi Order, some Generals were said to possess minor telepathic powers, and the idea of never having to actually say anything out loud was a wholly seductive one…
"No. It most certainly is not. Appo, seriously?"
"Appo, Fox was exaggerating the typical abilities of a General, not proposing a genuine alternative," Thire interjected. Appo nodded: that made more sense. A pity, though. "Boba, let Fox have this. He needs it."
"This is the thing about Sarge getting Prime's money from Ventress, right?" Jester asked. Slick must have explained that situation to them at some point, though oddly enough it was Sikes that Jester glanced to as if for confirmation. "It all being mixed up with the Seppies and stuff."
"That's right," Slick said, though he looked tense. "There's no reason Ventress should've had Prime's money. No reason he should've been fighting the Jedi, no reason for him to be on Geonosis at all, much less too early…Fox has been looking into it."
"I didn't know that," Appo said.
"Fox needed something to focus on after the Senate treated us like trash," Thire explained. "He tried to fall back on his duty, duty to his men and to his post, but duty alone will only keep you alive. It's not enough to let you really live."
He was looking at Appo.
This was quite reasonable, since he was explaining the situation to Appo. It was also quite reasonable based on the fact that Appo was likely the only other person Thire knew that fit the criteria of someone who lived only for duty. Who survived each day, but did not live. Who kept on moving forward like a walking casualty, like a dead man they had reanimated with wires, a droid masquerading as human and never quite getting it right –
Appo felt horribly uncomfortable.
Horribly seen.
He didn't want to be seen. Not by anyone. Not even Thire, not really.
If they look at you, they will know. They will find out. What you've done, what you deserve –
Intrusive thought. Rejected.
"It only stands to reason that Appo's system of inventing new duties if he's out of the old ones doesn't work for everyone," Slick abruptly said, oddly loud as if he was trying to speak over another person's screaming. "Fox went with puzzles instead."
"It's an investigation, not a puzzle. Stop making it sound like I'm a bored cadet or something," Fox grumbled, and Thire finally stopped looking at Appo in order to roll his eyes at him. "Shut up, Thire, I'm not. This is important."
"I'm not denying that," Thire said. "But you must admit that you get bored faster than any clone I've ever met."
"…I don't know every clone you've ever met." Perhaps aware that this response was not altogether dignified, Fox coughed and changed the subject: "Anyway. Based on what Boba explained about him and Prime going to Geonosis to pick up Prime's payment from someone called Tyranus, who was the one who hired Prime for the Jedi in the first place, my working theory is that this Tyranus was either murdered by or suborned by either the Seppies or the Sith or some combination of both. Either way, they sent a spoofed message to lure Prime to Geonosis in the expectation that the other Generals would follow."
He jabbed a finger through the air, simulating the journey.
(Because this was Fox, the path he drew was accurate to the hyperspace routes one would need to take to get from Kamino to Geonosis. Some people were just ridiculous overachievers.)
"The timing matches," he continued, "since this all happens just after General Kenobi made it to Kamino to start pick up and deployment procedures for the clone army. Prime would've reasonably expected to get paid right around then, but General Kenobi can be, well -"
"Capable of being shockingly irritating for a being supposedly known for his diplomacy," Slick interjected.
That got snickers from the boys, all of whom had been on joint campaigns with General Kenobi's 212th. At least half of them had been in the vicinity for the infamous 'why are you eating bugs, my dear apprentice' debacle, too.
"Not like Prime was the easiest to get along with, either," Fox pointed out, sounding like he was trying to be fair (though he was still smirking). "He excelled in getting under even the calmest being's skin when he wanted to be annoying. No offense meant, Boba."
"None taken. He was pretty proud of that."
"So let's say Prime and Kenobi meet and don't like each other, or maybe even miss each other - say General Kenobi's off finalizing things with the Kaminoans. Suddenly Prime gets a message from his original contact, saying his money's waiting for him. But if he suddenly takes off in the wrong direction, General Kenobi would definitely follow him to figure out what went wrong."
"He tried to stop my dad's ship from going," Boba said. "Got into a fight with him and everything. He even tried to fly after us, the slagger. Dad nearly blew him up."
"There you go. General Kenobi doesn't get blown up because he's got more lives than a tooka, he makes it to Geonosis, figures out something's wrong and calls in the other Generals – which sends them all straight into the Seppies' trap." Fox shrugged. "It doesn’t feel like I’ve got it all right yet, but it at least just about works. Or at least it did, until you said something about Prime working for Dooku. What have you learned, Appo? Will you tell me?"
Yes, Appo supposed he should. Fox was already investigating Prime's behavior, so he really was the right person to tell - and someone besides Appo needed to know, because then it could be the responsibility of someone other than Appo to say something or do something about it.
He just had to say it.
"Back on Kamino," he said. "When I was -"
The words got stuck in his throat, sitting heavy on the back of his tongue as if they wanted to choke him from the inside out and force him back into silence.
No. No.
Just say it.
Appo cleared his throat.
"When I was being reintegrated," he said, and pretended not to notice the way Thire flinched and Fox froze. "Prime had just returned from a long and highly irritating trip. Before he returned me to the command class, he detoured briefly to his room, told me to wait, and made a holocall. The person he called was Count Dooku."
“That’s impossible!” Jester burst out, eyes wide. “He can’t – we were made for the Jedi to fight against the Separatists. Count Dooku’s a Seppie, the lead Seppie. How could Prime have been working for him?”
“He was a bounty hunter. Maybe…”
“No way. Prime wouldn’t have done that. Right, Boba?”
“I don’t know, stop asking me!”
“I mean, obviously the Kaminoans did have to add in extra loyalty to the mix, right? But still, Seppies..?”
“Sarge, if this all went down when you were back on Kamino, why didn’t you mention it earlier?” Lacey asked, mind already three steps ahead of all the rest as usual.
“I didn’t think of it,” Appo said honestly. “No names were exchanged, and the voice meant nothing to me at the time.”
“So what brought it up now?” Gus asked. “You just, what, thought of it?”
“Yes,” Appo said, and wondered if it was relevant that the memory had emerged during an unusually lucid dream.
Probably not. Anyway, he didn’t want to have to go into the content of the remaining part of the dream – nor admit that he’d been dreaming of an unusually sympathetic Slick, for that matter. He wasn’t on the list yet, after all.
“Your reintegration wasn’t that long before deployment,” Fox said with a frown. “Less than a year, certainly. And Prime wasn’t isolated on Kamino the way the other Cuy’val Dar were…wouldn’t he have noticed something off if his contact for a contract with the Jedi was Count Dooku? Wouldn’t he have expected to deal with a Jedi directly?”
“Count Dooku was a Jedi once,” Appo pointed out, and Fox faltered. “Wasn’t he? It was in one of the info packs.”
“No, I remember that too,” Fox said, and Thire nodded as well. “He was trained as a Jedi before he went over to the Sith.”
“So basically this is all just like Fox already said,” Slick said, crossing his arms. “Prime’s original contact is Tyranus, who gets suborned by the Sith. So what if Count Dooku is Tyranus? What does it matter?”
“It matters because of the timing,” Fox said. “Count Dooku was already the leader of the Separatist movement two years before Geonosis. If Prime’s talking with him just one year before that, then he’s talking with someone he knows to be a Seppie.”
“What are you saying?” Boba demanded. “You saying my dad’s a traitor or something?”
“He can’t be a traitor if he never actually swore loyalty to the Republic,” Lacey said, and everyone turned to stare at him. He shrugged. “What? He didn’t. Just because we were made for the Jedi to defend the Republic doesn’t mean Prime cared. Maybe he was dealing information or something. That’s fair play for a bounty hunter.”
Technically true. Unfortunately for Boba, also irrelevant.
“He wasn’t selling intel,” Appo said. “I don’t remember exactly what he said, I wasn’t – I wasn’t entirely paying attention at the time. But he wasn’t selling. He said –”
What had Prime said? It had all been so clear during the dream, each word exactly as he had originally heard it. Clones were engineered to have extremely good memory recall, a feature strengthened by their educational background in flash training; typically, perceiving something once would be enough to let them remember it.
Unfortunately, Appo at the time had not exactly been in optimal state for perceiving.
What had Prime said?
What sort of an army am I making for you?
“He wasn’t selling intel,” he said again. “He wasn’t – he still thought Dooku was involved. He said –”
What kind of an army am I training for you?
“He said –”
What kind of an army are you having us train for you, anyway?
That.
In Appo’s mind, he was there again, and he didn’t want to be. The peacekeepers, his decision, the gas clouding his brain. Prime coming to get him instead of letting him die. Prime coming to get him and cursing the whole walk back. Prime coming to get him because –
“He said the training was wrong,” Appo said. “Our training. Clones. Something wasn’t satisfactory. The Jedi…it wouldn’t work for them –”
The Jedi’s capacity for discernment isn’t what I would call –
The Jedi’s discerning judgment is –
It’s not about one clone. It’s the precedent being set that’s the problem.
“It was something about me,” Appo concluded. “I was – evidence of a problem, I think. He was trying to explain. He was telling Dooku that the Jedi would be bad commanders if whatever the problem was wasn’t fixed. It was something about military discipline – the chips needed to work, because mere discipline wouldn’t be sufficient –”
And didn’t that burn? To think that Appo was so great a disappointment that Prime would point to him, point him out to an enemy, and say that he was proof that clones couldn’t follow orders well enough to do the job required of them.
Collective punishment will cull the ranks faster than they can be replaced. The Jedi’s capacity for discerning judgment. How sure are you about those chips, anyway? If you rely just on military discipline, you’ll be out of luck –
They will work.
“Chips?” Fox asked. “What chips? Our identity chips?”
He touched the back of his wrist, the little dip where it didn’t hurt to cut.
“I don’t know,” Appo said miserably. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t listening.”
“Ident chips can’t fix anything,” Nis said. “Least of all a gap in military discipline. Sarge, are you sure he said chips? I mean – well – you know – you have your – thing –”
He awkwardly waved a hand upwards.
Appo had no idea what that meant.
“Your droid thing,” Chopper said. “The delusion, psychosis, whatever. No offense, boss, but…you sure you didn’t make a mistake?”
They will work.
“I’m sure,” Appo said. “He said chips. He may have meant the ident chips, I don’t know. Maybe there was some new mechanic in the works? Some way of tracking people?”
“I can’t see it,” Jester said. “I mean, we’ve all been around plenty, and I’ve never seen anything like that. No one uses chips like that.”
Collective punishment will -
“Slavers do.”
They all looked at Boba.
“Slave chips,” he said, cheeks pale and bloodless. “They get put in a slave’s head or their body or something. And if the slave tries to run away, the slaver can just blow them up. That’s why you have to give slaves money when you let them go, so they can get it removed or disabled before it kills them. You have to either buy them or give them money, or you’ve got to kill the slaver…Barriss didn’t want to do that, though. Not on Coruscant. So we gave them money instead.”
Appo had no idea what Boba was talking about.
“I feel like we’d know if we had slave chips,” Fox said, though he looked a little spooked – they all did, really. “But at the same time, I don’t like that Prime still thought Dooku was involved with the Kaminoans that late in the game. What if he messed with something?”
“Which one?” Thire asked. He was looking at Appo again, but not in a searing way that hurt. More like he wanted to come over to take his hand. “Prime or Dooku?”
“Not to discount Prime’s ability to blow something up – no pun or body horror intended – but I meant Dooku.”
What kind of an army am I making?
A disposable one.
“Maybe it’s like the buckets,” Sikes said, and now he looked nervous, too. “Remember, we were talking about that? About the risk of someone introducing a fault into the production line, some sort of backdoor, and sitting back and waiting for the right moment…”
“The right moment would have surely come already,” Thire objected. “The war’s been on for years. If the Seppies could blow us all up at any time, why wouldn’t they have done it already?”
“Yeah, that’s right. It doesn’t make sense.”
“I just can’t see it.”
“Maybe it was something else –”
“Maybe you made a mistake –”
“Maybe –”
Why do you always have to be you?
“I think Appo’s right,” Slick said abruptly.
Appo – who had already started to doubt himself – blinked owlishly at him.
“Sure, it doesn’t make sense,” Slick continued. “Maybe Appo didn’t have the context to understand what was being said. Maybe he wasn’t paying attention, maybe he got the parts of it he didn’t understand wrong, or maybe Prime meant what he said differently than the way he actually said it. But if Appo says that that’s what Prime said, then that’s what Prime said.”
Slick believed Appo.
He believed –
Collective punishment will cull the ranks faster than they can be replaced.
Maybe it hadn’t been Appo that was the problem.
Maybe it had been what had happened to Appo that was the problem.
“Prime asked Dooku what type of army he was supposed to be making for him,” Appo said, and suddenly it was easy to say. “‘What kind of an army are you having us train for you, anyway?’ He asked him that. And Dooku said –”
A disposable one.
“– a disposable one.”
“I don’t like that,” Thire said, and looked at Fox. “I don’t like that at all.”
“I don’t either,” Fox said. He was scowling. “It might be true, but saying it like that makes me think of the Senate, the Chancellor, and all those rotten slaggers that don’t give a single credit for any of us… When did Dooku leave the Jedi, anyway?”
“I have no idea,” Appo said. “Does it matter?”
“Tremendously,” Fox said. “I wouldn’t put it past the Jedi to let one of their number keep helping out on a project even after he officially quit the Order, given their limited numbers. But they probably wouldn’t have let him be in charge of it, not if he’d left. If we’re afraid that Dooku was trying to do something to mess with the GAR – mess with the clones – then we need to know how close he got. Was he involved just in hiring Prime? Was it more than that? Supervising, technical specs, training? What did he know, and when?”
“Oh, well, just that,” Thire said, rolling his eyes. “A few minor details, no problem. Easy as downtime. Seriously, Fox? How exactly do you suggest that we’re supposed to figure any of that out?”
“Maybe it’s written down somewhere,” Slick said, shrugging to make it clear that he was joking.
But actually –
“It is,” Appo said.
Everyone looked at him.
“I mean, it should be,” he clarified. “I don’t know for certain. But all of that information – key contacts, timelines, responsibilities – would typically be included in a standard vendor contract, especially a multiyear one. Why don’t we just check what the Jedi agreed on with the Kaminoans? I’m sure they have a copy of their contract in the Temple.”
Everyone continued to look at him.
Still looking.
Looking – and looking – and looking –
“This,” Fox said gravely, “is what makes Appo so dangerous. Can we switch to the party now? I think I need a drink.”
“Please,” Sikes said. “I need three.”
“Just three? Weak.”
“Hey, can I have some?” Boba asked. “My dad never let me.”
“Sure. Why not?”
“I don’t think you’re supposed to give cadets liquor. Aren’t they too young for it?”
“I’m older than all of you!”
“Well, in that case…”
“Someone put on some music,” Thire instructed, and came over to stand by Appo. “We can continue the serious discussion later. The other two commanders have agreed to cover for Fox and me the whole evening, and I want to have fun with you.”
Appo was surprised into a smile.
Only Thire, he thought to himself, feeling warm inside again. Only for Thire.
Had he thought earlier that he was as content as he could be, stuck on a LAAT/I with all his boys? He had been wrong: this was contentment.
Maybe more than just that.
Maybe this was happiness: Thire curled in by his side, ranting idly about the stupidity of Senate architecture and all contained within it. Slick starting some stupid philosophical argument with Fox for the hell of it. Nis and Sikes facing up against Jester and Gus in some sort of makeshift game that involved round gears and mallets to hit them around with, much to the delight of everyone watching them.
Boba getting tipsy remarkably fast (maybe due to his smaller size) and threatening to fight everyone in the room, even together, because he was going to be the best bounty hunter in the galaxy just like his dad had been.
Fox laughing, genuinely and without pain.
Rikko trying to climb one of the massive filing databanks, with Punch and Sketch alternatively cheering him on and trying to spot him in case he fell.
Boba being carted away over the shoulder of a laughing Slick, who took a bottle from what was apparently a discarded case of Senate liquor with him as recompense for missing the rest of the party.
Trivet starting to dance with one of the Guard.
At least three spontaneous card games starting up, especially once the rest of the off-duty Guard found their way into the room. Each one was treated as a spectator sport, and the subject of betting games with random items and traded rations as the stakes – Lacey, with a devilish grin, proceeded to act as master of ceremonies and the house besides; he was undoubtedly raking it in.
Towards the middle of the night General Skywalker showed up to ask for Appo – something about filing something discreetly? some sort of offer Appo had made? – but even that couldn’t put a dent into Appo’s good mood. Anyway, the General quickly got distracted by the party and the presence of “the good stuff”, and somehow he ended up sobbing on Fox’s shoulder about his failure of a love life as Fox stared at him with the morbid fascination of observing a hitherto unknown form of being.
Sikes and Chopper starting to sing something horribly off-key, and somehow convincing everyone to join in instead of throwing things at them to shut up.
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