Herein and Therein

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.

Laughter. Everyone drinking, everyone talking, everyone laughing.

Thire, staying by Appo’s side the entire time.

Falling asleep with his head on his shoulder. Thire, lying there, comfortable, safe –

Yes, Appo thought to himself, and took another drink of whatever delicious thing kept being filled up in his cup. This was good.

Stars burned from bright stubs through to exhausted red giants, species lived and died and evolved into new forms, buildings were erected completed and then crumbled into dust, the galaxy itself creakily completed another rotation upon its ancient axis –

And maybe, possibly, at some time following all of that, Fox might actually stop laughing.

He was such a karking asshole. Slick loved him so much he wanted to throw up about it.

He wasn’t alone, either, given the expression on Thire’s face every time he took a moment to glare in the off-holo direction where Fox was (presumably) located, having fallen off his chair and not yet gotten back onto it. Thire looked like he had a headache, or possibly wanted to commit a murder, or maybe both.

Slick was betting on both.

Either way, it was sucker’s odds that he was going to give in to the urge to kick Fox within minutes.

Appo was still trying to explain what in the galaxy he’d been thinking.

“…really the only reasonable target available. There aren’t many people who can draw the attention of the entire galaxy, not the way the Chancellor can. And of course it was of primary importance that this not be permitted to impact the war effort.”

Appo was, as always, perfectly sincere. Slick marveled.

Fox made a sound not unlike a wailing Wookie. Possibly one high on laughing gas.

Thire shifted briefly in his seat.

This resulted in a very brief “ow” before the laughter picked up again.

Called it.

Of course, Slick couldn’t blame either Fox or Thire for their reactions. He felt halfway like he was about to lose his mind over it, even more than he had already been over the sheer spectacle and scandal of it all. The Chancellor! The kriffing karking fucking Chancellor of the Galactic Senate! Chancellor Palpatine himself! Accused of embezzlement and corruption! Palpatine! Chancellor Palpatine! The – Slick was running out of adjectives.

Maybe Ventress had a point about too much cursing deteriorating the vocabulary.

Anyway.

All that was bad enough, but then Appo had just gone and casually admitted that he’d been the one responsible for framing said Chancellor in the same genial tone of mild disinterest that he usually used to explain that he’d shifted training schedules around to accommodate for an unexpected shipwide announcement.

Honestly, Appo was damn lucky that Slick had been so unnerved by the masses of people crowding into the main part of the Hall of Records that he’d retreated into the archives to do his filing in peace. That meant that his only audience was Slick and his seemingly never-ending pile of data tapes, all of which needed to be put into different places in the massive towering pillars of the record stacks.

Ugh.

Flimiswork.

“I see,” Thire said, with commendable restraint that he almost certainly wouldn’t have shown if it was anyone other than Appo speaking. Speaking as a sergeant, Slick could tell that he was itching to tear someone a new one. “Could you explain that a little more, please? How exactly does implicating the Chancellor not impact the war?”

That was a very good point.

Slick finished slotting in his current set of tapes and kicked the switch on the platform he was on to send himself zooming up several stories to the next stop on his filing circuit, then settled in to listen to what was undoubtedly going to be an explanation like no other.

"It's precisely because it is Chancellor Palpatine that there will be no serious impact," Appo explained earnestly. "Aside from the initial shock and some salacious interest, no one would seriously believe that someone as universally respected as him is genuinely corrupt.”

Thire made a very strange sound. Completely indescribable, and judging from Appo's expression, also indecipherable.

"The Chancellor," he said. "The Chancellor…"

Unfortunately he seemed incapable of continuing the thought.

“Yes, the Chancellor,” Appo said, now looking a little puzzled. “I have no doubt that he will rightfully deny all the allegations and insist on a proper investigation. Once one has commenced, it will be short work to discover that it’s all a load of nonsense. They will blame the sabotage on the Separatists and the war can then continue uninterrupted."

“The Chancellor,” Thire said. He seemed stuck on that for some reason. “The – he – it – I – ”

Fox had started making high pitched little hiccupping noises from the intensity of his laughter. Slick was starting to get minorly concerned about the integrity of his ribcage.

“What about him?” Appo asked. “Did I do something wrong?”

Thire opened and closed his mouth. He seemed to want to say something, but to be struggling with what.

“Technically yes,” Slick butted in. “I mean, Appo, aren’t you the one who’s always talking about the integrity of the record?”

“I didn’t impact the record.” Appo looked almost offended to have it be suggested. “All the evidence has been falsified at a higher operative level than that – documents and communications, poorly done back-dating and suspicious bank transfers and the like. Sufficient stand up to initial scrutiny, yes, but any forensic comparison to the record will reveal them to be forgeries at once. In short, unless the Chancellor has actually been committing embezzlement, he’s completely safe.”

“I think I’m going to die,” Fox’s faint voice floated out of the holocall, a tinny and wheezing sound to it lending more than usual credence to his claim. “Thire. Thire, I’m going to die.”

“You’re not going to die unless I kill you myself,” Thire said flatly. “Stop laughing.”

“I can’t. I can’t. Thire. Did you hear –”

“Yes I heard.”

“I’m not understanding the problem,” Appo said.

“I mean, other than the fact that you just admitted to framing the Chancellor?” Slick suggested. “That’s a pretty big problem.”

“But –”

“Yes, yes, I follow your logic.” Slick waved a hand dismissively. “But Appo, everyone in the Galactic Senate is corrupt! I can’t imagine Palpatine is any sort of exception, no matter how many natborns say nice things about him.”

Fox certainly didn’t have anything nice to say about him, though in fairness Fox generally didn’t have nice things to say about anyone who wasn’t a clone, and even less for anyone who worked in the Senate. Slick wouldn’t say that Fox complained about Palpatine notably more than the rest, and if anything the sheer depth of his dislike for the man seemed a little unwarranted given that Fox’d always been a little vague on what was actually wrong with him – in fact, even in Fox’s recent breakdown, he’d admitted that it had been Palpatine’s intervention with the Committee that had spared Fox in particular. Of course, Palpatine had also made the original suggestion that had put Fox in the wrong place at the wrong time, but that wasn't something he could have known…though on yet another hand, he had consented to the Committee’s decision to cull the Guard.

Never mind. Palpatine was clearly a waste of space.

“General Skywalker has always spoken very highly of him,” Appo said with a frown.

“Yeah, well, General Skywalker started the war out still in his nines,” Slick said, rolling his eyes. “Sure, he’s an ace fighter and an even better pilot, but if it’s not about hitting things, he doesn’t know his boots from his skidplate. Probably regularly mixes them up and tries to shove his foot right up his own –”

“Fox,” Thire interrupted, his voice extremely flat. "Stop hooting like some sort of demented snow owl and make yourself useful."

"I refuse. You can't make me. I outrank you."

Despite this proclamation, Fox shortly reappeared on the holocall, looking vaguely wild-eyed and a little punch-drunk, and also still sporadically giggling so hard he’d developed hiccups.

"Appo," he said, and paused for a hiccup-snort he couldn’t suppress. "Appo. A question. Can I – heh – can I ask – I want to know why.”

“Why?” Slick snorted. “Isn’t how a better question? You’re the one who’s always saying you’re just a sergeant in a single battalion, Appo. How’d you manage to create a trail of evidence good enough to convince not just one but multiple Coruscanti journalists that your allegations are legit?”

Appo blinked. “People tend to believe evidence that appears in multiple places,” he said. “And that’s easy enough. All records stored in hardfile are routinely sent for replication and back-up throughout the Galactic information network. An entry on Coruscant will quickly appear on Messida, Kolona, Scarif, and so forth.”

“Yeah? But how do you get –”

Slick paused.

He wasn’t actually stupid, no matter how he sometimes scolded himself.

He looked down at his hand, literally in the middle of putting one of the tapes into its proper place in the record stack, and had the sudden sensation as if he were holding a particularly poisonous viper instead of a datatape.

“Don’t worry,” Appo said. “All of that material would have already been filed several days back; this set is all normal BAU. Anyway, hand-filing is a particularly secure method of data transfer because there’s no forensic trail to it. That’s what gives it the false imprimatur of legitimacy.”

“All that is well and good, beyond the fact that we should probably be looking more closely at what you’re sending us to file,” Fox said dryly. “That wasn’t my question. My question was why.”

“Why what?” Slick asked.

“Why exactly Appo felt the need for a distraction so large it would make the entire galaxy look at it instead of him. I mean, Appo, what did you do?"

Thire abruptly looked stricken.

Appo didn’t look too great either.

“I did not…” he hesitated. “I didn’t harm the plan. In fact, I’ve been rather remiss in that respect, when I believed that – but in fact everyone is alive. My concerns were misplaced. I will return my attention to it at once.”

“That wasn’t the question,” Fox said. His firm, friendly-but-unyielding demeanor was somewhat undercut by the way his shoulders would still occasionally shake from suppressed laughter. “Listen, Appo, I’m not really concerned about what you did. I’m sure it’s not as bad as you think it is. I mean, no offense, Appo, but you’re – well –”

Thire put a hand over his face and left it there.

“Inclined to overthink things,” Fox concluded in a frankly brilliant bit of diplomacy that managed to avoid any of the usual complaints about Appo. Which was right, since Slick would have no choice but to fight anyone who tried to call Appo boring, or else any of the other stone-face dead-heart appellations that some of the more annoying 501st assholes liked to throw around.

Okay, sure, only Appo would have turned a plan to free clones from slavery into a flimsiwork project. But the point remained, anyone who had the balls to frame the Chancellor of the Republic as a distraction was certainly not boring.

“Either way, I just want to know the immediate impetus,” Fox concluded. “Why the need for a really big distraction?”

Appo winced. “It’s – complicated,” he said, in what was possibly the first time Slick had ever heard Appo hedge about anything. “Following the events at Lola Sayu, I was under an unusual amount of pressure and felt as though there was no other choice to preserve the plan.”

Slick waited for him to continue, but apparently Appo thought that was a satisfactory answer.

“Are you kidding?” he asked.

“Could you elaborate on that ‘pressure’ you mentioned?” Thire asked at the same time.

Appo paused.

After a moment, in the tone of someone tentatively trying out something that had previously worked and that he hoped would work again, he said: “I would prefer not to.”

“Then you don’t have to,” Thire said at once, and visibly kicked Fox when he opened his mouth to protest. “Fox, go take that personal call.”

“Personal call? We’re under that comm blackout – oooooh right that call. The personal call. The call I need to go make right now before that Marine manages to find the way out of HQ now that we’ve told him he can’t use his head on any more of our walls.”

He disappeared out of the frame a moment later.

“Wow,” Slick said. “Subtle. Veeeeery subtle. One might even say slick, except –”

“I know where you sleep,” Thire said, very pleasantly, and Slick shut the hell up. What was it to him if Fox felt like being blatantly obvious about the fact that he was going to call someone to get more info about what had happened to Appo on Lola Sayu? Totally irrelevant.

Just as it was irrelevant that the person he was probably calling was Cody.

Because obviously everyone knew that the Citadel and Lola Sayu had been retaken by General Skywalker and General Obi-Wan, and everyone also knew that whenever General Obi-Wan and the 212th went on high-risk danger missions, so too went Cody. Fox, of course, was best rivals-friends-somethings with Cody, and that meant that Cody would pick up his calls, even if it was through the medium of some random Marine. Cody would answer Fox’s questions. Cody would probably do that little half-smile little huff of amusement when he heard about the comm blackout, and he’d –

Slick turned and put a few more of the data tapes away. He had very important filing to do. Intense, serious, vitally important filing. Appo’s stupid shit needed to go into the right place, after all.

Meanwhile, on the holocall, Appo and Thire were staring into each other’s eyes.

“I’m very glad you spoke with Doom,” Thire was saying, looking unusually earnest.

“I appreciate him getting us in contact once more,” Appo said, equally serious. “I will need to reach out to him to convey my thanks.”

“Pass along mine as well.”

Romance was dead. Slick had probably filed away its corpse at some point today on Appo’s ruthless orders.

“Oh, though, speaking of Doom, I have some news he will find enjoyable,” Thire said. “Some of our Guard recently claimed to encounter a vigilante –”

“Hey, Appo!” Fox chirped in an artificially bright tone that in no way concealed how absolutely furious he was, coming back into the frame as he spoke. He was still holding another comm in his hand, presumably the unfortunate Marine’s. Just holding it, casually, like it was no big deal that he had probably just been talking to Cody on it – “What’s this I hear about some asshole naval officer threatening to report you to the Chancellor for malfeasance?”

“What,” Thire said.

Slick agreed with him entirely.

“Captain Tarkin had grounds to do so,” Appo said, like that wasn’t the craziest thing anyone could say about anything. “I failed to efficiently follow his orders. Also Bossk hit him on the head and I didn’t report it.”

“He threatened to report you for lack of efficiency?” Thire’s voice was slightly more shrill than usual. “To the Chancellor?”

“And the Senate. That was the reasoning behind the size of the required distraction,” Appo said apologetically. “Between those threats and my incorrect belief that Slick was dead, which rendered Rex’s internal investigation a significant threat to the plan, I felt at the time as though there was no other choice. However, in retrospect, I can understand that I was likely behaving irrationally and should have consulted with someone else before acting.”

Because it was Appo, and this was Thire, there was absolutely no hint of an unspoken but still intended I tried to call you and you didn’t answer. Appo probably hadn’t even thought it, or even had it cross his mind in the background where no one was ever watching.  

 On second thought, maybe Slick could see why Thire was so damn nervous about emptying his blaster pack here, even though there was no chance Appo would ever turn him down.

“This Tarkin bastard was going to murder your men,” Fox said. “He was going to order you to murder them.”

“No,” Appo said, and all of a sudden he did not look well at all. “Death on the battlefield is not murder.”

“Yeah? When it’s that level of karking unnecessary –”

“I don’t think now is an appropriate time to discuss philosophy,” Appo interrupted. “Or ever, in fact. It is not a conversational subject I enjoy. Excuse me, I need to end this call.”

Appo must be really upset, Slick reflected. Normally he’d at least come up with an excuse before blatantly hanging up on two commanders (one possible Marshal Commander).

Still - wow.

Framing the kriffing Chancellor.

Slick turned back to his tape filing after Thire cut the call (obviously he hadn't actually called to talk to Slick, since he'd already extracted every piece of useful information about Slick's underworld excursion over what Fox had delusionally termed a "nice friendly chat"), but he couldn't seem to focus. There was just too much going on in his head, no matter how many calming breathing exercises (Cody had picked them up from his General and passed them on) or murder visualizations (a Slick subconscious special, courtesy of a Ventress dream) he did.

The Chancellor.

And poor Appo, thinking it was necessary - and maybe it was, if that Captain Tarkin scrughead really meant it about reporting him. Reporting Appo, of all people! Slick couldn't even imagine it. Nor did he want to: Appo was critical to the plan, and it was about time he realized it…even if it required Appo thinking everyone else was dead to do so.

Ugh, that was worse. Slick had been convinced his boys were dead a few times back in the rat cage, and he wouldn't wish that hell on an enemy.

Poor, poor Appo…

Who had just framed the Chancellor for embezzlement.

Poor anyone who went up against Appo, really. Still, Fox's distaste aside, Appo was undoubtedly correct that absent any real evidence of corruption beyond the normal for the Senate, Chancellor Palpatine would be quickly able to shut down any allegations and emerge smelling sweet as - something sweet.

Yeah, data filing clearly wasn't cutting it.

Slick gave it up as a waste of time and went to go find Boba.

Technically Boba was supposed to be helping Slick out as part of some sort of "supervised work release rehabilitation program” that someone, probably Thorn, had invented to justify Boba being out of prison without the reassignment they'd given Slick. In reality, it had been mostly Slick doing the filing, with Boba huddled up somewhere obscure moping and decompressing from his interrogation.

Slick didn't blame him. Karking General Vos.

He’d been damn good, too damn good. Boba had gotten out of that first interview more or less intact, without having given up the goods, but it had been part skill and mostly luck. If Vos hadn't had to rush of when he did…

Well, he had. And though they’d all stayed in the prison for another day, tense as wire strings expecting him to return to pick up where he'd left off, he hadn't - and then, of course, news had started filtering in about what exactly had been of such magnitude to draw Vos away and they'd realized he wasn't going to come back for a while.

After all, investigating Boba on a rumor was one thing, but investigating the Chancellor…

Slick ran through some of his better profanities in his head as he waited for the little platform he was on to complete the circuit around the giant tower of data tapes. It was a very good thing that clones didn't get vertigo, given how the bottom of the tower wasn't even visible from where he was standing – not to mention a mystifying decision not to include any guardrails on the moving platform he was on. Did they want people to fall or something?

Or maybe the idea was to prevent break ins by forcing anyone unauthorized to have to climb the towers manually to get to the right filing section.

Slick entertained himself with ideas of such a break in as he made his way across to Significant Individual Tax Filings, which was located four towers over and required at least two switched platforms, six swipes of his permitted ID cards, and one call back to the main desk for extra authorization that caused fair bit of annoying wait time for no real reason. No one was actually going to break in here. What would they even be looking for? Some poor bastard's tax record?

Well, maybe the Chancellor…

Slick very seriously contemplated the merits of beating his head against one of the reams of data tapes crowded into the tower.

Luckily that was about when he reached his destination.

Boba was perched on another filing platform, legs dangling over the edge above the abyss and his comm active for a group holo - with some very familiar faces projected in blue light from on the other side, even putting aside the fact that it was all the same face.

"You really think there's something wrong with the buckets?" Boba asked.

"What else could it be?" Sikes replied practically. "We were all there, same time and place, and none of us heard the warning Second Sarge did. And the only difference between us, besides rank, is the fact that we were wearing full kit and he wasn't."

Slick stopped right where he was, feeling like he needed a moment to absorb the fact that Appo's boys apparently called him Second Sarge behind his back.

His chest felt stupid warm with it.

"We're willing to go out on a limb and say rank isn't the differentiating factor here," Jester said dryly. "After all, the Boss being different is more about him personally than it is his CC training. So it's got to be the kit, unless you're willing to buy into Lacey's crazy watches-too-many-holos theory -"

"Of course not. Nobody's ever a 'secret' anything, least of all something that requires lots of training."

"I'm given to understand one is born with the ability," Lacey said haughtily, then laughed. "Not that any of us were born."

"Plus I think someone else might've noticed by now," Gus said, rolling his eyes. "Like, say, any one of the Generals. But yeah, we're thinking it’s the buckets. They’re made by one of the megacorporations that everyone knows is playing both sides, after all. And just think of it! It'd be a great sabotage opportunity, wouldn't it? Sneak in a backdoor no one knows about and then just sit and wait until the right moment to cause maximum damage."

"That's not really the Seperatist MO, though."

"As far as we know it isn't. But what if they're working on two parallel tracks at once?"

"What, one blatant and obvious and one subtle and sneaky? Gus…"

"It's not impossible," Boba interrupted. "The Seperatists have more than one General. And if Fox's theories about them doing something to play tricks with my dad's money have any basis…"

He scowled.

"Never mind about that, it's classified. But it would be a lot more aligned with the sneaky-subtle than the blatant-obvious."

"And if they're sneaky once, they could be sneaky again," Chopper said. "We've got some ideas on how to look into it once we're done with this escort gig, which should be soon now. Cordé just got the all clear from the Senator…"

"Good," Slick said, unable to help himself. "Because there's a hell of a lot more datatape filing to be done. So if you think you're about to go haring off on a wild nuuna chase in your own time, think again."

"Aw, Sarge…!"

"I'm cutting you," Boba informed them smugly. "Go suffer."

He did cut the call then, and looked up at Slick as he stepped over to join Boba's platform. It was just barely big enough for two grown men, so with Boba still being pint sized it wasn't too uncomfortable for Slick to come sit next to him.

"You okay?" Slick asked, since Boba still looked a bit shaky.

"You don't mind me talking with them without you?" Boba asked in return, avoiding the question.

"Why would I?" Slick shrugged. "One of you has got to be a good influence on the other, even if I haven't figured out what way that'll go."

That got a bit of a smile, though not much.

"Besides, if you don't talk, how are you going to conspire against me?"

That got a better one.

"You're just paranoid," Boba said, not very convincingly. "Anyway, it's whatever. They're just bored. I…Slick, can I ask you something?"

"Anytime," Slick said, trying to cover up his immediate concern. Boba wasn't normally the type to ask for things. Normally he was confident, even arrogant. It covered up a certain level of insecurity, of course, but who wasn't horribly insecure at age six? It was a terrible age to be, all growing pains and emotional angst and social awkwardness, and even sometimes spots, and Boba with his weird aging had to do it for twice as long as any normal clone. Yet despite all that, Boba's usual confidence wasn't just something he used a cover; it was genuinely based on a bedrock (if perhaps slightly exaggerated) faith in his own excellent capabilities.

This, though…Boba had really been knocked off balance, persistently, in a way that exceeded Slick's original estimation. He seemed nervous, even anxious. He seemed uncertain, and severely so, and Slick was at a total loss about how to help him.

None of his boys had had this sort of reaction, not even to the really bad trainings. Of course, neither they nor he had had to endure the horrors Fox sometimes casually mentioned as being part of the command course, which might be a better source of comparison. Should he go get Fox to talk to Boba? Or even Appo, who was also a CC - which had been an unpleasant realization, actually, and it still bothered Slick to think of sensitive Appo being subjected to that sort of thing – but maybe he would be better able to help..?

"Is my dad dead?"

Slick blinked.

"You mean Prime?" he asked, baffled. "Yes. He's definitely dead. I saw him without a head, remember? So did you. We both saw it."

"We both saw it," Boba repeated. He seemed more distressed, though, rather than less. "That's right. We both saw it, so there's no way it didn't happen. And there's no way he could've faked it - and he wouldn't have, anyway. He wouldn't have tricked me like that."

"Prime would have gladly tricked the whole galaxy, but he wouldn't have tricked you," Slick said with probably unwarranted confidence. He'd never actually met the man alive, so he really wasn't the person to offer such concrete reassurances…and yet he was absolutely if absurdly convinced that he was right. "You were his boy, remember? The only one he had. He wanted you bad enough to make you part of his price. If someone told him he could have all his dreams but had to give you up for them, I'd bet he wouldn't have taken it."

Boba made a choked sound, and rubbed his sleeve over his eyes.

"Maybe," he said, voice thick with emotion. "Maybe, maybe not. He was pretty set on his dreams – but what he dreamed was…oh, it doesn't matter. I had to convince myself he wasn't, you know. For Vos."

Slick wasn't surprised that the interrogation was what this was all about. But somehow he hadn't expected it to be this, either, and he felt horribly helpless, unable to think of anything useful to do or say to make Boba feel better.

"My dad told me that there's only one way to trick a spy," Boba said. "And that's to tell the truth. Or at least the truth as you know it. So if you can convince yourself to believe something, then you can convince them, too. So I did. I told myself that my dad was alive, and I made myself believe it. The worst part was that it wasn't even that hard…"

"You miss him," Slick pointed out. "And you're very capable. I mean, you actually convinced yourself well enough to lie successfully. I don't know if I could've done something like that."

Boba gave a watery snort. "Of course not," he said, and if he hadn't been so upset it might have come off as scathing. "You go crazy every time you think of something happening to your boys."

"And you," Slick pointed out. "Did I tell you I punched a Mandalorian because I was so worried about you?"

"You did what?!"

"He was wearing full kit, too. It was pretty stupid."

Boba burst out laughing. Or possibly crying. It was a bit hard to tell, and only got harder when he turned and buried his face into Slick's side, which did nothing to hide the way his shoulders were shaking.

Lacking any better ideas, Slick draped an arm over him. Not patting him or anything like that, nothing Boba might take as an insult, but just – trying to remind him that he wasn’t alone.

“He’s dead,” Boba mumbled into Slick’s shirt. “He’s really dead. I made myself think he wasn’t, and now it feels like I’m losing him all over again.”

Yeah, Slick had no idea what to say or do. It felt like shit.

“There’s worse, though. Even worse. Because sometimes I wonder if what I miss isn’t just my dad. If maybe what I miss is more like a picture I’ve built up in my head, a picture of what I think he should be like – should’ve been like. Because he didn’t really care about freedom, did he? My dad. He didn’t – he didn’t care.”

“It doesn’t seem to have been high on his list of priorities,” Slick hedged, because your dad was personally responsible for signing all of us up for this shit was probably not helpful right now. “That doesn’t necessarily mean he didn’t care about it at all.”

“No. But it does mean that I – that I – that I wanted –”

Boba’s voice was sounding increasingly fragile. He was getting worse, not better.

Slick needed to say something. Knock him out of the self-blame loop, somehow. Show him that it wasn’t his fault, that it was okay, that he didn’t need to feel like he’d done something wrong just by growing close to someone who wasn’t his dad even if they shared the same face –

“You can call me Sarge if you want,” he blurted out. “Uh. I mean, you don’t have to. Just, you know. If you wanted.”

Boba pulled away and stared at him.

“…I knew you’d think that was stupid and I still went ahead and said it anyway,” Slick said, and wracked his brain for anything else. “Hey, do you happen to know any commando clones that go on unsanctioned missions sometimes? Because one of them said something about you not getting your head stuck in a toilet and I wasn’t sure if that was metaphorical or literal –”

“When did you meet a Null?!” Boba exclaimed. “Which one – no, wait, never mind, it’s not important. Stay away from them, they’re trouble…not important. No. Let’s go back to what you were saying, that was important – wait, what were they even doing? You said it was a mission? Unsanctioned?”

“Something about hunting down a shabuir who was pretending to be their Kal’buir?”

“Oh great.” Boba pressed his hand to his head. “Did you tell Appo?”

“No? Why would Appo care – wait, actually, speaking of Appo, you will not believe what he apparently did while we weren’t around to stop him –”

“He’d care because he’s the shabuir in question! Not that Appo’s a shabuir. Appo’s great. But he’s pretending to be Skirata, remember? Kal Skirata?”

Well, shit.

In Slick’s defense – “They said Kal’buir, not Kal!”

“I think I need to teach you Mando’a,” Boba said, then wrinkled his nose. “I don’t know Mando’a! Or, well, not much, anyway. I know things like buir and stuff. But Dad wasn’t really into talking about it, not the way some of the others were.”

Slick blinked. It had never occurred to him that Boba wouldn’t know Mando’a, instead of just choosing not to use it. He’d somewhere gotten the impression that knowing Mando’a was an important part of being a Mandalorian.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” Boba said emphatically, as if he could turn it into truth just by willing it to be. “We need to tell Appo. I’ll call him now. Did you say he did something weird again? Was it flimsiwork related?”

“So weird,” Slick said, relieved to finally be able to share the news. “And yes, technically flimsiwork related, but so much weirder than – wait, you said you were calling him? How can you be calling him? There’s a comm blackout, isn’t there?”

Boba rolled his eyes at him. “Uh, secret datapad, remember? The one we use for the Mordagon stuff?” He picked up the datapad that had been sitting next to him the whole time and started jabbing at it. “Appo brought this with him from the 501st, so it’s not imprinted with Guard codes. No one will be able to trace a call made by this back to the Guard, so there’s no violation.”

“Yeah, but that datapad doesn’t make external calls, remember?” Slick objected. “It’s locked down. We have to set up a call time and have them call us.”

“It was locked down,” Boba said primly. “I got it fixed while I was outside. Now shut up, he’s on the line.”

Appo’s image was indeed flickering into appearance above the datapad.

Which, good. That meant he could tell Boba about the fact that his ‘weird flimsiwork thing’ was actually framing the karking Chancellor, a piece of news so utterly ridiculous that it would surely divert Boba from any and all Prime-related angst.

“Hi, Appo,” Slick said, abruptly gleeful again. This was going to be so much fun. “I was just about to update Boba on the news, but since you’re here, you can tell him yourself. Any other planet-shattering revelations you’ve thought of since we last spoke?”

Appo blinked owlishly at him.

“Oh,” he said. “You mean about how Prime was working for Count Dooku?”