#purgetroopercody

Ideally, if the book hadn't included Kal Skirata in the way it did, your presentation here would have been just about perfect. I also think it makes the most sense! A thousand small flaws in the wall that bring it all toppling down, and it offers significant room for growth and the spotlight to just about everyone. It's wonderful. There is definitely plenty there that could be used to assign everyone a whole crack of their own, from what’s been mentioned previously about supply lines, to the fact they have two ex-government employees hanging around who are probably listed as kidnapped/jail-broken, the fact Jilka never actually volunteered to be there, the fact Kyrimorut is just going to keep getting bigger and bigger and the garrison is right there, Kom’rk and Jaing’s unease with being locked out leading to them making a few mistakes when they try to get back in, someone on Mandalore rats them out because Kal trusted the wrong person just because they wore the same kind of helmet he did, Isabet Reau comes back with a Vengeance, one of the deserters isn’t actually (and they are pissed everyone here took off and left all their brothers behind), Rede’s whole...deal.

There’s plenty to work with!

Since Kal Skirata as he is does exist, however, I'm sorry to say that what you said here - you're not just pointing at *one person* and saying "yeah you're the one who fucked this whole thing, get out." - is actually kind of what I do want XD and also the thing that would absolutely have never happened.

The thing is, is that we know the other characters are already aware of their own flaws, willing to work to overcome them, and willing to own up when they fuck up. This is established in the story, with one glaring exception that changes the whole game. The only one who doesn't have to eat their own shit in the whole series in a way that could actually get them called out on their nonsense in a not-fun way is Kal.

And, I mean, sure, the whole thing with Darman, right? Except I refuse to actually accept that as a scenario where Kal "owned up to his mistakes". To me, it was a more extreme example of that thing he does where he "owns up" by blurting out shit like "it's because I'm such a terrible father" which is NOT an apology, or even a sincere admission of fault. It has never been.

Okay, hear me out.

The only one who left that confrontation feeling better was Kal. Kal got what he wanted, which was catharsis for his guilty feelings, and all without even having to admit to every aspect of his sins (what a bargain!). He walked out of there satisfied and vindicated that he was Doing Better By His Boys, even as he left Darman - the one he harmed, the one he was supposedly apologizing to, the one whose benefit this conversation was supposedly for - rattled and horrified and so guilty he immediately tried to bury all the misgivings he still had rather than deal with them. Darman got nothing from that conversation. It gave him zero closure, because Kal didn't actually answer him.

And the beating Kal was so determined to let Darman have? Who was that actually for? Who left that interaction with some degree of closure? Because it sure as hell wasn’t Darman. Kal decided letting Darman hurt him was a good way to pay his dues (which is tremendously fucked up in its own ways, but we already know Kal doesn’t have the healthiest way of conceptulatizing his relationships), and he barred intervention from onlookers deliberately so he could go about paying them with no regard for how it was going to impact Darman.

Look, he basically used Darman as a tool to salve his own guilty conscience at the same time he was supposedly meant to be doing better by him. As much as I like seeing Kal finally get punched in the face, Kal wanted it too much, and it hurt Darman too much, because Darman's not the kind of man who would ever be satisfied or okay with harming the people he loves out of anger for any reason. He knows it’s unacceptable, and he spends the rest of the series twisting himself up in knots every time he thinks of it, and too guilty to ever hold Kal accountable for anything again, even for things Kal deserves. That’s not healthy.

So that wasn't Kal owning up to his mistakes. That was Kal wanting to get on with paying his ticket so he could go right back to reckless driving.

Anyway.

So what I would really like to see if I have a choice, is a scenario where Kal actually has to pay up for real, when it's not easy for him, when it’s not on his terms, when it doesn't make him feel better. Where things are fucked up so spectacularly that there is no wiggling out of accepting his fair share of the blame, and he's not going to get pats on the head to make it all better afterward.

And since Kal in the story is so big on hobbling everyone around him by limiting their information and running everything through himself and hoarding secrets and refusing to clearly relay his intentions so people can get on with things without his direct input, so insecure that he has to make himself the indispensable lynch-pin to the family and coincidentally the single point of failure...

Let him.

Let him be that.

And then when that single point of failure that is himself, does, in fact fail, when everything falls apart around his ears, when he's gotten his own people killed in a way that can't be handwaved away, when they're scattered and hurting and when he has fucked up, have him have to eat that. Have his mistake be so awful no one's willing to cut him slack anymore. Have it be so awful there's no way he can make it so the people he harmed have to be the ones reassuring him. Strand him with Vau in the aftermath, maybe, and just him, and cut off from everyone he's got in an emotional stranglehold who might feel obligated to soothe him. Have him have to live with his faults dripping out of Vau's mouth and no way to hide.

Strand the clan in bits and pieces but primarily and most importantly without Kal, and have it be a long time before they're able to re-establish communication with him. Give them long enough to realize exactly what Kal did, not just the mistakes that broke their home, but the damage across a lifetime. Give them time to really feel it.

In this case, you can have characters wounded, or cut off from their usual support systems. Let the Nulls be shaken and scattered, have their usual frequencies, their unusual frequencies, be unreliable, tapped, have them not know how deeply they've been had, and have it take a hell of a lot of time before they can get their feet back under them and regroup. Let them be scattered, but Laseema know how to survive losing everything, how to live with nothing, dragging Kom'rk along behind her. Jilka snapping at a destroyed Fi because she's stressed, okay, and not a soft person by nature, and Fi almost feels like he's home. (Let Fi still have Atin, though, and Corr - don't leave him alone again.) Prudii hurt and alone with a wounded brother Null - A'den maybe, or Jaing, and they have never been hurt this badly before - who won't wake up, sick with terror and fear, getting them somewhere safe but not trusting the hospitals, not knowing who to call, who to trust, for the first time in his life not knowing what to do. But Ny is there too, or Parja, or both, and she has an idea. On and on like that. Ordo alone, maybe, and how that wrecks him - and then how he figures out how to keep going anyway. Solve the problem. Get his clan back. Piece by piece.

Have them have to rely on each other. Trust themselves. Solve each others' problems. Have them build those bonds together and be stronger for it. And when Kal's brought back into the fold in what feels like a lifetime later for all of them, have them not need him.

He stopped by a door that read, written in marker on a strip of spacer’s tape, “3rd Systems Army Engineering—General Ombo.”

“Did the credits run out when it came time to make signs?” Jaicente asked no one in particular.

Looper paused, a hand on the control panel, and it was the change in his scent—shifting cautiously to playfulness—that drew Jaicente’s attention. “Engineers have to make their own, sir,” he said with a tentative smile.

Jaicente looked to him in surprise, feeling a smile of his own take shape. “Do they, now.”

“That’s what I’ve heard.” Looper opened the door, cutting off anymore conversation, and ushered him in.

Jaicente hadn’t been sure what to expect, never having been in a general’s office before. It was disappointingly like any other office in the midst of a move: unfinished shelves stood against one wall, a massive flimsy map of the galaxy in realtime covered another, and tucked in the corner was a secretary’s desk, occupied by a clone in gray who was surrounded by a tangle of cords and haphazard office supplies.

“I’ll be with you in a minute,” he said, putting a hand over his headset mic to address them.

Looper made a silent gesture in reply, and the secretary went back to his holocall.

“I get what you’re saying, sir, but the fact is no one on this wing has any extra chairs,” he said to a portly gran, whose hologram stood, slightly askew, atop a stack of datapads.

The gran’s reply was inaudible, the sound pickups routed through the headset. “No—no, that’s not what I said. I said extra chairs, as in, chairs for people to sit in when they’re waiting to meet someone, or chairs to sit in while meeting someone. Not everyone in this building will be sitting behind a desk.”

Jaicente looked around, and indeed, there weren’t any chairs to be seen, save for the one the secretary was sitting in.

“I have the requisition forms in front of me right now, I can send them as soon as you’re ready.”

There was another door just beyond his desk, marked “private.” Two other voices rose and fell behind it, not loud enough to parse the words, but neither sounding pleased. Jaicente scented clone, twi’lek, and overbrewed caf.

“Thank you,” the secretary said. “You said by Taungsday? Great, we’ll be expecting them. You have a good one.” He signed off and gave them a polite smile. “How can I help you?”

Jaicente stepped forward. “My name is Jaicente Alhurayrah, I’m here to see Master Ombo.”

The secretary’s polite curiosity vanished in understanding. “Oh, you’re the new junior gen!”

“I—yes?”

“Let me just—” He hit a comms panel. “General, we’ve got Knight Alhurayrah here to see you.”

A gruff male voice answered. “Tell him I’ll be a few more minutes.” “Yes, sir.” He turned to Jaicente. “Did you catch that?”

Jaicente nodded. “I did, yes.”

“Awesome. Yeah, he’s in a meeting with a couple ARCs, they came screaming in from the Druess Sector in some kind of rush.” His expression gave frank indication of the severity and juiciness of the gossip. “Not good news, they’ve been at it for almost two hours.”

It was barely 0600; Jaicente couldn’t imagine the schedule Master Ombo kept. Over the secretary’s shoulder, someone had slapped a poster on the wall of a man—a clone?—in uniform, his face half obscured, with a gloved finger to his lips. It read: “Loose lips sink ships.”

 “I’d offer a chair, but as you’ve probably gathered, we don’t have any.” 

“That’s quite alright,” Jaicente replied. “I don’t mind standing.”

“Then you’ve come to the right place,” the secretary said with a wry grin, before turning his attention to Looper. “Are you Signal? You look Signal.”

Looper tapped out a rhythm on his breastplate in lieu of words.

“Ha!” The secretary tapped out a rhythm on the desk in reply. “I’m Chase.”

“Looper.”

“They’re exiling you to Engineering too, huh?”

“Wherever the GAR has need.” The words weren’t so different from what he’d said to Jaicente only a handful of minutes earlier, in the speeder; his tone, however, was far more dry.

“I feel that in my bones. It’s not so bad here, though—most commsjockeys I’ve talked to say Engineering is where it’s at. A good combat-to-chatter ratio.”

“You don’t see it direct?”

“Nah, I spend most of my time riding a desk, these days. We just moved in last week, you can probably tell.” He gestured to the chaos surrounding his desk. “We were split between Navy HQ and the Old Senate building, but the War Office finally decided enough was enough and that construction was done whether it was or not. The J-boys and stripers, those poor bastards, they’re still stuck squatting in an active construction zone. No idea why that is. None. Really a shame. Someone must have karked up the floor assignments.”

Looper snorted. “Criminal.”

“That’s what I thought! Good thing they're right there to investigate.”

Jaicente watched the byplay in a state of bemusement. Despite never having met each other before, the two clones had established a rapport in an eyeblink that Jaicente could only envy. Relegating it to “a clone thing” seemed unfair, but their scents mingled like old friends, and it seemed very much a clone thing.

The office door opened with an angry hiss, and a pair of clones trooped out, their armor noticeably different from Looper’s. Their faceplates were different: the visor shaped into more of an eye-shape than Looper’s T, and the smell of the plastoid composite was different. More noticeably, however, they had pauldrons over each shoulder and heavy, blastweave half-kilts hooked to their belts. Their faces were hidden behind their helmets, but Jaicente felt their eyes on him.

He felt naked in comparison. All of his usual methods of identifying others—the Force, scent, even sight—were stripped from him.

“Alhurayrah,” a third voice barked, and Jaicente jerked away to see who had addressed him.

A massive blue twi’lek stood in the door. His lekku were looped over his shoulders, and they were tattooed with intricate geometric designs. He wore the robes of a Jedi. “Master Ombo?” Jaicente asked.

“That’s right.” He pointed to the strange clones. “I’ll see you two at back here at 0900 hours.”

“Yes, sir,” one of them said, then they both saluted and trooped out of the office. Jaicente caught the tail-end of Chase’s eyeroll as he turned back to Master Ombo.

“Chase, do you have his paperwork?”

“Yes, sir, it’s right here.” He patted a datapad sat on the edge of his desk.

“Hold on to it for just a little longer. And tell anyone who asks that I’m out of the office, but that I’ll be back by 0830 at the latest.”

“Taking him out to the pit for a confab?”

Ombo slammed a meaty hand down on Chase’s desk, but only Jaicente jumped. “One day I’ll figure out how you learn my secrets, Commander, and that’ll be a dark day for you.”

Chase just grinned. “Yes, sir. Have fun.”

“Alhurayrah, follow me.” He paused, looking at Looper. “You’re the Signal major we seconded at the last minute, right?”

“Yes, sir. Looper, 114th Signal.”

“That’s Looper, 83rd Engineering, now. You think you can handle a regimental admin department?”

Looper didn’t even look phased. “My little brothers can handle an admin department, sir.”

Ombo barked a laugh. “I suppose they could. You come with me, too.”

He led them out into the hall, and as he passed through the general’s wake, Jaicente smelled caf, the strong, piney scent of resin gum, and very faintly, clinging to the general’s clothes, cigarra smoke.

“So, Alhurayrah,” Ombo said as he started down the hall, trailing them behind like [ducklings]. “You’re Consular?”

“Yes, sir. I’m in training to be an ambassador.”

“Good. We need that. I’m a Guardian myself; all this make-nice has been a hard lesson to learn.” “Did you choose Engineering?” Jaicente asked, lengthening his stride to match pace.

“No, it was assigned to me, same as you.” He pointed down a side corridor. “This way.”

He brought them down clearly disused corridors, the glowpanels spaced farther and farther apart until they spent more time walking in shadow than light. Stray mouse droids were the only occupants to be seen. Chase’s choice of words: “take them to the pit,” echoed in Jaicente’s mind’s ear.

“This wing is supposedly going to be for Kyala and the 8th System Engineers, but they’re in the middle of a campaign gone south, so they haven’t been able to clear out of RNHQ,” Ombo said. “I’ll take advantage of their absence while I can.”

Suddenly, the walls fell away. An atrium stood in the empty space beyond, an oasis of green in the midst of heavy permacrete.

“Looper, wait here, please. Me and the new general have Jedi shop talk to go over.”

“Yes, sir.” Looper took up a watchful stance by the mouth of the corridor, his eyes roaming over the plants.

Jaicente followed Master Ombo into the heart of the atrium, where a waterfall poured down a bare ferrocrete wall into a pool surrounded by ferns and palms. Early morning sunlight streamed against the transparisteel ceiling, shining warm and golden over the high corners of the far wall, but Jaicente and Master Ombo stood in shadow.

“I don’t know what possessed the architects to build something like this in this sterile shithole of a box, but I’m glad they did,” Ombo said, looking up and letting out a deep sigh. Jaicente sensed him release his stress and worry into the Force, and he followed suit, taking the opportunity to vent his nerves.

Ombo reached into one of his belt pouches, pulled out a lump of aharb gum, and chewed on it contemplatively. “So,” he said, looking Jaicente up and down. “Why Consular?”

Jaicente took a breath and composed himself. “I like people,” he said simply. “And I don’t care for violent methods of reconciliation.”

“Hm. You didn’t take the Right of Denial?”

“I… considered it.” “Why didn’t you go through with it?”

Jaicente clasped his hands behind his back. “The climate in the Temple is becoming increasingly hostile to those who publicly question the Council.” He chose his words carefully. “Not through any action of the Council’s, but there are those in support of the war that… do not take kindly to those who question its rightness.”

Ombo grunted. “That’s not good to hear.”

Jaicente wondered how long it had been, since Master Ombo had last been to the Temple. “The war is leaving its marks,” he said as neutrally as he could.

“Spoken like a politician. So, Knight Alhurayrah, the Council has seen fit to give you, a borderline conscientious objector, a command. Why should I let you?”

Jaicente blinked at him, set on his back foot. “Well—you shouldn’t.”

Ombo’s gaze sharpened. “Why not?”

“I’m… not a soldier.” Jaicente spread his hands apologetically. “I don’t know the first thing about leading an army, unless it’s an army of aides. And even then it’s still only the first thing, not the second, or third, or… or twenty-ninth. And to be perfectly honest, I’d much rather go back to the Temple than anywhere near a front.”

Ombo snorted. “A fair point. But these things can be learned.”

“With respect, General, but on-the-job training in the middle of a war sounds like a recipe for bloodshed.”

“Eh, your clones will look out for themselves, they’re a capable lot. And the benefits of having a Jedi in the field outweigh the risks.” He waved aside Jaicente’s alarm with a meaty hand. “I understand where you’re coming from, and if they’d tried to assign you to an infantry battalion, I’d have agreed. But you, Knight Alhurayrah, are not going to lead a humdrum infantry battalion.”

Jaicente did his best to release his budding terror into the Force. “A ‘special operations unit’?”

“I didn’t name it. But yeah. Your job will be to play nice with local leaders to get what the GAR wants from them. You build them a dam, they give us money. You build them a school, they give us loyalty to the Republic.”

“I repair their canal system, they give us orbital rights to build a medcenter.”

“Good, you read your brief. Not all newly-minted generals do.”

Jaicente left that frankly horrifying thought to the side. “Master Ombo, I don’t want to seem ungracious, but why do you need me for this? The 83rd already has a commander.”

“Yes. Commander Maia.” A muscle flexed in Ombo’s jaw. “He’s a brilliant engineer and a superlative commander, and that’s why I haven’t transferred him.” Ombo gave Jaicente a look out of the corner of his eye. “But he’s a right pain in the ass to work with. Passive-aggressive, arrogant—he’s better at pissing off planetary leaders than making them happy. It’s becoming a problem.”

Jaicente had thought his heart had already sunk to its lowest ebb, but it seemed determined to prove him wrong. “I... see.”

“Not to put too fine a point on it, the 83rd is important enough to the war effort that it’s worth putting a Jedi down on the ground to keep Maia in line. I’ve been doing my best, but I have a whole planetary army to run; I don’t have time to hold one CC’s hand.”

“So I’m to be a glorified babysitter.”

“That’s what all officers are, when it comes down to it,” Ombo said with a snort. “Should be old hat for you, anyway; I guarantee clones are easier to work with than politicians, even the squirrelly ones.”

Jaicente tried not to feel like a vulptex caught in a trap. “Thank you, Master. I’ll do my best.” He took a deep breath and released his disquiet into the Force. “What else should I know?”

Ombo shifted his weight. Jaicente was reminded once again just how large a man he was; he wasn’t accustomed to people who could look him in the eye. “In the interest of being absolutely square with you,” Ombo began, “because it <i>is</i> going to affect your work.” He took a solid half dozen chomps of his gum before resuming. “You’re getting the command, that’s already been decided, but I do not believe it’s one of the Council’s better decisions.”

The galaxy stilled around Jaicente. “Sir?”

Ombo sighed, looking suddenly tired. “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll lay it out plain. In the war of public opinion, appearance is all. There is no room for hurt feelings. I would have preferred anyone other than yourself for this position, because wherever you go, the locals will see a Zygerrian leading an army of genegineered soldiers, and they’ll think what they’ll think.”

The fur raised down Jaicente’s spine. It took him a heartbeat to muster the words through his shock. “I’m not a slaver.”

“Then you’ll have to make them believe it. Treat your men with the utmost respect, and be an exemplary Jedi. Do that, and we’ll have no problems.”

Jaicente took a step back, his whole body prickling, but decorum won out. He ended up beside the pool, staring into his reflection and breathing deeply, willing his emotions into the Force. 

“I understand what it is, to be judged on appearance alone,” Ombo said. Perhaps he did; nothing kind was ever said about twi’lek men.

Jaicente restrained his biting first reply. Then his second. Then he waited until he could trust his voice not to waver. He caught sight of Looper out of the corner of his eye, a pale ghost in the half-light of the corridor, and his throat constricted once more. He swallowed through it. “I would never risk the lives of the men under my command.”

“It’s a war, Knight Alhurayrah,” Ombo said, his voice sad. “You’ll have to.”

Jaicente spun on him, unbecoming anger boiling in his veins, but Ombo just looked tired. He couldn’t have been more than forty standard, but in that moment he looked all of sixty. “Every argument you have about the injustice of it, believe me, I’ve already heard.”

All at once, Jaicente’s anger waned, and he could master it. It left him cold and tired, as well. “Alright,” he said, even though it very much wasn't. “It's nothing more than I expected, so let's just… carry on.”

General Ombo nodded, his lekku shifting. “Nuts and bolts, then.” He pulled out a handheld holoproj, and a blue ghost of a capital ship materialized over his palm. “This is your flagship, the Unconquered. It's an Acclamator-class assault ship, crew of 700, mostly non-clones, and a payload of [amount] megatons—not including the engineering dets you'll also be carrying. Sixteen thousand clones at peak operating numbers, which breaks down to twenty battalions across various specialties; more than enough to get done whatever you need.” He pushed a button and the view zoomed out to include three other ships. “Your counterpart in the Navy is Admiral Suzah Ngo; she’ll ride with you, and you’ll need to work closely with her for fleet ops. You do not go anywhere without armed Naval escort, clear? You’re considered a high-value target, with lots of intel on GAR special operations.”

“Alright,” Jaicente said, trying to find serenity. “What’s my budget?”

Ombo gave him a sharp look.

Jaicente refused to waver. “If I am to lead a diplomatic mission, then I’m afraid I must have a budget. Local dignitaries will not wine and dine themselves.”

Ombo snorted. “No, I suppose not. You’ll be funded directly by the Temple, not the GAR. Officially, you don’t have a budget at all, so don’t go making a scene with it.”

“That sounds… suspect.”

“It’s not wholly above-board, no. But It’s easier to get Temple funds than GAR funds, so you’ll thank us in the long run. Any other questions?”

Jaicente breathed out slowly. “When do we ship out?”

“Today, at 1000 hours. Chase has all the paperwork you’ll need to sign, your code cylinder, credit chip, and a copy of your orders. And one more thing.”

Jaicente looked up at the dire tone General Ombo had taken. “Yes?”

“I want you to scan for life. Tell me if there’s anyone nearby who can hear us.”

Frowning, Jaicente did as he bid. He spread his senses as wide as he could reach, but the closest sapient minds he brushed against were Ombo’s and Looper’s, and Looper was too far to hear. “There’s no one.”

Wordlessly, Ombo reached into his tunic and pulled out a tiny device, no larger than one of his fingers. He pressed a button on it, and Jaicente’s voice came back to him, barely audible through the white noise of the waterfall: “There’s no one.”

Jaicente stared at the recorder, blood rushing in his ears.

“Never forget that the enemy plays into our greatest weakness as Jedi,” Ombo said, handing it over. “Never assume that just because there’s nothing organic to hear you, there aren’t any ears to hear. Oh, and if Looper had been wearing his helmet, he’d absolutely be in hearing range. Their helmet baffles can amplify sound.”

Shame was unproductive. Embarrassment spoke of pride. Jedi did not have pride. Jaicente looked up at General Ombo. “You chose this atrium because the waterfall obscures listening devices.”

“Yes. And because it’s restorative. There’s no reason not to multitask.”

“I understand, Master.”

“Good. Now if you don’t mind, I have twenty more minutes of peace, and I intend to enjoy them. Looper will help you find the way back if you can’t remember it.”