3-20 WETWORK

“Do… do you have another name?” you hesitantly ask. “Not just ‘CT-1061?’”

At your question, he frowns. Something dark twists inside of him, inflicting a wound. Internal. Mental. He hurts.

You’re about to apologize when he responds, still in that soft tone, “Tension. My brothers called me Tension.”

He looks down at his missing leg. Thoughts swirl through his head, drawn up by grief and shattering the image of bravery he’d been showing you until now. He’s missing something — far more than just his leg.

“Um, can I call you that? Tension?”

He doesn’t respond. Instead, he closes his eyes and rocks back and forth, swaying diagonally on account of the leg. You move around the bed, coming closer, close enough to touch him.

Standing on your toes, you reach up — ever so slowly so as not to startle him — and pat him on the shoulder.

He cracks open an eye, staring down at you warily..

With your other arm, you reach up, pull away your blindfold — your mask left behind in the changing room — and open your eyes.

“It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”

“You really think so?” he finally says.

“Bad things always happen.” You bring your hand down from his shoulder and rest it on top of his hand. You grip lightly, then release. “Things will get better. The friends, the family, and the comrades we lose… they won’t be forgotten. Whoever you’ve lost — your brothers — wouldn’t want you to lose yourself too, right?”

He tears his eyes away from your face, looking down at his leg again. He sits like that, completely still like a statue, for an entire minute. Slowly, he shifts, turning his head toward you once again.

“I… yeah. You’re right. I know. I’m a soldier. I expected it. We all expected it.”

“But, reality hits hard.”

“Yeah.”

The curtained room is quiet for a moment. Only the muffled sounds of medical personnel moving past break the silence.

“Tell me about them.”

He startles, then settles rigidly. “My brothers?”

“Yes. Remember them for me — for you.”

“...fine. Yeah, I can do that. Where do I begin? Right, how about I start with the corporal…”

≡][≡ ⬦⬦⬦ ≡][≡

Sitch was likable. He was always likable. That’s why he was good as our leader.

Not only does a leader have to be respectable, but he has to respect others too. That’s my opinion at least. Why would anybody respect someone, or follow them, when they do not respect you back?

Not at all the case with Sitch. He was our sergeant, and then our corporal. But, before all else, he was our brother. My brother.

A person’s qualities aren’t all that makes the man, though. You understand, right? It’s all the little things, the quirks and values, that build their personality in your mind.

For Sitch… what can I say?

We didn’t really have much. We had our guns. We had our armor. We had each other. Of those three things, Sitch centered his life around the third: us. His brothers.

I guess that’s his quirk. He was… motherly, not that I have a mother to compare him to, but I’ve read things. Oh, I guess that’s another thing we have: access to reading material. Nobody really seemed to build themselves off of that though. It's just too… fantastical.

Anyways, I’m getting off track. Sitch didn’t just earn our respect with his ‘qualities.’ No. He earned it because he made sure we felt cared for. Do you know that feeling? The feeling when someone just does something for you because they think you need it? It kinda tingles the back of my head.

No?

Ah, well. It’s addictive, really.

Whatever. There’s so much more to Sitch than that. You’d think there wouldn’t be, what with us being clones. Identical. Yet… not.

I could spend a day talking about each one of ‘em, but I guess you don’t really have that time. I think… yeah.

What you say is right. I want them to be remembered; not just by me, either. So, I guess I’ll move on. Who, next?

How about Oppen?

≡][≡ ⬦⬦⬦ ≡][≡

You sit there, just listening to Tension talk about his brothers. Sitch. Oppen. Drak. Avi.

He trained with them on Kamino, each one of them learning to trust and depend on each other. They would do anything for each other.

They would die for each other. And they did.

But, they’re not all. He was part of a ten man squad, but he knew the other five far less than the four he trained with. That doesn’t mean he'll let you forget them though.

Tyr. Aden. Skar. Ordo. Burns.

All of them, lost. All of them, his brothers.

Tension doesn’t weep for them. Instead, he smiles. He smiles and talks, radiating an overture of joy with an undertone of anguish. He’ll miss them all.

At one point, you notice Master Corr return. She peeks through the curtain behind you, but only nods and leaves when she sees Tension talking so animatedly at you.

Tension finally runs out of steam, winding down his reminiscing of his brothers. His smile slowly fades, but you can tell that a weight has lifted off of him.

“Thanks. Xena, was it?”

You nod.

“Thanks for listening. I… I needed that.”

“Everybody deserves an ear when they’re in need.”

He tilts his head, giving you an appraising look. “You’re far more mature than you look. Has anyone ever told you that?”

“Yeah,” you say, ignoring the hilarity of the situation. Who is he to tell you that when it’s practically the opposite for him? Then again, he seems to have had to grow up a lot faster in both ways — mentally and physically.

The room is quiet again, the both of you unsure of what to say now. Master Corr doesn’t seem to be coming back again anytime soon and it feels almost rude to leave now. And so, you think frantically for something, anything, to talk about.

“Can you tell me about what happened? The battle, I mean,” you ask.

Wait! No! Not that!

“Ah! I mean… I’m sorry. That was insensitive. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” you quickly rush to say.

Tension stares at you, unamused on the surface, conflicted below. Finally, the corner of his mouth turns upward just a hair and he nods.

“It’s fine. I guess I could tell you a bit. The memories are… Well, they’re less painful now. It’s a bit farther away, thanks to you.”

You smile awkwardly, suddenly remembering you don’t have your mask on you at the moment. It’s been a while since you talked to someone face to face who wasn’t Master Lasah or Master Corr. He can see your emotions, so pathetically laid bare on your unguarded face!

You school your emotions, straightening your expression. “Thank you. I’m sorry, again. But, I am a bit curious.”

“It’s alright. How about this: I tell you what I’ve seen, and you tell me what happened to you.” He points to his eyes with one hand while indicating you with the other. “That sound good?”

“Yeah.”

“Fair enough. Alright, what did you want to know?”

“Um, how did the battle go? How could it have gone better?”

He grimaces, scratching at the stump of his leg before catching himself. He yanks his hand away and sits on it, then speaks.

“It could have gone better. Probably. I wasn’t in a place where I could commentate on what happened overall, but I can tell you what I personally saw.”

“That’s fine.”

“Hm. Well, it went well in some ways. In other ways, it was awful.”

“How so?”

“It was… I guess I can say it was just like simulations in many ways, but not all. We trained hard for this. We trained for almost every scenario. Almost every environment, almost every enemy, almost every situation possible. Whatever it was, we almost always had some sort of training to cover it.”

“But?”

“But. Do you know the saying about battle plans never surviving contact with the enemy? It was like that. Even with all the training in the world, when there’s so much chaos, shit always hits the rotary blades, hard and fast and messy.”

“Oh.”

“‘Oh,’ indeed. That was my impression of it. I probably had my mouth hanging open half the time, that word stuck in the back of my throat. Things kept surprising me, and that’s with all the training! It’s not just the enemy you have to be afraid of after all.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s what you’re left with. Your armor, for one. Pinches like crazy. Sized poorly or something. The environment, as another. The simulations do well, but they don’t cover every single possibility. When you have dust and dirt jamming into everything, and then bugs crawling out of the tunnel walls around you, things go bad fast. And, of course, things get worse when you lose someone.”

He’s silent for a moment, gathering himself. You’re hesitant to say something, lest he decide to clam up. Fortunately, he wills himself to continue, opening up and speaking once again.

“We lost Sitch less than ten minutes once we hit the ground. Our leader, down. Dead instantly, so at least he didn’t have to suffer. Tyr took over from there. It was absolute chaos everywhere — not his fault, but the fact that he lost comms with command after touchdown made things even worse. He took a hit which damaged his comlink, so I had to relay information to and from him. That was not good to say the least.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“We were stuck in the open for ages. No cover in sight, with thousands of droids blasting away at us the whole time. You know what makes droids so deadly? It’s not just their numbers; it’s the fact that you can’t suppress them. What does a droid care for lasers flying over their heads? What does a droid care for a lost comrade? Nothing. They just keep coming and keep shooting.

“And, it’s even worse underground. My squad, down to seven at this point, was sent into the tunnels. Tunnel fighting is the worst, I tell you. The bugs — the Geonosians, that is — come from every direction. They pop out of the smallest holes you’d ever seen. You could check every damn entrance into a cavern, and then suddenly they’ll be swarming you the instant your back is turned. Almost everybody was lost the second time they did that. In no time at all, it was down to me and Tyr. Soon after that, well… It was just me.”

“I had a dream kinda like that,” you cut in, not letting him dwell on his lost brothers again.

He blinks, then frowns, drawn back to the present by your remark. “Oh? And, how many of your brothers died in it?”

You blush, embarrassed and annoyed at yourself. Perhaps you pushed a bit too far, too quick. “I - I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it like that!”

Fortunately, he’s quick to calm down — his sudden anger cooling as he remembers himself. He pulls back, wiping his hand down his face while groaning. “It’s… it’s nothing. I’m sorry too. You were just trying to distract me, right?”

You nod, keeping silent.

“It’s… well, we were just talking about this, weren’t we? I shouldn’t dwell on their deaths.”

“You can still mourn them though.”

“Then why did you stop me?”

“Because that’s not mourning. That’s just hurting.”

He glares at you, meeting the gaze of your burning orbs. However, you don’t have eyes that dry out. You don’t have to blink, and so he obviously loses the impromptu contest.

“...You say the damnedest things, you know?” he finally says.

“I know.”

“Heh. Fine. Tell me about your dream, then tell me about your eyes. You’ve gotten me curious.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah. Go ahead.”

≡][≡ ⬦⬦⬦ ≡][≡

“You want us to just charge through?”

“Yes.”

The marines look at one another, conferring silently. They then nod as one. “We can do that. Easy.”

“Wonderful. Just follow the skull.”

“As the Emperor wills.”

“Yes, yes. Hurrah. Now move!”

The marines, led by the skull, run a gauntlet through the upper levels of the fortress. While there are many heretics about, the tight corridors — meant to slow down and funnel invaders — work against the defenders instead. Instead of trapping the marines, the heretics are trapped themselves, allowing bolter rounds to tear through huge swathes of them with ease.

However, that does not mean it’s all easy going.

A cannon round ricochets off the lead marine’s pauldron, leaving a sizable dent and a thin, white streak. The marine crouches down, letting his battle brothers bombard the location the round came from. Soon, there is nothing left other than a smoldering husk of metal, the operator vaporized into a bloody mist.

The servo-skull swivels, silently urging them onward with its glaring amber eye — the Navigator not even bothering to speak.

“Does the skull not have its auspex activated, Navigator?” the marine asks, his annoyance creeping into his voice as a harsh rasp. “It would be most kind of you to give warning.”

“The auspex is tuned to a specific task at the moment. Use your own! Or, better yet, use your damn eyes!”

“They just keep coming out of the woodwork, Navigator. And, the catacombs here are ridiculous. They don’t make any sense. It’s almost like… like they weren’t made by humans.”

The marine gazes upward at the high ceiling above him, decorated in what he had thought to be heretic script. Then, he squats down, peering into a tiny tunnel, barely large enough for an adolescent ratling to crawl through. Inside, he sees branching paths, lit by dimly glowing crystals — the work of an intelligent being.

“Xenos. You think we’re dealing with anything… unsavory?”

“Seems like everything here is rather unsavory. Anyway, I would bet they’re long gone by now. The heretics have been camped out here for centuries, making this place their own. I would worry more about the ones pointing guns at you than the long dead aliens.”

“Very well. Lead on, Navigator.”

The servo-skull flies off, winding its way through through the xenos-built passageways with the four bulky marines close behind. As they move, they leave the light behind. These corridors are poorly lit with only gas lanterns few and far between. At times, the marines see small altars covered in candles, each one decorated in a gruesome spectacle of defiled body parts, the flesh parted and carved with symbols of the unspeakable ones.

It is with rage and pious resolve that the marines remove these blasphemes from sight. Once done, they quickly move along, not willing to wait around in case they disturbed something greater.

What they do disturb, however, is not great, but it is numerous.

Rows and rows of heretics look up as one when a body comes flying through the refectory doors. It splatters high up against the wall on the other side of the room and they watch it slowly slide down to rest on the floor.

And then the boltguns thunder.

The marines charge their way through the room — a cavernous war hall filled with heretics, daubed in blood, machine grease, food, and possibly fecal matter. They shoot efficiently, saving their ammunition for when they will need it most, yet slowly but surely, they become bogged down.

There’s just so many of them, and they do not retreat.

Autoguns fire back, lead slugs pinging off the marines’ armor to no avail. However, the weight of fire of thousands of guns is nothing to scoff at. At some point, something vital will be hit, and that will be that.

One marine blinks, the optics of his helmet suddenly spiderwebbed on one side. He ducks down and drags a metal table onto its side, then holds it before him as a shield.

He hears something at the edge of audible, but drowned out by the deafening noise of gunfire echoing through the chamber. He looks down, spying the servo-skull taking cover with him behind the table.

He taps his ear, indicating he cannot hear her. In return, the skull bobs up and down and he can swear he sees its singular eye rolling.

The Navigator, high above, sighs. Voxing doesn’t work now that they’re so far down in the fortifications. Her own method of communicating with them is to speak vocally from her psychically linked servo-skull.

How inefficient at times like these.

Sometimes, she wishes she had more power. The psykers however, always seem to be in for a hard time, what with their less than perfect resistance to the Warp.

But, telepathy would be nice at times, though it would probably be a massive pain if she couldn’t turn it off.

Ah, well. Not exploding is also nice. Drawing on the Warp always has its downsides, doesn’t it?

The servo-skull nods sagely, still controlled by her own psychic link. The marine behind the table tilts his head, then nods in return.

He holsters his gun, then with a silent roar, lifts the table up and begins rushing forward, bowling over the enemies in his path. His brothers follow behind, cleaning up the mess he makes with contemptuous swings of their chainswords, the puttering motors singing their own cheerful tune.

The Navigator sits up, surprised at the sudden charge. Cursing, she directs her skull to follow them, wary of it now catching a stray bullet while out of cover.

Imbeciles! They should have warned her if they were going to do something stupid like that!

And so, the marines make ground, slowly pushing forward, swapping the table out with another one when it becomes little more than scrap metal. However, they’re now in a risky position. While they’ve cleared their way through plenty of fodder, their backs are exposed to any enterprising defender attempting to flank. It is fortunate that the heretics have been too busy screaming, shooting, and reloading to think. Soon, that may change, though.

≡][≡ ⬦⬦⬦ ≡][≡

You tell him of your dreams — of the abrasive little Navigator directing the four marines — and how these dreams seem to form one whole and contiguous story. Tension listens, squinting at the atrocities so carelessly committed and at the seemingly ritualistic way both the marines and the “heretics” carried themselves. He grimaces at the description of what the Navigator saw below, and frowns at your retelling of the tunnel fighting.

Finally, you end your story. You’ve yet to see the whole thing through. Your last dream was rather long, but you’d woken up while the marines were still bogged down in the fighting.

You hope they made it out alright. Other-you seemed to like giving them a hard time, but maybe that was just from stress.

Maybe.

“It sounds like your dreams are trying to tell you something.”

“Huh?”

Tension looks down at you, pensive in thought. “Sometimes, I have dreams that seem abstract, but end up being a reminder for myself of something I’ve missed. For example, I’ve had dreams where I’m shooting at targets, but my shots just never seem to do anything when they hit. No indication. No satisfaction. But then, I realize, when I wake up, that I’ve just been doing my maintenance poorly. How am I going to hit anything when my gun doesn’t shoot straight?”

“I see… But, these dreams just seem so weird — so different from reality. Your dream sounded like it was grounded in some way,” you say. However, as you say it, you realize it’s not entirely true.

Other-you was a definite representation of you. The powers, the Warp… all of this fantastical drivel is actually a reality for you!

Tension thinks a bit more, then slowly responds. “I have weird dreams sometimes, too. I can’t move in them. Or, well… I can’t consciously move, like I’m trapped in my own body and forced to complete a hopeless, never-ending mission. Horrid times. But, I swear they’re trying to tell me something too. I just can’t figure out what, though. Maybe it’ll come to me with time. And, same for you. Maybe you just need to see more, both in and out of your dream before you understand.”

“Maybe.”

“Yup. Maybe. Your dreams are really interesting though. Very coherent. Those marines of yours sounded almost like commandos. They also move around in squads of four, and they’re trained and equipped far better than the typical trooper. Those ‘heretics,’ on the other hand… Not sure if I know of any parallel. Not sure I want to know of any parallel.”

“Me neither.”

“Those marines did seem… strong.”

“Yeah. Superhuman, I think. Armed and armored more than possible for a normal person.”

“Heh. Imagine what we could do if we had that! Would have been great, seeing blaster fire do nothing to my armor. A lot of things would have been great, really. Orbital bombardment too — only if accurate, though — would have been even better. Our air support was pretty good, but if we had ships parked in orbit able to drop some hurt on the droids, we would have lost far fewer men.”

Tension laughs grimly with those last words, then falls silent once more. You’re not sure what to say next, so you wait for him to collect himself.

Slowly, he comes back; his thoughts far more orderly than before.

“Thanks, Xena. It’s been nice talking with you — speaking about my friends and all.”

“Thank you for telling me about them. And, I’m sorry, again, for working you up.”

“Don’t worry about that. It’s… I’ll be fine.”

“Yeah. You will.”

Suddenly, a voice breaks in, cheerfully declaring, “I agree!”

You turn on instinct, only now realizing that Master Corr has been standing outside the room for at least a few minutes.

“Master Corr?”

“Had a good talk, huh? Good, good. I’m sorry, trooper, but I’m going to have to steal young Xena away. She has some other work to do.”

Tension nods stiffly, a soldierly demeanor fixing his bearing. He turns to you again, saying, “Thanks again. Hey, if you want to speak again, you know where to find me. I’d like to know how that dream ends. Oh, and you never did talk about your eyes.”

You reach up, now remembering your blindfold is off. You pull it back on, saying, “Next time. Yeah. And, I’d like to know more about you and your brothers, if you’re willing to share.”

He smiles, touching a hand to his brow in a friendly salute. “Of course. I’d love to. Until next time, then.”

And then you’re off, following Master Corr down the corridor and deeper into the Halls of Healing.

≡][≡ ⬦⬦⬦ ≡][≡

You thought it would have been different, speaking with Tension.

That wariness of clones you’ve felt feels… off, in some ways, but spot on in others. Replicae, as you’d known them to be, are unfortunate in their mere existence. They’re born and bred for a purpose, good or ill.

These replicae, the Fett clones as you’re hearing them called, are no different.

But, that doesn’t make Tension any less of a person, right?

He speaks. He thinks. He loves his brothers. He suffers. Yet, he is indeed an anomaly to the Warp. You felt it, so very subtly, in his presence, to the point that you’re only now noticing it after it’s gone.

The Warp bends. It twists. It does something… odd. With one clone, it’s not very much. With many, many more, who knows what will happen?

Each life created in such an abominable way strikes at the Immaterium and thus at Reality. Who will bear the cost?

The clones, most likely.

Those around them? Perhaps, them too.

“Xena, are you alright?”

You turn to Master Corr and nod, now realizing you’re at the next destination. Here lies, not a clone, but a Jedi. A young one, a very new Knight.

The woman lies in a healing trance, another healer sitting nearby to help maintain the trance. Master Corr touches the healer’s shoulder, dismissing her so the two of you can take over.

“Alright, Xena. I’m going to be operating on Vale here, and I was thinking you could help me. What we’re doing isn’t going to be very risky, so I thought we might take this chance to train you up a bit if you’re willing.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you’d like, you can help me with the Force Healing. Use what I’ve taught you while I guide you along.”

“That’s… is that okay?” you ask. You’re suddenly fearful. What if you mess up? You’ve not done this before — not fully! “Are you sure you want my help? What if it goes wrong?”

“Like I said, I’ll be guiding you. I’ll tell you to stop in those cases. Do you trust me?”

“Well, yes… But, I’m not sure if I trust myself.”

Master Corr sighs, putting her hands on her hips as she looks down at you. “Xena, you’re plenty talented. You’ve already learned so much! But, fine. If you really don’t think you can do it, we can just stick with the simple stuff. I’ll do the healing while you use Stanch and Purification when needed.”

“I guess I could do that. Can you give me a minute to think, though?”

“Hmph. Alright. Don’t take too long. We don’t want our patient to wake up in the middle of this.”