Buckets: A Star Wars Story

5. Eighty - Pt. I

There were a thousand things I wanted to do besides go to Lothal. I was going to be stuck with Lieutenant Ahuff, who hated us, and we were also going to be stuck on a planet whose people hated us under a governor I didn't like... who also likely hated us.

Hate is an endless cycle.

Kriff, I'm no Jedi. Let the hate flow.

We were all piled onto a shuttle, the four of my squad with our disgruntled lieutenant, and we made the ride down in utter silence. Aurek, for the first time in his kriffing life, didn't. Say. A. Single. Word.

He was totally silent.

Besh and Osk sat by like good little soldiers, and I was busy running through the nav charts and the maps. Lothal was... farms. Farms. More farms. A few academies. Some new weapons factories. General despair in the form of a planet. The usual. Ahuff kept glancing over at me and giving a satisfactory mini-nod from time to time as though my standard mission prep was something I needed to be praised for. See, Kando had instilled this sort of thing in me very early on that doing your job isn't something that you need praise for. Me going over maps was what I was supposed to do. Besh checking our shuttles was what he was supposed to do. Osk maintaining our weapons was what he was supposed to do. Aurek keeping the squad on-mission was what he was supposed to do... even if he was usually the one to go off-mission in the first place. Having some grey-coat leaning over my shoulder and acting like I was doing something outstanding was annoying at the least and insulting at the worst.

Finally, after the fiftieth time he glanced over at me, I finally turned to him, half-grateful for the bucket hiding my exasperated face, and had asked him, "Sir, can I help you with something?"

Ahuff acted like I had jumped out of a bush at him. "I am sorry, specialist, do I need a reason to assess your performance?"

I had kriffed up. I realized that the moment the first syllable left his mouth, and I remember clearly not even needing to see Aurek's face to know he had given the greatest grimace ever seen on a human face. "No, sir, but with all due respect, all I'm doing is reviewing maps. I hardly think it's worth-"

He practically bristled at my retort, narrowed his eyes, and I swear the corner of his mouth twitched. It was like this guy had been waiting for a chance to rip one of us in half. "Checking my men's performance and readiness is not worth my time? What do you take me for, TK-65780?"

He knew I had a nickname. He knew he could have shortened my number as everyone else did. A grey-coat calling you by your full designation was like a parent using your full name - all of them, be it two, three, or seven if your family is pretentious. My neck was sweating by the time he said it, and it wasn't because of my neck seal, either. "Sir, that's not..."

"I should expect such a level of insubordination from one who was taught by one of those useless Clones." I felt every set of eyes fall on me when those words left Ahuff's mouth, and I knew why. I may have tightened my hand just a little too much on the nav chart and the screen had started to protest with a slight color change where my fingers were pressing against it. "I always said that using them would just bring out the same defects in our recruits. They were always willful. They could not even do their one, singular purpose properly. There are still Jedi running amok."

"CT-7209 trained me well, sir." I cut him off mid-tirade, and I was close to standing up.

I'm a pretty relaxed person by nature. I don't fight. I don't drink... much. I don't get excited. I would have been better suited to the life of a desk jockey, really, but I like to think my level head helps in firefights. The one thing that genuinely riles me up and gets me to throw down faster than anything is talking krayt spit about Kando. So, there I was, on this small shuttle, getting ready to take my gloves off and punch-out Ahuff...