The Republic has fallen.
In the final days of the Clone Wars, Chancellor Palpatine died under mysterious circumstances. With the Senate struggling to retain a sense of unity, it was the perfect time for the Separatists to strike. And strike they did...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The boys would no doubt call him a sucker for this, but Captain Rex really missed the slate-and-red corridors and airy hangers of the Venator-class cruisers.
Clones were designed to adapt to new situations. Their only possessions were their gear and the odd poster or regulation-approved souvenir, and all could be dropped in a heartbeat and replaced later on. The only things they kept with them always were their values: loyalty, honor, and stubborn determination.
Rex wondered if he was defective of simply human for not adapting to a life on the run after years with the might of the Republic fleet behind him. It was the same pressure, the same get-up-and-go mentality. But with the familiar settings there had invariably been familiar people – vital people, ones Rex was now lacking.
His two Jedi COs had always made things feel normal, made it easier to cope. Without them, everything had lost its color. And to make matters worse, new orders from up top now stressed ships stopping off at major spaceports could only carry a handful of clones. The old Republic soldiers' sameness made them distinctive, and it only took one surprise inspection to rat out a critical operation before it began.
Rex knew he was fighting alongside good people, but he didn't know them. Not like he'd known his brothers, thousands upon thousands of good lads who never thought twice about helping one of their own. Not like he'd known his Jedi.
It was all so different. He had no constants, no stars to guide himself by. He'd spent most of the last year feeling like a droid, so overloaded with incompatible data he couldn't compute any of it unless he sifted through it on autopilot.
Then, four days ago, the switch had flipped. For the first time since the Battle of Felucia had driven the Rebellion to ground, Rex was back on manual, and actually felt real hope.
Shame he so cynical and burnt out he still wasn't sure if he could accept it.
Rex tapped a button on his wrist comm to turn on the holographic display, scrolling through his inbox until he found the message that was more precious to him now than any expendable travel souvenir:
"This is Loth-cat c–c–c–calling Old Dog. Soaring Bird isn't w–w– me. I'll wait for your reply for the n–n–next four rotations between–between–between... between 1400 and 1700 h–h– Standard. Stick to audio o–only for greater range. Loth-cat out."
He'd received it only hours before the Tantive IV, his current assignment, went dark to keep its position off Imperial scopes while it delivered supplies to a secret Rebel outpost. The communications blackout had given him lots of time to wear his comm into the ground replaying the message – and do basically the same thing with his head – trying to figure out if it was legit.
The codes checked out, and the voice had all the right inflections as far as Rex could tell, but he hadn't heard her speak in a year. The static and the jagged starts and stops distorting the words weren't making things easy on his memory, either.
