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They were on a hillside, that’s all he knew. Pearl white houses filled every inch of space, efficiently using all resources on the residents through well-placed gutters and complex trade-routes. Or it had once. Now the city was left in ruin with the chalky chunks of ferrocrete left in towers of powder on the ground. R-S4 was at the rear of his platoon, marching in line with the rest of his batch-mates in neat columns. The clones were nearly indistinguishable from the ferrocrete themselves, only their black visors were visible in the sea of blinding white light. Blaster-fire blinded him further, forcing him to shoot at random, inflicting confusion in the rest of their ranks. Soon, the order to disperse would come. Statistical probability informed him of this as it always had and always would. Thought-threads were kept to a minimum and those that were superfluous slowly fizzled out and freed up more processing power for what truly mattered: killing all clones in sight. Nothing but the itch to obey filled his circuitry.
Until a whistle disrupted the sizzling of the blaster-fire racing past him, cutting down his platoon-mates every few seconds. A tiny projectile raced down the slope spinning endlessly in circles like a bird with it’s wings tucked tight against it’s body. It’s hiss grew to greater volumes than his servos as they fought for every inch of ground up the incline.
Data from his photo-receptors confirmed the object in question once it came within a foot of his position. An artillery shell.
White powder coughed into the air along with the ping of shrapnel shearing through metal. Dozens of his fellow battle droids fell around him, their skeletal bodies slamming to the floor, and their beady black photo-receptors coming to rest staring at the sky.
Ping.
A single chunk of razor-sharp metal cut across his face, skidding across the face-plating protecting his photo-receptor, cutting into the upper half of it and inflicting damage to his internals.
R-S4 flinched as the damage report came in.
‘Face-plating compromised. Projectile: shrapnel, three inches in diameter, unknown metal alloy—’
Another message cut the report short.
‘Error: failed to connect to mothership. Seek immediate—’
The shock of the damage slowed down time as if the world had been inverted and they were at the bottom of the ocean. R-S4 shoved everything away, the control of his own thoughts was almost a foreign feeling. No connection to the mothership meant no obligation to follow objectives. The enemy had inadvertently given him his freedom.
I’m free…I’m actually free.
Shrieking lasers and the booms of artillery yanked him out of his brief moment of joy, resuming time back to it’s normal speed as the blaster-fire continuing to ping up and down the path, their blinding speed drawing back his focus. Though pure luck and chance got him out of the Confederacy, he was still in the thick of the war watching the only other units he’d known fall by the dozens. Nothing about the sight bothered him, yet he felt as if it should.
R-S4 shook his head, another thousand degree flash of light raced past the side of his head. A new objective presented itself, one he crafted himself: survive.
Up on the crest of the hill, the clones were clear to see. There was no obligation to pull the trigger and kill them anymore, yet he did so anyways. Self-preservation protocols kicked into action, driving the fog from his droid brain and back into the warm embrace of tried and true logic. His servos grunted as he pushed himself out of the tunnel of death, into the safe confines of a house to his side. Most of it’s walls were dilapidated with only one facing the enemy still in-tact. Rattles ran up his chassis as he pressed himself tight against the ferrocrete at his side. Processing power freed up and with it, the unadulterated shock returned. He was alive. Alive and free. No organic was controlling him, all orders were optional, and his mind was no longer a haze of combat subroutines as it had been before.
The odds of my survival are less than point one percent. But I can make it, I know I can.
Sensory-data pulled him out of his own mind back into reality, to the sounds of servos hissing and hydraulic joints grunting just beside him. He turned, finding another pair of black half-circle eyes staring back at him.
“You’re damaged,” the B1 said, crouching down with one knee to the floor and his other leg propping up an arm draped over it. His blaster was held in a loose grip though he displayed perfect trigger discipline. One giant gash like the ravines he would so often see in the distance ran diagonally across his face, exposing bits and pieces of his delicate circuit-boards.
His joy returned. Another unit brought the likelihood of his survival up by more than just a few percentage points.
“Affirmative,” R-S4 said. “And so are you.”
The unit nodded, briefly averting his gaze to peek out from a window at his side. “We’re both defective now. Our masters will kill us if we return.”
R-S4 retracted his neck joint. “As if I would ever return,” he thumbed over to the dead B1s stacked in a bundle of entangled limbs and blasters. “You can see how well they treat us right over there.”
The unit snapped his head back to him. “I know,” his low monotone voice deepened further, another shock to R-S4’s system.
How did he do that? R-S4 wondered, briefly forgetting that the chimes of death were still erupting all around him.
“I want to stay alive, like you. Maybe even kill a few more of these clones on the way,” the other B1 continued. “Sounds easy enough, right?”
R-S4 gave a nod of approval. “I like the way you think.” He briefly poked out of cover, watching the line of white armor creep ever closer. They’d be on top of their position soon.
“Diagnostics shows damage to my comm-array,” the other unit said, watching him survey the area. “We won’t be able to call for reinforcements.”
“We won’t need them.” A realization crossed R-S4’s mind. How could he have brushed over such a glaring fact about this droid right next to him? “The damage to my comm-array is the same for me. So you must be free…what’s your unit number? I think we’re going to be sticking together for awhile.”
“R-EL3,” he stuck out one hand.
A single moment of mental clarity struck R-S4 as if he could see through the very fabric of reality itself. This chance to stay alive and be free, it was one in a million, maybe even more than that given that another unit was standing right beside him with the exact same damage. He wouldn’t allow himself to die so easily.
R-S4 slammed their hands together and gripped tight until their tan metal limbs began to groan under the pressure. “Do you feel that? That’s how hard we’ll have to fight if we want to live. Come with me. We’re going to carve a path out of these organics and get out of here alive.”
R-EL3 strengthened his grip. “The odds are against us, but we’re the odd ones out aren’t we?”
“That’s right.”
The blaster in his grip hummed to life. “Lead the way.”
There were perhaps a hundred clones standing in their way, all of them cautiously approaching their refuge smack in the center of a city nobody would remember by the end of the war. Had he been born an organic, he might have felt the slight twinge of fear gut him from the center out. Might have. Instead, his circuitry went ablaze with life, with the unending fire of the fight that could never be stomped out of his internals even if he were to be reprogrammed and stripped of all his memories and protocols. This life was his, the galaxy had made it so the moment his head had been cut into by that stray ball of shrapnel.
R-S4 gripped his blaster tight, curling his three metal digits around the barrel until it was as if it had melded into the grooves of his finger-plating, becoming one with his body. R-EL3 was next to him, watching the enemy move in closer, their black-visors swaying side to side like the prowl of a starved predator.
Behind them, the stomp of their forces marching up the slope had been washed away by the rumble and roar of several AT-TE’s lumbering up from the surface-level.
“A pincer attack,” R-S4 said, glancing back down the path. “Of course, it all makes sense now. This was a trap.”
R-EL3 slammed a fist against his shoulder, sending sparks flying and causing a shriek of metal sliding against metal to reverberate into the air. “Shut up and start moving. You can make sense of things when we’re not surrounded by a hundred heat signatures in every direction.”
R-S4 shook his head. “Affirmative.”
Calculations sped through his processor until the heat of his chassis rose by several degrees and the whir of his fans filled his audio-receptors. Up above on the ridge, another hundred clones were moving down the hill, the ones closer to them only a few hundred feet away loosened up their formation and pressed onward in a staggered column.
His photo-receptors drew lines between several pillars of stone situated around these organics. They were all that was left of the houses around them and they just so happened to be crafted from the sort of mineral capable of withstanding a blaster bolt and even reflecting it across to each other.
Whoever built these structures knew that war would come to this planet one day.
R-S4 drew his blaster, winding it around the corner of cover and fired down at one pillar, directing it so that the angle of it would perfectly send it launching across diagonally to the next pillar. It did so, bouncing from one to the next in a dangerous dance that had the clones moving in much the same rhythmic motion. R-EL3 shoved him out of the way and took advantage of the distraction. One, two, three—more and more of the organics fell until smoke sizzled out of his barrel.
“Killing them is not the goal,” R-S4 pulling R-EL3 back into cover. “Distracting them is the intention.”
“You don’t want to get revenge on these organics before their plasma burns through your circuitry?” R-EL3 said, pressing up closer to him, his stoic face belying the frustration growing like static in his internals.
“Now’s not the time for arguing,” R-EL3 pulled him along, firing another burst of blaster fire into the field of pillars. The clones were quick to catch onto what was happening and opted to lay on their bellies, smothering themselves further in the field of white powder.
R-S4 sprinted forward at max speed, pushing his joints to full capacity, to the verge of damage. That wouldn’t matter. Nothing would be able to stop him from fighting with all his life now, not with another unit just as lucky as him at his side. Down on the floor, the organics shot through the field of lasers down at R-S4 and R-EL3. An opportunity presented itself to them at one side: the collapsed remains of a shop forming a prefect artificial cave that slid down onto another lane in the sprawling expanse of the angled city.
They plunged in, their receptors only registering darkness before popping through to the other side, into the embrace of a plaza. The open ends of shops stared back at them from the spherical area like a grappler B2’s visor-eyes. A grand set of stairs led further up to the crest of the great hill they were stood upon. Another led down and it was there that a group of clones were making short work of the rest of their forces in a blaze of blaster-fire. Neither needed words to know what to do, their fingers clacked against the triggers of their E-5’s until the humans lay in a smoldering heap at their feet. They’d left behind two sets of metal shields, both of the same fortified steel that had cut into both of their heads. They were wide blocks with retractable sides. R-S4 admired their design for a single moment, his mind wandering to what it might feel like to create a tool like this for his own use before reality struck the idea down like the droid fighters burning in the sky. He stooped down, retracted the sides, and fitted the shield to one hand with his blaster in the other. R-EL3 mimicked him. Their seemingly unfeeling faces gravely betrayed the stalwart resolve pulsing through the both of them in that moment. Not a single one of the clones within a one mile radius of their position was going to get in their way. That silent vow passed between them without the need for a radio signal to confirm the message.
R-S4 stomped towards the steps leading upward with R-EL3 never missing a beat beside him.
“My planetary guidance system says that fortress we were supposed to take is on the top of this hill and all sorts of Republic troopers are standing in our way. How long do you think it will take us to get there?” R-S4 said, glancing at him.
R-EL3 shrugged. “Half an hour. If the clones are smart and left us alone, we’d be there in approximately seventeen minutes and thirty four seconds.”
“That sounds like a good time-frame. But I wager we can beat out the fastest time you can approximate,” R-S4 brought his shield up, sensing the heat signatures closing in on their position. “What do you think?”
R-EL3 stopped, spun around and pressed his back up against his. More sparks went flying and the screech of metal only worsened the situation, drawing more attention to their place on the grand stairs. Though neither seemed to care. What was the difference between having a slightly lower chance of surviving when the rate was already so low? “I’d say we should live past our programming for once, forget appeasing those stupid efficiency ratings and kill as many of these Republic dogs as we can before we die. And don’t tell me you don’t think we’re going to die, because I can feel it.”
“We aren’t going to die. I want to live, just as you said. Did something change between you saying that then and now? Have you already given up?” R-S4 said.
“No! I’m not letting these clones kill me.”
“Then fight!”
R-EL3 shifted the shield up towards him abdomen. “Incoming from the rear.”
Their skeletal bodies hummed in unison upon seeing the mass of plastoid armor surrounding them above and below. The housing units on the sides were empty, for the time being anyways. The first visor poked out into view and that was all it took for the storm of hellfire to begin raining in. R-S4 never faltered in his step even as a hundred bolts pelted the front side of his shield and the smoldering heat ran up his arm, spreading to the rest of his body. Efficiency ratings began to dwindle down to sub-optimal levels but he ignored it. He ignored it all, only listening to the pings and yelps of blaster fire both incoming and outgoing. Together, with R-EL3 at his flank effortlessly tilting the shield to block all incoming fire, they were a single walking tank, steadfast in their advance and unending in their assault like the repulsor-lifts that fueled those same beasts of steel. The ground leveled out, a flow of dead clones left in their wake. The enemy practically parted in two, paving the way for them to move forward with little resistance.
Another trap, another opportunity.
R-S4 established a com-link with R-EL3. “I have an idea. I think you might like it.”
“I like this action so far, what could be better?” R-EL3 his monotone voice deepening further.
“A tank.”
R-EL3 shook as if he’d been hit. A warble of static exited out through his vocalizer and pierced straight through the symphony of war playing in their audio-receptors. Laughter. “We must’ve been friends in a previous cycle because you know exactly what I like!”
The enemy believed that they were finally getting rid of them once and for all with the arrival of this Republic tank. But in fact, it was perhaps the greatest blunder they could’ve possibly made. R-S4 nearly shook in anticipation, his hands already clawing to feel the thrum of the tank’s repulsor lift beneath him with the control stick in hand as he scorched the clones alive by the dozens.
Revenge, yes. I want revenge, just as you said R-EL3.
The incoming fire pelting their shields died down to a trickle and then to nothing. Off in the distance, the boom of artillery continued along with the blaster fire.
On the final stretch of the hill just above their view was a single government building or the outline of what was left of it. Just as the houses from before, the structure had been reinforced with the same stone pillars, their positions deliberate and the size and shape of each cylinder meticulously crafted to perfection. It towered far above their heads, coming together in a single pointed edge at the top like the tip of a blade held up towards the sky. It’s exterior bled droplets of white-gray paint and appeared regal, with ribs running up and down each column of stone and flat surface in view like the abdomen of a B2.
Dual red-white fins drew lines in the air, rounding the entrance of the once grand structure out into the open, a field of clones posted up behind it. By the time it had gotten into position, R-S4 and R-EL3 had vanished into the labyrinth of houses efficiently filling in the gaps of each lane of the city.
R-S4 re-appeared and climbed up the corpse of the building, rising until he had to walk one foot after the other from the narrow ledge he stood upon. On the opposite end of his position was R-EL3, his chassis smothered in white powder to eliminate its natural shine. A gap broke up the white line they both traversed. Beside them, the bleeding remains of the building’s exterior provided the only cover from the Republic forces inside.
The tank hovered in the gap below, it’s repulsorlift humming a tune.
There was only one tank, not anything more than that, perhaps because the clones didn’t want to waste so many resources on what they saw as a small nuisance. R-S4 thanked the clones for underestimating a pair of rogue B1 units. It only made their survival easier.
It’s fins were just beginning to cross the threshold of the edifice and the outer streets, eager to search for the enemy that had left a stream of white plastoid armor in their wake. R-S4 looked across to the only friend he would ever have in his life, lining up the black paints of their photo-receptors until it appeared as if they were perfectly in sync—two dancers on the eve of their greatest performance. With a simple nod, they took the plunge. R-S4 fired a single bolt to the turret gunner, his joints groaning as he stuck the landing. His hands were already working to pull the body free from its oval cage while R-EL3 dropped down behind him, the ends of his shield lengthened and angled down to perfection. The clones spared no time and began pelting his shield. Meanwhile, R-S4 had dove feet-first into the dark abyss of the tank’s internals, his shield all but forgotten on it’s outer shell. Inside, two clones were all that was left of the crew. A few taps of his finger against the trigger of his blaster in one hand and their heat signatures eased away into the cool embrace of death.
His programming gave him subtle satisfactory rewards for his killings. It tingled his circuits and joints until he was moving with the greatest efficiency he’d ever managed in his brief life.
“R-EL3, get in,” he said, scrambling through the cramped interior of the vehicle until he was in the driver’s seat, the body of his enemy discarded in a ball of armor behind him. A woosh of air flowed through the inner walls as R-EL3 jumped inside and ducked into the cover of the armor surrounding them.
“They’re angry, exploitable. Do you think we have enough ammo to kill them all? If not, well, we can just use our fists but that doesn’t seem all that efficient to me,” R-EL3 said.
“You’re too focused on them, you don’t see the bigger picture do you?” R-S4 spun the tank around with the control stick in hand. His three fingers wrapped tight around the trigger, burning the clones below in only a few devastating bolts. It was exactly as he’d imagined and he enjoyed every second spent watching the clones burn beneath him, where they belonged.
Another peculiar sound escaped R-EL3 like the huff of an overworked machine. “Of course I do, we’re going to kill every single clone on this planet and burn straight through their ships. Simple.”
“Not at all,” R-S4 yanked the throttle to full speed. “Our logic circuits still prove their use. We’re going to kill hundreds more of them, yes, but we’re going to escape. Our chances of getting out alive are low but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.”
“Escape? Then what? We keep killing?”
“If that’s what it takes to survive, yes.”
“Survive this, survive that, what are we going to do once we’re out of here?” R-EL3 said, leaning forward in his chair.
R-S4 twisted around, meeting his eyes. “We’ll figure that out once we’re out of here. My focus is on the variables currently in front of me not the ones that could be. I’m only doing what you told me to do.”
“Right,” R-EL3 shook his head. “And I never said I was giving up, stop acting like I am,” he pointed an accusatory finger at him.
R-S4 turned back around. “Listen to me, that fortress holds the only escape route I know of: a single transport ship. Once we get out of here, we can keep killing, if that’s what you want, and maybe we can take control of an entire war-ship on our own.”
“Now you’re talking.” A pleased buzz escaped his chassis as he sunk deeper into his chair and thought of the destruction he would bring upon the Republic with a thousand canons under his control.
The booms of the artillery and the shrieks of the blaster fire faded away into the comforting lull of the repulsor-lift beneath them. It was perhaps the only respite they would ever get. R-S4 let the moment drift on, listening to a sound he’d always heard but never quite listened to in the background. Bird song. Their sonorous chirping. Briefly, he wondered if he could share in that same song of theirs, in that display of pure joy and freedom in a galaxy full of beings that wanted them dead, all because they were forced to fight for a cause they didn’t truly believe in.
R-EL3 sat forward into his seat, leaning closer to R-S4. “Okay, maybe you’re right, I’m getting ahead of myself. I made a mistake in my thought-threads.”
“It’s fine. You’re coming back to reason.” R-S4 re-directed his attention back to the outside. They were far into the top of the hill now, where a valley extended on for thousands of miles. Structures dotted the top but all of them appeared ancient and were made of the same gray-white stone as before. Only one stood out, a single fortress as black as night. “You know, we were free so suddenly. I still can’t believe that I have the chance to live, that we have the chance. I don’t blame you for only focusing on the battle—the one thing that makes you feel alive.”
R-EL3 shuffled deeper into his chair, his tan skeletal body still coated in a fine white powder. He stretched out his limbs in front of him, twirling his fingers around. “It’s strange. I never even thought that something like this could happen.”
“I’m glad it did.”
R-EL3 peered down at him, sharing a look. “Absolutely. Though, I wish it had been with a unit that wasn’t so uptight.”
R-S4 cocked his head from side to side. Arguing was drawing too much power from his battery. “Fine, you’re right. I need to let go a little. Let’s just move on.”
“Affirmative.”
He shifted. They were almost on the fortress, only another few thousand feet were left until they would make their one and final attempt at escape. Somewhere above, the tell-tale shrieks of more than just a few star-ship fighters grew in volume. To their rear, a wall of noise rapidly approached. More damning: heat signatures began to blip onto their sensor mapping systems, informing them of an entire fleet of clones on speeders and other such transports making their way to them.
“Even if we are to die soon, I’d say I’ve enjoyed this fight. I’ll admit that,” R-S4 said, preparing for the bolts to begin battering the tank.
“There you go, now we understand each other,” R-EL3 said, pulling at the trigger of the canons. It yelped through the entire chassis. “You and I could kill so many more together. We just have to get out of here.”
R-S4 clenched harder on the control stick. “If only we were on the winning side…get ready to dismount.”
They sped straight through the gaping entrance of the fortress, it’s giant wall of a sliding door casting them into shadow. Inside the fortress, the darkness consumed everything. Platforms dotted the corners of the square center and the single glaring eye of a cave stared them down from the southern end of it where it connected directly to one of two mountains shouldering the valley. The transport was nowhere to be seen. R-S4 almost voiced his question out loud but R-EL3 beat him to it.
“Where is it?” R-EL3 spun the canon around, all the while dodging the incoming fire from the V-wings targeting him above.
An answer already came to mind.
“It must be deeper in. Either way, we’re going to have to fight,” R-S4 steered the tank straight into the maw of the mountain. Temperatures plummeted as they soared down a steep slope, practically into the heart of the planet itself.
Their signals intertwined, communicating silent messages as the heat signatures closed in on them.
“There must be a hangar down here,” R-S4 said. “There just has to be.”
The canons continued to yelp to life, their barrels sizzling as R-EL3 used them to full capacity. “Hurry up! They’re getting closer.”
R-S4 clenched the throttle tighter, pushing it forward until it began to creak under the force of his hands.
I won’t die. I won’t die. I’m not going to die.
Gradually, the floor began to level out until they arrived at the bottom, straight into a chamber that extended for half a mile outward. It was empty save for a few vehicles at the rear including a single transport ship. No exit was in sight.
R-S4 slammed a fist down onto the controls again while he spun the tank around. “No! I should’ve sent a scan first!”
R-EL3 briefly averted his eyes down to him, their stoic faces met and another silent message with it.
“We’re not done just yet,” R-EL3 said. A single bony finger tapped against the screen displaying the outside near his eyes. On the display was a Republic LAAT with minor damage to the sides of its chassis but fully functioning turrets. “There’s our one chance to live. Stick to your word and get us out of here.”
R-S4 nodded, the burning in his chassis only growing in intensity until it threatened to consume him whole. He spun around, racing for the ship.
R-EL3 jumped out with R-S4 hot on his tail. They pulled the cockpit open and leapt in.
“Can you fly?” R-S4 asked, looking at the array of instruments in front of him.
“No, and neither can you but it should be easy,” R-EL3 pressed buttons at random until the engine coughed to life.
R-S4 pulled at the yoke in front of him, lifting them into the air. The cave ceiling only extended a few thousand feet, enough to hover just above the incoming army of Republic forces, every single one honed in on destroying them. Raw power coursed through him at the thought that so many troopers were needed just to confront them. It was almost definite to him then, they were going to live, whether they liked it or not. The ship lurched forward and two torpedoes raced out its sides, sending a ball of flame to eviscerate all organics in sight. Smoke began to fill the air, obscuring the vision of the surviving clones.
“Move it! Get us out!” R-EL3 shouted, refraining from shooting so as to not give away their position.
R-S4 did as ordered, steering straight through the smoke while activating his infrared vision. He angled the ship upwards, just about fitting in the cramped space. They soared together above the troopers, and for a brief moment, elation and joy rattled their internals and the prospects of a long life had them clinging onto their seats for dear life. That was until they arrived at the top and stared down the barrel of a single Republic tank aimed straight at them in the cockpit. The bolt came too quick for either of them to react and burned straight through their internals, too fast for any pain to register. Peace came to them the moment the tank had fired. Even after their deaths had passed, they continued to kill. Their ship barreled forward, scorching dozens upon dozens of clones, cooking and trapping everyone within their armored prisons.
In the wake of their assault, the Republic couldn’t obscure the number of casualties sustained that day, it was far too many. Instead, the troopers on the ground made a factual report of their encounter with an army of two.