Chapter Text
As far as tiny Mid Rim agricultural moons go, Peloxes-Areus is what Commander Drift calls mess-hall variety. Quiet, temperate, sparsely populated, and quite poor, the Peloxes system is nominally aligned with the Republic, but doesn’t have the resources to contribute to the war effort. It has no GAR presence besides a listening post monitoring the nearby hyperspace lane, and even that was all but forgotten once the Separatists abandoned the sector early in the war. Were it not for the skeleton crew keeping the station running, the 13th Battalion would have no reason to be dropping by.
The sky is breathtaking, though.
When their two larties had landed in an desolate field west of the village, Peloxes-Areus was at the tail end of its eight-hour rotation; Cal stepped off the transport into shoulder-high grasses that’d never known a clipper, glanced up, and his jaw smacked into his toes. At night, the moon faced Peloxes, a massive, pale blue gas giant that seemed to swell straight out of the horizon and reach overhead towards the glittering stripe of the galaxy’s spiral arm. The light pollution was nonexistent and the Peloxans, primarily ranchers and subsistence farmers, had no satellites or orbital stations to mar the view. Cal stood there and stared until his neck ached. Logically, he knew the arm was thousands of lightyears away, but from here, it glowed, so stark against the pitch-black night he almost thought he could reach up and sift his fingers through the stars like sand. Then Spell came by and tipped Cal’s head forwards again, said, “Enough stargazing, Commander, and get a move on or the General’s gonna leave you behind.”
“Right,” Cal said, shaking himself out of his rapture. “I’m coming.” He gave the sky one last wistful glance. The majority of his short life so far had been spent on Coruscant, where starlight was stopped before entering the atmosphere and asked for its transponder code, or aboard the Albedo Brave, often in hyperspace or windowless cabins. He never actually got to stargaze. But they had a job to do, and he didn’t want to be left with the troopers hanging back to guard the larties just in case, so Cal ran to catch up with his master and the rest of the men and tried to focus.
It's easier now that the sun’s climbing up to hide the starscape from view, and they’re busy traipsing through the thick old-growth forest separating the village and fields from the hilltop where their listening post is perched. The Peloxans – short, hairless, wrinkly humanoids who come in every shade of yellow imaginable, though Drift just refers to them collectively as jaundiced – allowed the Republic to build the station on their moon, but they seem to have an innate distrust of technology. The lonely hill in the middle of the forest, more than an hour’s walk from the fields, was the best site both parties found acceptable. There’s nowhere near it to land the larties. Given why they’re here, Master Tapal thought doing a flyover and just jumping might’ve been too conspicuous, so walking it is. The sun can’t reach them beneath the heavy tree cover and the wind’s trying to suck the marrow out of Cal’s bones. Wondering whether winter is coming or going, Cal draws the sleeves of his tunic down over his hands, tries not to shiver. He hadn’t noticed the chill when he was gawking at the stars. They’re long gone, but he does still like peering through the occasional gap in the trees and seeing if he can tell where the sky ends and the little curve of Peloxes visible begins.
At the moment, he’s not looking at anything. That’d break the rules of this game they’ve invented to pass the time.
“Okay, okay,” Lop says, audibly grinning, “we’ll try something easy.” Cal rolls his eyes behind their lids. It’s not fair to make him try to guess Hilt, whose gleaming armor was issued barely a week ago when he joined the 13th. The guy’s seen less active combat than his prepubescent commander. He pads on through a carpet of moss and fallen leaves, Brook on his left ready to nudge him out of the way if he’s about to trip over a root, and waits until Lop places something in his hands. Automatically, Cal closes his fingers around the plastoid and lets all his shields melt, and the echoes bypass his tunic-mittens like every other pair of gloves he’s ever tried and light up the insides of his eyelids.
– can’t believe you got away with that, you absolute nerf-herder! You shoulda been swabbing toilets until you –
– we’re going to be overrun in minutes, I can’t raise General Tapal, they’re dead oh kark oh kark they’re all dead –
– Gem’s pulse is a bit too slow but still thumping steadily against his fingers, and he doesn’t meet his brother’s hazy, half-lidded eyes because if he does they’re both going to burst into tears. If there’s any miracle in this kriffing galaxy it’s his batchmate’s survival. They’re already the only two left –
“Easy,” Cal says.
Brook snorts. “Good thing I didn’t have money riding on Lop’s shit-awful wordplay,” Salt remarks as Easy leans around Lop to take his gauntlet back from Cal. “If you’re gonna give the guy a challenge, don’t tell him who it is beforehand just ‘cause you think you’re funny…”
“Ah, shut up,” Lop says cheerfully. “And I’m hilarious. Want another?”
“Yes,” Cal says. “And Salt’s right – don’t make it easy on me.” He pauses, trying not to laugh, for the obligatory groan from the clone in question. “And there’s no point if I can’t get anything off it. It’s usually important memories that leave imprints. Strong emotions. So if you haven’t done anything exciting…” He trails off, considers what he just said, and glances over his shoulder. “Sorry, Hilt.”
Hilt, shining in his pristine white armor, heaves a sigh that sounds like it originated somewhere around his kneecaps. “Don’t worry, Commander, I’m a big boy. I can handle being told I’m boring.”
Cal shoots him an apologetic grin and turns back around. Before he closes his eyes again, he notices Lop bump Spell, watches Spell bump back in a friendly sort of manner and shake his head. Good. The fighting, the horrific injuries, the deaths, the horrors of war that wake him up screaming – he’s been through it all before. Heck, he’s participated in a few of those battles, because Master Tapal can only protect him from so much, and what are a few more nightmares, besides? He’s slightly jaded for his age. But he doesn’t want to see any memories the clones don’t want him to see, since that always feels like a horrible breach of privacy even when it’s accidental. One time he’d made the mistake of picking up Phoenix’s helmet when it fell off the bench and suddenly somebody was lifting it off his head, pulling it a little too far forwards so it caught on his already unkempt hair, and he’d tilted his head with the motion to make it easier. He got a moment’s glimpse of soft dark eyes and a mouth that quivered just the tiniest bit before the helmet was pushed into his arms and pair of hands cupped his face – he was so tired the only thought that went stumbling across his stupid mind was I haven’t shaved since we landed on Lonnaw, I must look like crap – and then he was being kissed with desperate reverence. He sighed, sagged. The hands slid around to the back of his neck, locked together, pulled him in like the two of them could merge and overlap and never be separated again. And clone number two-million-and-something, no tats, no cool scars, no mutations, just another trooper bred to die… he felt holy.
Cal has never been kissed, because he’s not quite eleven yet, but the psychometry doesn’t care, so he’s also been kissed a few dozen times. He doesn’t know if the echo ended because he dropped the helmet or if Phoenix dropped it in the echo and then Cal dropped it; either way, he was blushing to the roots of his hair and Phoenix figured out pretty quick he’d seen something intimate just from that. They hadn’t been able to look at one another for weeks. And now it’s been months, but he still wonders from time to time if it’s better or worse that the man with the gentle eyes and callused hands, the one he’d loved recklessly for those few seconds suspended in somebody else’s head, will never know exactly what happened to Phoenix.
Nobody puts a piece of their armor in Cal’s hands, and when the quiet chatter flowing around him abruptly hushes, he peeks. Master Tapal, formerly at the front of the pack with Drift, has stopped walking – he gestures for the rest of the men to continue, but his eyes are fixed squarely on his apprentice. Cal wilts, dropping his hands to his sides like Master Tapal doesn’t already know what he’s been up to. The look on the Lasat’s face speaks volumes. “Tell me, Padawan,” he says, “what I’m about to tell you.”
Ouch. Nothing like a reminder they just had this conversation not too long ago. Cal wants to shrink into the moss and let himself get chopped to slivers by the enormous razorblade ants scuttling around his feet, because that’d be less uncomfortable, but he’s not some youngling who’s going to hide the evidence of their wrongdoing. He makes himself meet his master’s eyes and says, “Jedi are supposed to be humble.”
Master Tapal merely nods, having gotten his point across. Lop, who says he had to be the best in his unit so every Kaminoan he pissed off wouldn’t drown him and not even bother making it look like an accident, butts in – “See, if I could do something like that psychometry stuff, I’d be obnoxiously proud of it.” He hitches his pack up a little further on his back. “Actually, I’d probably go on the road as some kinda fake mystic and make loads of money pretending to read minds.”
“Stick to scamming people at cards,” Brook mutters.
“It’s not like pride and humility are opposites,” Cal says to Lop as they start moving again. “I’m proud of being a Jedi. Honored, even. That’s a good thing. But we shouldn’t be arrogant, or go around bragging, or elevate ourselves and our abilities above everyone else.” He looks towards Master Tapal, who’s already looking back. “I was just showing off,” he admits.
Master Tapal nods again, not to agree (although he definitely does agree or else he wouldn’t have intervened), but acknowledging Cal understands what he’s saying and isn’t just mindlessly regurgitating what he’s been told since he was in the creche. Now he’ll expect Cal to put it into practice. He’ll also expect Cal to fail, eventually, and then keep trying. “Stay alert,” he says, gaze sweeping over the troopers. “We are not far from the station and we still don’t know what we’re walking into.”
Cal can already hear the dumb joke Lop’s no doubt concocting in his weird head – A clone walks into a listening post. He says, “Ow!” Suppressing a smile, he walks faster so he’s not quite so far behind Master Tapal.
Everyone here, up to and including his master, suspects they’re not walking into anything. There are six clone troopers working the listening station – used to be eight, before two were lost to some kind of waterborne parasite – and they’d dutifully manned their posts right up until three weeks ago. One missed weekly check-in raised a few eyebrows. Two raised some concerns. Three raised the alarm; the Albedo Brave was closest and not presently wrapped up in anything vital, so they were diverted to investigate. But there’s been zero Separatist activity around these parts for over a year. Peloxes and its moons have no strategic importance, Republic interests in the rest of the sector are well-defended, all the previous dispatches from the post have been excruciatingly mundane. Master Tapal spoke to the few Peloxans in the village who knew some Basic and they had nothing unusual to report. Even the Force feels warm and content on this quiet little moon, smoothing over the static still lingering in Cal’s head after the battalion’s last engagement. On their way in, Salt had opined they were going to get to the station and find they’d had a massive system failure that’d knocked out their comms, that was all. Drift was inclined to concur. If it was something they couldn’t fix, they wouldn’t be able to rely on the Peloxans for assistance. There are backup systems, of course, and maybe it’s not likely everything would go out at once, but tech always decides to die at the worst possible time in a war, so as Drift bluntly put it, it probably all just shit the bed.
Cal’s not supposed to repeat most of what Drift says. The commander is unapologetically rude and as Master Tapal has pointed out many times, Cal doesn’t always think before he speaks. He tends to take note of the less offensive phrases, though – rude or not, the man has a way with words.
Master Tapal’s slipped into a quiet conversation with Brook, who’s their communications expert and could rig up a working comm system from the contents of his rucksack and three potatoes. Cal doesn’t bother them. Next to him, Grim and Spell have their heads on a swivel and their blasters close at hand, and their conversation sounds a lot more interesting. “It was the worst,” Grim’s saying. “The one time I was practically begging the longnecks to crack down, and they ignored it. I still kriffing hear ‘Agony of the Heart’ in my head every time we have to leg it…”
“I’d prefer whingy sparklebop over the anti-authority bantha-crap one of my trainers made us march to,” Spell says. “If the guy in the song really mouthed off to his superiors like that, he would’ve been stun-batoned into a drooling vegetable inside of a day. Gotta wonder if Sarge was just trying to provoke us.”
As someone who likes anti-authority bantha-crap but is also extremely respectful towards his master, Cal really wants to know which song they’re talking about. He chews on his lip so he doesn’t interrupt. “I can’t believe you guys had marching cadences past age three,” says Bell from Cal’s other side.
“I think our whole dome was just weird.”
“Or else we were really clumsy,” Grim suggests. “Even after everyone else stopped, Spanner would mumble that stuff to himself to stay in time. I know every word of ‘Droyk’ thanks to that guy. And some roboto thing where all the lyrics were error messages. And that song about the kingdom full of rats.”
He can’t help himself. “Do you mean The Rat Queen?” Cal asks. Spell and Grim’s helmets swivel towards him now. “‘You look upon my glory,’ said the queen to the breeze, ‘my kingdom will reign to the crowns of the trees’?”
“That’s the one.”
He quickens his pace so the troopers with their longer legs don’t get ahead of him. “It’s not a song, it’s a poem. I liked it when I was little. Everyone knows the first three or four stanzas because they were in some classic holofilm half a century ago. There was even this one wannabe politician from the Colonies who used it in his campaign speech.” Cal hops up on a knobby arched root in his path, balances atop it for a second, jumps down. “Practically every newscaster from here to the Core ravaged him for it. Because after the beginning part everyone knows, the queen gets overthrown by her people for her greed and she has to go on a journey to learn how to be a better ruler. That’s what it’s really about. Not the sort of thing you want to quote if you’re trying to get elected… and he wasn’t. Elected, I mean. He was trying but he didn’t do enough research, obviously.”
“Hey, Commander,” Drift says, pivoting so he’s walking backwards, “got a question – who named you Cal?”
Cal blinks. “Um. My parents, I guess? If I had them.”
“You’re not a tubie,” Spell says. “You must have.”
“Yeah, but I don’t know if they named me, or if I was orphaned or something and someone else named me. It might be in my file at the Temple. I haven’t looked it up.” It’s never felt necessary. Even at his loneliest in the creche, he never wanted for family. “I think I was born on Ringo Vinda, though.”
“Yes,” Master Tapal rumbles, “you were.”
This is the first time his master has alluded to knowing anything about Cal’s life before he came to the Jedi Temple. Cal speeds up even more until he’s level with Master Tapal and Drift. “Did you look it up?”
Master Tapal shakes his head. “Not exactly. I saw your record the first time I met with the Council to discuss you becoming my apprentice.”
“When was that?”
“Just after you turned eight.” Master Tapal must sense Cal’s surprise, because he adds, “You were too young to be apprenticed yet. It was only brought up as a possibility… but I knew.” He’s silent for a few seconds, which gives Cal time to wonder if he would be patient enough to wait a year and a half for his future Padawan to grow up a little more. “I don’t know anything else about your origins. It was not the subject of conversation.”
He shouldn’t ask. The words pop out anyway. “What did they say about me?”
“I seem to recall the term ‘precocious’ being used liberally.”
“…in a good way?”
“Sometimes,” Master Tapal says wryly. Grim and Bell both snicker and Cal grins despite the subtle rebuke. ‘Precocious’ is probably a good word for it. Things came easily to him when he was younger – he knew the answers to his instructors’ questions, got new lightsaber forms correct within a few repetitions, retained information well, had a large vocabulary because he liked to read. Things that didn’t come easily to him, he avoided and pretended like it was his own idea. Then he became a Padawan and (as he remembers with some embarrassment) spent a lot of time crying those first couple weeks, because for the first time in his life, he couldn’t do anything right. Eventually, though, he caught on to the lesson Master Tapal was trying to impart – he was being set up to fail so he could learn how to. Keep trying. Keep failing. Figure out how to fail in the right direction until you succeed. He’s still relearning that lesson about once a month, and he doesn’t cry over it anymore.
There are a bunch more questions he wants to ask Master Tapal now, but it’s an unrelated one that cuts in front of the queue. “Drift,” Cal says, “why’d you ask about my name?”
Drift shrugs. “Just curious. If you’d been a clone kid, your brothers woulda named you ‘Chatterbox’.”
“Hey!” Cal exclaims, laughing, and amusement ripples through the rest of the troopers, rebounding back to him like a hug. Even Master Tapal’s clearly trying to hide a smile. “I don’t talk that much.” The disbelief doesn’t feel quite so warm and cuddly and he huffs. “Fine, I’ll be quiet.”
“Five credits says you can’t keep quiet until we get to the listening post,” Brook challenges.
“You’re on,” Cal replies, then demonstratively clamps his mouth shut and fixes his eyes straight ahead.
Maybe he does get too talkative. It’s hard to resist when he’s around so many people who want to talk to him. He wasn’t exactly excluded or anything when he was back in the creche, but he wasn’t close to anybody in particular, either. Bohta and Leem had been best friends since they were in the nursery, and Cris and Tazenthalay were always together, and Ollo and Miranda and Gen formed a tight trio, and so on and so forth until Cal was the odd man out. And the psychometry made them uncomfortable sometimes. And… Ollo, who struggled with everything Cal found so simple but had enviously beautiful handwriting, once called him an obnoxious know-it-all, and the others agreed, and Cal hadn’t said much for weeks after that.
So, with some experience under his belt, shutting up for the last ten minutes to the station should be easy. Cal blocks out everyone else’s conversations to avoid temptation and keeps walking. Brook tries twice to trip him up with random questions – the first time, Cal gets as far as inhaling and opening his mouth before he catches himself, and the second, he just gives him a nice try sort of look. The trooper retreats, but Cal expects a third assault, possibly from someone else if Brook can recruit to the cause. That tells him Brook might not have five credits to lose, which is kind of sad. Cal’s a Jedi kid with little use for money and even he has some stashed in his cabin on the Brave. It’s supposed to be the same principle – the GAR provides everything the clones need, so they don’t get paid for their work – but it doesn’t sit entirely right with him.
He’s clambering over a mossy hump on the ground, mouth firmly shut, alert for danger he doesn’t expect and sneaky questions he does, when something pings in the back of his skull and stops him dead. He had sped up to dodge Brook and everyone else is behind him; Spell asks, “What’s up, Commander?” as he approaches.
Cal doesn’t answer. Five credits is five credits. But he closes his eyes, pushes himself outwards, feeling, searching – “Master,” he says suddenly, spinning on his heel, “there’s something here.” Without waiting for a response (or permission), he skids down the slope and off their course, letting the Force guide him to whatever it is he’s supposed to find.
Not fifteen meters away, he steps on something that rolls beneath his heel. He yelps, manages to stay standing, hops on one foot as pain shoots through the other. Then he looks down at the offending object and, stomach lurching, crouches down to touch it –
“Wait!” An arm curls around his chest and yanks him up and away before his fingers make contact. “Wait, sir,” Spell says, backing up to let Salt and Grim pass them. “Could be a trap. Let us check it out first.”
Cal’s no fan of that course of action, but it’s one he’s gotten accustomed to in a war. He stands there, flexing his twisted ankle, as Grim and Salt sweep the area for bombs or a cadre of droids lying in wait, as Master Tapal and the others catch up. Once Grim gives him a nod, Hilt seizes the boot and drags the body of a clone trooper out from the underbrush.
Someone groans faintly. Master Tapal has too good a grip on his emotions for them to seep into Cal, and Cal can’t read his expression. “‘scuse me,” Lop says, brushing past them and squatting next to the trooper. The man is clearly dead – not only are there two scorched holes in his chestplate, moss is growing on some of his armor – so Lop doesn’t check for a pulse, just pops the seals and removes the filthy helmet.
They’ve all seen too many corpses to be shocked or disgusted by the decomposing face of a clone. “Well, he’s definitely one of us,” Lop says, all business now.
“Uh, sir?”
As one, they glance over towards Brook as he and Easy pull another body from the brush.
After the whole mass of leaves, broken branches, bushes, and assorted undergrowth is excavated, there are six armored bodies lying side by side in the moss. Cal knows what everyone’s thinking – they had six soldiers manning their listening post. Most of them were killed by one or two shots to the head or chest, though one trooper looks like he was used for target practice, and the last one’s faceplate is completely smashed in. When Lop starts to remove that helmet, Cal looks away. Ruined faces make him squeamish. He’s relieved to see Spell do the same.
“It’s been three weeks since we’ve had any communication from this post,” Lop says after a minute, tapping his finger to the cheek of his helmet like he’s deep in thought. “We’ve got a problem, General. These guys have been dead a lot longer than that.”
There’s nothing playful or happy in the multitude of emotions that swell in the Force at that proclamation. Cal lets the feelings flow through him like water, tries to stay grounded. So much for a simple communications failure. Resisting the urge to ask then who’s been transmitting the weekly check-ins?, he takes a step forward, extends a hand. “Let me look.”
Lop raises the first helmet he removed. Master Tapal’s hand falls to Cal’s shoulder – less emotional support, more physical support in case he blacks out – and Cal takes the helmet in his hands.
There’s something wrong with the lights again. He’s turned every single one in the facility on and he can still see too many shadows.
“We should go back to the mess,” Tig says shakily, trembling hands locked tight around his brother’s vambrace. He’s going to dent the plastoid alloy soon. “I keep telling you guys, we can’t be alone, that’s how it gets you –”
“I keep telling you that doesn’t matter, hut’uun!” he snaps. He tries to yank his arm away, but fear is giving Tig a whole lot of strength. “Otherwise we’d all be dead. Or did you make Sixty come with you when you took a piss this morning?” Tig doesn’t answer. “We’ve just gotta keep to the lights.”
Cal blinks as the brightness fades from his vision. Bewildered, he lowers the helmet into the first set of hands willing to accept it, shrugs off Master Tapal’s hand, starts patting down one of the other deceased troopers. The blaster finally gives him something.
– it’s in the walls it’s in the walls IT’S IN THE WALLS –
Strange. He tries another clone with no success. The fourth is more helpful, as is the fifth; as he stands to try the man with the shattered helmet, his knees buckle and Master Tapal has to catch him before he hits the ground. “Enough,” the Lasat says firmly, holding Cal up until Cal thinks his legs are going to support him again.
“But –”
“If you exhaust yourself now, whatever we find at the station may be too much for you to handle,” Master Tapal cautions. He doesn’t mince words. And he’s right, of course – Cal takes a few deep breaths and wills away the weariness pressing at the backs of his eyes. “What did you see?”
Running his fingers through his hair, Cal glances at the bodies and shakes his head slowly. “I don’t think we’re going to find anything at the station.”
“No tinnies?” Fifteen asks, sounding almost disappointed.
“I could be wrong, obviously, but… they were all scared of something different, and none of it made any sense. One of them thought there was some… presence in the walls that’d drag them in if they got too close.” He waves a hand towards the clone at the end of the row. “That one barricaded himself in his quarters and then –” his voice falters for a moment, “I think he shot himself in the head. He thought the others could read his mind and were plotting against him. It’s like they all suddenly developed paranoid schizophrenia or something at once. Droids can’t do that.”
“A biological agent, maybe…?” Bell murmurs.
“Wait,” Spell says. “There was that parasite that killed the other two men here –”
“They thought it was a parasite,” Drift corrects. “Not like anyone performed an autopsy on a pair of clones stationed in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. I was looking through their communications while we were on the way – they’d just guessed ‘cause someone talked to the Peloxans and the symptoms matched a parasite in the water they dealt with sometimes.”
“Yeah, but they all drank the same water! If it didn’t kill the rest of these guys, but caused some kind of – hallucinations or whatever later on –”
“This is merely speculation,” Master Tapal interrupts. “We cannot know anything for sure until we reach that listening post. Let’s move. Keep your guard up.”
“I can have backup here in six minutes,” says Drift. “It won’t be quiet, though.”
“Leave them on standby for now. I’d rather have stealth on our side. Padawan –” Master Tapal’s gaze fixes on Cal, who’s unwrapping a ration stick, seeking a fast jolt of energy. He always has a couple on him, all the same flavor because he only likes one. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, Master,” Cal says. He wiggles his foot. “I rolled my ankle a bit, but it doesn’t hurt much. I’ll be fine.”
“Good. And Cal?” Master Tapal waits until Cal’s finished chewing a mouthful of jitfruit-flavored calories and looking up at him again. “Well done.”
It seems inappropriate to smile when he’s standing next to six dead men, but Cal can’t smother it before it steals across his face. Getting used to failure has made genuine praise feel so much more meaningful, especially from his master. He allows himself only a moment to bask in it, then shoves the rest of the ration stick in his mouth, squares his shoulders, and falls into line with the others, and they march on towards the listening post.
“I’m not doing you any favors, you know.”
Cal says nothing. The woman on the other side of the desk scowls at her datapad, taps the screen a few times. “This ain’t a job for a kid,” she continues, setting the pad down and sliding it across the desk to him, and he picks it up slowly. “If I didn’t have a quota to meet, I probably wouldn’t be considering you at all…”
Drawing his knees up, Cal props the datapad against them so he can get a better look at the lines of miniscule print and starts reading the contract. It’s the exact sort of hyper-exploitative nonsense he was expecting, with the occasional bone like free healthcare (if you were injured on the job and can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt it could not possibly have been your fault or in any way prevented) thrown in there. But it pays something, at least, now that that’s an concern. He’s survived the galaxy-wide massacre of his people; why not try his luck in a career with a fatality rate larger than some star systems?
He feels so sick. The crowded words on the screen swim and he has to blink a dozen times to bring them back into focus.
“Not much of a talker, is he?” the recruiter says flatly.
“He, ah –” There’s a noise back by the door, skin scraping across fabric – Prauf tends to rub his hands over his knees when he’s nervous. Cal chews at the ragged, bleeding mess of his thumbnail and keeps reading. One day off in every ten-day cycle. “He hasn’t actually said anything to me yet… wrote down his name and that’s about all. But – that’s not gonna be a problem, right?”
“No velvet off my horns,” she says. “Once his name’s on the contract, whatever happens to him is outta my hands, so I really don’t care.”
“Oh. Okay. I’m sure sooner or later, maybe…” Prauf doesn’t finish the sentence, but the implication hangs over Cal’s head.
He hasn’t spoken since he scrabbled out of the escape pod. At first, he had nothing to say. Then, after Prauf turned on the fritzy holoscreen in his apartment and Cal saw the Temple spewing smoke into Coruscant’s atmosphere, heard the Supreme-Chancellor-turned-Emperor vowing to rid the galaxy of any lingering pockets of the Jedi insurrection, words failed him anyway. If he tries now, it feels like someone’s closing their fist around his windpipe and he can’t make a sound, so he doesn’t try.
Maybe it’s better this way, he thinks, pretending he’s still studying this contract he’s about to bind himself to. He’s sure there are more survivors – the Council, hopefully – and someone will find him on Bracca eventually, but until then, he needs to disappear. The Scrapper Guild is just a wet, smoggy cog in the machine. He can fly under the radar here. And… keeping his mouth shut until he’s among Jedi again is suddenly looking like a brilliant idea. He can’t say anything incriminating if he never says anything at all.
There’s a spot for him to sign his name at the end of the contract. Cal reaches for the stylus on the recruiter’s desk, but she puts her hand over it before he can take it. He blinks at her. “Look,” she says, very quietly, “I won’t stop you. But you could go down to the spaceport, see if one of the outgoing cargo ships’ll let you work your way off-planet. Lotta better places out there.”
He has nowhere to go. Nowhere is safe anymore. She lifts her hand and he takes the stylus, writes Cal on the line, pauses. Using his real name is pretty stupid, but she’s watching him and erasing what he’s already put there would look a little suspicious. “If you don’t got a surname, that’s enough,” she says, so he leaves it at that and returns the datapad. “Welcome to the Guild –” she glances at the screen, “Cal.” To Prauf, she says, “Get him tattooed and kitted before tomorrow night. You know where to go.” Then she looks back at Cal. “Count yourself lucky, kid. If he wasn’t willing to train you, you’d be starting in Hazmat. Day after tomorrow, you report alongside Prauf for first shift at dawn, understand?”
“We’ll be there,” Prauf says, getting to his feet with a slight grunt. The office is so small Cal only needs three steps to reach him and the door. “Thanks.” He puts his big hands on Cal’s shoulders, guiding him out, and Cal squeezes his eyes shut for a second so he can pretend it’s Master Tapal instead. “Might as well see about getting you properly dressed first. You’re tiny for a Human, but I bet we can scrape something up… hey.” Cal feels him bend closer and opens his eyes, sees they’ve reached the lift already. “You okay?”
Cal doesn’t say anything. But he does nod, just a bit, and Prauf squeezes his shoulders like Master Tapal used to before urging him into the lift.