A New Galaxy

Chapter 3: Nightmares

Locating ARC-77 “Fordo”

Location: Coruscant

Designation: Temporary Placement until further orders

Coruscant: Chancellor’s Room

Captain Fordo walked down the hallway towards the Chancellor’s main office, being called by the Chancellor about a dilemma that arose. Captain Fordo was wearing his Phase II armor with red markings on him, but he was not a Republic Shocktrooper. Fordo gained a reputation with leading the Muunilist 10 in a Republic victory and saving the lives of three Jedi generals. Fordo was also awarded for aiding in the defense of Coruscant from the droid army, but why would the Chancellor want him.

The doors opened for Fordo as he entered where the Chancellor, looking fresh and not at all displeased with his work, was waiting for him. The older, former Naboo Senator, man had his hands clasped together and gestured for Fordo to take a seat.

“Do you know why I called you here captain?” the Chancellor asked

“I’m afraid not sir,” Fordo answered

“We have lost contact with three ARC Troopers like yourself in the Outer Rim Territories. They just disappeared and no one can get information upon their sudden disappearance. One of those ARC’s you might know,” the Chancellor explained sitting more upright and in a relaxed manner upon his chair

“And that might be?” Fordo trailed sensing where this might be going

“Commander Steele, he was with you on Coruscant when I was kidnapped,”

“ARC-29? I remember him, brave but arrogant. I remember him fully, wouldn’t give a bit of ground to the droids no matter how many of his men were killed,” Fordo recalled with slight bitterness

“You seem to dislike him captain,” the Chancellor mused

“He disregarded my order to fall back when we were being overrun. He even ran out into the hail of blaster fire to save a wounded trooper. I admire but resent his spirit,” Fordo nodded

“Well captain, he is missing. I want you to find him, and the rest of his men.” the Chancellor then got real serious

“No offense sir, but how when no one knows?” Fordo questioned

“That’s for you to find out. I want those clones back here, and I want a full story of their disappearance. Am I understood captain?” the Chancellor said firmly

“Yes sir,” Fordo nodded rising from his seat

“You are dismissed captain,”

Fordo gave a salute before leaving the office. Thinking about the time Fordo and Steele fought on Coruscant to beat the droids back.

Battle of Coruscant

Blaster fire was fired back and forth, blue and red streaks of death coming over a bridge in a metropolitan city. Buildings, all skyscrapers mainly, filled this scenery but also a lot of rubble and wreckage. The clone forces were holding their position on Sector 4 as the droid army kept pushing forward, a surprise attack on the Republic capitol planet. Two of these clones were ARC’s as it was Captain Fordo and Commander Steele firing their DC-15A blaster rifles at the droids.

“Steele, we got to pull back! This is getting too hot for us, the droids will overrun us any moment,” Fordo told the other ARC

“Fordo, you fall back but I am not giving one inch of ground, where I stand, to the clankers,” Steele retorted as he shot several rounds, precisely taking down several super battle droids

“You’re going to get yourself killed out there!”

Just as Fordo said this, one of the clone troopers up front with Steele was shot in the side, falling to the ground as the droids continued. Steele looked at the clone and the other clones who were falling back, they couldn’t leave their fellow brother like that! Steele then ran forward, throwing a smoke grenade as he lifted the clone onto his shoulders.

“Steele, get out of there! That’s an order!” Fordo yelled as Steele was coming towards a small rubble hill

“No brother left behind!” Steele would reply, setting the wounded clone behind some cover before taking a position and firing his blaster

"Sector Four needs reinforcements. We are being overrun. Repeat, we are—" Fordo was saying before whacking several droids and firing his blasters at others

“Fall back! Fall back!” Fordo ordered

“Fordo! We can take them! Everyone keep fighting!” Steele reordered the clones as the troopers  looked at one another in confusion

“Hold your positions!” suddenly they would hear Jedi Grandmaster Yoda order as he came onto the battlefield riding a goat like species, slashing droids and force pushing others away

“See! What did I tell you?! We keep fighting,” Steele smugly said to Fordo, getting up close and personal with the droids as Mace Windu came crashing a Vulture droid into the advancing robots

“I’m already hating you Steele, but you definitely know not to give up,” Fordo said to himself

Scanning Location of ARC-29

Location: Unknown

It was dark, nothing could describe how dark it was to any human or sentient life out there. The mare in Steele’s dream could only stare at the dream that was nothing, but she did see one small sliver of light. She took this sliver of light and approached it, drawing nearer every second and the light becoming more brighter. Upon reaching this light though, the mare was transported to a plains area of some sort. Calm breeze, warm sunlight and everything was at peace, or so she thought.

Luna looked at the rest of her surroundings and directly right behind her was something else, the same plains area but devastated with bodies of armored troopers and battle droids, the ground barren as explosives and blaster fire was killing the life she once saw. But this wasn’t the end of it, there was a lot of blood, from the clones dying on the battlefield as some had lost entire limbs. This made the Princess of the Night want to hurl but she kept her body from reacting in such a way, though she felt the burning of stomach acid in the back of her throat.

“There’s too many of them sir!” a clone yelled as Luna could see a handful of clones right behind a destroyed vehicle, a six legged vehicle that resembled a beetle

‘We keep fighting! We don’t let these droids get anywhere close to the settlement!” Luna could hear the familiar voice of Commander Steele yelling orders as the advancing droids were being torn apart by blaster fire from the clones, but the droids had the numbers and it was obvious

For every clone trooper that fell, at least ten or twenty battle droids were destroyed. The clones numbers were only five and the droids had a least fifty, having the standard, the super battledroids and even some commando droids. Luna continued to watch to understand where these clones had come from but it was pretty obvious where they had originated….war.

“We’re running out of ammo sir, we aren’t going to make it!” a clone private told his superior officer

“As long as you’re still breathing, you will fight private!” Steele coldly countered as he then got shot in the shoulder, knocking him down onto the floor

“Sir!” another clone said in worry before getting shot in the helmet, killing him instantly

Steele got up as he had dropped his two DC-15 pistols when he fell, but he couldn’t find them as a Commando Droid instantly came at him with its sword ready to plunge into his gut. Steele rolled out of the way as the sword just hit dirt and Steele gave the droid a nice punch to the metal face, hurting his hand just briefly but it still stunning the droid. The Commando droid though was quick to recover as it hit Steele in the gut and kicked him in the face, knocking off his helmet in the process. Steele recovered and back up just in the nick of time to feel the tip of the sword make a clean slash on his right cheek.

The sting of pain only pissed off the ARC trooper as he tackled the droid, which did not expect the clone to do, and grabbed its head. Pulling it off as the droid tried to remove the ARC off of it but it only took two seconds for the more physically stronger ARC to pull the Commando Droid’s head off. Steele only had a brief moment to relax as he saw another one of the last clone troopers get shot down. Grabbing his helmet, and the Commando Droid’s blaster, he rushed back to his former position. The pain in his shoulder was very minimal as his extra armor on his shoulders helped resist the blast damage.

“Only 30 left! We can do this men! Grenade out!” Steele encouraged the last remaining three troopers as he tossed a grenade into the swarm of droids

The grenade did its job, blasting apart the cluster of droids and reducing their numbers to twenty or less. But that was short lived as another trooper was shot and killed by the droids and before Steele could say anything, another blast got another trooper. It was just Steele and a private now on the fallen AT-TE walker that once was operational.

“Just you and me rookie! Let’s send these clankers to the scapyard!” Steele told the private as he kept firing the stolen weapon, taking out five B-1 battle droids with ease

“Yes sir!”

One by one, the droids fell to the two troopers firing at them, it all went so well until….

‘Gaah!” the private screamed in pain as thermal detonator was thrown and exploded near their position, sending flak that got the trooper in the face

“Rookie! Why you piling mounts of trash!” Steele angrily declared as he blasted the remaining droids down before going to the rookie’s body

“S-sir…….” he was in bad shape, bleeding heavily as a shard of flak was embedded into the left side of his face, with no medics to come and help

“Don’t worry trooper, we’ll get you out of this,” Steele assured beginning to carry the trooper but the said trooper just stopped his officer

“no…..I’m….not going to make it.”

“Don’t say that, you will,”

“No...I won’t. Can i ask a question sir?”

“What is it trooper?” Steele sighed as hated seeing his own men die, right in front of him, slowly

“Is this….what were made for? To kill? To sacrifice our lives for the Republic? To follow orders without question?”

“Yes, this is what we do,”

“But...aren’t we human? Don’t we have our own thoughts and minds?”

“What are you saying?” Steele now questioned as the trooper was struggling to breathe

“Are we just machines too? Mindless….follow orders without question….no matter what…..I thought….we were more…..like everyone else…..but…...look at us…...dying...nobody cares sir. We’re just clones,” the trooper said finally as he gave one last breath before succumbing to death itself

Steele just stood there, motionless, confused, angry at all the same time as the trooper’s words were getting to him. Sure, he was an ARC, he had more independence than the standard clones but still, were they just another type of machine? Would it matter how many clone lives were lost? They could always make more anyway, right?”

Steele looked up to see the rest of his brethren, all laid out dead in front of him. All the bodies of once a good defensive thousand men, turned to just one. They took down a force of at least seven thousand droids, which was impressive, but still costly. Steele took off his helmet and just stared at the scene in front of him, a LAAT flying over him suddenly.

Luna wanted to understand how the ARC felt, but she didn’t have anything close to how the commander suffered. Seeing men with high hopes of beating the enemy, die in front of him in vast numbers and yet, the war continued, with no mourning for those dead. Then she noticed the clone was looking at her in confusion, wait, how could he see her? Nopony was able to notice Luna in their dreams but before she could figure this out, the dream ended abruptly.

Luna found herself on the floor of the commander’s quarters, somehow knocked out of his dream and also with the commander awake. He stared at her with somewhat of a glare in his eyes, not pleased with his invasion of privacy. He didn’t have any threatening gestures though, just simple annoyance.

“How did you end up in my memory? I don’t remember anyone in that field but myself,” Steele questioned with slight annoyance

“We have the power to go into dreams of every being. Strange how you could notice, nopony has ever noticed me in their dreams before unless I allow them to,” Luna explained

“But why?”

“Dreams and memories speak a lot of one’s character and history. Your history was tragic and I am sorry for you having to go through that. I cannot recall anything close to what you have faced so i cannot say I know how you feel. The only instance where I felt so much pain was being banished to the moon by my very own sister. Alas, I was different then, giving into my anger and frustration than seeing reason,”

“Seems….heartbreaking,”

“Like I stated, I do not have anything as tragic as your own memory of that conflict. Our world has been blessed with the lack of wars and abundance of peaceful negotiations. Did that clone mean a lot to you?” Luna then asked as her tone was soft and empathetic

“No, what he said did. The words haunt me with every order I followed, especially the idea of being another machine, a living one. I couldn’t stop thinking about how we are no better than the droids, just blasting them and dying so the Republic didn’t have to fight the majority of the war. We were their tools of destruction and peacekeeping, and I considered desertion but…..I couldn’t do that to my own brothers. I wanted the best of them, to live on and win this war.” Steele answered with a cold attitude

“Do you know what it means to live?” Luna asked which confused Steele

“Survival, fighting, grief, joy…..repeat?” Steele replied unsure as his whole life was the same thing as the Princess just shook her head

“No, much more than that. Compassion, empathy, happiness, friendship, family bonds and much more. Thriving….that’s how life should be. To thrive,”

“Then I clearly have not lived,” Steele sighed his expression softening to remorse

“No worries, I can show you. I was once in your position, to an extant. Never the less, it is never too late and since you are far from your war, you may appreciate your life more,” Luna assured him

“Are you offering me something?”

“Of course! But the question is, are you willing to live?”

“I don’t see why not,” Steele answered as she had a point, he didn’t have to worry about the war for right now

“Huzzah! We appreciate your answer! Now we must depart, I will inform my sister of your presence tomorrow. I will visit you to discuss the details and that you all may meet her,” Luna said as she vanished into a mist

Steele stood there for a minute before rubbing his eyes, was he still sleeping? He must have been because when he opened them again, he was looking at the ceiling. As if he never got up from bed to look at the Princess who was here, and no indication of her actual presence being evident. Everything in his room was the same, with the ARC trooper sighing to himself.

“I really need to get some sleep,”

Chapter End