Tears won't help...
But a kind word and an appeal to what bound them together — yes, she could achieve more that way.
"Rex," Ahsoka, wiping the wetness from her eyes with her forearm, tried to pull herself together. "We need to talk."
"CT-7567, Commander," her old friend corrected her, disfigured by augmentations and cybernetics.
Even his voice was no longer the one that had belonged to Rex over thirty years ago.
Artificial, projected — presumably directly from his vocal apparatus.
Like a droid's...
"No, you're Rex!" she insisted.
For some reason, Jedi training came to mind.
Instructors who said that even within the most impenetrable darkness, there was light.
You just had to see it.
Let the light grow strong — and then, if the light knew it was needed by someone, it would leave its prison.
It would conquer all the darkness around it.
You just needed to give it a little push...
The clone simply ignored her words.
Whether this was a good sign or not, she couldn't tell right now.
But Ahsoka thought that this was exactly the direction she needed to keep moving in to save and bring back her friend.
Everything had to be done gradually.
Since he was the only one fighting alongside her right now, she needed to learn more about his fate — maybe the past held a secret that would help save him?
For some reason, Ahsoka wasn't thinking about herself at that moment.
Just as she wasn't thinking about the solar ionization reactor fifty meters away from her, which, if it went critical, would destroy everything here, everyone, forever.
"Rex," she addressed the clone. "Talk to me. I want to know what happened to you and the rest of the guys from the 501st."
Her old friend, who had already put his mask back on, turned his head to look at her, but she simply couldn't read his mood.
The shock cuffs worked perfectly, breaking her pathetic attempts to concentrate on the Force.
"Before the Republic fell, but after you left, Commander, General Skywalker offered me command of the 501st," Rex's voice from beneath the mask sounded even more ominous. "I refused."
"Why?"
"Too many new clones had appeared in the legion," he said. "Not our brothers. Even though they claimed otherwise, we felt something was wrong. There weren't many of us — those born on Kamino — left after several bloody battles. General Skywalker..."
"Anakin didn't accept your refusal?" the Togruta understood.
"He went to rescue Supreme Chancellor Palpatine," Rex said. "Appo took command of the legion. And I was arrested."
"Did other clones do that?"
"Shadow operations clones," Rex explained. "Fighters against defective clones, traitors, saboteurs. Me, and those who tried to stop them, were brought here."
"I was told this was a prison..."
"It was," Rex said. "For a while. All clone deserters caught during the Clone Wars were held here. Everyone who didn't follow an order. Everyone who broke one."
"But that's thousands of people!"
"One thousand seven hundred and forty-two clones, Commander," Rex corrected her, making the girl reel from what she heard.
The Kaminoans prided themselves on the fact that the clones they created could not betray their client.
Obedience and loyalty — that's what made Kaminoan products a qualitatively different level from other cloners.
Given the size of the Grand Army of the Republic, nearly two thousand clones being "defective" was far too large a number to be considered a "margin of error."
Something was wrong here.
"You were all kept here, in the prison."
"Yes. Then, when the Empire was established, the Supreme Commander arrived, and on his orders, the prison was rebuilt into the base it is now. He and his men controlled the process, personally giving instructions during inspection tours. And soon it turned into a laboratory."
"For what?"
"The Supreme Commander of the Empire wanted to know the reasons why clones disobey orders."
"Darth Vader," Ahsoka swallowed the lump in her throat. "We suspected he was behind all this."
"Exactly."
"Rex... You know who he is, don't you?" the Togruta asked cautiously.
"Yes," the mask of General Grievous nodded almost imperceptibly. "He didn't hide it from us."
"Strange," Ahsoka frowned. "Given your training and everything else, it was unwise to reveal himself. You could have escaped..."
"We couldn't," Rex replied. "For our guard, an entire army of CIS battle droids was brought here, reprogrammed to destroy any escapee. All seventeen escape attempts were brutally suppressed, the instigators killed."
"Rex... did they find what they were looking for?" Ahsoka asked.
"I don't know," Rex replied. "The longer we were here, the more clones were put into stasis freezing. After the uprisings, they didn't keep us in barracks; they put us to sleep. Woke us in small batches only for research and work."
If Vader had found the answer to how to make all clones obedient...
Wait.
If he had found such an answer, why hadn't the Empire revived Kaminoan clone production?
They had Kamino under their control; they wouldn't even have had to pay — the population was surely in the status of "indentured workers."
Or maybe... there was something else here.
The Empire had abandoned the use of clones a little over twenty years ago, completely shifting the formation of its armed forces to a recruitment-based method.
But if so, then...
It couldn't be that Vader had created a top-secret base-prison-laboratory for just one purpose.
"What else did you do here, Rex?" Ahsoka asked.
"I don't possess that kind of information, Commander," the clone replied. "I'm just a Terror Trooper, like everyone here."
No, it couldn't be that simple.
Her old friend's words didn't match what the Grand Admiral had briefed the attackers on.
"Clone commandos, Rex. According to our information, there was a prison here for clone commandos," she said. "Both for those who remained loyal to the Empire and for those who were demobilized from the GAR or the Imperial armed forces. Do you know anything about that?"
"We're all expendable here," Rex said. "Regular stormtroopers, heavy equipment operators, commandos, clone assassins, even clones for shadow operations..."
"Wait, what?!" how many times had she been shocked now? "This base cracked open the heads of not only disloyal clones, but also those completely loyal to the Empire?"
"Exactly, Commander," Rex reported. "The first are simple soldiers — Terror Troopers, to be precise. Expendable material that's no loss in any battle. The second are the commanders of the first."
"But... that means you were all transformed into those monsters... into Terror Troopers?!" Ahsoka gasped. "Rex, but how, how could you not rebel against such an atrocity?!"
The mask, similar to the one General Grievous had worn, stared intently at Ahsoka.
For a moment, she thought Rex was expressing pain, resignation, and sadness, but it wasn't the Force that was the source of this knowledge.
It seemed as if his entire posture spoke of it.
"It's hard to resist Darth Vader's will when part of your brain is cybernetic implants," said CT-7567. "All that's left for us, Commander, are memories and no free will..."
"But you're talking to me right now! Telling me classified information!" Ahsoka reminded him. "You're not resisting this; you're telling me everything yourself! I'm cut off from the Force and can't force you..."
"This is only happening because the central computer has diverted its attention from full control over us," Rex explained. "Otherwise..."
She thought something impossible had happened.
The artificial voice became full of self-pity.
"Otherwise," her old friend repeated, "we're all just 'meat droids,' Commander. And even this conversation, I have no doubt, is part of the plan to destroy the forces attacking the base."
* * *
It took a considerable amount of time to break through the blocking forces holding back the attackers in the central corridor-tunnel.
And a significant number of Dominion battle droids, which now lay scattered across the floor, destroyed or damaged.
The stormtroopers advancing in the second wave were now setting up a makeshift checkpoint from the damaged equipment.
With the support of droid techs, this proved sufficient to secure the corridor from uninvited guests.
And Darth Maul had no doubt that they would need to repel a new wave of attackers.
The room, burned to the ground, where all three corridors converged, indicated that a battle between strong fighters, if not formations, had already taken place here.
But the details would only become clear after the base came under Dominion control.
For now, the central units, having broken through to "operational space," were finishing off the remnants of the enemy in the adjacent corridors.
They were the first to link up with Lady Meilis's units, but from the regimental commander's report, it became clear that the former Jedi had broken through the enemy's defenses and plunged deeper into the territory.
In the corridor where Starkiller and the commandos had been operating, none of the latter were found.
They also couldn't force the doors open — the base, having lost territory, cut power to them.
Of course, this didn't stop the techs, who tirelessly cut through the locking mechanisms to manually pry the doors open.
But it would be a very long process.
"You're in command of the forces here," Darth Maul ordered his young colleague, Deimos.
His wounded comrade wasn't in the best shape for battle right now, but the Zabrak had already had his damaged prosthetics replaced.
So he and the droids would go forward.
Deimos needed to handle the evacuation of wounded stormtroopers, corpses, and the remains of enemy technology, and prepare to leave the base's territory in case of self-destruction.
"We need to find Lady Tano, Starkiller, and Delta Squad," the young follower of the Dark Side of the Force said hollowly. "Not to mention that Lady Meilis has also gone missing."
"That's what I'm going to do," Maul promised.
"They've probably been taken prisoner," the former Jensaarai developed his thought, rightly assuming that the enemy had no use for corpses.
But interrogating prisoners...
Why would a base controlled by an artificial intelligence or its equivalent need that?
Then again, guessing was also pointless — until the central computer's data bank was studied, it was unlikely that any assumption about who created this base and why, what protocols they had prioritized for the mechanical defender, and so on, could be correct.
"We'll sort it out after the victory," Maul promised, watching as dozens upon dozens of B2 and BX commando droid squads headed from the central room through the corridors deeper into the complex. "Be ready to withdraw the troops from the planet if something goes wrong."
"I'll only do that as a last resort," Darth Deimos warned. "If necessary, I'll join you."
"No," Maul cut him off. "You won't. You have your own mission — I and the droids are going to the central computer. Better make sure that he," the Zabrak pointed to the charred corpse of some strange Zabrak, pierced by a lightsaber blade, which the flames (clearly the work of a Jedi Shadow) had disfigured beyond recognition, "is securely frozen."
"I'll do it," Darth Deimos said after a pause, showing his desire to join the slaughter.
Maul watched the medical and technical crew already hurrying towards them with a repulsor stasis pod for preserving the corpse.
The lightsabers found among the soot on the floor, Maul assessed as simple, yet somehow familiar...
As if they were saturated with a kindred Force, which was impossible in principle — he hadn't created such sabers.
But that would be sorted out aboard the Guardian, which was why he hadn't claimed the dead Zabrak's lightsabers either.
His thoughts were occupied elsewhere.
The 501st Legion had suffered heavy personnel and material losses, so risking the remnants was rather foolish.
Yes, the dead numbered just over a battalion, but there were also seven full-strength battalions of wounded.
Effectively, a significant portion of the legion's stormtroopers were now out of the fight, and the rest had been pulled back to second-echelon positions and were exclusively engaged in evacuating the wounded and hauling away trophies.
Was eight battalions of losses a lot?
For an operation that a Guard legion had gotten into, acting without the slightest precise intelligence data, attacking enemy formations superior in numbers and technology — actually, no.
Irreversible losses were only one battalion of stormtroopers.
That was six hundred and thirteen men.
Against over thirty thousand enemy combat units — and that was only the count of equipment that could be identified immediately; the work and inventory of trophies was ongoing.
Seven legions' worth of wounded and maimed was, of course, a lot.
But only idiots would immediately say that the 501st Legion had been bathed in blood, whereas before it had won "at the snap of a finger."
There is a science called tactics.
Maul, even if he hadn't studied it under Palpatine's guidance, had absorbed it when he became part of the Dominion.
It couldn't be otherwise — command demanded it.
Every Force-sensitive allowed to participate in military operations as part of the regular army or fleet had to possess a body of knowledge that allowed them not only to understand the orders of the formation commander but also to take over command in the event of the latter's loss.
There is curious information based on the analysis of numerous battles.
The Clone Wars, which demonstrated numerous effective techniques, particularly enriched military science.
Practice shows that the key parameter of an attack on a defending enemy is fire density.
On both sides.
Attacking a prepared defense with small forces and a lower density of firepower than the defenders is death.
Attacking with proportionate forces and equal fire density against a similar enemy is a lottery.
Dominion combat regulations require commanders to have at least a threefold advantage in the case of a forced frontal offensive against prepared enemy positions.
In this case, the assault operation without preparation along the entire front was a forced measure.
And here, military science says the unthinkable happened.
With the attackers' fire density three times greater than the defenders', by the time they reach the forward edge, the attackers' losses will be one percent less than half of their initial strength, and the defenders' losses will be fifty-six percent of the same criterion.
At a ratio of two to one, the figures shift towards ninety and thirty percent, respectively.
In other words, the Dominion's combat regulations didn't write the "three-to-one" ratio out of thin air.
It is precisely the ratio at which the attackers, having reached the enemy positions, will still represent something as a fighting force.
And it's no accident that in combat regulations, "three to one" is specified as the minimum advantage.
For comparison, at a fire density ratio of "four to one," the attackers' losses will be only thirty percent of the initial number, while the defenders' losses will reach eighty-four to eighty-five percent.
Well, if you manage to assemble a sixfold superiority in firepower, then the attackers, losing every tenth man, will completely annihilate the defenders and enter the empty trenches.
At the moment, the Dominion had sent one full-strength Guard legion against a well-prepared enemy.
The key difference between Guards and standard legions lies precisely in their much higher authorized strength.
By two regiments.
By eight battalions.
In other words, instead of nearly half of its fighters, the 501st had lost only a third.
Out of twenty-four battalions — eight.
And irreversible losses — only one.
This, despite the fact that even with armored support, the battalion's strength did not exceed fifteen thousand fighters.
Meanwhile, the enemy, operating on "its own territory," fighting defensively, having on its side emotionless machines that would not be frightened or retreat without orders, had irreversibly lost from thirty thousand combat machines.
Six hundred and thirteen men.
And twenty-seven dead pilots.
And the enemy had lost no less than thirty thousand combat machines in infantry alone.
A ratio of one to fifty.
And the rout here was on the side of the defenders.
What the 501st Guard Assault Legion had done here and now was nothing short of a miracle.
Yes, the victory wasn't the "cleanest," as the Dominion had a large number of battle droids and the Shadow Guard, and armored vehicles — two and a half thousand units of droids and walkers were lost.
But the enemy also had special units that were in no way inferior to the elite of the Stormtrooper Corps, and no one had fully counted the defenders' losses yet.
From the standpoint of achieving the set objectives, even summing up all the known losses of both sides at this point, the 501st Legion had suffered ten times fewer losses than the defending enemy.
Maul ran all this through his head as he delved deeper into the base through the corridors, commanding the droids to split into ever smaller squads, rapidly advancing through the levels.
In some places, there were already traces of battles; in others, they had to clash with defending Terror Trooper units.
From time to time, messenger droids reached him, reporting discovered corpses and droid chassis in the complex's projection to the "right" and "left" of the central section.
Where Lady Meilis and Starkiller were supposed to be advancing with their troops.
The latest reports indicated that the carnage in Meilis's sector had ceased, and she herself had vanished without a trace.
It was the same in the opposite part of the base.
As if someone was luring as many enemies as possible inside by the absence of resistance.
Maul liked this less and less.
The Dark Side demanded that he break through to the very core of the base and understand what was happening here, to conquer...
But he also didn't forget that he was not his own master.
He served the Dominion for the triumph over Palpatine.
And capturing this base could help in that matter.
Everything had to be done wisely.
Acting not only by brute force, but also by properly assessing one's own resources.
So he had sent a messenger to the upper level, to Darth Deimos, ordering him to pull the troops back not just beyond the base's perimeter, but also out of its tunnels.
If this was a trap, then only those who had already descended deep, and the droids they had brought with them, would die in it.
Ahead lay the assault on Kamino and Rothana.
Droids were just tin cans, expendable material.
But the clones...
Even the single regiment that remained on Egon-IX needed to be evacuated from the planet.
At least until the base came under full Dominion control.
The central sections he was moving through were crawling with enemies.
But there was no one here...
Which meant... a suspicion arose that the insufferable Togruta was dead.
But Maul didn't believe it.
The Force brought him a thin, distant sense of Ahsoka Tano's energy.
As if she couldn't concentrate...
And all of this told Maul that the base's central computer wasn't as stupid as he had thought.
He had taken the Togruta prisoner, put her in shock binders, preventing her from using the Force.
But what in the nine hells for?
She wasn't even a commander, not an officer — just an "elite unit" on this battlefield!
"May Kenobi cut me in half again," Darth Maul muttered, pushing deeper into the central sections. "But what in all the blazes is going on here?"
The whole situation reeked of dark secrets and the ruthless intellect of a born schemer.
Only Thrawn believed that this base wasn't Palpatine's work, but Darth Vader's.
Could that scarred and broken man really be playing his own secret game against everyone?
Or... did he think he was doing something behind the Emperor's back, while the Emperor was simply letting his puppet do what the Sith needed?
Questions, questions, no answers...
* * *
"Sir," Major General Cain was puzzled. "Darth Maul and the battle droids have reached the mid-level. We've discovered a large number of laboratories, small workshops, and cybernetic prosthetics pre-assembly."
Not bad, not bad.
So this really wasn't just a prison and a lab, but an actual assembly line for some dubious project.
Quite a haul, considering we've already captured a considerable number of J-1 proton cannons, rocket droids, and various corpses and hulls of differing study value.
Given that J-1 proton cannons are no longer in production, their rights-holders and creators long since killed, a weapon of this power could serve the Dominion well.
The thing is, these cannons — like much of the successful military tech from the Clone Wars — were produced by the Separatists.
More specifically, by the Techno Union.
At the start of the Clone Wars, the Techno Union was one of the commercial guilds of the Galactic Republic.
It was a major coalition of high-tech firms, formed primarily from heavy manufacturing conglomerates.
The Techno Union lobbied for its members' interests in the Galactic Senate and tried to ensure fair trade among its members.
Fair, of course, by the lobbyists' own standards.
Over time, galactic shipping magnates joined the Techno Union to further ensure the free flow of goods.
The Techno Union was one of the first to declare support for the newly formed Confederacy of Independent Systems.
They subsequently became a major supplier of starships, battle droids, and other modern weaponry for the Separatists during the Clone Wars.
They also created numerous research and development projects for the CIS, ranging from superweapons to cloning experiments.
Yes, the CIS also experimented with cloning — on the planet Saleucami, they produced Morgukai warrior clones, but the Grand Army of the Republic put a stop to that.
With the complete destruction of anything that could shed light on what the Separatists had been doing.
If any records of the Saleucami work survived anywhere, we didn't find them during last year's operations on the planet, and our Intelligence couldn't find any "leads" either.
I suspect, as was often the case, that before the destruction, the data came into the possession of the secret director of the Clone Wars, who now weaves his intrigues from the planet Byss.
The Techno Union leadership, like the other leaders of the Confederacy of Independent Systems, met their deaths nineteen years before the Battle of Yavin IV.
Yes, they weren't the first victims of the young Sith named Darth Vader, but they certainly fell into the category of those it was no loss to exterminate by any means short of planet-killing and mass civilian slaughter.
The Techno Union ceased to exist, as the newly formed Galactic Empire seized all its assets and subjugated them to its influence, distributing them among trusted and vetted underlings.
And so, the J-1 proton cannons can now be produced by us without any restrictions.
What makes them so good?
For one, the main heavy armored fist of the Imperial war machine is the AT-AT walker.
Even in their Imperial variant, these are quite difficult targets for conventional weapons.
Thanks to their blast-absorbent armor.
And the arsenal capable of penetrating it is extremely limited.
Orbital bombardment with heavy turbolasers aside, of course.
But the J-1 is perfect for the job.
With its long range, high projectile power, and other characteristics, the J-1 proton cannon can punch straight through an AT-AT, turning the walker's insides into superheated plasma.
Yes, a bit more, and this gun would be as legendary as the Kalashnikov from the old jokes, the one that could shoot through railroad tracks.
Lengthwise.
From Vladivostok to Murmansk.
The J-1 Proton Cannon.
The Dominion has a certain number of these cannons in its arsenal — about two hundred.
We're producing them based on reverse engineering, but who would turn down extra weapon units?
Especially since this cannon works equally well as a ground artillery piece and as a anti-space defense weapon.
Sure, it's not in the same league as being able to take down enemy capital ships in the atmosphere with a couple of shots, but that doesn't mean a battery of these cannons can't create a localized Vietnam for an invasion force.
Such trophies will never be surplus.
Especially if our artillery engineers can upgrade this platform to modern standards.
Because producing planetary turbolasers or ion cannons for planetary defense is, of course, great.
But in the long run, you have to understand that for defending tens of thousands of planets, expensive planetary defenses are ruinous.
No wonder Vice Admiral Pellaeon is personally overseeing the project to create a domestic analogue of the J-1.
And we will get it.
Of course, if we do some preliminary work, like we're doing now with the AV-7 anti-vehicle cannons produced by the Time and Back corporation.
Just as we'll get our own variants of any weapon that will help us fight the enemy.
Like the AV-7 itself or the guns in its series.
The AV-7 Anti-Vehicle Cannon.
Thanks to long-term storage depots, we have a large number of these cannons.
The Empire mothballed excellent artillery largely not because enemy tank armor had improved.
But because mobile self-propelled guns became far more profitable for fighting the occasional enemy and the CIS stragglers.
When you're fighting an enemy who can only field armored skimmers instead of proper artillery or a tank company, you don't need heavy, long-range artillery.
But rapid-fire walker-SPGs? Yes.
And changing military doctrine is also useful for money laundering.
The Imperial war machine is, in principle, one big way to embezzle public funds.
And, truth be told, it wasn't just the Empire.
The Old Republic, the New Republic, the Imperial Remnants, the Corellian Diktat — it happens everywhere.
Even the Sluissi, who declared their independence, manage to steal from the budget.
And... I'd like to say this doesn't happen in the Dominion, but it does.
Wherever big money flows, there's always someone who wants to "skim a bit."
Yes, counterintelligence doesn't eat its pay for nothing, but they haven't managed to catch everyone red-handed yet.
Yes, show trials and exiles to Kessel to feed the spiders help — the level of corruption is low.
Not just in the military sector, but in industry too.
But it exists.
A phenomenon that's almost impossible to eradicate.
Of course, only if you replace all sentients with clones.
But then a legitimate question arises: why even start all this if you could just conquer yourself a quieter sector, far from the galaxy, and stuff it with clones, hard-wiring their brains for permanent loyalty, instead of all this chaos?
How many ships could we have built if we didn't have to spend on social services, paying salaries, and so on?
But no.
A state of clones is utter stupidity.
And not just because they have short lifespans.
That problem can be solved.
But what's the point?
Sooner or later, clones will have offspring, because endlessly creating sexually mature copies of sentients is madness.
Sooner or later, even among clones, there will be those who don't like the existing order.
A state where everyone is completely brainwashed, toeing the line, and devoid of any initiative — that's a useless state.
A wrapper for a candy made of bantha poodoo.
Unfortunately, as efficient and obedient as clones are, as creatively as they can think, it's a dead end.
Simply because, in my understanding, it's immoral.
The Hoffans are a prime example of what a civilization becomes when it encapsulates itself in a stage of cloning.
They thought they had reached the peak of their development.
The best.
Akrey Dobramu burned them using just one squadron, led by just one Super Star Destroyer.
Unfortunately, no matter how good obedient, brainwashed clones are, no matter how creative, thinking, proactive, and inventive they are, they will never surpass the originals.
Not one of the clones of Kreb, Bren, or other donors has surpassed the original in combat training.
Even if they are better than the bulk of our military, they can't break through their own developmental ceiling.
Maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe the experiment with Captain Pellaeon, commander of the Guardian, will live up to expectations.
There's progress.
But not radical enough to be considered a qualitative superiority of clones over their originals.
Isard... the other side of the coin.
She's performed well enough, but...
It doesn't compare to what the originals do.
Much as I might wish it did.
For better or worse — I don't know.