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CT-7425 stood in front of General K’Kruhk in the ranks of the vod’e of the 316th Assault Battalion and watched as the Whiphid paced back and forth. They wondered absently what the next mission was that had their general so agitated. (Later, they would realize that K’Kruhk was simply always this agitated.)
“Troopers,” the General barked, his voice rumbling in his barrel chest, “Our next mission will require perseverance and valor.”
Next to CT-7425, one of their vod’e twitched. They didn’t know this vod’s name, but he had a red medic’s insignia on his pauldron and the Aurebesh letter H written small on the upper corner of his chestplate to demarcate his pronouns. CT-7425 wondered what this vod’s problem was with that statement. This mission seemed worthy to them, at least – perseverance and valor was what they were made for.
The General continued, “We must take this moon, Jilan II, before the Separatist leadership becomes aware that we are in orbit. The moon houses one of the main droid factories for this sector. Destroying this factory will guarantee our forces breathing room in the fight to push the Separatists back!”
Commander Jair stood at attention behind General K’Kruhk, helmeted head staring straight ahead. CT-7425 couldn’t be sure, but they had the sense that the Commander’s hands were shaking with an emotion they couldn’t identify.
“There will be opposition above the moon,” the General continued. “Our intelligence has warned us about a small blockade consisting of a dreadnought and a cruiser. I and Commander Jair will remain with the Tireless, in order to coordinate both offenses. Pilots, your main objective will be to keep the blockade occupied and destroy the communications arrays of both ships as soon as possible. We must keep a distress signal from going out!”
Around CT-7425, the vod’e with pilots’ helmets straightened. “Sir, yes sir!” they yelled in unison. CT-7425’s blood began to pump faster as they felt determination swelling through the ranks.
“Troopers!” the General barked.
“Sir!” CT-7425 cried with their vod’e.
“You will be tasked with the destruction of the factory on the ground. You will have minimal air support due to the battle in the skies, so you must strike hard and fast before the enemy becomes aware of our presence.”
“Sir, yes sir!” CT-7425 cried.
The General nodded. “Then may the Force be with you,” he intoned with a great weight in his voice before turning away. CT-7425 thought privately to themself that it sounded too final. The General’s bulk vanished behind a blast door, and CT-7425 was left with nothing but a sense of foreboding under the buzz of the fight they knew was coming.
CT-7425 hadn’t yet picked a name, but they wished they had. Having all of their vod’e have to refer to them by number felt wrong, now that names flew fast and loud across the hangar. They’d thought over dozens of names in their bunk at night, but none of them every felt right.
A name wasn’t something you jumped into.
CT-7425 had a feeling that by the end of this campaign, they would have one.
Commander Jair had modified the General’s orders once the General had returned to the bridge to prepare for the jump to hyperspace. “Vod’e,” she had stated, standing in front of them with her helmet held tightly at her side. “I will be sending down an advance force of one company to scout the area. The 316th has been burned by bad intel before, and I will not lose all of you to faulty intel. Thresh Company–” CT-7425 straightened as their company was called, “–you will be the advance force. Land out of sight and scout around the complex. Report any defensive structures and try to avoid springing any traps. I don’t want a repeat of Teyr.”
The medic at CT-7425’s shoulder grunted. “No one wants a repeat of Teyr,” he growled.
CT-7425 wondered what Teyr was, and why it had been so bad. Maybe Teyr was why the 316th's ranks were mainly filled with vod’e their age. Maybe Teyr had just happened, and they were part of the resupply of the 316th’s ranks.
The way the medic talked spoke of long-held grief, though. That… worried CT-7425. If Teyr was so bad, but was somewhat long ago… Why was the 316th still staffed mainly with rookies?
The Commander continued. “If you do spring a trap, report it immediately. We will assess our next steps then.” She scanned across the assembled vod’e, and CT-7425 saw her face harden with what looked like well-worn grief. (They felt it thick in the halls, but they tried to ignore it. Surely it would be alright.) “K’oyacyi, vod’e.” She turned and paced toward the bridge, pulling her helmet onto her head.
Silence fell for a scant few seconds before the ranks fell apart, troopers moving to their designated tasks. A voice rang over the din – “Thresh Company, form up!” – and CT-7425 moved in that direction.
“Alright, you lot of rookies,” the vod with a Lieutenant’s pauldron called as they gathered. His helmet was at his side, and CT-7425 watched as he scanned over their faces. “I’m Lieutenant Kresh. We’ve got the most important job besides the pilots. If we kriff this up, our vod’e could march right into a trap and get decimated. We don’t want that, do we?”
“No, sir!” CT-7425 called with their vod’e.
“No, we don’t,” the Lieutenant agreed, face hard. “Now, I want you all to form up by squad. We’ll drop in the gunships and run a stealth insertion, dropping from low altitude behind the rim of the crater the factory sits in. Scans say atmo is breathable, so we’ll conserve our filters and rebreathers. Understood?”
“Sir, yes sir!” CT-7425 replied. They modulated their breathing, feeling their face heat as adrenaline dumped into their bloodstream.
“Good,” the Lieutenant said. “Form up by your squad’s gunship and await the drop out of hyperspace. K’oyacyi, vod’e.”
CT-7425 nodded and turned toward their LAAT/i, painted on the side with a deaths-head in 316th purple. They found themselves surrounded by unfamiliar vod’e except for one, a vod who’d somehow had the time to paint his armor in 316th purple before getting the order to assemble.
“Vod!” they greeted, “When the hell did you have the time to paint up? We just landed last cycle!”
“Hey, ’25!” Their vod said. “Call me Painter, hey? What can I say, I sniffed out a can from the sarge and managed to convince him to let me paint up. Didn’t want to go down looking just like all my other vod’e. I want the clankers to know which vod took them down!”
The sergeant chuckled. “Admirable, Painter,” he said. “I’m Sergeant Primer, but you shinies can call me Sarge. Welcome to Scythe Squad. Any other introductions before we get this brief over with?”
The vod’e around CT-7425 sounded off.
“Rek, sir,” said a vod with an aurek carved above his visor.
“Besh,” from a vod with besh above hers.
“Wren,” added a vod who had also managed to find some paint and detailed a delicate wing on their pauldron.
“Trill,” said a vod with two musical notes carved onto their chestplate.
“Vicegrip,” said a vod who had removed his helmet, revealing a double mohawk buzzed short.
“Sawed-off,” from a vod holding what had to be a nonregulation-modified DC-15A rifle with an oddly short barrel.
“Looper,” added a vod with a nearly-complete circle of scar tissue above his right eye.
CT-7425 shuffled their feet. They were the only one who hadn’t chosen a name. “Uh, CT-7425,” they said quietly. “Call me ’25, it’s shorter.”
Sarge looked at them with a small smile. “It’s okay, ’25,” he said. “Took me two engagements to settle on a name myself. You have time; you’ll find one.”
’25 let themselves smile a little. “Yessir.”
They ignored the foreboding tug in their gut that said that the sarge was lying through his teeth.
Just then, ’25 felt the small jolt as the Tireless pulled out of hyperspace and the shipwide klaxon began to blare. “Alright vod’e!” the sarge yelled, “Form up on the gunship, we ship out as soon as the pilots give us the go-ahead!”
“Sir!” they all yelled, piling into the gunship and grabbing a hanging handhold. The hangar doors yawned open and the pilots lifted off, A-wings arrowing toward the unseen blockade. The gunship’s engines spooled up, a loud whine filling the hangar bay as the ones surrounding theirs did the same.
’25 listened to the pilots on comms. It sounded like a routine mission so far – they heard one pilot yell in jubilation as he hit the communications array of the dreadnaught. The second communication array went down in short order, followed quickly by acknowledgement from the pilots – “Thresh Company, you are clear for liftoff. We’ll cover your shebs on the way down.”
Lieutenant Kresh sounded fond when he said, “Thank you for that, Skreel.”
“Anything for you, vod,” the pilot – Skreel – said.
The gunship engines somehow whined even louder as they lifted off, blast doors closing and vacuum-sealing. ’25 looked around at their squad, their armor almost to a vod unpainted, and stuffed down the urge to bounce in place.
They were surely ready for whatever Jilan II could throw at them.
Their landing went off without a hitch. No alarms blared from the base beyond the crater rim – surely someone had to have noticed the battle happening just outside of the moon’s atmosphere, and yet. Droids, ’25 grunted mentally. Stupid to a mech.
The moon’s atmosphere tasted dusty and slightly sour on ’25’s tongue, but they weren’t choking on their own blood or gasping for oxygen so they figured it should be alright. Dusty yellow flats stretched in every direction away from the crater rim, which rose only somewhat imposingly in front of them. An easy climb, but good cover. On the internal comms, the Lieutenant said, “Everyone roll in the dust, we’ll stand out too much in our pretty whites.”
’25 hated to sully their new armor with this dust, but they saw the use for it. They dropped to the ground with the rest of their squad and rubbed dust into their armor, making sure to cover their helmet and chestplate as the two biggest targets. The dust got into their helmet, even past their filters, and they coughed, choking on it a little.
“Ugh,” a vod said. Their HUD identified him as Rek. “This planet tastes like shit.”
“Well then stop eating it, vod,” Besh teased, rubbing a handful of dust over her visor to fill the carving and make it stand out in stark yellow.
Sawed-off coughed too, muttering, “I’ll stop eating it when it stops getting in my kriffing teeth.”
The dust tickled the back of ‘25’s throat and they coughed again. They grunted after the small fit ended.
Almost as if it was a sign, Trill and Wren started coughing – deep, dry coughs that sounded painful. Trill’s cough quieted first and they gasped audibly for breath. “Kriff,” they wheezed, “What in the stars’ names is in this dust?”
Sarge shook his head, a fine haze of dust motes scattering from his shoulders as he stood. “Just breathe deep and slow, rookie,” he said. “It’ll pass.”
’25 stood as well, looking around and seeing the other three squads of Thresh Company getting up around them, all covered in the yellow dust. A few other vod’e were doubled over hacking and coughing, the Lieutenant among them, but the Lieutenant recovered quickly enough. He straightened and ordered over comms, “Form up in squads and spread out – we want every potential choke point and trap mapped out before the main force gets here. If you see a clanker patrol, do not engage unless spotted.”
Sarge gathered them all up with a quiet, “Form up, Scythe.” They lined up two-abreast with Sarge at point, Sawed-off and Looper taking rearguard positions, and moved off to the right, another squad joining them, two others heading left.
Every step stirred up more and more dust until every breath ’25 took tasted like the moon’s strange dirt, sour and gritty. Every step was also accompanied by a wretched cough as one vod or another descended into yet another hacking fit.
’25 hadn’t heard this much coughing since a strain of Kaminoan flu had made the species jump and sent every vod in Tipoca City to the medbay with potential pneumonia and a dangerously high fever.
Speaking of fevers, ’25 realized, their temperature had spiked by a noticeable amount since their transport had landed. Pulse was up too, according to their vitals readout. As Sarge muffled yet another cough into his fist, ’25 dared to speak up, opening a comms channel to every vod in range. “Anyone else noticing a vitals spike?” they asked, “Mine are reaching critical levels. Temp’s been rising since touchdown, I think, and pulse rate along with it. Blood ox seems to be lower.”
Lieutenant Kresh said, voice noticeably rough, “I’m seeing the same. Everyone hold position, sound off if you’re noticing the same effects ’25 is.”
The comms immediately went quiet with the blatt that meant too many vod’e had tried to speak at the same time and the comms had muted to prevent overload.
The Lieutenant corrected himself, clearing his throat: “Sound off if you’re not noticing the same effects.”
Silence.
Lieutenant Kresh muttered, “Kriff it all to the seven hells, that’s not good.” The comms line went silent for a few seconds, and ’25 looked around at their squadmates, all shifting on their feet, hands twitching around their rifles, muffling coughs.
“Any medics on the ground?” the lieutenant asked, “I’ve radioed in to Commander Jair and the other landing craft are on standby–” he choked on a cough and the comms went silent for a too-long second “–while we figure out what this is. For now, everyone pull back to the LZ. We’ll reassess once we’re there.”
Sarge led ’25 and the rest of Scythe back toward the gunships, and the coughing continued. ‘25’s chest ached, from the coughing or from whatever was causing their blood ox to drop – they weren’t sure. Besh was audibly wheezing, one hand on Rek’s shoulder to stay upright. ’25 let Painter lean on their shoulder when Painter took a bad step and could only choke off a gasp before breaking into another coughing fit. Sarge was still walking tall, but ’25 could hear him huffing for breath, despite walking downhill.
Scythe Squad arrived back at the gunships to find dozens of their vod’e standing, sitting, or sprawled around the LZ, helmets off and the medic of the company bouncing between vod’e like a tooka with a laser pointer, stopping to cough himself between sentences.
’25 kept their helmet on as they slowly lowered Painter to the ground, leaned against a grounded LAAT/i. The taste of Jilan II’s dust hung rank in their mouth, and they didn’t want to breathe any more of it. Painter, though, tore off his own helmet and gasped for breath.
Something red speckled his lips when he stopped to cough fitfully into his fist. ’25 choked on their own inhale as they tried to yell, “Medic!” Their voice barely carried and they turned up the volume on their external speakers and tried again – “I need a medic over here!”
But the medic – ’25 hadn’t caught his name, and they felt so guilty about that suddenly – didn’t hear, or he couldn’t spare the time. Lieutenant Kresh had collapsed on the dirt and the medic was frantically running a scanner over his chest and shaking his head.
’25 wanted to stand and go over to them, but Painter wouldn’t let go of their pauldron. They turned back to Painter, trying to soothe him somehow with a gentle hand on his chest. “The, uh, the medic will be right over, vod just – just hang on for me.” They paused to cough before they managed to speak, choked breath making their voice come out too high, “Just breathe for me, vod. He’ll be right over.”
Painter wheezed and tried to smile up at them. “Sure… vod,” he managed around another wracking cough.
’25 shook quietly, not sure what to do. Painter needed help. But looking around, every other trooper on the ground was collapsed, helmets off, obviously struggling to breathe around the hacking coughs that filled the air with a resounding racket. ’25 was the only trooper upright under their own power besides the medic, who had the lieutenant’s chestplate off and was – he was doing compressions.
’25 heard the medic over their in-bucket comms all of a sudden, as if he’d managed to accidentally toggle a broadcast in the middle of pulling off his bucket to try rescue breaths. “Kresh you bastard,” ’25 heard the medic wheeze, “you don’t get to go out like this. You fucker, don’t make me” – a break for a breath to Kresh’s lips, which even ’25 could see were too blue – “don’t make me tell Skreel. You can’t do this to him, come on – breathe for me, vod, just breathe–” The broadcast cut off. The medic must have finally realized he’d turned on the all-hands.
An unidentifiable noise on the comms filtered through but cut off. The CT number that flickered on the screen to identify the speaker matched the pilot Lieutenant Kresh had spoken to on the way down. Skreel.
’25 bowed their head and breathed through a cough. They could give the vod a moment of silence.
It was a good thing the Lieutenant had stopped any other landings on the way back to the LZ, ’25 thought in a moment of bitter resignation, looking around themself again. No need to sacrifice any other vod’e to… whatever this was.
Next to them, Painter wheezed in a heavy inhale, wetter than it had been a few minutes ago. ’25 turned to him, holding his hand against their shoulder as if the contact was keeping him… keeping him present.
“Painter,” they said quietly through their own insistent wheeze, “I’m here.”
Painter nodded slowly, eyes half-closed and glazed. His lips looked pale and unhealthy. “Glad you’re here, ’25,” he said quietly, voice rasping. “Even if we never got to shoot a clanker.”
’25 swallowed a knot in their throat. “Yeah,” they wheezed, their own throat rough. “They were too scared of you. ‘S why this happened.”
“Heh,” Painter chuckled, “cowards. Buncha– bunch of cowards. Resorting to kriffin’ plague to beat the best army–“ he wheezed for breath “–this side of Wild Space.”
Plague. ’25 turned the word over in their head and let it slot into place.
That’s what this was. No dust would cause symptoms this fast, not even the finest of silicate fibers. This was biological, and it was engineered.
They toggled the radio on their helmet to broadcast to all-battalion channels. Use of it by privates like them wasn’t strictly allowed, but they figured this counted as an emergency.
The medic was slumped half-over Kresh, one hand braced on the ground as he slowly buckled forward. ’25 could see his shoulders shaking, from sobbing or coughing. They couldn’t tell. They could see that Kresh, on the ground under him, still wasn’t breathing. The medic had stopped doing compressions.
It was too late. They had to do something. Say something.
“Vode,” ’25 wheezed into the open comm.
Silence greeted them. They’d expected some kind of reprimand. The whole battalion in space must be hanging onto every status report from… whoever was able to give them.
‘25 hoped that they weren’t the only one able.
They paused to hack something suspiciously wet into their bucket filter. “Vode,” they repeated, “CT-7425 reporting. All units on the ground… afflicted. Our medic is overwhelmed. Recommend no further landing activity on this moon and full decontamination of any materiel retrieved.” They muted the comm to let free the cough they’d been repressing. They unmuted it and continued, “Suspected fast-acting biological. Symptoms: respiratory distress, blood ox levels dropping steadily, fever.”
The line stayed quiet for a few seconds until a voice ’25 had only heard the once came on. “Commander Jair receiving, CT-7425. Acknowledged recommendations. Can airborne units render any aid?”
’25 looked around. Even just for the time that had elapsed, more vod’e on the LZ had gone frighteningly still.
’25 swallowed deeply and unmuted the line. “Sir, CT-7425. It’s too late for us.”
The silence stretched. ’25 was sure they imagined the choked sound of a scream held behind teeth. The commander came back on the comm and said only, “Jair, private. Acknowledged, vod’ika.”
’25 tried to take a deep breath and choked on it halfway through. They hadn’t muted their comm and mentally apologized to all of their vod’e for the noise. “Sir,” they choked, “one more thing.”
“What’s that, Private?” the commander asked, voice quiet.
“Record my name as Plague, sir,” they wheezed. “I’m Plague.”
The comms blatt-ed all at once and Plague – they refused to die without a name, they refused to let their vod’e die without an acknowledgment of what had killed them – flinched.
Commander Jair’s voice had the slightest of shakes when she came back on. “Oya, Plague.” A long pause. “Manda be with you all, vod’ika.”
Plague choked on what could be a cough or a sob. “Oya, sir,” they replied.
They muted the comms again and pulled off their bucket. If they died, they wanted to see Painter’s face with their eyes, unfiltered by a HUD.
Painter was looking up at them, eyes still alert even if his eyelids had fallen even further to cover them. “Oya, Plague,” he wheezed quietly. His hand on Plague’s pauldron squeezed just enough that Plague could feel the pressure.
Plague could feel a wetness on their cheeks, tear tracks through the dust. “Don’t go,” they whispered. “Painter, stay awake. Breathe for me, please.”
Painter looked like he was trying to give them a grin as bright as the one he’d greeted them with on the LAAT/i, hours and yet eons ago. His lips just twitched upward to reveal teeth with a pinkish tint before falling back to a grimace. He swallowed a huge breath and sighed it back out, eyelids blinking down and slowly, slowly pulling back up.
“Oya, vod,” he breathed out a heavy sigh.
His eyelids slid slowly closed as he choked on another breath.
They didn’t reopen.
Plague reached up a hand to Painter’s cheek, trying to jostle him back awake, to jostle them both out of this waking nightmare, and his skin was so cold. His lips had gone from pale to purplish without Plague noticing. His breathing rattled in his chest.
They’d never heard a death rattle before.
A long few minutes passed. Plague leaned back against the LAAT/i and tried to remember how to breathe. In, out. In for – not for four, but they could manage in for two. In for two, out for three. Holding their breath caused even worse coughing when they let the breath go, so they skipped those steps of the breathing technique.
They felt a shift against their side, where Painter’s hand rested on their shoulder.
Painter’s hand slid, slowly, from their pauldron into the dust.
It left a white outline of his hand, smeared at the bottom when gravity had taken hold. .
Plague didn’t have the breath to sob.
They stared at what they could see of the outline and, on some kind of instinct, reached for that pauldron and the vibroknife they kept in their boot.
With hands that shook more and more with each passing minute, they slowly outlined the white mark with their knife, carved deep enough to stick but not deep enough to damage armor efficiency. They wanted to have some kind of distinguishing mark when the collectors arrived.
If they even bothered collecting the bodies, given the inherent hazard of literally everything on the manda-forsaken moon.
Bombers screamed overhead and dropped their payloads on the base in the distance. Angry clouds of bitter yellow-brown dust billowed into the atmosphere like swarms of tiny enraged insects.
The bombers came back for a second run, even though the base had obviously been scrapped the first time.
A new bomber wing came in for a third run. The plume of dust climbed ever-higher, supported by black smoke from the bombs. Plague could almost feel the rage in every pilot in the skies, unable to help their vod’e on the ground and using – wasting – ordinance on a target they could reach.
The dreadnought must have retreated, if the bombers were freed to make land-based approaches. Plague looked up into the sky and saw only the ghostly shape of the Tireless against the black of the void, bombers and fighters small as ants swarming around her hangars.
Plague just kept breathing and waited for their own death to arrive. They could barely move, couldn’t even shift onto their hands and knees to crawl to the vod’e who moaned and cried through their own death throes.
They tried to soothe those vod’e from afar, calling, “I’m here, vod, I’m here.” They wished they could move but their body refused to effect more than a shift of their leg, the twitch of a wrist when they tried. All they could do was offer a friendly voice.
Slowly, even those noises faded. The bombers stopped screaming overhead after five – five – runs, and silence fell over the dust and dirt and death of Jilan II. Plague sat in the silence and wished it would have taken them, too.
They breathed.
They hated that they still breathed, for a few bitter broken minutes.
They sat next to Painter’s still body, leaning against the LAAT/i, and let their mind scatter across the vod’e around them, fading ever so inevitably into darkness.
Some time later, as Jilan II’s planet sunk below the opposite horizon from where it had hovered when they landed and the shadows grew long, Plague realized they were thirsty. Their lips smacked together dryly, their throat scratched, and they could barely feel their tongue in their mouth.
They pulled out their emergency water ration – just the one – and took a long pull. It rushed body-warm and plast-bitter over their tongue. It was the best thing they’d ever tasted.
The water settled in their empty stomach, reminding them they hadn’t eaten in half a rotation or… something like that. Plague felt their stomach churn around the measly offering of water and reached for their emergency ration sticks on autopilot.
They paused, hand half out of the pocket they always stuffed their rations. Why were they doing this? Why were they feeding their body when they were doomed to die?
They stared at the ration sticks in their hand, beige-bland and as inoffensive as Kamino could make sticks of reconstituted protein and carbohydrate.
They didn’t want to die here.
They avoided looking around themself. They all hadn’t wanted to die here either. None of them had. But Plague especially… wanted to live. If they could.
They looked up to see the Tireless still hovering above the moon, seemingly motionless in its geostationary orbit. They looked back down at the ration sticks.
They took a bite. And another.
Plague refused to let themself begin to do the math on how many of the vod’e around them would have carried emergency rations. How long they had, if they were truly going to survive whatever plague had killed everyone else.
They realized, suddenly, that it had been a long time since they’d coughed. Their chest still felt like someone had poured molten steel into the cavity behind their ribs and let it solidify into a solid mass … but they were breathing. The water had washed the taste of blood from their mouth, and it hadn’t returned.
They tried to stand.
They made it to their knees.
Aching at every joint, armor chafing at their hips and their knees, chest tightening with every too-short breath, they crawled to every vod on the LZ that they could find.
All of them were dead, skin cold and solid under their clumsy fingers. Plague physically couldn’t hyperventilate, their chest wouldn’t let them, but their body made a good effort as they painstakingly pulled themself between collapsed vod after collapsed vod.
They closed any open eyes that they saw as they passed. Gentled a hand over cheek after cold, purplish cheek.
So many without paint.
Rek and Besh were curled into one another, eyes blank yet focused on one another, hands locked together in rigor mortis.
A vod whose name Plague didn’t know had curled into herself, one hand covering her own screwed-shut eyes as if to hide herself away from the hell she’d died in.
Sarge’s body half-shielded the body of a vod Plague could barely tell was Wren by the paint. At least some of their vod’e had had someone nearby when they marched on.
Plague cursed their body for preventing them from being that vod for any, for all of the vod’e around them.
Their crawling journey had finally brought them to Kresh and the medic. The medic had fallen over Kresh’s still body, apparently succumbing in the middle of doing chest compressions. Plague gently closed his eyes and murmured a quiet, “Oya, vod,” for his dedication. Their voice rasped in their chest.
Kresh’s eyes, wide open, looked up, into the sky, as if in his last seconds he wanted to catch one last glimpse of… something. Plague remembered his voice talking to the pilot, Skreel – remembered the medic’s accidental broadcast, the blatt of choked noise – and bowed their head over Kresh for a breath, two. “Shi taab’echaaj’la,” they murmured, sweeping a hand over his face to close his eyes. “You’ll find him again.”
An ache pulsed in their head like a void had opened around them and they had to pause in their crawling mission to... to pay their respects. To apologize for surviving when no one else had. To recognize the responsibility they carried.
“I will honor you, vod’e,” Plague choked out around a lump in their throat that had nothing to do with the dust of Jilan II. “I will learn your names. I will carry you with me. You will be eternal. Ni par’tayli, gar darasuum.”
And in order to ensure that, they resolved, they needed to live. They would live.
Plague crawled achingly back to where they’d left Painter, where their bucket was still lying discarded in the yellow dust. Lifting it, they settled the plastoid back over their head and blinked at the HUD flickering to life, a blue glow covering the eternal yellow of Jilan II.
The comms icon in the corner still blinked operational.
Plague breathed in, out. They realized it had been slowly getting easier. Their blood ox level in the HUD read 95% - not optimal, but they’d heard the medics telling horror stories and knew it could be worse.
They could get off of this moon – but what then? They were covered in the same dust, and whatever that dust carried, as every vod who’d died here. They were a walking contamination source, a mobile unit of infection that could kill the entire 316th.
Plague choked around a sob that welled up in their throat, a cough aching in their chest. They had to live, to bear witness, but a smart commander – a good commander – would cut their losses.
They looked up at the Tireless’ silhouette in the sky. Why hadn’t they cut their losses and left?
The flagship hovered there in defiance of Plague’s expectations. Plague shook their head, trying to shake out the defeat – if they wanted to live, then they couldn’t be left behind.
They looked around themself, at all of the vod’e who didn’t make it. At the shape of Kresh and the medic in the distance, Rek and Besh, Wren and the Sarge… and Painter, right next to them. Their vod’e here would be left behind to rot in this fucking yellow dust, the twisted, smoking ruins of a base that Plague half-wondered, mutinously, if it had even been staffed. If this whole operation hadn’t been a trap.
The Commander had implied that she’d lost vod’e to traps before, and that was why only Thresh Company had been sent.
If multiple companies had come down - Plague couldn’t imagine the scale of the loss of life.
The blatt of their comms coming online startled them so badly that they sent up a cloud of dust with the flailing of their hands toward their bucket. In the next instant, the sweetest sound they’d ever heard echoed through their ears.
“CT-7425, CT– Plague, do you read?” the vod on the other end of the comm asked, voice tumbling over itself in a rush. “We’ve got vitals from your HUD, Plague, this is Tireless comms command, do you copy?”
Plague heaved in a breath and it left them in a wracking sob. They’d forgotten about the vitals readout connected to their helmet. Their vod’e must have thought they’d died like the rest when they’d taken their helmet off hours ago.
The comms officer continued, voice suddenly hushed, “Please don’t be a glitch, vod, please.”
Plague swallowed another painful sob and toggled on their comms, managing to reply, “Plague receiving, Tireless. I’m here, vod.”
Silence and the faint fuzz of an open comm line reigned for long moments, and Plague wondered if they’d hallucinated the entire exchange. Then the line blatted again and a familiar voice filled Plague’s ears.
“Plague, this is Commander Jair. Do you read?”
“I read, Commander,” Plague replied, trying to regulate their breath and sound as professional as they could.
“Vod’ika,” they heard. “Stars and seas, you’re alive. Can you give a sitrep?”
Plague nodded even as they realized that Jair couldn’t see them. “Sitrep, yessir. It’s… it’s bad. I’m the only one left.” They heaved in a breath around the horror rising back into their throat. “I don’t have any means to leave the surface, and haven’t been able to assess the numbers of rations available… in my surroundings.”
The comms buzzed as if, a distance from the receiver, someone had made a noise. Plague paused to let the interruption proceed if it would, but silence fell. They blinked quietly for a second and decided, kriff it. “Commander,” they said, “please don’t leave me here. I can’t do it on my own, and I’m a walking contamination source, but please, Commander, please–”
“We’re not leaving you, Plague,” Jair cut in. “Engineering is scrambling to create a contained LAAT/i with a built-in decontamination station and an isolated cockpit. They’ve tapped CMO Tithe for iso suits and a portable oxygen system.”
A pause, and then another vod’s voice came over the comms. “Private Plague, this is CMO Tithe. I’ve got your vitals on my datapad, and we’re working on a diagnosis. While Engineering does their part, I’d like to get a head start on mine.”
Plague blinked. “I… yessir. What do you need?”
Tithe cleared his throat, causing a fuzz of static over the line. “Tell me any symptoms that the vitals readers won’t pick up, anything you’ve noticed in the environment. Time to onset, and how long it took for your symptoms to… well, they’re obviously not resolving.”
“Sir,” Plague acknowledged. “Symptoms include tightness in my chest, difficulty breathing–” they paused to pull in a deep breath “– blue tinge to the lips, bloody coughs, and exhaustion. For an unknown amount of time, all I could do was sit on the ground and breathe through the pain.”
They paused to breathe through the memory of being sure they were dying, being sure they were the last alive and the last to die. Tithe said nothing on the other end. “Time to onset was fast – I could feel something in the back of my throat as soon as I breathed in some of the dust through my filters, and began coughing soon after. I don’t know how long it’s been, sir, but it took less than a quarter of a local rotation for every vod but me to die. I don’t…” they choked in a breath. “I don’t know why I didn’t.”
Tithe hums wordlessly. “The dust made it through your helmet filters?”
“Yessir. Immediately.”
Tithe grunted, “Pieces of banthashit. Alright, I’ll forward that on to Engineering so they know they’ll need to use self-contained ventilation for the pilot.”
Plague suddenly remembered the LAAT/is that had dropped them off. “Sir, the pilots that dropped us,” they asked, “are they alright?”
“They are,” Tithe confirmed easily. “They and the LAAT/is were hosed down with our strongest disinfectants as soon as we got your transmission. They’ll all need new paint, but they’re clean. My working theory is–” He cut himself off, saying, “You probably don’t give a kriff about anything but getting off that dustball, Private, apologies.”
“No!” they insisted, “I want to know. I want to – this killed all of my vod’e, sir. It almost killed me.” It felt like it was still trying to kill them. “I want to… I need to know.”
Tithe cleared his throat again. “Of course, vod’ika. My apologies. My working theory is that whatever agent is on that moon can’t survive hard vacuum – we had multiple vod’e servicing the LAAT/is from the surface and none of them report anything more than needing tooth cleaner for the dirt in their teeth. But I can’t space you, so we’re working on the best disinfectant to kill it.”
Plague choked through a surprised laugh. “Yessir, please don’t space me, sir.”
Jair’s voice came over the comms after a rush of static and a muffled noise that almost sounded like someone had hit someone else over the bucket. “We’re obviously not spacing you, Plague. Engineering reports that they need a little more time to get the LAAT/i outfitted to safely retrieve you – are you able to hold position for half of a local rotation?”
Plague swallowed down an instinctive plea to come down immediately, to please not leave them in the company of these ghosts, and took a deep, painful breath. “Yessir,” they finally managed. “I’ve got.. there are sufficient rations here to sustain me that long.”
A long pause reigned.
Plague cleared their throat before they remembered that it caused an ungodly amount of static on the other end of the comm. They pushed through and dared to ask, “Sir? Are there… will we be bringing them back?”
Another long pause over the comms. Plague checked the status light – all green.
“I don’t know, Plague,” Jair finally replied, quietly. “I don’t think that the general will allow such a… delay. Considering.”
Considering that their vod’e were all vectors for whatever this was, Plague knew Jair wasn’t saying. Considering that it would require decontamination of every part of the ship between the hangar and the incinerator. Considering that their armor might even be a contamination vector – it’s not like they knew how the sickness spread, beyond it being connected to the dust.
“I understand, Commander,” Plague replied, voice just as quiet.
“Hold tight, vod’ika,” Jair said. “We’re coming for you.”
The commline buzzed dead and Plague heaved out a heavy breath through lungs that still felt too small, even smaller as they realized that they’d be stuck on this moon for even longer. They looked around, knowing that they needed another water ration at the very least. Their tongue was sticking to the roof of their mouth, bitter-sour dust in their teeth an ever-present reminder of what they’d just survived.
Water rations. They could locate a water ration. Food could wait – a local half-rotation was nothing. But with how dry the moon was, they needed the hydration.
Plague had a reason to survive now. Someone was coming.
A local half-rotation passed so slowly Plague kept glancing up to check the position of the planet’s star in disbelief. Even so, it passed, and as the planet’s star sank behind the massive gas giant on Jilan II’s horizon, Plague heard a familiar whine.
LAAT/i engines.
They shouldered their pack – emptied of everything but their weapons and shards of plastoid. One for every vod who wouldn’t leave this moon. Remembrances.
Plague knew somewhere in the back of their mind that keeping around a shard of plastoid with their vod’e who marched on would become untenable too quickly, require too much storage for the cramped quarters of a Venator. But they couldn’t… they couldn’t let these vod’e, left to desiccate and fade into the dust of such a barren place, go unremembered. Not when their arms could just barely still heft their pack onto their shoulder.
They looked down at the deep outline of Painter’s handprint they’d carved into their pauldron. They knew that decontamination would remove all of the dust, but they knew exactly how they’d paint that piece. Another remembrance, for the kind vod who’d wanted so badly to be remembered that he’d painted up before he’d ever fired a shot. The vod who’d never gotten to fire a shot.
Their lungs burned as the LAAT/i blew clouds of dust right into their face. Kriff, but they couldn’t wait to get off of this moon.
The LAAT/i looked odd with the slits in its reinforced doors permanently sealed with obviously hastily welded durasteel slabs.
“Private Plague?” the comms buzzed.
“Speaking,” they replied.
“Let’s get you off this hell,” the vod who had to be the pilot replied. The doors to the LAAT/i shuddered open, a sight Plague had almost convinced themself they’d never see again.
Plague stepped in and found every soft surface inside removed except for a single loop handle – obviously for them. They grabbed on and keyed their comms, saying only “Ready to go when you are.”
“Copy that, private,” the pilot radioed back. “Hold on – something in the decontamination sequence karked with the inertial dampeners on the rear. It might get bumpy back there.”
Plague reached up their other hand to grip the loop with all of their strength. Their arms burned – they felt weaker than a third-cycle cadet. But this was their only option off this moon, so they would hold. “Copy that.”
The takeoff wasn’t too bad, but the acceleration out of the moon’s atmosphere and back into orbit wrenched Plague’s shoulders so hard that they groaned along with their straining muscles. As soon as the LAAT/i’s trajectory leveled off into orbital flight, they keyed their comms and bit out, “You weren’t kidding.”
“Yeah, kid, I know,” the pilot said back. “This one was the best of a bad lot. Just hold on a little longer – Captain Tithe is already on standby on deck.”
Plague swallowed and stood a little straighter on the deck of the LAAT/i, waiting for the telltale bump of landing. Immediately after they felt it, the doors of the LAAT/i shuddered open to reveal… draped plastifilm? A vod in what had to be the iso suit Commander Jair had mentioned waited inside the shroud of filmy, draping material, arms behind his back in parade rest. The iso suit bulged oddly around his helmet and chest and clung firmly to the rest of his body, whirring coming from somewhere behind him where air must be getting filtered through.
Plague stepped out of the LAAT/I to find themself standing on more plastifilm, shedding a fine layer of yellow dust with every step. “Come this way, Private Plague,” the vod said with a familiar cadence. This must be Tithe. “We’ve cordoned off a path to the decontamination suite. I’m here in case you need hands-on assistance before we can be sure that your shell is clean.”
“Sir,” Plague acknowledged.
They followed Tithe through a tunnel of draping material that crinkled oddly under their boots. The light from the hangar bay filtered oddly through the translucent plastifilm, leaving Plague feeling as if they stood in the dusk of a planet too distant from its sun, half-lit and lost in the soft emptiness.
At last, they came to the end of the tunnel into a slightly larger area with a shower in an elevated cubicle against the wall, a drain in the base leading to a hose that drained into a large container plastered with every hazard sticker Plague imagined their vod’e could find. (They could swear they saw “EXPLOSIVE” carved into the plastoid and half-papered over by a BIOHAZARD LEVEL FOUR sticker.)
“The shower won’t be pleasant,” Tithe admitted as Plague stepped forward and up into the cubicle. “Take off your bucket and set it next to you – since you took off your bucket, we’ll need to clean any skin that was exposed.”
Plague nodded slowly and reached up to unseal their helmet. “What about my pack?” they asked. “I don’t… I can’t lose it.”
“Anything that can’t get soaked?” Tithe asked. No questions about why they needed their pack. Plague could almost swear they even saw his shoulders soften.
Plague thought about the contents – “It’s just plastoid and my weapons, sir,” they answered. “I can lose the weapons if I get replacements.”
“I’ll send the contents through a cycle once you’re done, private,” Tithe said after a quiet moment. “You might not get the pack or the deecee back, but plastoid I can guarantee will be thoroughly cleaned and survive.”
“Thank you, sir,” Plague replied, steeling themself for whatever not pleasant meant.
They got their answer as a hidden door wheezed closed behind them and the shower roared to life, pelting them and their armor with a deluge of antiseptic-smelling liquid for longer than they thought they could bear. They gasped breaths through their mouth around the downpour, trying to keep the liquid out of their mouth as much as they could. Their skin felt overheated, assaulted by the sting of whatever was pouring over them. It smelled astringent, almost painful in their nostrils.
As soon as the first stage ended and the last streams of the decontamination solution ran clear down the drain they stood over, a strong wind blew through the cubicle. Their soaked hair dried much faster than it should have and the astringent smell intensified for a few short seconds before it vanished almost as if it had never been present.
The pipes overhead gurgled again and Plague braced themself for another downpour.
This one was just water, and Plague barely kept themself from tipping their head up and drinking from the spray like a tubie in their first rainstorm. The cool water soothed the tightness across their skin that the first shower had left.
After a final sonic cleaning cycle that buzzed the water from their armor, skin, and hair, a different door hissed open to reveal a group of medics in 316th purple paint, obviously waiting for them. One stood next to a hoverchair, stern face already expressing that Plague would sit in the chair or else.
Plague didn’t really have any arguments against the idea. The combination of heavy deluges, strong wind, and a sonic had left their knees weak and lungs heaving for air. They didn’t think they’d be able to make the trek across nearly the entire Venator to the medbay.
Without a word, they lowered themself into the chair. The medic next to the chair sighed quietly, a buzz in their vocoder, and lifted a hand to rest on Plague’s shoulder – until he caught sight of the rough carving on Plague’s shoulder. The handprint that Plague would carry forever.
The medic paused and pressed their hand carefully over the carving, already slightly worn by the decontamination process. "Let’s get you to medbay,” he said quietly. “Bucket on, vod. You’re almost there.”
Plague leaned back into the hoverchair and heaved out a breath. Time to see what damage had been done, then.
They’d been poked and prodded at intake for what felt like a small eternity. At one point, a medic who hadn’t introduced herself affixed a mask with some kind of balloon attached to it to Plague’s face and told them to breathe out as hard as they could. The balloon fluttered and Plague’s chest burned.
The medic hadn’t said anything, but Plague had felt a stone settle into their gut nevertheless.
Tithe and his team of medical staff had apparently concluded, even before they’d made it out of the iso tunnel in the hangar, that Plague wasn’t contagious. Something about quick-culture of aerosols – Plague stopped listening when the jargon flew too heavy. The important thing was that they wouldn’t spread this hell to any of their vod’e on the ship. Whatever thing that lived on the dust of Jilan II couldn’t leave their lungs.
Time passed in the medbay where they lay – hours maybe, maybe less. Plague couldn’t tell anymore, with the quiet metronome of their breaths now stuttering, helped along by a mask that drove oxygen mixed with aerosolized bacta and some other medication into their lungs.
Tithe appeared from his office and moved back to their bedside with a stormy look on his face. “We know what it is,” Tithe said quietly. “I’ll need to adjust your medications, Plague.”
“What is it, then?” Plague asked.
“Some kind of fungus,” Tithe replied. “A very aggressive one, but something is keeping it from sporulating in your tissues. Thank all of the stars for that. Its growth seems to have stopped in you, but you’ve got a long recovery ahead.”
“Is... Is the damage permanent?” Plague asked quietly as Tithe lifted the mask off and their breaths got noticeably harder to take.
Tithe looked down at them, medic symbol shining on his armor, striking red against 316th purple and mourning grey. “Not if I can help it,” he replied just as quietly.
The door to the medbay swept open with a quiet crunching sound that had to be intentional – some kind of signal to the medics that someone was entering, maybe? A yelp of “Commander, sir!” from the direction of the doors followed quickly and sent Tithe spinning to face the entrance as well.
“Commander,” he saluted. “Here to bother my patient?”
Plague sucked in a harsh breath, the lack of a mask making any kind of gasp almost painful. They tried to salute, but the Commander waved them both down. The paint around her eyes was smudged like she’d been rubbing at them, her helmet held tightly to her hip.
“Just for a minute, Tithe,” she said quietly. “Just for a few answers.”
Plague swallowed a cough and offered, “I’ll answer what I can, sir.” They hoped they had the answers the Commander needed.
Tithe stared the Commander down for a few moments more. “Ten minutes, Jair,” he said stiffly. “Private Plague will need their mask replaced with updated medication as soon as we’ve determined the best fit.”
The Commander didn’t even react to Tithe’s use of her name, the insubordination in giving her a time limit. “Understood, Tithe. Thank you.”
Tithe took the unspoken dismissal for what it was and turned on his heel, leaving Plague with Commander Jair alone in their corner of the medbay.
The Commander pulled over an uncomfortable-looking rolling chair from a neighboring bed and settled into it with a sigh, raising the datapad she’d been holding in her other hand. “I did mean it when I said I only needed a few answers,” she told Plague quietly. Her voice rolled heavily over Plague, smoothed with what must have been exhaustion. Plague wondered what the General was doing suddenly – was he filling out after-action reports? Thinking about the vod’e he’d commanded to their deaths? Or was that the Commander’s burden alone?
“I’ve got enough in me for a few answers, sir,” they replied. The weight in their chest remained like a stone, but they had enough breath for this. To tell their story.
The Commander nodded. “Tell me if that changes,” she ordered them. A smile cracked across her face. “Tithe might come for my shebse if I exhaust you too much.”
Plague nodded, conserving their words for the important things.
The Commander nodded back and inhaled deeply enough to move her shoulders up and down. “First, Private Plague – in your estimation, could any action have been taken by your superior officers on the surface to reduce casualties?”
Plague had known the question was coming in a distant way – knew that the question was always asked. Who did the wrong thing, who karked it up, who caused so many deaths? Even still – it stung, hearing the Commander accuse the Sergeant Kresh, even in a roundabout way, of failing at his duty. “Absolutely not, sir,” Plague replied, voice thready but as resolute as they could make it. “We were exposed as soon as we set down – multiple vod’e remarked on the taste of the dust as soon as boots hit the ground. It went right through our helmet filters.” They paused to catch their breath. The Commander waited patiently.
They continued. “The only way to salvage the mission would’ve required us to know the surface was contaminated. Sending a small scouting force saved the battalion – but doomed the scouting force.”
Silence fell. Plague remembered in a jolt that the Commander had been the one to choose their squads to be the scouting party. The sacrificial offering for the safety of the rest. The Commander’s face could have been carved in stone.
The Commander nodded slowly. “I agree with that assessment, Private Plague,” she replied quietly. "Recovered comms logs back up your testimony.”
Plague spoke out of turn but they needed to say - “Thresh Company’s medic did his best, sir.” The Commander glanced up from her datapad, eyebrow quirked. “He did. He – I never learned his name. But he kept trying to bring Sergeant Kresh back, sir. He fell on – He was lying on top of Sarge when I came to.”
Tithe’s voice surprised Plague, and apparently caught the Commander off-guard too by how she jolted just slightly. “His name was Weal. Heard it in some old book he picked up fresh off Kamino and liked the sound of it.”
Plague cleared their throat of the lump that had formed in it. “Weal, then. He kept going until he couldn’t, sirs.”
“Best way we medics could go out,” Tithe muttered. His eyes were ringed in red.
The Commander made a few more notes on her datapad. “Thank you for your time, Private Plague,” she said into the quiet that had fallen. “That was all that I needed from you. I’ll leave you to your treatment – Tithe? A word?”
Tithe glanced at Plague and back to the Commander. “If it’s about our vod here and what they need, we can speak here,” he stated.
The Commander glanced at Plague as well and nodded. “Very well. What do they need, Tithe?”
He sighed and scrubbed his face with his hand. Plague wanted to cover their ears to keep from hearing the list of supplies that would cost more than a replacement for their battered carcass. “Too much. To start, aerosolized bacta and antifungal medication to improve lung function. Steroids to open up inflamed airways to let the treatment in. Physical therapy if I could swing it to train their lungs to open up naturally without a machine shoving them open, once we get the swelling down and the fluid out. Retraining at the end of all of that to regain lost muscle tone.”
Plague closed their eyes and wished they’d covered their ears after all. The medications, maybe the Commander could convince GAR requisitions to approve. But physical therapy? Re-training? Absolutely not. Too much to invest in even a veteran trooper with skills to keep – they were fresh off of Kamino with no specialized skills or any badge of honor to recommend them.
They were done.
The Commander’s voice cut through their mental maelstrom. “Done.”
“Jair, what–" Tithe choked out, “You can’t guarantee that. You know as well as I do–"
“I know exactlywhat you do, Tithe,” the Commander shot back. “But I know how to talk with the General about this and I will leverage everything I can.” She turned back to Plague, and her eyes burned into theirs. “Plague will get everything they need as recompense for harms suffered needlesslyin service of the Republic, at their General’s direct order. They will get the chance to avenge their vode in this fight if I have to drag the General in front of the Requisitions Council myself.”
Tithe stared as the Commander finally fell silent. “Luck, vod,” he finally said. “You know the General best.” He shook his head as if dismissing the Commander and turned to Plague with a new ampoule of something in his hand. “Time to replace your mask, Plague,” he said to them. “Your skin tone is getting worse – let's get your saturation back up.”
The mask went back on, the ampoule replacing the other medication in the aerosolized mix being shoved into their lungs. Plague breathed with the machine, looking up to see the Commander watching them, almost looking through them. As if feeling their eyes on her, the Commander looked up and blinked before nodding and turning to leave.
“Treat them as you would,” she called back to Tithe. “Push the paperwork through once I give you the go-ahead.”
“Copy that, Commander,” Tithe replied. He sighed, eyes locked on the monitors over Plague’s head.
Plague made a questioning sound through the mask, talking made difficult by the suction around their jaw. They wanted to know – Was the Commander serious? Were they staying? How long would they be stuck like this? When could they take this karking mask off?
Tithe’s attention was drawn back down to them and he smiled just barely, almost bitterly. “Commander Jair will get it done, vod’ika. She practically swore it. You just focus on getting the bacta down into your lungs. If you need a ‘pad or something else to keep yourself busy, I can find something lying around.”
Plague nodded slowly. Not answers to all of their questions, but enough of them for now. Clumsily, they signed in battle-sign, Supplies later, now rest. The need to sleep had snuck over them, heavy exhaustion following the mask and the mist pushed into their lungs. They would consider that they would be stuck in a bed for stars knew how long later.
Tithe nodded. “Sleep, then, Plague. We’ll speak when you wake.”
Weeks passed, punctuated by treatments shoved into their lungs and breathing into that same karking balloon that they’d barely made flutter their first day back from the surface of Jilan II. Plague knew, distantly, that the 316th kept fighting in the war – no battalion would stop fighting for one trooper, especially not a single private – but none of that ever came to them. Vode circulated through the medbay – mild blaster wounds, twisted joints, concussions from falls and grenades, nothing so serious as their own affliction – and they remained. Jair’s promise was apparently kept; Plague’s medications kept coming in supply restocks, in smaller and smaller amounts as their breathing steadied and deepened.
When Plague was able to inflate the balloon enough that it no longer drooped toward the floor, Tithe whooped and immediately looked incredibly sheepish about his own outburst. Plague let out a weak whoop of their own.
At that point, the real work began – breathwork to train their lungs back into shape, according to Tithe. Deep breaths and holding it, deep breaths and releasing it for even longer than they’d drawn it in, regulating their breathing as they walked around the medbay.
The Commander walked in on them doing a mild calisthenics routine in full armor for the first time, breathing like a fourth-cycle cadet but doing it. The fresh paint shone under the lights – just as Plague had imagined it. Painter’s handprint stood out in negative against 316th purple on their left shoulder bell, a skull in negative on the opposite side. Their chestplate and vambraces were mourning grey, and 316th purple lined their visor. It was all of the paint that they needed, and when they’d brought up their misgivings about painting their armor – they hadn’t even fired their deecee once on Jilan II – Tithe had shot back that they’d survived. Their survival was enough of an event to commemorate.
Plague supposed it was.
The Commander stood at the entrance to the medbay and watched them finish the last set of jumping jacks, breathing hard but not as alarmingly wheezily as they had not two weeks previous.
Plague turned to her and saluted. “Commander, sir, apologies for the delay. Medic’s orders to complete the set.”
Commander Jair’s mouth turned up into a smile. “We wouldn’t want to anger our CMO, would we? At ease, Private Plague.” Plague settled back against the bed and began box-breathing, trying to settle their heavy breathing back into its normal rhythm.
“You seem much improved,” the Commander continued.
Tithe stepped out of his office, sketching out a skeletal salute as he walked over. “They are,” he said. “Plague, any difficulties today?”
“No, sir,” Plague replied. “Feels like I’m back in third cycle in our first calisthenics course, but no exceptional trouble.”
Tithe nodded and turned to the Commander. “Jair, why are you gracing my medbay? Anything I need to know about?”
“I wanted to speak with Plague about a potential opportunity for them if they were healthy enough,” the Commander said, turning to Plague. “Plague, if you’d like, a cycle for ARC training is opening up in two months. If you’re willing to hang back and train up, I’m willing to put your name forward as a candidate.”
Plague stared in disbelief. ARC training? Them? “Pardon me, sir?”
“You showed great initiative that day on Jilan II, reporting in from the ground and stopping further forays, preventing more unnecessary losses. That’s not to mention the strength you showed in surviving and recovering from the illness. ARC troopers have more freedom than standard troopers – you would be able to operate ahead of the lines, feed back information as a lone scout to keep us from having to deploy entire companies. The General agrees that we need more solo operatives to fill that kind of role, and I suggested you. Even with the time needed for the training, you already have some knowledge of the battalion and the command structure.” The Commander paused and looked them over, eyes catching on the handprint on their shoulder. “I think you would excel in such a position, Plague.”
Plague did consider it. Being able to be the scout, with upgraded ARC-quality gear that could keep them safer? Protecting other shinies from the hell they walked into? The only thing they worried about was – “I want to agree, sir, I’m just concerned about the timeline. I don’t know if I’ll be... ready.”
Tithe stepped in. “You’ve made plenty of progress these past four weeks, Plague. With two months, you can be in ARC shape. I’ll write a note to be sent to your training officer in case of an emergency.”
“I know the vod who runs ARC training these days,” Jair said, nodding. “He’s firm, and demanding, and he’ll have you on your shebse at the end of the day, but he respects effort. If Tithe thinks you’ll be ready, I believe you’ll excel.”
Plague drew in a deep breath – something that, only two weeks ago, they wouldn’t have been able to do. ARC Trooper Plague. It had a good ring to it – even better to know that they would lead the charge, send back information to protect the rest of the battalion.
“Alright then, sirs. Sign me up.”