Chapter Text
☽ Fog of War ☾
A Star Wars Story
✦Prologue✦
Kamino
Day and night had little meaning here in the sterile confines of Tipoca City. In the winding tubes and vaulted domes, the clinical lights hummed cold and constant over the network of laboratories and training facilities. Darkness was a rare respite.
A respite Hex had found.
Solitary and hunched, he sat in the barracks beneath the rows upon rows of sleeping capsules. His shoulders shuddered as he stared down at the medal in his palm—such a small thing.
Such a steep cost.
Hex swept his thumb over the brassy face of his token, still trying to shed the crushing weight that seemed to be smothering him from all sides. He barely recognized his hand as his own. The warm tawny skin and pale nails. They were his brother’s hands.
A projected voice chimed from all around, placid and apathetic:
“All First Generation Troopers report to the Atrium immediately.”
Hex pushed himself to his feet and tucked the medal into his tunic. His brothers were filing past in their identical red garb. He slipped into step at the end of the procession. Their boots fell on the pristine metal floors in sync from a lifetime of drills.
Beyond the dim barracks was one of the winding glass pathways. A Kaminoan approached, walking in the opposite direction with a group of cadets marching along behind. The Kaminoan dwarfed Hex and his companions as it walked with otherworldy grace, like something drifting through water. Its bone-white skin seemed almost bioluminescent in the harsh artificial light, but its black eyes stared ahead, paying no mind to Hex.
Though it never turned its crested head nor even twisted its long, slender neck to acknowledge him, a cold dread prickled Hex’s skin as the Kaminoan passed him. The cadets paraded past with the synchronized obedience of tethered mastiffs. Hex watched the boys.
They were youthful and more identical than natural-born twins. The ever-present florescent light played off the dark curly hair of his kin and threw an eerie pallor upon their skin. One boy met his gaze with the same hooded brown eyes any of the others might have.
Hex averted his attention from the youth and gazed through the windowed corridor walls.
Through the glass, towers of growth chambers rotated mechanically. The liquid in the pods glowed a sickly teal, silhouetting the fetuses within. Kaminoans moved languidly between the terminals, assessing the progress of their creations.
That sinking, stifling sensation settled around him again, and Hex focused on the path ahead.
The heavy, airtight doors swished open at their approach, and they passed through the opening into another glass tube. The illusion of otherworldy cleanliness was broken here by the crushing green ocean beyond the glass, pressing in on all sides.
It was heavy. Hungry.
The water blotted out any sign of a sky above and gaped endlessly down beneath them into a murky abyss. Dark shadows lurched in the deep, sluggish, colossal things that Hex had never clearly seen.
Hex followed his brothers through the narrow shaft of air to the lift that would raise them from the depths. They ascended, though no windows were here to assure them that the water was behind them. Instead, it was more of the same. Halls and labs, armouries and arenas.
A city of productivity and perfection, but a city in name only.
─── 𓆩⟡𓆪 ───
The atrium was vast. The viewports rising floors above seemed like mere lights on the sleek black walls. Around him, rows upon rows of troopers stood at attention. Blocks of identical men in tunics and pressure suits, armour and uniforms, all gazing up as the holographic projection flickered alive above them.
An aged human man, sallow-skinned with eyes as pale as ice, spoke in a regal and paternal voice from some distant world Hex had only read about.
“...with great reluctance that I have agreed to this calling...”
Hex gazed past the hologram to focus on the observation deck above.
“...I love democracy. I love the Republic...”
He recognized the dark gaze and ribbed cranial fin of the Kaminoan president along with the Chief Medical Scientist.
“...The power you give me I will lay down when this crisis has abated...”
Accompanying President Lama Su was a stranger. A tiny wizened off-worlder with green skin and long pointed ears hunched over a walking stick and garbed in roughspun robes...
Jedi.
The hologram’s voice lifted with a strengthened edge of command:
“And as my first act with this new authority, I will create a Grand Army of the Republic to counter the increasing threats of the Separatists.”
The clones saluted as one, but even as his body made the motion, Hex’s gaze remained fixed on the leader of the elusive Jedi Knights.
─── 𓆩⟡𓆪 ───
The pressurized undersuit was form-fitting. A utilitarian black emblazoned with a steely Republic Cog across the chest, it clung to the clones’ bodies like synthetic skin. Hex encased himself in pearly plastoid armour. He paused a moment as he turned his helmet over in his hands. The smooth white dome was adorned with a crested fin reminiscent of a Kaminoan, but the black visor cut a sleek T in the faceplate like the Mandalorian warriors of legend. But which were they? Kaminoan or Mandalorian?
Hex tilted the helmet and caught his face reflected in the opaque visor. His mismatched eyes stared back at him. The right was a dark and steady brown, as it should be, the other a striking silvery teal.
A mark of his deficiency.
Hex sunk into the dark confines of his helmet and let the hiss of pressure block out the mechanical hum of the facility. It was a welcome escape from the oppressive light, but a sickening desperation to touch his face and an irrational sensation of breathlessness had him gripping the wall for support.
You were bred for this. Hex reminded himself. For the Republic. For the Jedi.
The bay doors opened upon a tempest. The ocean thrashed and roared as it rose and fell around the domes and pillars. The landing platforms were bordered with lights, but the hissing wind and flashes of lightning made visibility shoddy at best. The ramps and catwalks were slick with water as the rain hammered the steel, but Hex’s boots never faltered as he raced alongside his brothers toward the gunship. It lowered with a violent whirring, and the clones leapt aboard without missing a step.
They rose, and Hex gazed down at the cloning factories shrinking beneath him in the writhing sea.
He gripped the strap hangings and dangled through the open door to cast his sights skyward. The mercurial grey clouds roiled and shuddered with thunder. From within the storm, a vast starship emerged, and Hex became as small and insignificant as space dust in its wake. The undercarriage opened its maw, and the gunship climbed the turbulent sky to be engulfed.
At last, he would fulfil his purpose.
At last, he would be free.
─── 𓆩⟡𓆪 ───