Come Back (part 4)
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Rated: T | Words: 2436
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KANDRIA
“I will answer your questions to the best of my capabilities,” Tech says, a strength in his voice that wasn’t there before.
You don’t have to worry about me, kid, us clones are more resilient than we look, Jaunt had told her while he lay on the cobblestone street, a smile on his lips even as blood trickled from one side and Kandria frantically tried to wipe it away with her sleeve.
Tech continues, “However, I am more valuable than you realize. Information can be misconstrued and outdated; therefore, I can offer you something greater in exchange for your assistance making contact with my brothers.”
Kandria’s heart thuds violently in her chest, and blood throbs in her ears. She tries to keep her breathing steady, her feet firmly planted, but she is trembling.
Uncle Garo walks forward and shoves Kandria roughly aside; however, she is ready for the impact, moving with the force of the push to sidestep and keep her balance. She turns and just catches Tech’s eyes shift to her briefly, before focusing on her uncle.
“You are in no position to bargain with me, clone,” Uncle Garo sneers. He pulls his blaster from his holster. “I could shoot you right now and be done with you.”
Kandria bites the inside of her cheek to keep from protesting. Something in Tech’s voice tells her that she needs to trust that he knows what he’s doing, that he understood her whispered warning. She prays to Maker he does.
“You are correct,” Tech tells Uncle Garo. “You could shoot me; however, that would not be in your best interest. I can build you equipment.”
Uncle Garo lowers the blaster. “What kind of equipment?”
“With the proper materials, I could construct almost anything you might be in need of,” Tech tells him. “I am an engineer by design, and my mental capacities have been enhanced. I have memorized hundreds of schematics in my lifetime.”
The fist around Kandria’s lungs loosens when Uncle Garo reholsters his blaster. “Is that so?”
“But I will need your word that I can make contact with my brothers.”
“We do not have a transmitter,” Uncle Garo tells Tech.
Tech nods. “I thought as much. I will build that as well. I will be sure that it has the capability of secure encryption.”
Uncle Garo is silent, and Kandria knows he is trying to decide if he should take Tech at his word or not. Finally, he nods before turning sharply and leaving the storeroom.
It is as close to an agreement as Tech will get, although Uncle Garo will never keep his word on such a thing. But Tech has bought himself time, plenty of time, to heal. Kandria can help him escape later. She will not think about the consequences. The consequences don’t matter. She can save him. She will save him.
Kandria releases a shaky breath of frail relief.
TECH
After proving his usefulness, Garo allowed the girl to use the correct dosages of medications. It has made him sleep for long hours, surfacing consciousness only long enough to drink water and the nearly flavorless but warm broth he is offered before sinking again into dark, dreamless depths.
This time, when he comes to, he finds his mind more alert than it has been since he made the decision to sever the connection between the railcars. Although he thinks he might be able to manage on his own, the girl insists on helping him sit up, and offers him the mug of broth to hold in his own hands. She then sits on the edge of the cot.
“Can you really do all the things you told Uncle Garo?” she asks him.
“I can,” Tech tells her.
Kandria tips her head. “And you’re an enhanced clone?”
“That is also true.”
“Are there other enhanced clones?”
The girl seems genuinely curious, pale eyes watching him intently. He is not accustomed to natborns being particularly interested in clones or their development outside of vague fascination. Then again, Clone Force 99 rarely worked directly with civilians for any substantial length of time to allow such questions to appear organically. Perhaps this is a common line of conversation.
“Few survived,” Tech tells her. “My brothers and sister are enhanced in different ways.”
“What kind of ways?”
He did not anticipate the subject of his siblings creating a sharp twist of emotional discomfort under his broken ribs. While he has every intention of finding them again and relocating Kandria to Pabu, there are variables outside of his control. Clone Force 99’s perfect record has ended spectacularly, starting with the loss of Crosshair to the Empire. Failure is as likely as success.
He may find his family again.
He may not.
He may save Kandria from the man she calls uncle.
He may not.
He may die, either from an unforeseen complication of his injuries, or a blaster bolt between his eyes if Garo should have a change of heart.
Do you ever cry, Tech? Omega asked him in another lifetime.
“Hunter has heightened senses and is able to detect electromagnetic fields. This makes his sense of direction far more accurate than any map you might have,” Tech says, answering Kandria rather than Omega. “Crosshair…” he hesitates a moment before pressing on, “Crosshair’s mutation is that his vision and marksmanship capabilities have been enhanced. I have yet to witness a shot he does not have the ability to make. Wrecker possesses superhuman strength and is larger than the average clone. We once watched him wrestle a young rancor until he wore the creature out, as an example.”
The girl laughs. It in no way sounds like Omega, but it is painfully reminiscent. The emotion in his chest twists again, and were it made of flesh, it would surely be bleeding.
“He fought a rancor?” Kandria asks incredulously, still smiling, oblivious to Tech’s invisible wounds.
Tech blinks. “A young one,” he reiterates.
“Why?”
“That,” Tech says, “is a long and complicated story.”
“We have time,” Kandria tells him with a grin.
And Tech cannot argue with that logic.
KANDRIA
Her father used to tell her stories about when he was a ship medic, traveling the galaxy. Granted, most of his stories centered around an injury or illness of some kind, but Kandria didn’t mind. You’d be surprised how much trouble a crew can get into, he’d tell her. Some of the stories were secondhand from his patients, excuses and explanations for the ailments they’d bring to the med bay. Lies, most of them. I felt like a detective trying to root out the truth in all the malarkey. And it was funny that he said that, because Kandria was almost positive that he embellished his own stories liberally, even if it was just to make her smile or laugh.
Tech does not tell stories like her father did, and she does not have to worry about any sort of malarkey.
“...we were criminally underpaid for the job,” Tech tells her as he finishes his account of the rancor incident.
Kandria shrugs one shoulder. “But at least you got a good story out of it. My dad always said that as long as you have a story to tell or a lesson you learned, no experience is wasted.”
“Hmmm.” Tech regards her thoughtfully for a moment. “Your father…where is he?”
If Kandria has learned one thing about Tech in the little time she’s known him, he is well spoken but blunt. Painfully honest; however, it is a fair question. And she brought her father up in the first place. “He died,” she says, keeping her voice as even as she can. The admission still feels as fresh as the day she told Jaunt the news. “During one of the Separatist attacks on my home planet.”
There had been chatter about Separatists in the area; but there was always chatter. After all, they were close to a major trade route and were under Republic protection. And yet, her father had told her to stay home that day, to keep the door locked. It had made her so angry, and like a small child, she’d pouted and didn’t tell him goodbye. She can still feel the warmth of his palm on top of her head as he told her he loved her, that he’d come straight home after his shift. I love you, sweetheart. I won’t get caught up in conversation with Mister Roolek today, I promise. She hadn’t wanted his promise. She’d wanted her way. And it had cost her any final happy memory with him.
“Is that when you came to be with your uncle?” Tech asks.
Kandria shakes her head. That is a part of her history she is not willing to tell. Not yet. Maybe not ever. “Are you finished with your broth?” she asks, shifting the subject away from raw, stinging memories.
“Yes, thank you,” he says, and lets her take it from his hands.
Kandria turns to leave.
“I apologize if my questions were insensitive,” Tech says behind her, briefly stopping her retreat. “I did not mean to cause you any sort of emotional discomfort.”
And she knows he means it, which somehow makes her emotional discomfort worse and better in the same aching heartbeat. No one has cared about her for a long time. She’d almost forgotten what it was like to have the real thing and not just threadbare memories of those now out of reach.
“I’m fine,” she tells him, and leaves the room before she starts to cry.
<<>><<>>
“You look a little young to work here, kid.”
Kandria startles and looks up from her data pad to find a clone staring down at her from the other side of the counter. Flustered, she begins rambling, “Oh. I don’t. I’m just sitting here reading while I wait for my dad. He’s finishing his rounds.”
“Ah, I see,” the clone says. He takes off his helmet. “So, your dad’s a doctor? Would his name happen to be Doctor Terrand?”
Kandria nods.
“Fantastic, just the man I wanted to see. I have a delivery of medications for him.”
“Oh.” Kandria didn’t know that soldiers made deliveries.
The clone looks past her at the door leading to the main ward. “You said he’s just finishing his rounds?”
“Yes, sir. But I can go get him if you’d like.”
“I’d appreciate it, kid,” the trooper says with a grin. “And you can just call me Jaunt. ‘Sir’ makes me sound more important than I am.”
Kandria smiles politely as she slips down from her chair. “I’ll go find my dad,” she tells him, hugging her data pad to her chest, before she whirls around and flees the front office for the sanctuary of the clinic.
One of the night nurses catches her the moment she gets through the door. “You know better than to run,” she scolds.
“There’s a clone trooper here with a delivery for my dad,” Kandria tells her.
The nurse frowns. “No excuses. Walk.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Kandria sighs.
Her father’s clinic is small, specializing in long-term elder and end of life care. As Kandria walks past open doors, some of the patients call out greetings, and she makes sure to smile and wave back. As she suspects, her father is in Mister Roolek’s room. She stands in the doorway, patiently waiting for a lull in the animated conversation between her father and the Rodian.
Mister Roolek’s dark eyes fall on her almost immediately. “Little Star! Apologies, I have kept your father longer than I should.”
“It’s okay,” Kandria says, stepping into the room.
“Did you need something, sweetheart?” her father asks.
“There is a trooper here that says he has a delivery for you,” Kandria says.
“Oh,” her father says, turning back to Mister Roolek, “You’ll have to excuse me, Siero.”
“Of course, of course,” Mister Roolek says, waving one long fingered hand. “Go do your work, Doctor. Our conversation will keep until tomorrow.”
As her father passes by, he pats Kandria’s head. “Thanks, kiddo.”
Kandria moves to follow after him, but is stopped short by Mister Roolek’s voice. “How’s your new book, Little Star?”
Kandria turns back and goes to Mister Roolek’s bed, holding up her data pad. “Very good. I’ve almost finished it,” she tells him. “Then I can read it out loud to you if you’d like.”
“I would like that very much,” he says. “You are an excellent narrator.”
Kandria beams. “Thank you.”
“You know that your mother was one of my students when I was a teacher?”
Kandria does know this, has heard it a hundred times; however, as she always does, she shakes her head, letting Mister Roolek tell the story again for what he thinks is the first time.
“Such a bright student, your mother. Kind and diligent. You are just like her when she was your age.”
“Thank you,” Kandria says.
Mister Roolek sighs, sinking back into his pillows. “Taken too soon, your mother.”
Kandria nods. While she does not have any of her own memories of her mother, she feels the loss deeply through the voices of those who knew her. It feels strange to miss something she doesn’t remember, but it is there nonetheless, a tender, hollow emptiness.
“Go catch up with your father, Little Star,” Mister Roolek tells her.
“I’ll come read to you tomorrow,” Kandria says. “I think I’ll finish the book tonight.”
He smiles at her. “I look forward to it then.”
Kandria returns to the lobby just as the trooper is putting his helmet back on. “See ya around, kid,” he says with a nod.
Her father turns to her. “I’ll go lock this up, then we’ll be ready to go.”
“Okay, Dad,” Kandria says, watching the clone trooper leave.
She wonders if she’ll ever see Jaunt again…or how she’d even know since he looks the same as all the others.
TECH
Kandria takes the distraction of her presence with her, leaving Tech’s hyperactive mind entirely to its own devices. He should be thinking about how to escape, how to bring Kandria with him. He should be thinking of his own survival; however, melancholy claims his thoughts instead.
Tech misses his data pad. He misses his goggles. He misses the structure of the war, the certainty of success, and the defying of failure. He misses his squad. He misses Hunter’s quiet leadership and Wrecker’s unconventional brilliance. He misses Echo’s hard won wisdom and Omega’s determined optimism. He misses Crosshair and hopes that they still search for him.
Do you ever cry, Tech?
And he thinks he might.
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