There’s no such thing as a good morning.
Though, hell if I know; could be night for all I can tell.
Nobody’s ever let us outside.
Since I first came to in this body, I’ve never once seen the sky.
Not even a local one.
Just sterile corridors, ceilings full of light fixtures, and the growth chambers, and even those only in passing, back when they moved us out of the nursery.
Everything here is built to save space.
We’re marched out to the parade ground.
“Company, fall in!” How did I ever end up here?
It’s only been six months, and I’m already sick to death of his commands, sick of the same food, sick of the barracks, sick of every corner of every lesson.
But today’s different.
Today…
“CT-0002, report!” “Sir, Master Sergeant, sir, the company is fully formed!” Clones 0001, 0043, 0045, 0101, 0102, 0204 are unaccounted for, and 0442.
CT-0002 finished the report.
“Fall in.” You might be wondering why there are only three and a half hundred of us left now.
Turns out mortality, plus the sheer grinding fatigue of monotony, can wear down even a clone built for better odds.
It started simply enough.
One day they announced endurance training out of nowhere and put us on the parade ground.
We stood there for ten hours straight.
Everyone ended up standing in their own filth by the end, since nobody was let off to use the toilet, and moving out of formation wasn’t allowed either.
That kind of thing happened once or twice a week after that, no set pattern, no way to guess when.
Then one day, we were made to watch one of our brothers get dissected with clinical precision.
Alive.
No anesthesia.
A child, essentially.
Right after, they hit us with a rapid fire quiz, what order the tools sat on the surgeon’s table, what he said and in what sequence, at what point his breathing visibly stopped.
The others started breaking down, predictably.
Same as when it would go back home.
Nightmares, tears, full-blown breakdowns.
And whoever couldn’t hold it together got quietly taken away by evening.
They never came back.
“Unfit to serve the Republic.” Cold-blooded butchers, all of them.
What scared me most was that none of it triggered any real pushback in me.
Intellectually, I understood we were supposed to be conditioned for torture, execution, all of it, but the actual methods used here were something else entirely, brutal in a way that leaves no room for doubt.
We went through every stage of it ourselves: sleep deprivation and interrogation drills straight from the instructors.
The pain was unreal.
Close to fifteen of us are still in the infirmary now.
Didn’t recover overnight.
In terms of pure cruelty toward people, the instructors in this galaxy outdid anything I saw in my old one, by a wide margin.
We still look like teenagers, on the surface.
But that’s all it is: surface.
You ever notice that look clones get in the shows?
Look closer next time.
Cold as durasteel.
Once you’ve gone through something like this, you don’t have any other look left in you.
I still train at night and early in the morning.
Helps take my mind off it.
Meat droids, that’s really what we are to them.
I get it now, why so many of the Jedi and the people running this galaxy looked at clones the way they did.
It probably wasn’t just how we were grown.
It was how we were raised.
Today’s the day we get sorted.
Finally split off into specializations and handed to other companies.
Some will end up signal officers, some snipers, some pilots.
Dozens of specialties here, each needing its own deep, separate training, since trying to make one soldier good at everything just gets you someone mediocre at all of it.
You can only really master one thing at a time.
Only near the end, in the final year of training, a year and a half from now, do they fold everyone back together.
Makes sense, if the goal is coordinating every branch of the army as one force.
Not my place to question it.
The Mandalorians have spent their whole lives at war.
And honestly, I just don’t care anymore.
I just don’t want to keep bending over backward for nothing.
“Congratulations, cadets.
Based on your training results, you’ll each be sent on for further instruction in other wings.
And I’ll go ahead and congratulate you twice, since somehow, despite the laziness and half effort, you actually managed to stop being useless.” Right as he finished, a dozen more Mandalorians filed in from a side corridor, all different builds and colors, lining up behind our sergeant like some ragtag honor guard.
“When I call your number, step out and report to your new instructor.” The whole process felt oddly ordinary.
The sergeant would call out a string of numbers, the matching instructor would raise a hand, line the group up in a column, and march them off into the unknown.
I don’t feel too bad for any of them.
If anything, I’m a little envious.
At least they’ve got a bit of variety coming their way now.
What was left of our company ended up second to last, called off to some unnamed instructor.
I’d sort of checked out mentally by that point, just waiting for my number.
You know that state where nothing rattles you, and you just wait, and wait?
I didn’t care, right up until I looked around and realized I was the only one left standing alone in the middle of an empty parade ground.
Guess I’d been somewhere else in my head.
That old familiar panic flared up for a second before I shoved it back down.
“So, what do you say, one thirty four?” Our own personal nightmare, in yellow, gold really, turned to face me.
“Sir?” Because really, what else was there to say.
“I’ve been watching you this whole time, you know.” Great.
Thanks.
And now what?
At that point I was ready for almost anything.
Even a fight to the death, if it came to that.
You never know.
Meanwhile, Manduke kept going.
“And I liked what I saw.
So I’m going to give you a choice.
Right now, you’re free to go with the rest of the group headed for assault infantry, and honestly, that’d be the sensible option.
Or, you can come with me instead.
Everything you’ve trained on so far will look like a kid’s game by comparison, but you’d have a real shot.
I don’t offer this to many.
You’ve got what it takes to join the clone squad, Series A.
Trust me,” he raised a hand before I could get a word out, “I rarely do this.” Damn, damn, damn, ah.
Alphas.
The elite.
We’d only ever heard stories about them from the older companies.
And he’s offering it to me?
But, wait.
Why me?
What could possibly have made me stand out?
No, this couldn’t be real.
“If you’re ready, you can come with me right now.
So, what’s your answer, one thirty four?” Whatever part of me wanted to say no got drowned out fast by the math on the other side.
Assault infantry is basically just meat.
Any assault, even back on my old world, was the last twenty minutes of your life, live or don’t.
And here they were offering me a spot with Alpha instead.
Elite, special forces, work that wouldn’t get thrown away on nothing, harder missions, sure, but ones that actually mattered.
It’s basically what I used to do before I died, adjusted for local conditions and whatever knowledge of the future I’ve still got rattling around in my head.
However you slice it, that’s a real advantage, and one worth using properly.
What was there even to think about?
“Sir,” I said carefully, “I accept, sir.” Then something I hadn’t seen coming happened.
Our Master Sergeant, of all people, pulled off his helmet.
“Call me Kal, boy.
Master Kal.
You’ll still have to earn a real name or a callsign, but that, you should know, is a serious honor for any clone.” I got my first real look at a face that actually looked different from the endless sameness I’d been surrounded by, and somehow I felt like I’d memorized every detail of it instantly.
Pure shock, that’s the only way to describe it.
From what I remembered, Mandalorians only go bare-faced in front of people they trust, or family, something along those lines, I couldn’t recall exactly.
Didn’t matter.
He was just different from the rest, and that was enough.
“Don’t think this makes things easy,” he said, sliding the helmet back on and turning toward the exit, well away from the parade ground.
“For what it’s worth, everyone had you pegged as a pilot.
But there’s something else in you.” “Sir!” Damn it, things were actually looking up.
“I won’t let you down, Master Kal, sir.” Funny how little it takes sometimes.
Strip everything from a person and hand a fraction of it back, and they’ll be grateful for it.
Whether this whole thing is some cosmic joke or just the way fate landed, I ended up here, and I can feel my whole situation just shifted, hard.
Here’s hoping I actually get to live out whatever time’s left, and longer this round.
And whatever happens, I’ll make sure it’s interesting.
Heh.
I can already tell the training’s about to get a lot rougher.
Fine.
Sweat saves blood, as they say.
Just have to stay sharp.
With that running through my head, and about as close to good spirits as I get these days, I left the hall and stepped into an unfamiliar corridor.
com/Hezzario