Clone Wars: Underground - Chapter 2

     

    The Jedi were gone. The Jedi Medical Facility where Ellia worked and practically lived seemed to be in limbo. It was still there, but their benefactors were wiped from the galaxy in a matter of minutes. There was an uneasiness about it that hung in many minds. Something about the media coverage of the Jedi betrayal didn’t sit right with Ellia. She tried several times to contact Shaak Ti on Kamino. The comm silence bothered her the most. She took a deep breath and held it several seconds, trying to calm down. She thought about contacting her family on Chandrila, but if she was caught with illegal research and a fugitive clone, she didn’t want her family involved. If felt like all the doors on her life had closed in one night.

She watched the announcement given by the Supreme Chancellor. He looked as if he had aged decades in a single night. It was shocking. What came next was even more radical. He openly declared himself Emperor over a new order, a new Galactic Empire born from the ashes of the Republic. 

Ellia knew it was insubordination and she’d likely be arrested, but she couldn’t stop herself. Sooner or later, this new government would be prying into all the dealings the Jedi had done, and that meant her project. She had to hide her research before anyone came snooping around.

Working as fast as she could, she transported the rest of the men from the tanks down to the underbelly of the city. Then, she returned to her office and removed all of her files on the project to her personal datapad. She poured liquid bacta from one of the tanks on the computer core and did her best to make it look like an accident. Once finished, she hoped the data on her projects would be un-recoverable. When everything looked the way she wanted, she headed back down to the ancient facility where her clones lay waiting in older tanks.

She walked from tank to tank with a stat monitor in her hand, checking the vitals of each patient. Some of the tanks looked downright ancient. At least they were serviceable. The lighting was poor and there was exposed piping and other elements where the walls had partially crumbled away. At least all of the support beams were intact. It gave the whole room a mad-science look. She paused at Maaka. He was her second acquisition. She had read his file. There wasn’t much to it, but some earlier reports were either locked or corrupted. What she did have was an accident report. Maaka had fallen off the platform when completely inebriated, suffering a concussion and broken spine. He’d slipped immediately into a coma, then died on his way to the medical center. He was subsequently brought to her. He was stable, but not showing signs of progress. Yet. 

She moved on to the next four. These were the ones that helped in the securing of the Jedi temple from the now rogue Jedi Order. Ellia’s thoughts drifted. It seemed so strange to her that the Jedi would turn against the Republic. The clone troopers she had spoken with always praised their Jedi leaders. She could feel the admiration for their generals coming off the soldiers as they spoke of them. It was a terrible tragedy that the clones had to defend against the ones they seemed to love so much. 

Burnout had a lightsaber wound to his chest. Brix and Tiptoe had lost limbs and were only dead for moments before the cells revived them. Jace had been hit in the throat with a deflected blaster bold.  He was also alive, barely. 

Then there was Fives. The fugitive from the 501st. According to the report from Medical Leader Nala Se, Fives removed his own inhibitor chip and was therefore unstable and an immediate threat. He had made himself a criminal when he removed a chip from his head. A cold shiver went down her spine as she looked up at Fives. She was becoming more and more certain that Commander Fox had been the one to hunt him down in the Coruscant underworld. She was glad Fox had not pressed the matter. He had bought the ruse of the replaced clone in the tank. The decoy clone hadn’t been dead and Ellia had him transported to the army medical facility after Fox and his men finished their clean up. 

Ellia glanced at her datapad again. Nala Se spoke of the chips in the report almost casually, like they were common knowledge, but it was the first time Ellia had heard of them. The cloners at Kamino never mentioned anything about the chips. Ever since reading Fives’s file she had spent her off time researching these inhibitor chips. She discovered that they were implanted into each clone to make them more docile. It threw up a flag in her mind immediately. She knew the Kaminoan genetic practices. Things like behavior changes would have been changed in the DNA template directly, not in a bio-chip. Still, the thought that this clone had removed his own chip made her curious. Maybe this clone knew something. When it came to deciding who to wake first, this was the pivotal piece of information. Should she wake him first, or would he be dangerous without his chip as Nala Se reported? Would it be safer to wake one of the clones whose chip was intact? Then again, it seemed the clones had been acting so strange recently. 

 

She arrived at work early the next morning. Commander Fox was already waiting when she walked into the lobby. She was so startled that she’d almost dropped her morning chocolate. There was someone else with him. He was nearly a head taller than the clone commander. Both dwarfed Ellia easily.

“Doctor Tian.” The Commander greeted. 

“Commander Fox?” Despite his helmet she could feel his eyes on her. 

“Sorry to bother you, I am Director Gresh, your new boss. I’m here to re-assign you.” It was the other man who spoke. He was wearing a white lab coat and a perpetual look of distaste on his sour face.

“Oh, I’m being reassigned?”

“The Emperor wants to make the most of his assets.” He frowned as he looked around at the interior, standing away from anything that might brush up against him as if the whole lab was infected with some sort of virus. “I’m afraid you will need to move your uh, humble station to the new Imperial Research Center of which I am the director.” His bored tone was beginning to grate on her nerves. “I will be suppling you with all of your future work. Check your messages for assignments and reports twice daily.”

“Research Center?” How did this man know?

“Didn’t you graduate from the top genetics program?” Gresh asked. 

“Well, yes.”

“And you want me to believe you’ve been treating battle cuts for four years?” The accusing tone told Ellia that he already had his answer.

“Director.” Commander Fox cut in and Ellia breathed a sigh of relief.

Gresh gave a quick disdainful look in Fox’s direction. “Right. Commander Fox’s team is doing a thorough sweep of the Jedi temple. I have given him permission to use your little outlet here as a staging point for as long as he needs.” With that, the director rushed from the building before anything else could delay him. Commander Fox nodded at Doctor Tian and exited as well.

“So far, so good.” Ellia breathed. If having your whole career turned over with the upheaval of the government could be called good. At least they hadn’t found out about her project. Not that it would matter anyway, the Jedi were gone. Still, had already hid everything. If she told them now, it would look suspicious. She also knew that she owed it to her test subjects to do the best she could to help them. 

 

The next day, Fox had visited the lab again. They had pulled a few more bodies from the temple and were making use of the incinerator. As his men worked, Fox walked over to the empty bacta tank.

“What was the number of the clone that was in this tank before?” He asked.

“Oh,…” Ellia tried to think fast. “All of that information was transferred with him to the Republic…I mean Imperial Medical Center. I didn’t keep a record here, but you can check with the staff there.”

“You didn’t keep any records?”

“Uh, I’m in the process of transferring all of the records to the IMC, since I’ll be transferring there myself. Sorry.”

Fox paused for a long moment. Ellia wished she could see his face under his helmet or get some kind of hint at what he might be thinking. 

“I understand.” He said finally.

Ellia sighed in relief when he left. She continued to pack all of her effects for the immediate move to the Central Medical District. She stopped when she came to the window and looked up at the temple spires. To Ellia, those Jedi spires had been an inspiration to her. They reminded her of how her own hard work had gotten her a position here, in the temple district, working with the Jedi. They were visible from her office. The office she now had to abandon. Just like we all abandoned the Jedi. A sullen feeling replaced the inspiration she’d felt, just as the black smoke still drifted up from those spires.

 

Fox finished his report and headed to the barracks. He didn’t give thought to how much nicer they were owing to his station as the personal guard of the Supreme Chancellor, no, Emperor. It was the Emperor that ordered his guard be given special treatment, even though Fox knew it was unnecessary. He showered, checked his chrono, and went for evening meal. His mind refused to catch up with him. His thoughts stuck on the Jedi Medical Facility. The doctor, Ellia Tian, had two clones in her office. Gresh said she was a geneticist. Was it a coincidence that a geneticist working for the Jedi had a clone he swore was the one he’d personally shot in the presence of a Jedi general months ago? It was too strange to think that they would keep the corpse for any purpose. He remembered that day often, the strange order given to him by the then Chancellor. The target was to be eliminated at all costs. Not taken into custody but taken out completely. Although he never asked why, he still wondered about it. There’s no way Doctor Tian would know that. Was there? Was it a secret project? Something that the Jedi had known about Emperor Palpatine that this clone also knew? He shook his head. It hadn’t even been the same clone, he told himself again. 

            He’d even made special note to inspect the tank on his second visit, but it turned out not to be the renegade. He had been so sure before. Fox had heard of strange illnesses and hallucinations particular to clones. He wondered if he was experiencing something of the sort. The ARC trooper, the one he thought he saw, the same one he’d killed, had something similarly wrong with him. He was completely delusional. 

            Fox shook his head and stabbed the dewback steak. No, it was nonsense. It had just been stress. He was fine.  

 

Brenni walked past the first officer’s cabin. It was where her adopted daughter, Kisha, slept. Well, when she was home. 

“Kish!” She shouted, but there was no reply. She wasn’t surprised, there was probably a race tonight. She checked for Kisha’s speeder bike in the cargo bay. It was gone. Brenni sighed. She hadn’t asked to be a mother. She wasn’t a good one, she knew. She promised she wouldn’t be too imposing, not like it had been at her home on Alderaan. 

When Brenni had found Kisha stowed away in her cargo hold nearly two years ago, she’d not known what to think. The twelve-year-old girl had run away from home. She had stubby lekku and no sign of budding montrails. Her skin was a ruddy, rosy-peach with a few lighter splotches. Brenni could tell right away she was only half Togruta. Instead of the fearful surprise at getting caught, it was the angry daring stare that told Brenni she had her work cut out for her. She knew right away she’d take the girl under her wing, but she had no idea how to be a parent. 

Shaking the memories from her mind, Brenni turned her thoughts to Ellia. A frown formed on her face. Ellia had seemed almost frantic today, asking about the clone she’d brought to her. She hoped that she hadn’t gotten her friend in trouble. Since leaving Alderaan to work as a relief aid runner for the war, Brenni always did her best to present herself as a model Alderaanian citizen. She met Ellia while picking up supplies and medics from the Jedi Medical Facility and they became fast friends.  

Ellia was educated and determined, but still very naïve about the greater world. She’d have to make it a point sometime to drag the younger woman out of her office and show her what Coruscant looked like. She was sure Ellia had only seen the walk from her apartment to her office.  

“Maybe it’s time to check up on you.” She muttered to herself. She put on her jacket and exited the ramp of the ship she called home. 

 

 

Ellia nervously passed the time in her old office. Almost everything was relocated save the datapad she always carried and her flimsi notes. When evening finally came, she slipped down the turbolift to her secret lab. Since bringing her six clones down here, she’d begun transporting the medical equipment she needed. She had no idea if the equipment she took was on record or if the new Imperial Order would even notice it missing. Now, the underground lab was beginning to look like her own lab up top, except some of the equipment was a little rusty. She told herself that it matched the atmosphere. In fact, she felt safer down here than up above. It was as if all the frenzy of the city and tense authority pressed on her by the New Order didn’t reach the depths of the city. She could have solitude. Her plants cast irregular shadows on the walls from the grow light Ellia affixed to a shelf unit. 

“That will have to do for you guys.” She told them. 

She walked up to the first tank and placed her hand on it. She took a deep breath. Solitude. While a student, she’d pushed her family away, made little to no friends, and practically kept residence at the medical library. Solitude had been necessary for her success, and now it was all she knew. It couldn’t last long. It was time to wake them. Ellia had already decided who would be first.

“Please don’t go crazy on me.” She whispered to the man in the tank. She tapped the controls, and the pressure pulled the man from the confines of the tank. Her medic droid, Ardie, transferred the clone to a table and Ellia paused one more time to awe at how well her experiment had turned out. This man had been dead minutes before Brenni had put him in statis. She had administered the modified stem cells immediately and over the course of a few months his wound healed. Brain cells had only just begun to degrade before the modified cells re-built them. If she had not done the research herself, she would have called it a miracle.

Ellia armed herself with a stimulator to wake the chip-less clone and a sedative to satisfy her own fear of what this supposed rogue clone might do. She examined again the number five tattooed on his right temple. His file running through her mind again. She practically memorized it. ARC trooper from the 501^st. General Skywalker’s legion. A slight smile came to her lips. There were many stories about General Skywalker and his men. Of all the war stories, his were the most entertaining. If this clone served under him, it was like another wild card thrown into the mix. No inhibitor chip. Erratic behavior. 501^st ARC. She clutched the sedative nervously and gathered her courage. She administered the stimulant and waited, holding her breath. 

He didn’t move.

She began counting to give herself patience. She checked his eyes, his fingers, his pulse, looking for any sign of life. She checked the screen. Brain activity seemed to be increasing. 

Ellia nearly jumped when the clone suddenly drew a breath. He sucked more air in and coughed. She steadied her sedative as the clone blinked and instantly tried to stand. He was too weak but caught himself. He looked at her and his eyes grew wide. 

“No!” He rasped and knocked the sedative from her hand. Ellia jumped back. He tried to stand again and crumpled to the ground. 

Regaining her composure, Ellia knelt down slowly.  “Take it easy. It’s okay.”

He opened his mouth to talk, but a raspy cough was all that came out.

“You haven’t used your vocal cords in a while, or your legs for that matter. You’ve lost a lot of muscle tone.”

“Why?” He wheezed.

“Fives. I have a lot to tell you.” She helped him back up onto the medical table. “And you have a lot to tell me.”

He tried to sit the best he could, but everything felt weak. Still, he refused to lay down and forced himself into a sitting position.

“I have been working on a project for the Jedi. It was recently shut down. You were my first experiment.” She explained quickly.

He gave her a questioning look.

“I found a way to use some of Jango’s stem cells to repair,” She looked him up and down. Alive. He was alive and awake. “to repair, well just about everything. Do you remember what happened to you?”

Fives rubbed his chest. Memories shot though his mind like blaster bolts. He remembered the warehouse. He had tried to tell the general about the chips, but he hadn’t been able to concentrate. He had felt dizzy and nauseous. Then Commander Fox showed up. Fives knew that he couldn’t go back with him. Fox was in on it, the whole conspiracy. He would not go back to that room, not to the Chancellor. The Chancellor was… He shivered.

“Hey. Are you okay?”

“I was shot.”

“Yeah. Quite a miracle huh. Too bad my project was shut down.” She fixed him with a glare. “And you’re the reason that hot-head Fox keeps breathing down my neck. I had to hide you and all information about you. If he finds out, I’m in trouble.”

“More than that. You’ll be dead.”

            Ellia froze at his blunt reply. The consequences of her actions seemed to be getting heavier by the minute.

            “I didn’t sign up for any of this.” Ellia hugged herself absently. She suddenly felt very small. 

            “It’s Supreme Chancellor Palpatine. He’s behind it all. I have to tell-”

“You mean the Emperor.” Ellia cut in.

“Emperor?” His eyes widened.

“While you were out. The Jedi staged a coup. They all turned traitorous. They attacked Palpatine and he ordered the army to hunt them down.”

“And every clone did without question.” He said it as a statement. 

“That part seems a little odd to me. Weren’t you guys all supposed to be loyal to your generals?”

“I’m too late.” Fives wasn’t looking at Ellia anymore, he was staring off into space. His face was distressed to the point she though he might have a breakdown. 

            “What happened? Somehow, you know.” Her voice was low. She wasn’t sure she should ask. Maybe it was better that she didn’t know, but she was curious, and a part of this whole mess now.

            “The inhibitor chips in our heads. He tapped his head. They’re directly linked to the Supreme Chancellor’s command. On his order, all clones with a chip are programed to execute Jedi on sight.” He looked down. “I saw it happen once. A chip malfunctioned and a Jedi general was killed. Palpsy himself confirmed it.”

            “Orders, huh.”

            “Yeah. And it seems he holds all the cards now.”

            “It wouldn’t matter. Everyone believes the Emperor. That the clones were ultimately loyal to him has be seen in a positive light and as proof that the jedi were wrong. You should have seen his face. He was horrendously disfigured.”

            “And the Jedi?”

            “Gone.”

            Fives eyes unfocused again for a moment. Ellia was silent. It was a lot to take in. She would need to study one of the inhibitor chips to see exactly how they worked. Although Fives had his removed, she was sure the other clones’ chips were intact. 

            “I’m sorry.” He said at last. The young doctor was a civvie only doing her job. “You got mixed up into this dangerous mess just like I did.”

            “No. I excel at getting myself mixed up into things.” She had tried too hard to be the best geneticist possible, how could she think there wouldn’t be consequences?

            Fives almost smiled. “We’ll get along then. But you’re in danger. I should go. I shouldn’t be seen with you.”

            “Oh no. You’re still my experiment. I moved you down here so I could see this project though. I have tests to run.” 

            “You do know that I’m actually a person. A human.” He retorted.

            “Besides, I think I’m going to need your help with the others. We’re several stories below the surface. No one will find any of us here.” She admitted.

            “Others?”

            “I managed to save a few other clones before my project was terminated. I should probably take their chips out before I wake them.”

            “It won’t be easy. They’re difficult to find. You need to run a phase five sub-atomic scan just to see the thing.”

            “Are you a field medic?” Ellia asked. She’d never heard a clone use such precise medical language before.

            Fives gave her a questioning look. Something seemed to click in his mind and his expression softened. “No, my friend and I just underwent a few tests back on Kamino.” He cracked a half-smile. “And I’m an ARC trooper, I remember everything.” Ellia smiled. For once in her life it felt good to have company. Better yet, it was someone who was in as deep sludge as she was. It was an odd comfort.

            “I don’t have that kind of equipment here. It’s not standard. But I think I can get an atomic scan-modifier from up top. I can install it into Ardie.” She sighed. Somehow, she thought her life was about to change and not just from the upheaval of the new order.  

 

Ellia was still getting used to her new office. She had brought the RD-6, Ardie, research and development droid with her. Ardie had sturdy legs for lifting lab equipment and large specimen samples. He also had fine limb attachments for medical procedures and Ellia had uploaded several medical procedures into his programming besides the research core he originally came with. She didn’t personally have the scanning device that she needed for the bio-chips, that belonged to the lab itself. She slipped in while the assist droid was cleaning up. Making sure she hid her actions from the security cam, she slipped the compact scan-modifier into her med-pack. It was different than the ones on Kamino, but she had used it before. She turned only to come face to face with Gresh. 

“Ah, Doctor Tian.” 

“Director Gresh.” Ellia hoped her voice didn’t sound as astonished as she felt.

“I wanted to ask you some questions about the work you were doing previously.”

“Sorry, but you’ll have to be more specific. I worked on a lot of things.” The words came out as innocent as she could make them.

“It seems odd to me that someone of your caliber was placed on report reviews and lab processing. Isn’t that more suited to a student study program?”

Ellia searched for her excuses. “I, I didn’t make the assignments, sir. And besides, I’m still a junior. I’ve still spent more time in school than on the job.” They weren’t lies, but they created an easy story for her. 

Gresh studied her closely. He was middle-aged, thin, and somewhat gaunt. His dress and demeanor suggested he’d spent his entire life in a lab. Ellia wondered if she’d look that way in a decade. She shivered involuntarily. Gresh must have noticed. He smiled creepily. 

“Okay, Doctor Tian.” His raspy voice seemed to drone right into her head. “I’ll give you that for now. But remember, you work for me. I’m more hands on than your previous Jedi masters. I’ll be watching your progress and time expenditures. I won’t allow for unaccounted activity.” She was getting the feeling that he was on to her. She really didn’t need to bring unwanted attention to herself. “Good day, Doctor.”

“And you, Director.” She replied, hoping he didn’t hear the relief in her voice. Ellia continued to her office and installed the scan-modifier to one of Ardie’s ports.