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Rex walked through the hallways of the Imperial base, his armor feeling both familiar and foreign. It was clone armor, but the plasteel was completely blank, shiny. The visor was the wrong shape, and the weight of his kama and pauldron was missing.
Here, he was not Rex, decorated officer of the Republic. He was an Imperial foot soldier, devoid of any semblance of individuality.
After having spent his entire life trying to build his own sense of self, he hated it. But it was worth it for the mission.
Rex’s mission was twofold. The first thing he was here to collect was information, specifically shipping logs and disciplinary records. The disciplinary records in particular were an invaluable tool for finding clones who were beginning to resist their chip, or perhaps whose chips had never worked properly in the first place. The second thing he was here for was a pair of clones he had been in contact with.
Rex wished more than anything to save every last clone from the Empire, but he just didn’t have the resources. His resistance group was growing, but they didn’t have the means for a full scale extraction of a platoon or company, nor the resources for mass chip removal.
Instead he was stuck extracting clones a few at a time, in small enough numbers and spread out enough that the Empire hopefully wouldn’t notice their absence.
Rex had gotten the disciplinary records onto a data stick and was now going for the shipping logs. Unfortunately the decentralized layout of the base meant that the information he still needed was held in a separate databank, some distance away.
He walked down the hall, the military posture that had been drilled into him since decanting coming easily. He passed only the occasional lower level officer, nodding respectfully to each one; in the Empire all natborns outranked clones.
“Oh, kark.” The two simple words over the comms almost caused Rex to stumble mid step. Fireball, his getaway pilot, had a cool head; he wasn’t prone to exclamations of surprise, certainly not during an active mission. Whatever it was, it had to be bad.
“Report,” Rex ordered, continuing to walk towards his destination but already planning escape routes in his head.
“Vader’s on board.”
Oh, kark indeed.
Vader was a new player, having only appeared three months ago. In that short amount of time, he had already built up a reputation as Palpatine’s favored war-massiff.
Actual intelligence on Vader was fragmentary and vague. There were a lot of rumors, but little facts. None of their informants had seen him in person, relying instead on second or even third hand accounts.
The information they did have on Vader could be summarized in a single paragraph: He was a Sith, possibly the apprentice to Palpatine. He had a bad temper. He had some amount of cybernetics and wore a helmet at all times. He was kriffing terrifying.
The greatest mystery surrounding Vader was where he came from. Had he, like Palpatine, been hiding from the Jedi as an ordinary citizen? Or was he instead, a fallen Jedi, turned to the Dark side of the Force? Rex didn’t like to think that a Jedi would fall, but he had seen it happen before, on Umbara.
Wherever he came from, the question still remained as to why he hadn’t shown himself until almost a year after the rise of the Empire. There had been a rumor of Vader’s involvement in the purge at the Jedi temple, but Rex dismissed it. The physical description of the dark Force user seen that night didn’t match with Vader beyond the dark clothing, a feature that most dark Force users shared. And anyway, appearing once and then disappearing for a year before reappearing again was even weirder than just showing up for the first time three months ago.
“How did we not know this?” Rex knew the answer to his own question. Intel on this particular mission—if he was being honest, most missions—was sparser than he would like. It was inevitable that they had missed something, but it was just their luck that the thing they missed would be so huge and dangerous.
“I’ve been monitoring the local channels,” Fireball explained. “The others sounded surprised as well. It must have been an unannounced visit.”
“Where is he now?”
“Unknown, sir. The officer mentioned being nervous because Vader’s on base, didn't say anything about where. I’ll keep monitoring.”
If Vader was on board the station, Rex’s mission was dead in the water. Everything had been going so well. For all Rex knew, Vader was on the complete other side of the station and he would be able to finish the extraction without the Sith ever realizing something was wrong.
But the risk was too great. Rex had to leave. Now.
He had gotten one of the data sticks. It was a paltry comfort compared to what he hadn’t gotten.
His heart broke for the clones he’d be leaving behind. It would be some time before they could get a message to Holiday, the clone he had been in contact with. In the meantime, he and his vod Dash would be wondering why their rescue never came.
It would be even longer before they’d be able to attempt a second rescue mission. It might be too late by then.
But as much as he abhorred leaving brothers behind, Rex knew that his own capture would ruin not only this extraction, but possibly his entire resistance group.
“Aborting mission. Heading back to the turbolift now.” Rex turned around and marched steadily back the way he’d come. Despite the urgency of the situation, a clone trooper seen running down the halls would draw suspicion.
“Affirmative. Transport is still in docking bay 6. I’ll be ready for takeoff as soon as you get here.”
Rex reached the turbolift without issue, stepping on and entering his floor.
He watched the display as the numbers ticked down. Just thirty more floors to go. Then twenty five. About halfway through the descent, the turbolift stopped. The door slid open and Rex stepped to the side and shifted into parade rest for whoever was getting on.
He glanced over, and was immediately grateful for the helmet covering up the way his jaw dropped to the floor as the hulking, black-clad figure stepped into the turbolift, boots clanking heavily across the metal flooring, breath whistling with an unnatural hiss, face covered with an expressionless, terrifying, obsidian mask.
Rex had never seen Vader, not even a holo, but there was not a single doubt in his mind who had just stepped into the turbolift.
The Sith Lord said nothing, punching his desired floor into the panel as the doors closed—only two floors above Rex’s destination—before facing the door to wait. It was the exact sequence of motions that everyone riding a turbolift did. Rex himself had done so only moments before.
It was almost surreal, watching the Sith Lord perform such an ordinary routine, as though he were just some person instead of a monster directly responsible for who knows how many innocent deaths.
If Rex wasn’t terrified at the realization that he was standing in a tiny metal box alongside one of the most terrifying beings in the galaxy, the silence might have felt awkward. Belatedly, Rex realized he should have greeted his superior. But how was he supposed to address him? Sir was the default, but Palpatine preferred my Lord. Does that title apply to all Sith, or only the Emperor?
Uncertain and panicking internally, he settled on a stiff nod. Vader didn’t reply; didn’t even glance in his direction.
For a single, glorious moment, Rex considered drawing his blaster and shooting Vader in the chest. A single blaster bolt to take out one of the biggest threats within the Empire. No witnesses.
If he opened the hatch at the top of the turbolift and climbed through the shaft, Rex might even escape with his life. It was a situation that couldn’t have been planned better if he tried, a series of circumstances that would never happen again.
It would be perfect, if it was any other Imperial Officer. Anyone but Vader. Anyone but a Sith.
Rex had fought alongside Anakin long enough to know that element of surprise or not, a clone trooper would never win one on one with a force user.
If he tried anything, Rex would be dead before his finger closed around the trigger. Or worse, captured and tortured for information.
Rex stared at the display. Only ten floors left.
The turbolift ground to a halt.
For a moment, Rex was sure that Vader had found him out and had stopped the turbolift with the Force.
A quick glance towards the Sith revealed that was not the case. The mask covering his face left Rex with little to work with, but what little body language he could see; a slight stiffening of the shoulders, the turn of his head towards the lift controls; seemed to indicate surprise.
Which didn’t mean that Rex was out of the woods. Far from it.
Their information on Vader might be sparse, but one common thread in every report they had was the Sith’s explosive, deadly anger problem.
There was a very real possibility that Rex was about to be Force-choked or stabbed to death for the simple sin of being the nearest living being when Vader was inconvenienced by a broken turbolift.
Rex gulped, glad it wasn’t audible over his bucket’s speakers.
Without the steady whine of the turbolift, the air was filled only with the sound of slow, mechanical breathing.
Rex stared at the closed doors, wondering how he had been cursed with the worst luck in the galaxy. He stood perfectly still, barely daring to breathe, that animalistic, hind-part of his brain telling him that if he didn’t move, the predator might not notice him. But Rex was not a loth-rat, and Vader was not a loth-cat. There was nothing he could do to escape the Sith’s notice.
Vader was staring at him. Rex didn’t need to turn his head to confirm. He could feel the weight of his gaze, the power of it. Those dead, empty lenses of his mask were staring through Rex’s armor, through his skin, down into his very soul.
He had asked Anakin once, whether the rumors were true that Jedi could read minds. Anakin had laughed, and explained that force users couldn’t read people’s minds, at least not without touching them and performing an invasive probe which was not only very obvious, and usually painful, to the receiver, but also heavily frowned upon by light Force users. In other words, if Vader was reading Rex’s thoughts, he would know about it.
Jedi could, though, read surface level emotions projected outward. Rex could only assume that it was the same for Sith. And so he tried deliberately to keep himself calm using every ounce of battle experience. Hopefully any nervousness that slipped through would be explained away as an Imperial clone trooper having heard of Vader’s reputation, rather than a dechipped clone infiltrating the base.
There was also the chance that while Jedi couldn’t read minds, Sith could. After all, you didn’t see Jedi throwing blue lightning out of their hands. Who knows what kind of extra powers tapping into the Dark side of the Force could give.
But if Vader could read his mind, surely he would have done something by now, right? Unless he was just toying with him.
Kark. None of Rex’s training had prepared him for this. Not even a little bit.
His heart pounded in his chest. His stomach felt like it wanted to crawl out of his throat.
And then, as though the situation couldn’t get any worse, Vader started talking.
“What is your number, trooper?” Vader’s voice was deep and booming, the mask adding a layer of modulation over top. It was even more terrifying in person than all of the stories had made it out to be.
Why was he asking for Rex’s number? The only reason an Imperial Officer usually wanted a clone trooper’s number was so that they could file a complaint on their performance. Vader didn’t seem like the kind of person to bother filing formal complaints.
“CT-3142, sir.” It was the identity that Rex had adopted for the mission. The number belonged to a clone they had recently freed. As of this morning, his information was still in Imperial systems.
There was a mechanical noise that might have been a hum.
“You seem…” There was a long pause as Vader drew in an artificial breath mid sentence. Rex had a sudden, ridiculous flicker of sympathy over how annoying it must be to have to time all of his sentences around whatever automatic machine kept him breathing. It was gone as soon as it appeared, and Vader finished, “nervous, trooper.”
No shit he was nervous. He was trapped in a small metal box with a Sith Lord who would crush him into dust under his boot the moment he discovered who he really was or what he was really doing here.
But he could hardly say any of that. He genuinely had no clue what kind of answer Vader was looking for. Instead he nodded his head respectfully.
“Apologies, sir.”
Vader continued to stare at him. A drop of sweat rolled down Rex’s neck. The lift fell into an uneasy silence once more.
Fear and anxiety had a way of warping one’s perception of time, faster or slower. In Rex’s experience, battles tended to go by quickly, despite lasting hours or days, the stress of an active firefight pushing him to move and survive. But now, with no outlet for his anxiety, no actions he could take, time seemed to slow to an absolute crawl.
It had only been a few minutes since the elevator stopped, but for Rex it might as well have been eons.
How long did it take to fix a turbolift? Someone would need to notice and report the broken lift first. Given one of the trapped passengers was someone as high profile as Vader, it shouldn’t take much time at all for someone to realize the Sith Lord didn’t show up wherever he was supposed to be going. Then, assuming the station had a competent repair crew, it shouldn’t take long to fix the turbolift. Hopefully.
The thing was, Rex wasn’t sure he was going to make it that long. Even if, by some miracle, Vader didn’t do anything to him, his heart might just give out from the strain.
Vader took a step forward.
Rex flinched at the sudden movement, but the Sith Lord wasn’t moving towards him, instead stepping up to the control panel.
Vader’s gloved hand hovered over the panel for a moment, fingers brushing the buttons almost gently. He curled his hand into a fist before yanking it back towards his torso. The panel tore off of the wall, flying backwards and crashing loudly against the back wall, narrowly missing Rex in the process.
Rex jumped. During the war, he had gotten used to objects flying around, but the Jedi had never been so careless or violent with their use of the Force. With Anakin and Ahsoka, he trusted them implicitly. No matter what kind of surprising or scary stunts they had pulled off with the Force, Rex felt, at his core, a steady calmness born of that trust.
There was nothing calm about Rex now. He had no idea if Vader had purposely missed, or if he had thrown the jagged piece of metal without caring, and it was only through sheer luck that it missed and Rex was not impaled or squished by the impact.
The Sith either didn’t notice or didn’t care about Rex's reaction. He appeared to be fully focused on the exposed wires in front of him.
Rex still couldn’t relax a single muscle. Even if Vader was no longer paying attention to him, his presence still loomed, unable to be ignored.
Vader was digging through the opened panel, pulling out strands of wire and carefully examining the connections of each one.
The absurdity of the situation hit Rex like a speeder bike. He was trapped in a turbolift with Darth Vader and instead of throwing a tantrum and killing him, the Sith Lord was calmly working on the wall panel like he was some common mechanic instead of one of the scariest and most dangerous men in the Empire.
He watched Vader work, morbidly fascinated with the Sith’s actions, so different than he would have expected. Vader looked like he knew what he was doing, and for a moment Rex was reminded of Anakin working on his starfighter, entire upper body buried in the engine.
After some time, Vader stopped fiddling with the panel, shoving the remaining wires away roughly, standing up abruptly and angrily. The turbolift didn’t move. Whatever was wrong must not have been fixable from inside the turbolift car.
Vader clenched his fist in anger, artificial breaths as slow and even as ever. The entire turbolift creaked ominously.
This was it, Rex thought for the dozenth time in the past twenty minutes. This is how I die.
But Vader didn’t crush his throat with the Force, nor did he cause the turbolift car to fall down the shaft. Instead, he continued to stand there, raging silently. Rex continued to tremble in the corner.
Time passed. Rex didn’t know how long it had been. Just as Rex was beginning to think it might have been kinder for Vader to have just killed him earlier, putting him out of his misery, the turbolift moved.
It jolted into action, moving slowly downwards a short ways before stopping once more. The doors slid open, revealing a worried looking group of Imperial mechanics and several officers.
“My Lord,” one of the officers stepped forward, “My deepest apologies. We-” The man cut off abruptly.
Vader stepped out of the turbolift, hand raised towards the officer. “What is the meaning of this incompetence? A simple repair should not have taken you this long.”
The man tried to choke out an explanation, but it came out incomprehensibly. His eyes were bugging out of his head, tips of his toes scrabbling against the smooth floor as he was lifted upward. The rest of the Imperials watched on in fear, no one else willing to speak up.
Vader choked the officer for several more seconds before clenching his fist. There was a sickening crack and the man went limp. Vader dropped the body onto the ground like a discarded doll.
“I expect better,” He boomed, and then he was storming away down the hall, the group of Imperials scrambling to follow after him.
Rex was left behind with the body of a man who had suffered a fate that Rex himself had only narrowly avoided.
Rex stepped out of the turbolift, legs as wobbly as a newborn eopie. He walked down the hallway towards the stairwell. It was several flights down to the docking bay, but he wasn’t getting in any more turbolifts.
It took every ounce of self-control to resist the urge to run away, towards safety. The stairwell was deserted, most personnel preferring to use the turbolifts, but he couldn’t risk a single person seeing him act weird, not after he had so improbably survived this far.
He flicked his comms back on, immediately met with a worried Fireball.
“Rex here. I’m on my way to the transport. There was…a delay.” His voice sounded flat and unnatural to his own ears.
“Affirmative.” He could tell that Fireball wanted to ask him a dozen questions but held off.
As soon as Rex stepped onto their ship and the ramp closed behind him, hiding him from prying Imperial eyes, the full weight of his experience and how close he had come to death finally crashed into him all at once. His knees buckled beneath him, and he fell to the ground, plasteel clanking against the metal floor.
“Rex!” Fireball called, standing up from the pilot's seat and turning toward him, alarmed. “Are you okay? What happened?”
Rex waved him off, gesturing towards the console. Fireball took the wordless order for what it was and sat back down, firing up the thrusters to get them out of here.
Rex ripped off his helmet, throwing it to the ground. The recycled air of the ship was cool against his sweat-dampened hair.
He could hear Fireball updating the others on the situation. He tuned most of it out, trusting his vod to fly them out safely.
He knelt on the floor and he breathed.
Later, Rex would tell them all the whole story, every last terrifying moment, but for now he just wanted to get as far away from this Sith-damned Imperial base as possible.