Ambassador

Chapter 3: The Regs and the Experimental Trooper

It took a little bit, but Alanja cleaned up her disheveled appearance, checking the time for dinner every few minutes to be sure she was ready. She had not seen their family friend, now Admiral Tarkin, in two years, not since the war had taken him and Rov far away. She couldn't wait to turn his long, serious face into joy. Excitement tingled through her. She couldn't wait to hear about his stories or see what promised rocks he had collected for her. When last she saw him, he pledged to retrieve a stone from every battle he won and save it for her. Certainly, that pile was large now. It would be such a privilege to keep those keepsakes of victory. When she asked Rov for the same, he just shook his head, but not Tarkin. A big smile had played over his tight lips. Warmth spun inside her at the idea that Wilhuff was so fond of her. Rov had been in a haze of darkness when their father died, and without Wilhuff Tarkin stepping in to mentor him, Rov may have been lost forever to that drowning tide of useless and ambitionless men.

Just as she peered deep into her own gaze in the mirror, a bounty hunter had once considered her, contemplating if he would take a job from Tarkin to bring justice to the assassin of Alanja's father. She could remember the man's saunter like it was yesterday as he left her home, the glaring shadow of a Mandalorian darkening the door of her family home. She never saw Jango Fett again until she laid eyes on the first cloned trooper. Rov walked among them that day he came back for her on Naboo. She still remembered the haunting sound of the trooper's voice asking, "are you all right, ma'am" as he rushed to her aid when she doubled over retching. On all sides, she had been surrounded by Fett's reanimated and immortal face. The clones were like ghosts of him, only not him at all. And now, she was surrounded by those soulless slaves made of his deadly essence.

"Calm down, Alanja," she begged herself, shivering as she clutched the sink before.When the doors to her rooms slid open, she put on a fancy smile for Rov. He had need of her here, and there was work to begin whether she felt up to the task or not. She pinched her cheeks, drew a deep breath, and twirled her silky, brown, come-follow-me curl around her finger. Like a swirl of smoke on the sunrise, Alanja glided out into the common area, her head held high.

But when she gazed down her nose at Rov, he was not there. Four clone troopers were back with their white-helmed scowls.

"Hello," she greeted them, disguising her contempt for their presence behind a pretense of pure grace. "Where is Vice Admiral Rampart?"

His voice filtered through his pale mask of black-eyed grimace; a trooper replied matter-of-factly, "Our orders are to bring you to the officers' galley." There was no kindness, just cold professionalism in his tone. Every time she heard a clone speak, her mind reviled the sound of the dead bounty hunter's voice, and she wondered if any of them ever knew him or wanted to.

"Ma'am?" the trooper called. "We await you." It was in that moment that she realized she didn't know which one had spoken.

Pursing her pink lips into a rosebud, she waved the troopers out, being sure to never really look at them as her opalescent gown wafted past. "Lead on, my friends," she said with a heavy sigh. Resisting the urge to nervously press her hands to her gown, she held them at her side gracefully as she allowed the four troopers to surround her and begin their escort.

Walking the corridors inside a square of four troopers like she was their prisoner was unnerving. She was sure they weren't actually her bailiffs, but as she occasionally passed Kaminoans, their black eyes with white pupils followed her with some sort of placid dread. Alanja's stomach tightened the more clones she saw. It was like a nightmare. Their faces were an endless sea of the deceased bounty hunter, Jango Fett. He was dead, yet copies of him still walked, roaming with no true free will, only a giant hive mind. Rov had said the clones think independently and could be very creative, but it was hard for her to see.