Star Wars Republic Commando: Knight of Honor ✓

Chapter 17

Author's Note: If you have any tips writing tips, please feel free to comment.

As always, I continue to hope that I am doing justice to the spirit of Star Wars as well the respective authors and characters from which I borrow. Again, I gratefully accept constructive criticism as a means to help me develop my skills further as a writer.

Mandalorian (Mando'a) words

Kriff (or Kriffing): a vulgar expletive

Ba'vodu Gan: Uncle Gan

Ika (EE-kah): diminutive suffix written as 'ika - also added to a name as a very familiar or childhood form, e.g, Ord'ika - Little Ordo

Di'kut (DEE-koot): idiot, useless individual, waste of space (lit. someone who forgets to put their pants on)

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Chapter 17

I've heard people say that we don't care about them and it's immoral to have them used from the start. They're right, and I often wondered what other choice we could have made when our backs are against the wall. The Clone Army was a grave mistake, but not because of their lives as men, as beings. It was a mistake because of how they have been used and exploited. How many of them will ever have any kind of normalcy... a relationship... a family?

Private journal of General Bardan Jusik, prior to resigning from the Jedi Order

Tochin Moon III, 784 Days ABG

After a moment, he looked to her and he decided that a woman with an edge, a woman with more hardened emotions would not have noticed the battle damage on his armor or look upon him with compassion. 

A woman who was stronger would have ignored those fine details and would have brushed him off as another clone, another soldier. 

A woman who did not hold such compassion would never have found it within her to genuinely thank him for saving her.

"Les'ika," Jas said softly. "Please stop. Don't carry guilt that isn't yours."

Arlesse couldn't help her hands balling into fists. She watched a man die, an innocent man who had done nothing but be on a side in a war, and the side he wasn't on wasn't even his own choosing. 

The mercenaries simply killed that cloned soldier because he could, not because it was an order in a war. Had that cloned man chosen his future, maybe he wouldn't have been a soldier and maybe he would never have been captured. 

She knew, though, that regardless of how the cloned man had come into Hazar's possession, the mercenary killed him, because it was something to pass the time. 

He didn't kill him for the good of all in order to save an entire population or world, and that was the crime she could never see justified. That was the reason Hazar and the clone continued to haunt her.

She looked from Jas for a moment and stared at the blurry green around her. She could still see that trooper's eyes and the fear he held in them. He was not only afraid for himself, but he was scared that he would fail in his duty to keep Hazar away from her.

 The cloned man's screams sometimes echoed in her ears, and right now he was standing beside he, shouting in agony until he was hoarse.

Jas realized that the princess' thoughts had drifted far away. He suddenly took hold of her shoulders, making his grasp strong but not painful.

 He had merely jerked her gently to get her to return to the present, and as his hands cupped her tiny form, he almost felt like a giant standing before her. It made him afraid of being too rough, too strong, and he didn't want to hurt her.