Star Wars Republic Commando: Knight of Honor ✓

Chapter 24

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.

This chapter's opening quote is taken from Karen Traviss' novel, The Clone Wars: No Prisoners.  

Mandalorian (Mando'a) words

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

Vode (VOH-day): brothers,  sisters, comrades

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Chapter 24

I'm a soldier. It's all I am. I don't know a lot about the outside world, but I'm pretty sure that other soldiers have families and lives outside fighting. We don't. 

Clone Captain CC-7567 "Rex" 

Tochin Moon III, 785 Days ABG  

Arlesse brought her eyes to the trees that surrounded the lake and looked upward to the natural clearing that displayed the night sky. Her eyes moved about the constellations and the millions of stars that made up the galaxy. The sky above resembled a black velvet curtain that had been littered with pinholes, and she realized then that she rarely had such an opportunity to see the universe's wonder. There was just too much artificial light around the palace, and it blocked so much of the natural beauty that was the night over her world.

Rainbows of twinkling stars caught her attention, and Arlesse concentrated on a bright star that glittered in reflections of blue, red, and green. Suddenly, a larger ball of white passed beneath the twinkling star she was watching, and after a couple moments, the falling star disintegrated into the darkness. She couldn't remember ever seeing a star fall from the sky, and she was quickly reminded of an old proverb from one of her childhood flimsi stories: If a star falls at night, make your wish right.

Finding herself disappointed now, Arlesse realized that she was so enthralled by the beauty the falling star held that she forgot to make her wish.

"Les'ika?"

Arlesse felt her breath quickly tighten, and she closed her eyes, forcing herself to contain the memories from the last three days. She didn't think it was possible that by looking at the sky above for a matter of minutes, she could disregard her capture and the frightening time she spent with that mercenary. However, with just the sound of her modified name spoken in that undeniably unique and thick accent, she had relived her first encounters with these Republic soldiers, starting with Jas offering her his hand in that dreaded prison cell. She briefly wondered if she had never connected her hand to his if she would be feeling the overdrive of her emotions. If it had been Dusty who held her hand instead, would she feel this way for him rather than Jas or would she not have felt anything for any of them?

Opening her eyes now, Arlesse decided it was a question she would prefer not to contemplate. She cared about these soldiers even though it seemed very few others did, and the conversations she shared with Mouse and Dusty the previous night had educated her to the horrors they faced growing up. Even though they were able to make her laugh about their lives, she was saddened at how these cloned men didn't deserve to be raised in a secluded world without a true childhood. She thought it was unfair that they were so duty-driven that they even had to bend and break rules to know what being human is all about.