Star Wars Republic Commando: Knight of Honor ✓

Chapter 72

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.

There are no Mandalorian (Mando'a) words in this chapter. 

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Chapter 72

I've failed you, Sir. The last two men of my squad have died in surgery, and I have been diagnosed as being disabled and unfit for service. Having a destroyed thigh means I'm useless now, and spending the last of my years behind a desk is no way for a soldier to live. I hope my replacement serves you far better than I have.

Excerpt from TK-2857's suicide note

Tochin Moon III, 91 Days after Order 66

Gillard slowly turned around in the center of the bright room. The walls were layered in soft, pastel textures of yellow and peach. The window was wrapped in a fabric that resembled something like creamy lace with small flower designs embroidered in the material.

 A similar fabric was draped over the four wooden posters of the bed, connecting to a canopy top above the mattress. False flowers and vines were wrapped around the corners of the bedposts, making the bed seem more organic than it was.

Gillard finally pulled his eyes away from the bed, noting that it looked like something out of a fantasy story, yet it was every bit the kind of thing he should have expected to see in her room.

Moving his attention elsewhere, Gillard started to study every possession and every trinket. He had no idea what he had anticipated to see upon entering Arlesse's personal bedchamber, and at this point, he was certain anything would have been a surprise. 

He didn't even know why he was here, but he could only conclude that it had something to do with finding closure.

Just like everything else in his existence that had slipped through his fingers, the life he thought he could fabricate had also been ripped from his grasp before he could truly hold it. 

He had lost the people who would have helped him achieve his idea of a content existence. First, it was the personal squad that had been assigned as his guardians, then TK-2857 had taken his own life yesterday, and still, the hardest person for him to accept as gone was Arlesse.

Clenching his right hand into a fist, Gillard flinched at the way the skin of his arm pinched, and he was thrown back into the memories of how his idealistic dream had ended so abruptly.

 He still didn't understand what had happened in that hangar and how a couple of soldiers had so easily taken out his entire squad of sixteen men. 

And for as much as he was angered over that loss, his thoughts constantly saw Arlesse's lifeless body lying on the floor. Everything in that moment had been taken from him, and his only consolation was that he had finally admitted to Arlesse how he had found affection for a woman like her when she had done nothing kind for him in return.

Through his tunic sleeve, Gillard touched gently upon the bacta patch and reminded himself that healing was still taking place beneath as the bacta slowly treated the blaster wound. 

And, in a way, he came to understand that it was a metaphor for his own emotional healing because he had fought so hard against living the life his parents had shared, that he didn't even notice he was forcing those same arrangements onto those around him.