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Neyo followed his General, walking one step behind as was protocol. Thankfully, the corries were well known for keeping their helmet on at all times, including while in the barracks. This little idiosyncrasy of theirs allowed the commander to keep his own bucket on, using its cover to look around curiously.
Somehow, after over a year of war, he’d never been to the Coruscant Guard HQ, always sending someone else to pick up the few of his men who ended up in the Drunk Tank. His battalion knew better than to misbehave and cause problems for their brothers in red. But more than that, he hadn’t been allowed to visit. Not with the orders in place since their training batch had been split up. Seeing a member of his first batch without a superior present would get him decommissioned if the Long Necks ever heard about it.
He hadn’t dared ask his generals to come with him. The jedi might be league better than his buir trainer had been, but they were still a threat.
All that to say that, when General Windu asked him to come along to talk with the Coruscant Guard about communication issues with the wider GAR, Neyo hadn’t hesitated.
But now, looking around while following the General, he had to wonder if he shouldn’t have braved the interdiction earlier after all. Surely the threat of decommission was nothing compared to what seemed to be happening in here.
He had no certitude, only conjectures that he could draw from the skittish behavior of the corries around him. So far, he hadn’t seen any of them wearing any less than their full kit, their step purposeful and back straight. Not a single vod in the building seemed to be without a purpose. But that didn’t make much sense, did it?
Even on Venators, there were always hundreds of off-duty vode walking around, looking for way to pass time. Here, everyone was busy, no matter where in the base, he hadn’t seen a single idle man. And the vod leading them, a private it seemed, didn’t appear to be avoiding any part of the base on purpose.
Where did off-duty corries go? Outside the base, around Coruscant? But he’d never seen a hint of their red armor outside of their patrols before.
His musings were cut off by their guide knocking on a door. A call to enter sounded out and they did so. Yet, as soon as the door opened, Neyo’s hope of seeing Fox was squashed. The vod seating behind the desk wasn’t wearing the well-known armor of the Marshal Commander.
Neyo took a minute to try and remember the Commander’s name, checking their armor for distinctive signs, he noticed the twin wings painted on their bucket. To his dismay, it didn’t help.
Thinking back, had he ever met any of the guard’s commanders? He could vaguely recall seeing one of them, early in the war, who had etched feathers on his vambraces, but he didn’t know their name, and they didn’t seem to be the same vod as the one welcoming them into their office.
If it was even their office. There were four desks in the room, each of them piled higher than the other with datapads. This didn’t help the already small room, which felt more like a closet than an office with only three people inside, let alone the four who were apparently sharing it, judging by the number of desks.
“General.” The commander snapped a salute. “I’m Commander CC-8948. You requested a meeting?”
The vod’s voice was as polite as could be. To anyone else, they would have sounded perfectly happy to see them. Yet, there was an undercurrent of unease beneath the forced politeness. Neyo snuck a glance at his general, whose face was as impassible as it always was. Yet, the man was a jedi, he had to have realized it.
“Commander, is there a name you’d prefer to use?” That was a familiar question, one all jedi had gotten used to asking when meeting a clone the first time. Or at least it used to be familiar, back at the beginning of the war. Nowadays, even the Shinies were likely to introduce themselves by name, as long as they had one.
“My designation is fine, general.” And then the commander kept talking, seamlessly changing the subject. “Your message implied communication issues between the guard and the GAR, am I correct?”
Windu nodded, not mentioning the subject change.
“Indeed, there has been worries, amongst the Jedi, about the lack of communication between the guard and the wider GAR, especially when it comes to joint missions.”
This wasn’t news to Neyo, and apparently it wasn’t to CC-8948 either, if their body language spoke true.
“Following regulations, any official communication between the GAR and the Guard must go through our direct superior, which it has so far as I know. Everything is according to regulations, sir.”
While saying so, the commander had taken one of the numerous datapads sitting on their desk – which, why did they have so many to begin with? All of Neyo’s paperwork was on a single pad – handing it over to the General.
Considering the thoughtful, if a bit frustrated furrow of Windu’s brows, the paperwork did indicate that the guard wasn’t at fault for the issue.
The General nodded at the commander. With a thanks and an apology for wasting their time, Windu swept out of the office, Neyo dogging his heels.
They were barely a few steps away from the door when Neyo asked his general if the man would mind a small detour. The man had barely answered, guaranteeing that he had nothing urgent to deal with in the immediate, when a trooper appeared, seemingly out of nowhere.
Saluting briefly, the vod then informed them that he would guide them out of the base. Neyo interrupted the guard, slightly unsettled by the realization that he had no idea if they were the same as the trooper who guided them earlier.
“Actually, is there any way I could see Marshal Commander Fox before we leave?” He saw the vod hesitate (thanks the sea he knew how to read body language so well) and kept talking. “He’s my batchmate, we haven’t seen each other in forever.”
The hesitation remained for a few seconds, but the trooper eventually nodded his agreement. Thankfully, the general didn’t say anything upon learning the personal nature of the detour.
Something loosened in Neyo’s chest. He didn’t think that Windu would forbid it, but he was still relieved.
They followed the trooper through a part of the base they hadn’t yet seen today. Yet, there didn’t appear to be any more off-duty vode than before. Neyo squashed the uneasy feeling that bloomed in his chest. Emotions were a weakness he couldn’t afford. Not when alone, not when under the scrutiny of anyone not a batcher.
He refocused on his goal.
The vod guiding them stopped in front of a door which did not slide open on their arrival, although the sensors above it suggested it should. They slid it open manually, brute forcing their way in, to reveal a flurry of activity.
This seemed to be the Corrie med bay, judging by the few troopers wearing medic aliik he could see. That, and the cots lining the walls, occupied by vode in various states of injuries.
Before Neyo could look around more, one of the injured troopers noticed them and whistled, a low note that seemed to freeze all activity in the room for a second. Suddenly, what conversations he’d been able to hear went silent, as every conscious vod straightened up.
A knot formed in Neyo’s throat. Seeing those injured brothers keep the perfect soldier act up was sickening. A brief memory rose up to the front of his mind before he could stop it, of him and his closest vode, standing at attention in front of Buir Priest despite most of them sporting broken bones.
One of the medics approached them, saluting respectfully before asking why they were here. Still in that overly polite and bland tone of voice every Corrie seemed to speak in.
“My commander wished to see his… batchmate,” there, his general’s voice went uncertain, the man unfamiliar with that specific term. Most vode still avoided going too far into personal subjects with the natborns.
The medic’s helmet turned towards him, not saying anything for a bit. And that was another weird thing about corries. Why were the medics wearing full armor? On venators, medics were considered soft-shells, unless they were in an active fight. Yet here, every one of them was in full kit, bucket included.
“I wasn’t aware you had a batchmate in the guard, commander.” The medic’s voice jerked him back to the situation at hand.
“It’s,” he hesitated. “complicated. And I haven’t seen Fox since before Geonosis. Which explains why you’re unaware of the situation.”
He didn’t mention that no one except for their other batchmates were aware of the so-called ‘situation’. The medic nodded, directing him towards the back of the room, where an inconspicuous door was located, blending into the wall well enough that, with the activity in the room, he hadn’t noticed it.
He was grateful for his general who elected to stay in the main room. And even more so once he caught a glimpse of Fox.
His ori’vod looked dead.
There was no other way of saying it. The man, who’d always looked larger than life to Neyo and their batchmates, was sitting behind the desk that occupied the room. It seemed this was the CMO’s office, Neyo noted distractedly.
Fox hadn’t yet looked up, allowing Neyo to observe him at will. He was pale, paler than he’d been on Kamino, and looked gaunt enough that Neyo wondered when his last meal had been. His hair was greasy, the curls swept back in an attempt to keep them away from his face.
But more than all these rather worrying observations, the scars and fresh bandages he was covered in made him look sickly, which wasn’t helped by the perfusion stand that was right next to him.
He had been silent for long enough that Fox stopped reading whatever file was displayed on one of the many datapads littering the desk.
“Snitch, I already told you, paperwork is not gonna- “The marshal commander raised his head as he spoke, his words cutting off as soon as he noticed who was in the room with him.
His face, which had been fondly annoyed, suddenly closed off, becoming a blank mask faster than Neyo could really register.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
Neyo suppressed a flinch. His brother hadn’t sounded like that since Priest had been alive. Of course, he’d never been the picture child of enthusiasm no, that had been ’03, hadn’t it? But this was extreme.
“This is within regulations. My superior officer is here. Not in the room but,” he started to explain before he was cut off.
“Not what I meant. You can’t be here.” There’s a harsh, cold bite to his brother’s voice. One he hasn’t heard since training, since he’d seen Fox standing over one of their batchmates body, hands covered in blood.
It shouldn’t be. They were off Kamino. They’d been off of it for over a year. Fox shouldn’t sound like that. He shouldn’t have gone back to being the cold, empty figure that stood larger than life, and protected them by drenching himself in their blood.
“Leave.”
The word was nothing but an order. One that Neyo wouldn’t have been able to resist, even if he’d meant to. Not after so many years of following his or’ivod’s lead.
But as he turned away from his brother to leave the room, Neyo promised to himself that he’d find out exactly what was going on. And he’d make sure that whoever had turned his brother back into that empty husk of himself, whoever had hurt him in such a way, would suffer.