Saga - ST And Then There Were None - Fifty Titles Challenge - Stormtrooper OC-centric

I know that I’ve absolutely sucked at keeping up with this story and I apologise for that, but now that I’m finally back to leave a review (after catching up on the latest chapters some three months ago) I can only reiterate my very first comment: this was intense.

I absolutely loved how you portrayed Phasma as seen by Lil in chapter III. The way you had her use medical terms in her speech describing the situation of a planet in terms of disease and healing as it passes from the hands of the Old Republic to the Empire and then to the New Republic was a perfect way to summarise in just a few words the type of fascist ideology she represents, and in that sense (to answer the author’s note about your concern that it might come across as Empire-****) it was much better than Hux’s speech in TFA, that totally lacked such indirect references to fascist discourse.

The other aspect of the fascist ideology of the First Order is very well depicted in the brutalisation of the recruits, both in the flashbacks and in the present time. The contrast with the older troopers inherited from the Empire was a nice touch, as was Phasma’s sole preoccupation being that Lil wasn’t violent enough during the brawl.

The Takodana scene was pretty intense as well and Lil’s nightmare, coupled with the fact that she takes stims before going into battle, made it all the more creepy. The back-and-forth between flashbacks and the present time is building the impression that even she is losing track of which fight she’s involved in – is it an old mission on Csilla, a sparring duel with a fellow trooper, a brawl with another squad or today’s battle for the First Order? What makes it even worse is the fact that, as fewer and fewer are left, and as we realise that truly there will be none in the end, Lil is quite likable. She has these moments of doubt and emotion as shown when she doubles down on her transgression and etches even more words inside her armour – and as a reader I find myself rooting for her, hoping she survives and recovers her humanity, but deep down I know that the chances of this happening are slim to non-existent.

Bottom line, this is an awesome story and I hope you’ll be back to finish it!

 

Huh, for some reason I don't get notifications when other people post. Wow. But thank you for the review Chyntuck, even after all this time! I managed to plow half way through chapter 5 before letting it collect dust for the past few months. Now I absolutely have to finish it.

 

Chapter 5

Lil wasn't there when the life support started screaming. She came in after, when they drained the bacta tank and Three-Eight sat pressed against the glass, half stripped of skin. Two men from the MediCorps waited with a self-propelled lift hovering just a few feet over the floor. The officer with them, fitted in the usual midnight black uniform, checked his chrono and sighed. The techs, wrapped in hazmat suits, watched as the med droid hauled her out and dumped her on the lift. It gave a little under her weight, an arm swinging off the side. Wet muscle and tissue squeaked over plastic as the techs fit her into a bag. Her frame had always been on the bulkier side and they struggled a bit zipping her in, limbs pushing out the edges.

Before they left, the officer pivoted on a heel. “Have your bunks cleared by seventeen-hundred and report to your Storm Leader for reassignment,” he said and marched from the med-bay, corpse in tow.

Cool ripples of bacta trickled down Three-Eights empty tank, the only open cylinder among rows and rows of calm, watery green. Without a word between them, she and Sixer went back to barracks for maybe the first time in the last twenty-four hours. There wasn't anything Lil really wanted to say. Just the thought of talking seemed an exhaustive effort.

The rest of the squad's things were gone, each drawer and locker picked clean. Like the others had simply never existed. Phantoms of their imagination. Lil donned her plastoid, fresh and clean after processing. The oil coating used to preserve the alloy was still a bit wet, greasing her fingers. She found comfort in the strong, bitter smell as she locked each piece in mechanically, functioning on mere muscle memory. Sixer moved the same, but slower, gaze hollow. No matter what angle she stood in his field of vision, he wouldn't look at her.

As it turned out, they didn't even have to report to the Storm Leader. New assignments cropped up on their datapads, along with a host of physical and psychological evaluations slated throughout the next week. Then more training, refresher courses, and they would be fit for combat duty again. They would officially be integrated with Seventh Squad, since Third was too far below its operational threshold and likely wouldn't be reinstated until replacements arrived. Seventh had seen nearly as many casualties as Third in the last few days. The whole Battalion would have to be reorganized.

At least today they would be planet-side again. Living on the ship was starting to wear on her nerves, hone them to a sharp, biting edge. They were rotating out with the 219th Battalion, CT Corps. Black duffel bags packed and slung over their shoulders, she and Sixer waited in the hangar with FN Corps as they were sorted to transport shuttles. It was a buzz of activity, each handful of troopers embarking on new assignments, ships coming and going like an insect hive. She spotted a few RC Corps squads filing into an AAL, spared for transport runs while the Upsilons carried the larger companies of FN.

Lil wasn't sure how she found him. Perhaps it was the stiffness in his posture, or the slow, measured way his body moved, but she saw RC-0227 on the left-wing formation. Her IFF confirmed as much a moment later. She nearly flinched when his visor rotated to settle on her. Had he been watching her too? It didn't matter, she held his stare, even if it made her stomach boil.

Sealing their helmets on, she and Sixer were the last to board a shuttle bound for Starkiller. The loading ramp closed and they kicked off. Lil experienced a moment of weightlessness. Her IFF pinged the rest of the troop-bay's occupants as FN Corps, from squads she'd never encountered or even met before.

She opened a private frequency to Sixer.

“Do you think they hate us?” she asked. His helmet remained locked on the far wall, but she knew he'd heard her. Maybe he didn't understand. “The Resistance, I mean.”

Inertia pressed against her back as the ship banked. Lil sat her blaster rifle in her lap, toying with the settings. Like she had already done a hundred times since waiting in the Finalizer's hangar. Still he didn't answer her.

“They must,” she said. No matter how many times she searched, how far in her memory she reached, it didn't make sense any other way. She simply couldn't wrap her mind around the Resistance as an entity. She understood it was a guerrilla army with enough backing to be a threatening military force. She understood the tactics they used. How they designed their operations to take down a larger and stronger foe. FN was one of the few Corps trained as a counter-insurgency unit – she knew everything about them.

But she didn't know why they hated the First Order so much.

Lil looked to Sixer beside her, still motionless, swaying only with the movements of the carrier. Heat swelled in her chest. “Are you taking up Sharp's post now?” she snipped. He only bowed his head and she cut the link, angry – ashamed.

Everyone lost comrades, but it was deeper than that. The Order trained them to move on, to carry the burden like Captain Phasma carried her cape. It was the echoes of the old Stormtrooper Legion's call to duty. She found the thought brought less comfort to her now. For the first time, her enemies seemed everywhere and unstoppable. She hated that feeling. Couldn't the Resistance see how much they were hurting the Galaxy? How all the Republic had done was splinter it in two? Couldn't they see how wrong they were?

Lil hugged her rifle to her breastplate, muzzle angled down.

As they entered atmosphere and local range of transmissions, an advisory appeared on her HUD. Starkiller was spinning up for another firing in the next few hours. The Upsilon shuttle came in on one of its many landing platforms along the snowy mountain caps. Just north of the firing trench. As the loading ramp descended, a gush of frozen air rushed into the opening. They were higher up now, by Processing Plant 19. Below, she could see one of the primary docking zones, designed for the mass of the Star Destroyers, now cleared for incoming ships.

Lil moved to release her harness and disembark when Sixer set a hand on her thigh plate. She paused, finding him concentrated on the floor. They'd landed just outside one of the topside hangar bays, which was already packed with Ties and AALs. Their crews and technicians were missing, a few stragglers descending below deck in preparation for the firing. From their ship, the other troopers grabbed their gear and lumbered down the ramp in an orderly fashion, automatically forming a small column and marching into the bay. Only then did Sixer move. As Lil stood, she saw one Stormtrooper linger out by the open blast doors a moment, hesitating. Male, by their frame. Two-Seven.

Lil followed Sixer onto the platform, where he collapsed atop a supply crate left nearby. A question parted her lips, until the pilot and his secondary came down the ramp.

“Problem?” one of them asked, EVA helm tucked under an arm.

“No, sir,” Sixer said, hand over his chestplate, “respirator malfunction. I just need to correct it before reporting to inspections.”

The pilots shared a glance, one of them shrugging. “Just be clear before the Deck Officer comes through,” he said, and the two departed.

Lil watched them go, until she was sure they were beyond earshot. The lingering Stormtrooper was gone. “Six?”

“Little. We're leaving,” he said, moving for the AAL's troop bay.

She stilled, suddenly as cold as the winds outside. “Orders?” she asked. She hadn't checked their data-feed the whole trip. Maybe he'd seen something she didn't, or her HUD's alert system wasn't working right. She towed behind, halting at the edge of the ramp.

“Yeah. Far away.” Sixer stepped to the cockpit door and tapped in a code at the bulkhead. She didn't know where he’d learned the codes.

“What are you doing?”

The doors parted, the cockpit and its suite of controls open to them. He kept his back to her. “I won't stay here.”

“Why?” There was a plea in her question, and it made him face her. Though only a few feet, the distance between them was all at once this deep, galaxy-spanning fissure. An un-seeable force that blocked her out, became utterly impassable and sickening her to the core. Specters of thought enticed her, whispered to her limbs, calling her to cross the threshold.

“I don't think I can do this anymore, Lil,” he said, shoulders falling. He sounded beaten, and she remembered how defeated he'd looked on that muddy field five years ago. They stayed that way, seemingly miles and decades apart. She didn't know what to do, and Sixer could see it. He folded his vulnerability away. Lil didn't know why that hurt so much.

“I won’t go to the Cages.” Sixer made for the cockpit without her.

Her hands tingled, aching for action. The primer of a blaster whined. Sixer froze.

“Six,” she said, hating how her voice shook. But the blaster in her hands remained steady, her finger poised over the trigger. “Don't.”

Sixer turned, deliberately slow, but only halfway. His chin lifted, defiant like a snow layered mountain. For once she couldn't read him and her heart surged, ready to burst from her chest. His hands made fists.

The sky rumbled. Swathes of starlight curled and warped, painted over with splashes of green, blue and purple. The atmosphere-burn of the planetary shielding faded. A modulated voice hollered to them. The distraction was all that Sixer needed.

Something struck her arms off center and a back-hand came up across her helmet – she made hard contact with durasteel. A blur of white barreled past her, plowing into the trooper that had called out. Landing flat on his back, he struggled to gain his feet. Lil recovered just in time to see Sixer punching in the code to a maintenance bunker, buried within a rock face alongside the landing platform. She snatched her rifle up, stock to her shoulder.

She took a deep breath and her finger twitched. Another breath.

“Shoot him!”

The trigger started to give. Sixer disappeared within the bunker, a bolt blasting after him in futile pursuit.

Forgetting about the other trooper, Lil dashed to the entrance – its threshold shielded by a thermal barrier, but otherwise open. Red tubes lit up the grated floor, doing little to disperse the dense shadows clinging to the tight, narrow halls.

Lil cursed and keyed her comlink. “LP CON, FN-two-five-zero-one, E-band message. Over.”

A pause. “Two-five-zero-one, LP CON, send. Over.”

She paced outside the bunker, rifle down. “Two-five-zero-one, shooting incident, one Stromtrooper AWOL in grid nine-eight–” a hand grabbed her shoulder, everything spun, another set of digits clamping around her throat. They dug under her jaw as she was lifted up, heels dragging. Boarder rails punched into her back plates, allowing her to see the Stromtrooper with her neck in a vice. Long enough for her HUD to flag his IFF. The one Sixer had shoved in his race to escape. RC-0227.

He pivoted, vaulting her. She hit the floor, brain bouncing harder than a bolo ball. With it all her years of precise training pattered out in a mess of wild, thrashing instinct. Two-Seven was already pitched atop her, thumb digging into her larynx as she tried to break his hold. He pressed a knee on her breastplate to keep her pinned.

“You had the chance. I knew you were weak,” he snarled, other hand coming down as she struggled against him. “I knew you were just like me.”

The Controller from LP CON buzzed in her ears. “Two-five-zero-one, your transmission cut off, send again. Over.”

Lil could feel her blood flow stutter, like a bolt being tightened around her trachea. But Two-Seven's grip relented, just barely.

“It just doesn’t… make… sense,” he said the words like he didn't understand them. “Why all the training? All the beatings and the weeks in Iso if it doesn’t mean anything? If some frack in a Tie fighter can wipe you with the squeeze of a finger?” he sounded so lost, so confused when he asked.

“Two-five-zero-one, respond. Over.”

“I mean, you've thought the same thing, right? I could see it in your face on the Finalizer.” a small, gasping chuckle left him. “Why aren’t you dead? What makes you so special?”

A small squeak of air passed her lips unchecked and she forced herself to stop, to hone in on response, even though the light was dimming. His stance changed as he leaned into her, straddling her.

“Why are you alive? Why do we get slaughtered while that frack Eight-Seven gets away with it?!” Those thumbs plunged against her airways, stressing cord and membrane to breaking.

Adrenaline surged through her, a tidal wave of energy that still seemed like too little. Lil slammed her arms into the creases of Two-Seven's elbows, drawing out a shout. He pitched forward and she cracked her faceplate against his. Whether it blinded him as much as her, she didn't have time to decipher. Straining, she threw him off, the effort leaving her fumbling drunkenly for some semblance of balance. Black prisms burned over the world like pulsing sunspots, but discipline gave her enough presence of mind to know the battlefield: her blaster rifle was out of reach, tossed somewhere out of sight.. Automatically, she touched the sidearm at her thigh. The same one he was sure to have.

Lil scrambled to her feet, blaster pistol primed in both hands. Light cracked, but the bolt streaked through air as two hundred pounds of stiff muscle and plastoid collided with her. They staggered in a moment of struggle, where he managed to grab her arm, beating her wrist and the crease of her elbow. Her hand opened on reflex and the blaster clattered between their feet.

Their Mandalorian trainer had called it the weakness of weapons. Knives, blasters, slug-throwers – they were just tools to make the acts of war more expedient, more efficient. It was soldiers, Stormtroopers, that were the real killers and destroyers. In her panic, she’d forgotten that vital lesson. She’d punish Two-Seven for forgetting too. He'd focused too much on taking her blaster, leaving himself open. She could have dulled his grip and shoved him away, regained her bearings, but she’d be extending the same courtesy. Act, don’t react.

The move was calculated and hard – she landed a fist on his helmet, drawing a bone-numbing ache in her knuckles. Two-Seven would be seeing black holes, but his grip held fast and he tried to leverage her body weight, until she yanked him gut first into an armored knee. Plastoid crunched and he gasped, fingers flying open. She locked her hands together and railed him over the head.

It was one thing to trust the body as a weapon instead of its accessories, and it was another to use every advantage to attain victory – to survive. When facing an opponent of equal skill, having any upper hand meant everything.

Lil reached to her lower back and drew a vibro-knife, reverse grip, angling a thrust towards Two-Seven’s neck. His arm was there to block hers and their movements blurred in a winding pattern of swipes and parries. He twisted with a block, revealing his side and her heart leapt, fevered nerves quirking her lips in a smirk as she drove the knife to his lung. She wasn’t prepared for the hard elbow that crushed down on her arm, disabling her thrust. A lapse gasped between them, allowing him to dip into her guard and shove.

Lil kept her feet, barely managing to block a thrust-slash from Two-Seven as he drew his own vibro-knife. She stepped back from the first and fore-walled the second. It was a longer blade than hers, with a wide tip designed for making deep, tendon shearing cuts. The fight had already lasted too long – for both of them. Thirty seconds was enough to deduce a pattern, a style, and they’d both received the same training. Now it came down to who was faster, who was stronger, as they zeroed in on the task they’d been designed for. Each using the hard bones in their forearms to absorb momentum and divert attacks, conditioned all throughout their life to endure the welting pain. Hours against the Trandoshan slave batons, two meters of hard wood with resin that bit into the skin and nothing but naked tissue to defend themselves. The solid weight of it cracking their flesh until their arms were little more than trembling remains of black and blue meat.

What moved between them was an arc of grapples, seeking to disable the other for a well-placed knife, only to be parried to the side or averted with savage precision. A contest of who could make one vital mistake – just one. Because each moment that passed was a clue given to the other, an attunement of instinct that searched for every opportunity to inflict damage. Like the Firaxa sharks of Manaan, dark eyed predators hunting for weakness.

In the span of seconds, Plastoid clapped and grunts were exchanged as the two weapons collided again and again. Lil threw off a grapple and went for another stab, his neck. But the trap was sprung. Two-Seven’s free arm came up to block hers, trapping her arm up and allowing him under her guard again. His knife flared.

Lil screamed as it ripped across her abdomen, blood spitting on the wall. Phasma’s voice lorded over her, urging her to plunge further into the tidal current of adrenaline instead of succumbing to the hurt. Her teeth clamped hard enough to break, screeching out sounds she didn’t know she could make. Two-Seven stepped in again, slipping her knife arm away and coming back with another thrust. She forearm parried with unchecked force, snatching his wrist in the same movement, her blade zeroing in – she had him.

White flashed forward, his fist thwacking her faceplate. Lil staggered, another stab of fear and hate driving her to counter attack. There was a fore-wall block waiting for her, followed by a burst of needles as his right elbow crunched down on her knife hand. Nerves shuddered and she dropped the blade, armor the only thing saving her cartilage. All at once his blows became more vicious and all Lil could manage were feeble attempts to stave off cuts and jabs, each attempt weaker than the last.

She had to change the tempo. With his next extension into her guard, Lil moved to grab his knife arm at the elbow, intending to strike his hand – until he punched the raw wound at her gut. It was like a plasma cutter plucking each strand of sinew at once. A stifled shriek clawed from her throat, rupturing a new sting. As his blade angled down for a slash at her neck, she fore-walled again and hammered a fist into his wrist, trauma forcing him to release the knife. It clattered at their feet.

Two-Seven was already moving, aiming for her stomach. Lil swiped an arm down to knock it away – but she'd done exactly what he wanted. He’d put the fear of pain in her. His other hand crashed against her faceplate, so hard a crack splintered across the visor. She fell back against the corridor wall, struggling to keep her balance. As he came in, she rammed a heel to his thigh and he buckled. Then, arm cocked, wound an elbow into his helmet. The force knocked him to the floor, but back in range of his fallen knife.

Muscles contracted, yanking at her lungs in desperate pleas for air. Lil had two options.

She wouldn't make it outside the bunker to her blaster rifle, too much time for him to draw his sidearm, which she wouldn’t recover either. That, and Lil could already feel the energy being sapped from her limbs as her body struggled to keep up with the loss of blood. She couldn’t tell if anything internal had been hit, her intestines maybe. All Two-Seven had to do was outlast her and the wound would do all the work for him, allowing him to cut and slice away her defenses until he could deliver a killing blow.

Lil staggered several steps into a run, breaking to lose herself in the maintenance bunker. The heat of blaster bolts chased her, just as she rounded a corner. Metal burst and molten pain ate into her side, but she kept running. If the thundering of her steps on the walkways hadn't been so loud in her own ears, Lil would've thought she heard Two-Seven calling after her.

She jumped and juked down corridors and alleys, diving ever further into the plant's cramped maze. The ordered halls soon became disorganized. Pathways corroded from chemical spills and fluid lines detached from their mounts, the sounds of liquid slapping metal far below her. Lil only stopped when the ache in her ribs began to overpower her fight or flight, and she collapsed against a nearby rail. Space echoed, walls and shielding groaning like the bowels of a sarlaac.

Sliding to her rump, Lil’s fingers tested the wound, sparking waves of ice-fire. Crimson seeped from her stomach, dark globules carving streaks over her white plates. The medical injectors must've been damaged. Reaching to her side, she found charred and warped plastoid from Two-Seven's blaster pistol too. Judging from the sting, her skin had been proximity crisped. She fell back against a support bar, each movement driving ionized spikes into her intestines, as though she were tearing the wound open a little more each time. Lil prepared herself for what came next.

Stripping out of her upper armor sleeves was an agonizing process, but there was no other way to reach the wound easily. Besides, the armor was trashed, it wouldn’t do her any good against Two-Seven. Warm blood soaked down between her legs and over her thighs. The wound trembled from the touch of cold air. Sifting through the medkit at her belt, Lil applied bacta spray, draining the small capsule of its supply. It was enough to wash over her organs and plug the wound, barely. The flesh was still tender and felt stretched to bursting whenever she moved.

Resting her head back, Lil finally had the presence of mind to tap her comlink. It wouldn’t be long before Two-Seven caught up to her.

“LP CON, FN-two-five-zero-one,” she said between gulps for air, forgetting etiquette. Static reigned over the channel.

“LP CON, do you read me? Over.” she emphasized the last word. Sometimes they wouldn't answer unless it was done right. But still, no response. Just then she thought to check the relay on her HUD display, which fuzzed in and out from the beating her helmet had taken.

Her transponder was shot.

“Frack!” Lil tore the thing off and tossed it hard down the catwalk. It made an unsatisfying clack against a bulkhead before rolling to face her. She soon regretted the outburst as her abdomen shattered with pain. For a while, she simply sat there, holding her stomach and running over her options.

Wherever Sixer was, he was far ahead of her by now. Knowing him, he would work his way back to the landing platform, or an entirely different sector, and wait to steal away on a transport again. Something was happening out there too. With the shielding down, malfunctioning, whatever it was, it couldn’t have happened at a worse time. Lil wouldn’t let him get away, and now with a rogue trooper on her trail, no back up and no weapons, she had little choice.

The pathway she found herself in was heavy with shadow, given light only by the occasional emergency bulb. Steam creaked and hissed out of vapor-control valves, Starkiller’s myriad of mechanisms all speaking their disjointed tones. A damp chill washed her skin, dried her blood.

This was her element – this was where she was born. The First Order had always been survival of the fittest. For too long she'd been reliant on the squad for her shortcomings. Had been blind to Eight-Seven's betrayal. Lil was responsible for all those deaths just as much as he was, and she wouldn't let that happen a second time. She wouldn't be the weak one anymore. It was up to her to keep Three-Eight's promise to Six, the one she'd made after their Decimation.

She resolved, then and there, to kill Sixer – no matter if Two-Seven got in her way. This was her test, her trial by fire. Eight-Seven had been the weak link in their chain, and now it lay in pieces at her feet. But she wouldn’t let them break her.

First, she had to deal with her hunter.

Lil began to snap off the rest of her plastoid, down to the black bodysuit underneath. With it she would only be a bright white target against the gray and black surfaces. Two-Seven, she had to assume, still had the benefit of his HUD and its thermal and night-vision filters. The former she wouldn't have to worry about too much, not with so much energy and heat passing through one place, still, her form might still stick out. She had to be careful how she traveled and where she stood. The bodysuit would regulate her temperature, but without the armor, she didn’t have the benefit of shielding from sensors.

Under her feet the cool walls descended into a well of darkness, where leaking hydro-systems pattered like the caves in the mountains. Piece by piece, she tossed her armor over the edge of the walkway and into its depths. They slammed and clattered to unseen junctions of Starkiller. From there, she stuck close to the walls where heat was more likely to collect from auxiliary reactors and their coupled power generators. The walkways became tighter as she went; faded, half-rusted signs trying in vain to decipher her location. She was lost.

The ramps led her down, deeper into Starkiller, as though she were in its cold, gentle mines again. Soon, she found the heart of the processing plant – one of the planet’s city-sized power converters. In a step the space opened, lending her breath back from those cramped halls she'd fled down. Cylindrical and bulbous induction pillars towered before her like skyscrapers, lighted only by dim rivers of electricity rolling periodically down their length. Beyond the forest she could just barely make out the massive silhouette of the power converter. A beating, heat pulsing body of durasteel shaped in a perfect sphere all the way around, encased by a thick jungle of pipes, wiring and conduits. Whining turbines somewhere beneath the induction spires spun up the hydroelectric systems, yet another piece of the grand machine. Along with the unsynchronized clangs of converter pistons, it created a discordant kind of symphony.

Panels of computing stations made the darkness above and below glow with starlight specks of green and blue and red. Despite her situation, she couldn't help but wonder how long it had been since anyone last set foot in the underworld beneath the planet's crust. The surface appeared so white and organic, it was easy to forget the terra forms were just a mask for the mechanism.

Gradually, the darkness began to weigh on her, but the echoing slaps and shrieks stopped making her flinch as she was absorbed in it. The narrow gangway led her to the skin of an induction spire. Here, she made sure to avoid the cooling fluid pumps and the square, rigid formations of the anti-resonance plating.

“Little Kinrath pup, all by her own now.”

Lil froze. Pistons churned, hives of busy circuit conductors chittering. If he wanted to kill her, she'd have been dead already. Even though her eyes had adjusted, the black of the conversion core was near impenetrable despite the tiny civilizations of light. It was nowhere near enough. Lil remained absolutely still, controlling her breathing. Then, timing her steps with the ringing claps of pistons, took slow steps towards what sounded like a reactor. There would be clouds of heat with it, masking her. But if he was moving on her level of walkways, she wouldn't be able to tell. The motion of the processing plant reverberated along the grating, at the very least making the quivering in her chest bearable.

Still, the silence broke her. “Why are you doing this?” she asked, throwing her voice. No response. She strained her ears, but he was being just as careful. Warmth poured over her skin as she closed within proximity of the reactor, drawing out beads of sweat. Eyelids squinted as she scanned the darkness. “You're a traitor.”

Steam cracked from a temp-control pipe. Her heart thundered. The heat was making it hard to breathe.

“I am a monument to your sins,” he said, voice seeming to come from all around.

Something hard hit the floor below her. Lil put herself low. Smart, he’d positioned himself below her, that way he might be able to see any gaps her form would create in the starlight canopy. Steadily, Lil moved to the edge of the railing. She had to keep him talking.

“Who are you?” she asked. Lil knew very well who he was, but the answer didn't satisfy her. She didn't know RC-0227, not like she'd known El-Tee. Not like she'd known Nines. She grimaced at the feeling that had possessed such a question from her.

“I could ask you the same,” he cooed. Lil grabbed hold of the rails and slipped between them to the outside, senses tingling with the unknown. “I know who I am – a traitor... a fracking traitor who was too much of a coward to die with the others. But who are you?”

“FN-2501,” she said to the darkness, easing herself down, searching the air with her foot for another railing.

“Who are you?” he asked again, his voice level now instead of bouncing between spaces. Lil set foot on the catwalk, trying to stay within range of the reactor. She'd been right.

“Lil.”

Where was he? Thin skin over her abdomen burned, ripe to split again. Lil tried to fight the nausea, a wash of dizzying specters drawing her forward. She halted with a rattling step on the walkway. Stones bundled in her throat, waiting for Two-Seven to move in on her misstep. Why couldn't she find him? She should have been able to at least see the faint presence of his armor. Had he taken it off? She shook her head, jostling a headache to life, but keeping her balance.

“Who are you?”

Frustration twisted tight around her chest. “I'm Lil,” she snarled.

“That’s just a nickname. Droids get nicknames,” his words glided down her neck, chilling her stiff. Gently, she turned, peering into the blackness. “Because droids are just numbers.”

There was nothing but darkness. She whispered, as if afraid to wake it. “It's me.”

“NO!” Something heavy crushed her side, throwing Lil into the solid rebar of railing. She tumbled over end, just barely managing to grip the edge of the catwalk. Her knuckles turned white, pressing hard enough to blunt her nails over the durasteel. Sweat slicked between her flesh and metal. She felt the edge glide from her finger tips.

For a blissful, terrifying moment, she seemed to be floating.

Her body me steel with a wet crunch and she screamed, stifling it halfway. All at once she became dizzy from the shock, every part of her arm pulsing and ripping from a dislocated shoulder.

Two-Seven's voice howled after her. “It's just a tag – a marker for identification! Empty. People only remember numbers to measure victories in slaughter. No one remembers you!”

"Who are you?!"

Lil couldn't possibly answer, not while gasping for air from the sudden impact. She writhed for an unbearable minute. Metal rattled as feet rushed along a catwalk. He was coming for her. Lil sat up and crawled across the platform, feeling for an edge at every inch. She was down by one of the pumps now, a huge series of humming engines and rotating cylinders. Red light lanced out of grates beneath, casting strange shadows up into the walkways. Two-Seven's footsteps became louder, each one bringing him closer. She panicked, pulling herself into a small alcove next to a dripping coolant vent.

The footsteps stopped. She held her breath. For a time, the clank of the pistons beat a heart shaking pulse. Shadows danced in tribal celebration.

His voice slithered along the walls. “We're the same, you and I,” he said. It was getting hard to focus, her mind dripping with chemicals to dull the sense of pain pouring from her arm. Oscillators thrummed their cooling tune, making his voice come from everywhere.

“I'm nothing like you,” she growled, damning herself for rising to the bait.

“You're everything like me.”

Lil propped herself up against the vent, setting a palm against her protruding shoulder. “I'll kill you,” she said, using that hate, that fury to brace herself. She sucked in a deep breath and, clamping her teeth, shoved on her shoulder. The bone crunched back into place and she muffled a cry, teeth drawing blood from her lower lip.

“I'm keeping the Order strong,” Two-Seven said. He sounded close, maybe on the other side of the pump. “We can’t both make it out of this maze.”

Steadily, Lil gained her feet. She stayed pressed to the wall, thighs trembling – veins shaking. It took three more quivering breaths to venture from her cove, darting eyes trying to decipher his shape in the shadows. The engines whirled.

For a flash - she saw his frenzied eyes.

A red bolt lanced and she dove. Fire tasted her back as she came to land beneath a piston, now arcing down to crush her. Lil rolled from its vector, just a hair's breadth from where it would have flattened her skull. The sour scent of burnt skin numbed her nose and the muscles of her back drew taut, boiled and crisp.

Down here, the pistons were deafening, each impact shaking her vision, which was blurred and swayed like a malfunctioning turbo lift. With it came a compressing ache at the back of her skull, shoving itself down on her cortical stack of nerves. Lil fought it, willing her body to keep going. She'd endured worse pain than this – this was nothing.

She was a layer below the pump now, pistons hammering alongside her, some in front of her.

“Come out, come out, little soldier...” Two-Seven sang, voice like water over glass, smooth through the hammers. She watched them, eyes darting, until she was sick of how well she knew the timing. It had to be perfect, or she would never make it through the gauntlet to the other side. Just one piston to stomp out her foot or a hand, and she'd be done for. The others would come down to grind her to pulp, and she'd be another corpse lost in Starkiller's womb.

“Little tin soldier... little doll...”

“You don't even know what that word means,” she spat, launching forward on her elbows and knees through the first row of pistons. A new ache pulsed in her side, something broken. Lil counted the seconds in her head, shaking it to keep everything steady.

"Better than you do," Two-Seven said, farther away now. He didn't know where she was. Lil scurried under the next ring of pistons. She had to get back to the surface. She couldn't fight him down here, she had to escape. Just downrange of the pump as it curved up into the darkness, there was a dotting of light. Tenacity filled her heart again, set her blood on edge. A deep breath. She muscled through the third row, and her leg stopped short. Something caught.

Everything went blank. Lil reacted on pure fear. She ripped her legging and the tendons beneath it, just as the piston cracked down where her foot had been. She didn't have time to breath, because the sight just beyond the next row took it away.

Water pattered by a drainage valve gushing over a rusting grate. Empty white armor lay twisted in a heap about the floor. An empty shell abandoned and discarded. Her armor. Not only hers, but another set too, meticulously laid out beside it.

“Oh-one no-one... do you like that name? It's truer than anyone else's...”

He was just trying to get into her head. That's all he was doing, trying to set her off balance. None of it was true. Lil knew who she was. She wasn't those beaten, twisted pieces of armor. The pistons railed their pillars, the reverberations shaking Lil to the bone. She didn't doubt herself, no matter what Two-Seven said – she couldn't. It wasn't the First Order that was wrong, it was the galaxy. This was life, this was reality.

“We're just children, Lil! Children sacrificed at the altar of war!” He screamed, frustrated, as if in answer to her thoughts.

A rattling crash erupted on the opposite side of the pump. The sounds of a predator rushing towards it followed. Lil didn't waste the opportunity. She scurried out of cover, her final barrier passed. She left the pistons and the steaming heats behind, rushing down a cool corridor of pulsing red lights. Alerts, but what for? There was a maintenance ladder at the end, cramped and musty. Lil climbed out of the red pit, swept up in waves of chilled air. As she ascended, she felt a shudder rumble through the complex. Not a mechanism. An explosion? Another followed soon after.

Lil put it out of mind for the time being. Finding her way up and out of the plant, she came across signs along the walls again and picked a destination she knew to be on surface level: Fluid Control Center 19.

The pathways became lighted again, blue and crisp and clean, air flowing properly through the halls. Lil rounded a curve in the corridor and walked straight into an empty control room. Emergency lights flashed periodically, a muted red. Beyond the windows were Starkiller's snowy caps. Lil's brow furrowed as she stepped further in, a blast of a fire in the distance catching her breath. Marching up to the glass, she came face to face with her reflection, not recognizing the person staring back at her. First of all, her armor was missing, her new and pressed plastoid and visored helm. Some of her short blonde hair was singed off, fresh cuts seeping over purple welts on her forehead and cheek. Her eyes appeared sunken, probably from lack of sleep, black rings making her appear eons older, smooth lips cracked and split now. Her body, her toned, warrior body, was in ruins. Sliced open and burnt and scarred and bruised and scabbing and bleeding.

Who are you?

Beyond her, she could see small shapes – star fighters – zipping through the low, misty clouds. X-wings and Ties. A whirlwind of adrenaline swept her up in its current, assaulting her haggard thoughts with too many questions. Lil turned–

Two-Seven stood in the doorway.

A blaster pistol was held level with his hip, muzzle trained on her. Every receptor tingled, sensing the burn of compressed energy before it could even leave the chamber. Primal instinct responded, fingers folding to make fists, but her shoulders drooped as both her mind and body gradually came to the same bleak realization. She was tired, and felt it weigh over every part of her being, ready to finally rest. To stop fighting. To stop thinking.

“Answer me. Who are you?” Two-Seven said, quiet. His silver eyes were blazing, but she looked again, beneath his stone-carved features. There was something there she'd seen in Three-Eight, back on their snowy hilltop. A deep-seated fear. He didn't understand the answer any more than she did. That was what he was searching for – as much as he was hunting prey. He was hunting for answers. And he'd convinced himself she was the only one able to give them to him.

“I'm a soldier,” she said, keeping herself from eying his blaster as ideas and scenarios crawled into her thoughts. Manipulation and force.

“Then who is the enemy?” He asked.

Lil, slowly, lifted her hands, bowed her head a little, assuming a non-dominant stance. Weak. Beaten. She took a small step towards him. “The Resistance.”

His eyes squinched as they tracked her, but he didn't seem to be seeing her. They looked far away. “Enemy.”

“Yes.” she took another step, then another.

“Enemy.”

Lil was within a few feet. Just a little more. “They're the enemy,” she said, and it tasted like a lie.

Two-Seven came back to himself, raising the blaster – just as she swung a kick at his hand. The blaster went clattering and she stepped into a punch, left arm coming in at a wide arc to double the force with momentum. He stopped it with both arms up around his head. Then he snatched her wrist. Pain splintered through the side of her head as his bare knuckles collided with her skull. Everything erupted black and shook, the same hand coming down on her tricep. Lil felt her arm pass in front of her from the strike, numbness wriggling in her abdomen and the right side of her body. But she moved with her momentum, spinning around and extending her leg – still half blind. Her heel landed in his stomach, lifting him off the ground for just a moment.

No sooner had he doubled over than Lil launched another kick, aimed for his chin. Two-Seven sidestepped, barely, stumbling too close in. Gone were the refined strikes and arcing movements of trained killers. Every swing was drunk with fatigue, each dragging on with too much momentum, leading from one sloppy strike-counter to the next. Lil tried to back pedal and put distance between them again, but he didn't stop, even when she threw a punch at his head. He just brought his arms up again, parrying her hand. He pushed and then her side was facing him, arm up, totally exposed. She buckled as his shin plowed into the back of her legs, lifting her off the floor – where she landed flat on her back. Air flew from her lungs and she spent precious moments struggling to get it back. Lil climbed to her knees, only just, waiting for the next hit to come.

The familiar whine of a blaster pistol hit her instead, and a cold ring touched her forehead. “You always knew how this was going to end,” he breathed, chiding. Almost lamenting.

Seconds lapsed by, filled with their heaving gasps. Outside, the battle in the skies raged.

Two-Seven twitched, eyes darting to the entryway. He spun – bolts streaked and Two-Seven smacked the floor, writhing, mouth open in soundless screams. It happened so fast Lil didn't have any time to react, could only lurch forward at the blur of white across from her. Two-Seven left her mind. Maybe it was the abuse finally catching up with her, but she was in a state of floating, like in her dreams.

A body lay motionless at the open blast doors, garbed in white armor. For a horrible, bloated moment, she couldn't move. Couldn't hear or feel. Lil came to her feet, only to crumble to her knees again as she reached the Stromtrooper that had saved her.

Sixer lay there, head resting on a shoulder as his remaining eye stared at nothing, a smoking hole plunging into the left side of his head.

“Six...” she said, so low she wondered if she'd said anything at all. A cold hand wrapped around her, like the snows of Starkiller and Csilla, like the ashen world of her dreams. An embrace she'd confused for comfort icing her with its hard reality. She was sitting in that tent again, but there were no bodies to warm her, no one to share in this moment of naked weakness. Lil wanted to know when he started tailing her, how she'd become such easy prey.

There was always someone looking out for her. Whether it was El-Tee and his firm guidance. She thought fatherly was a good word for it. She'd never had one of those. Or if it was Nines and his easy touch, reassuring her with just his presence. Or Forty, disciplining her when she stepped out of line, keeping her from the scrutinizing eyes of the officers. Zeroes and Sharp, showing her by trial to survive, hurting her in sparring to show her where she was weak, where enemies would take advantage of her and steal her from them. Slip and his fervent loyalty, his strong belief in the Order that reminded her of her place. Eight-Seven's quiet resolve, keeping her head level in the worst of it on Csilla. Even Three-Eight, and how she refused to rely on anyone but herself. An impenetrable wall given human form.

And Sixer, who'd come when she needed him most. Even after she'd betrayed him.

She was, for the first time in her life, completely alone.

A pitiful sound reached her from across the control room. A blast, closer this time, shook the floor. Lil stood, following a smeared trail of blood to the view ports.

“I don't want to die,” Two-Seven whimpered, choking on a sob. “I don't want to die.” He'd stopped struggling, likely too weak now, eyes screwed shut as he repeated his prayer. The bolt had scorched into his chest, just between the neck and shoulder opposite his heart. The tissue that hadn't been singed and blackened would be seeping fluid into his pulmonary tree, and in minutes he would drown in his own blood.

“Please don't leave me,” he said as she came before him, something so pleading in his eyes, so much more vulnerable than she'd ever thought possible for him, and she saw him. She saw Two-Seven for what he really was. For what, she entertained in that odd moment of drifting, all of them might be deep in their core.

“Please don't kill me.”

She saw a scared little boy, tears rolling down his dirtied face. A child baptized before the altar of war.

Lil felt like she should hate him. Part of her did – more than part. Every inch of her ached for violence, like she'd been taught. Wanted nothing more than to ruin his face to pulp, wrap her hands around his throat and squeeze the last bit of life from him. For Sixer. For herself.

Suddenly, she was a child again too. Standing out on those frozen, muddy fields with the stink of vomit and sweat. Her fists bloodied while Sixer glared up at her, knowing there was no succor or mercy to be had, no matter how much she might have wanted to give it.

Lil felt her anger melt away.

She settled to her knees beside Two-Seven, warm blood seeping through her bodysuit and soaking her skin. Taking him in her arms, she let his head rest in her lap and when he clutched for her, she held his hand, so at least his last moments wouldn't be without the heat of another, somewhere cold and alone.

“What's your name?” She asked. It seemed only right that she should know it before he died.

Two-Seven shook his head. “It doesn't matter. Look... none of it matters.” he pointed to the battle beyond the view port, where the X-wing fighters of the Resistance were peeling off, explosions blossoming from a flat structure she recognized. The thermal oscillator.

“It'll be over soon,” Two-Seven croaked, blood spurting from his trembling lips. “Then there'll be no one left who will remember us... doesn't matter.”

Through a filter of glass and distance, the Resistance assault could have been happening on another planet, while she watched from the detached comfort of a holo-vid. Streaks of green from point defense turbo lasers burned the sky, wavering into non-existence the farther they traveled, dissipating like the sickness that had embroiled her all her life. The sickness of fear. Here, on the pillar of their Empire, raised with her hands and stained with her blood – here they were supposed to be invincible. The galaxy wasn't supposed to be able to touch her here. Lil had been told, time and again, that something like this could never happen.

The control center buzzed with vibrations from internal fractures, trapped heat from the oscillator escaping to the core works. Maybe this had been imminent. Maybe Two-Seven was right. What was the point in the pain they'd endured if the galaxy could take away all their triumphs so easily? If order and training meant nothing? Why had they done it? Why hadn't the righteousness of their cause been enough?

Warmth brushed her face and she flinched at the gentleness of it. Her eyes, cobalt steel, met Two-Seven's stormy gray. His lips parted, but he couldn't speak, not while drowning. His fingers glided down the side of her neck, leaving small trails of blood as they fell away to rest limply on her chest.

Chin up, little soldier.

The weight in her arms became heavy. Two-Seven's eyes fixed wide, staring scared into nothing.

Something wet touched her cheeks. It came over her slowly, tugging on her trembling lips. But she couldn't hold it in. Her armor shattered and Lil sucked in a heaving gasp, clutching Two-Seven close as her shoulders shook with quiet sobs. And she couldn't stop it. Everything came tumbling out – and she clung tight to Two-Seven, crying into his neck.

Imperial children were never afraid.

Imperial children never cried.

Power surges snapped at the nearby consoles, calling her back. Beyond the control center, the oscillator erupted in a rose of flame, a hot scorch of light in a dark world. Snow lifted in curtains with it, releasing arcing fissures of energy like the whipping tendrils of a leviathan. Ice-splitting fractals caved the mountains and swallowed the walls and towers, sucking everything down into a fiery maw.

Lil sat there holding a corpse to her, the last Stormtrooper of FN Corps' 343rd Battalion – watching as her entire world crumbled.

And then there were none.

 

Back to my original comment once more: this was INTENSE, starting from the very first lines of this new entry with those oh-so-vivid images of Three-Eight's corpse and the contrast with the cold, clinical space of the barracks where it's as if the dead troopers never existed.

And then it all becomes this dysfunctional-trooper-fest. After everything we've seen of Lil in previous chapters and her nightmares that border on hallucinations, it's amazing that she doesn't snap – if you can call her behaviour "not snapping". She has been so thoroughly conditioned that her immediate reflex is not only to prevent Sixer from leaving, but also to try and rid herself of the one who dares interfere.

And of course all this happens while the final attack on Starkiller base begins, and Lil is so deep in her emotions, in her need not only to survive but to stick to procedure, to her training and to win, that she doesn't even stop to figure out what is going on. And this is where we find out that Sixer isn't the only one who snapped, Two-Seven snapped too, for his own reasons that are probably not so different.

Your action writing is amazing! I could physically feel every blow as if I were on the receiving end of it and the heat and wind of the valves, turbines and pistons as if they blew against my own skin. There's a Blade Runner element to the whole underground scene, with the demented hunter who keeps going on and on after his wounded prey, and who burst in anger at the moment when she asserts her individual identity: "it's me".

The end was incredibly touching – the moment when both Lil and presumably Two-Seven, realise that they had never been alone until now, but that even then they are not individuals because there will be no one to remember them. It's essentially the moment when they understand what it means to be fully, freely human, and in the moment when they realise it their humanity is taken away from them in death

This was an extraordinary story and I'm grateful that you chose to share it. I know that you're very busy with DRL and all, but I hope you'll post more stories on these boards when you have the opportunity.

 

Just finished reading the first chapter. What a hard life! Makes me think of Fin in a whole new way. From their point of view, he is a traitor who let them down, and I feel their regrets and anger. And you know what? That scene in the movie where the stormtrooper seemed to take it real personal, Fin's defection? Makes that emotion and anger feel much more real.

You're writing style is awesome! I felt like I was there, with the others. Excellent work!

 

Thank you two for taking the time to leave reviews - some mighty high praise there! It feels good to finally have this finished.

It was that exact scene from Bladerunner that inspired the one in this fic.

I have another story or two that may eventually make it onto these forums, but I'm glad you enjoyed this one. EDIT: seriously Chyntuck, I really appreciate the time and thought you put into your review. It means a lot to know one's work is appreciated.

Right? I remember seeing that scene for the first time and thinking - there has to be more to that. After all, Finn had developed a close enough bond with Slip that his death drove him away from the First Order.

 

In addition to what others have said, I just want to add that it's always great to have stories about stormtroopers' perspectives. Some important themes explored here, such as identity and humanity, were portrayed really well. It leaves the reader with questions and perhaps some empathy for these soldiers once we know their stories. And the ending---just everything Lil knew being destroyed including herself--is the most touching scene in the entire story.

 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I had the ending planned out since the first two sentences were put down, but making sure it tied everything together thematically was difficult, and I'm glad to see it seems to have paid off. Star Wars is a fantastic action/adventure tale, but what makes great stories are empathetic characters. That's a big reason I loved the TFA. People can judge it for being a reskin of A New Hope, but the opening scene with Slip leaving a bloody streak over Finn's helmet as he dies and Finn's following PTSD was a refreshing nuance to the 'faceless goon' stereotype from the original trilogy.

 

It may have been a reskin of A New Hope but it established something important here that the original trilogy never did: the 'faceless' goon stereotypes from the original trilogy were just that--bad guys that could easily be killed off and the audience wouldn't care. In TFA, the same faceless goons now have actual feelings and stories to tell, and if you create this kind of empathy for the audience, they look at stormtroopers in a different way now because they are now humanized. I think we really need more stories like this in SW, so I think it's great you wrote this

 

This is excellent. I’m not exaggerating when I say this is some of the best written Star Wars fiction I’ve read. Old and new canon combined. You need to be published man! You have a real talent.

Seriously, great job.

 

Thank you! Getting published is the goal one day, ideally in the next few years. Just sit down and hammer a few books out.

 

In the end, they have been robbed of their humanity. It is why they were incomplete as human individuals. The inability to forgive mistakes made them tear themselves apart from the inside out. They gave their enemies an advantage with their self destructive need to root out weakness, never realizing that each of them were rife with weaknesses, or refusing to acknowledge their weaknesses. Their philosophy, their doctrine, their indoctrination made it impossible for them to compensate for each other's weakness with each other's strengths.

Glor, I've never read any of the novels, so I don't know how New Order Stormtroopers were trained. I only remember a bit from the movie, that Fin was taken from his home as a child, and raised as a Stormtrooper. If you fleshed out Stormtrooper training and society from that little bit from the movie, or if you were keeping true to an existing description of Stormtrooper life from one of the Star Wars novels, I can't tell. Again, I never read the novels, so I don't know.

However, if you invented all of that (philosophy, doctrine, training, indoctrination, etc.), then I got to say that it was pure genius. But even if you were following an existing description of Stormtrooper life and philosophy, I still have to say that your characters and their experiences, as it tied in with the events of The Force Awakens was awesome.

As a fanfiction writer, I know that we have to stay within the boundaries of the existing world. But sometimes, the existing world hasn't covered a particular subject, and we have to fill in those blanks. Are the philosophies, doctrines, training, and society of Stormtrooper life one of those blanks that had to be filled? Did you fill in those blanks?

Every Star Wars movie that I ever saw, only showed Stormtroopes as fodder to be handily felled by "the good guys." Again, I've never read the novels, so I don't know how Stormtroopers are treated in the novels.

Yet, the irony is that despite their high tech equipment, their high quality high powered weaponry, and their intensive combat training, luck simply had not been on their side. The vagaries of chance simply was never in their favor. Where they had the advantage, chance robbed them of victory. Where they had the element of surprise, chance turned the tables against them. It was as though they were simply fodder, to be handily felled by their foes...

Aside from all of that, I really enjoyed what I read. Nothing was straight and narrow. Everything was an emotional and psychological mess. Everything led to doubt, fear, and uncertainty, and because of this, in the end, I was immersed and emotionally invested. I wanted them to win, even though I knew how it would all end. It was a bitter ending.

Excellent job with this short story.

 

I know this is kind of weird, to come back to a review after so long, but I was reading this again and thought it deserved more than just a silent 'like'.

I actually haven't read any of the new novels. When starting this, I did reference the wookiepedia to gather as much information as I could to form a basis for whatever else I would inevitably have to make up. But the specifics of training and doctrine weren't really there, and that was the most fun to craft here.

One thing that you said, which I obviously agree with, was how the OT always showed Stromtroopers as faceless goons. Which is fine, it's simple good vs evil stories that carry a meaningful resonance with everyone. But I like tales that explore our humanity. I also like your observation about chance not being on the side of the Stromtroopers despite their technology and training. What I wanted to try and communicate through this was how important our 'why' is as beings capable of introspection. The things we can accomplish when we have a strong enough reason to drive us are pretty incredible, and it can't just be a communal thing. It has to resonate deep within us, and that can take a lot of time to figure out. So it doesn't matter how well you are trained or what equipment you have, if you don't have a why that can keep you going and shield you against the struggles that inevitably try to push you down and defeat you, you will always be lost.

Anyway, thank you so much for the kind review.