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A Different Type of Soldier Chapter 2

FMA Starwars crossover

Story Summary: In a period of civil war, the Empire pushes the Rebel forces towards the outer reaches of the galaxy. With the Jedi Master Van Hohenheim captured and the Rebel forces stretched to their breaking point, there doesn’t seem to be any hope for them to take down the Empire. But a forgotten insignificant clone might be the answer the Rebels were looking for.

Chapter Summary: ED-0001 encourages the Cadet to become a leader.

Chapters 1/ 2/ 3/ 4/ 5/ 6/ 7/ ?

AO3

“Peter.”

“No.”

“Paul.”

“No.”

“Petunia.”

“Sir, if you don’t stop trying to find a nickname for me I will smother you in your sleep,” Cadet PT-3149 threatened.

“May the best man win, Patrick,” the Captain mocked lightly, just earning a light kick to the shins from his subordinate. He knew it would have been a rather gruesome glare, but it was hard to see facial expressions when your face was concealed behind a helmet. PT-3149 returned to his work and snipped a frayed wire on one of the harvesting droids. He was showing one of the Privates some simple mechanics so that they could get more people working on the damaged robots. It seemed that the Cadet had a secret talent for fixing machines that no one in the unit knew existed. He called it a hobby, but Imperial troops were not allowed to have hobbies.

The Captain caught sight of some movement and he looked up to see the farmer who owned the droid standing in the corner. The man was taut and watched them with cautious eyes as if they were vipers ready to strike. He was watching over them to make sure they didn’t sabotage his droid, but also to make sure that they didn’t shoot him in the back. The Captain felt that fear grow in himself as well.

After discovering the extents of the destruction in Liore after their unit’s latest harvest, he made up a rather large convoy to provide some aid. Nearly half of the buildings were destroyed in the fires and many of the farmer’s tools such as the droid were damaged. He didn’t question his soldiers about what really went down in the town. He frankly didn’t want to know. With the level of animosity there was between the citizens and their troops, it couldn’t have been good. The instant they stepped foot on the town’s soil they were already trying to be killed. Luckily, he was able to diffuse the situation before a fight broke out. If that happened, there might just be nothing left in Liore.

The Cadet stood up and allowed the Private to take over for him in finishing the job. The Captain motioned for him to follow and they quickly left the foundation of one of the few remaining houses in the village. The day was warm but not over blaringly hot which made the Captain grateful since he could only imagine running around in his armor in the desert. Across the town he saw figures of white armor racing around to help with anything that needed to get done. Large tactical tents were being set up in the fields for families whose houses no longer remained. The Captain had convinced the Supply Sergeant into lending him ten of them from the storage room. They were kept on hand for field training which they never did so he decided that they were going to be put to good use. Until the houses in the village were fully repaired, the homeless families would stay in them. They were very comfortable tents with solar heating for when the nights got chilly but they were no replacement for a house.

“Sir, did you get permission from higher up to do all of this?” the Cadet asked him nervously as they walked down the streets of Liore.

“Pfft. No,” the Captain chuckled at the Cadet’s simple question.

“B-But Captain!” he exclaimed, almost tripping over himself with the shock of his answer, “when General Greed finds out he’s going to decommission you for not following orders-“

“And what orders were those? To rape and plunder a defenseless village? I don’t think I remembered that being written in my files,” he replied sarcastically. “I am doing this because I want the General to find out. When he does, I am sure he will agree to changing up a few standards of operation.”

“You can’t change the General’s mind! You’re just going to get this entire company put under! We can’t tell a higher up how to do their job! They will kill you,” the Cadet argued. The Captain growled and grabbed the Cadet’s shoulder to stop him in his place. The street was busy, but wide, so there was space for their quiet conversation.

“You are going to be an officer in this unit so you need to learn how to act like one,” he said stiffly. “What do you see when you look at the people in this town?” The Cadet held his head like he was confused but the Captain motioned for him to look around the small village of Liore for a moment. The man took a small disinterested glance and then shrugged.

“Farmers, common folk, nothing to get killed over.”

“That’s where you will fail,” the Captain scolded him. “Our job is to feed the legion right? With food planted by these people. Without them we have no crop. We need to take care of our suppliers, or else they will stop supplying. If we keep ransacking the villages, the farmers will be less willing to give what they made. When that happens, there will be rebellion and the Rebel Alliance will win even if they aren’t here.”

“Who would ever side with those blood thirsty thugs?” the Cadet asked but that only made ED-0001 smirk.

“With what we did to this village, blood thirsty thugs doesn’t look like a bad option. If General Greed isn’t compelled by humanitarian efforts, he might like the idea of preventing rebellion.”

They continued their walk down the street and checked up on all of their platoon leaders who were in charge of different tasks. Everything seemed to be going as smoothly as it could be though the villager were still untrusting of them. With the progress they were making, the Captain imagined them to be finishing for the day within a few hours. Nearly all of the tents were set up and he saw some droids buzzing around the town again. Things were turning out well. However, as they started to near the fields where Desden was supposed to be discussing the next harvest, the Captain saw a rising commotion with one of the civilians. He recognized the man as the village leader. He was not one to cooperate with them, especially after everything their soldiers had done to them before. It was difficult for the Captain to talk his way through the fists the man tried to throw at him. Now it seemed there was more trouble stirring up at the scene.

“It won’t work! There is no way we can make two harvests! Even then I am sure that you are going to just steal that from us too! No matter how much we make, every year we starve!” the man yelled at his subordinate.

“Sir, I am sure that we can get our quota in without draining your food supply. It will have to be a quick season but the average crop grows-“

“These are all ifs! The frosts come early here and cut our season short. This won’t work-“

“Uh, excuse me, what’s the issue here?” the Captain asked, butting in gently. The leader turned to him, his face red and growing redder by the minute. He seemed to only yell for the sake of fighting them in any way he can. The man stepped forward, pushing Desden roughly out of the way just to get to him.

“I’ll tell you what’s going on! There is no way we can keep giving you food as we starve during the winter. This woman’s trying to make us do twice the work for two harvests which we don’t have enough time for! The frost comes too early. Then we would have no food and no seed.” The Captain looked at Desden who was standing there very unsoldier like with her arms crossed over her chest. She looked aggravated from having to argue with a thick skull for the better part of an hour. He motioned for her to step to the side for a minute so he could talk to her.

“Is this true?” he asked, knowing that while PT-3149 was a mechanic hobbyist, Desden liked botany. She knew agriculture like the back of her hand and as word of several soldiers in the unit, she was the only reason why they kept their harvested crop from rotting.

“I compiled harvesting plan for each village so that we know how much we need from each town to get our quota. There were often times where some villages were reaped dry while others were untouched. We would need the better part of a year’s harvest from every town leaving not much left to feed everyone else for the year. There could be a plan for the villages to pull in two harvests for us to get our quota and for them to have enough food, however there are too many variables to guaranteed that the crops would actually grow,” she told him, shaking her head in dismay. “But it’s the only thing we can try. There just isn’t enough time in one summer.”

The Captain frowned, and he closed his eyes in aggravated thought. He hated it that she was right. No matter what they did here, they still would be robbing a village of most of its food supply and sending them into starvation year after year. Looking at how thin the townspeople were, he knew that was already the case as well. However, as much as it looked like they couldn’t win, he didn’t want to accept failure. There was always a way. Like when the Empire was on its last limb of soldiers after the battle of the planet Ishval, the army dropped far below sustainable number. But they didn’t give up to the Rebel forces. More clones were made, like PT-3149 and they won the battle though the war was still raging. Crops were different than people but there still needed to be a way. They just needed more time. Or…. A thought occurred to as he slowly opened up his eyes and glanced down at his hands. Or they just needed to be faster. The Captain quickly spun around in his place and returned to the forgotten village leader.

“I have a solution. Give me one pound of seed for each type of crop you sow and I will give you three harvests a year,” he said.

“What? That’s impossible!” the man scolded him slowly like he was a child.

“You don’t need more time in a season, you just need the crops to grow faster. I will engineer the seeds to do that-“

“That’s-“

“Impossible,” the Captain finished for him with a smirk. “No, it’s not. I am only six years old, yet I have grown a fair amount already.”

“You still look short to me,” the leader huffed. The Captain felt a sharp spike of anger fly through him as the man blatantly insulted him. He sucked in a silent breath to choke it down however. With everyone as on edge as they were, a heated argument would only end in guns.

“I am still growing, mind you,” the Captain hissed through his teeth as he relinquished his anger to the wind. “If I can grow this fast, I am sure I can make simple seeds grow faster.”

“I don’t want contaminated stunted seeds! I don’t know what you are planning, by doing all of this, but I want no part in your Imperial cloning voodoo. You can keep that stuff to yourself!”

“And everyone else in the village?” he asked him. The leader froze not really understanding his question. “By not accepting this proposition, are you willing for your entire village to starve when you already know your second harvest as is will fail? I am sure a pound of seed is no sacrifice for you to make.” The man’s face turned burnt red and he held his hands up in the air like he wanted to choke him, but the energy was in vain. There was an instant submission as the leader realized that it was his only option.

“Someone get this monster some seeds!” he called out to the gathering farmers before storming off to brood. The Captain was glad to see some farmers fetching a couple sacks for the seeds to go into. He turned around to consult his two subordinates just to find them staring at him. He believed that underneath their bulky helmets that their faces read dumbfounded.

“What?” he asked.

“Sir, how the hell are you going to clone seeds! We don’t know anything about it!” Desden cried. “You just walked everyone into a bloody corner.”

“I have a correction to make on that statement. You don’t know anything about cloning,” he retorted snidely. This comment got PT-3419’s attention.

“Wait…. You know how we were made?” he asked him, his voice was filled with disbelief. Though clones had their process encoded on their backs at all time, they themselves did not understand it and were not allowed to. The Empire did not give them any books or knowledge that wasn’t heavily regulated. ED-0001 knew he was a very large exception for that.

“Self-taught I guess you could say,” he waved off. “I know the basics. Any more information I need is on our backs. Once decoded I can create a process designed for plants with Sergeant Desden’s help. You know a lot about botany, Sergeant. I am going to need anything you can get on the crops that these farmers have been planting. Cadet you will help me make the growing environments for them.”

“This is so farfetched. It’s science fiction and you know it,” PT 3149 yelled at him. “How do we know it will work? How will we get it done in time?” That only made the Captain laugh as he rested his arm over the Cadet’s shoulder. He looked very pissed off that he was acting so casual to the crisis but made no move to brush him off.

“How very little you think of me,” he chuckled. “But since I will be spending nearly all of my time on this, I am going to need another officer to step up and help me run the unit. Cadet Peyton, we are going to make you lieutenant material. You can start by coordinating the convoy back to the base.”

“That’s not my name!” the man cried in aggravation as he then brushed his arm off of his shoulder. “I feel like you just love pushing your work off on me.”

“That’s only one benefit. The other is seeing you get your stripes. Come on we have a lot of work to do. I need to prepare for the completely unexpecting call from the General.”

“Let’s just hope its General Greed and not Lieutenant General Lust that finds out what you are up to.”

……………..

The Captain sat on his desk chair after their long day in Liore. He had plans to send more men out by platoons the following days to continue fixing the village but now they needed to rest. They did well and deserved to relax even for a few hours. The Captain got himself a nice steaming hot shower to ease his muscles and to help his body recline. He still felt the now cooling drops of water drip down his bare back to release the tension he held. It worked to all but his mind which was racing now more than ever. He could not stop thinking about his plans for the seeds and grew aggravated the more he realized that it would take time to develop them. If he could make them tomorrow he would to keep the villages from suffering another winter hungry but alas, he couldn’t. And he feared there never would if he didn’t come up with a convincing speech to tell the Generals why he took off with several of the units supplies, made an unauthorized visit to the local villages, and was planning returning trips of similar fashion. It wouldn’t take long for the logs to go up and reach their ears. The only thing he could do was to wait and plan for the storm to come flying in.

The pen in his hand tapped angrily against the journal that was laid open in front of him. The binding was old and worn. He had it since he was only two, and was filled with odd thoughts or constructs, few of which would help him in this newest pet project or any other situation he was currently stuck in.

“Sir,” the Cadet moaned as he turned over in his bed. He was trying to get his well earned sleep especially after the completely chaotic trip home. The Cadet needed practice planning a convoy or at least reading a map. They got lost three times on a route that they must have driven a million times over. It was only the tired groan in his voice that made the Captain look at his clock which read one in the morning. With an early wake up the next day he knew that he already was missing a lot of his sleep.

“Please, go to bed,” the man begged.

“I can’t,” the Captain sighed as he continued to tap his pen against his desk.

“You can’t get anything done tonight. You can start tomorrow with your code-“

“I will feel more comfortable if I had it written down tonight,” he hummed tiredly. His eyes were sore from staring down at the blank pages in his journal as if ink would suddenly appear there and give him a divine revelation. He rubbed them with exhaustion in every twitch of his muscle before he returned to tapping his pen on the table. There was a sudden screech of mattress springs and before the Captain knew it his notebook was being torn out from underneath him without anything of a warning. As he turned to try and rip it back out of his subordinate’s hands, he found that his pen also was missing within seconds of him taking his eyes off of it.

“Sir, you aren’t going to go to bed until you have something are you?” the Cadet asked more like a statement than a question. His voice was weary and deep. Looking at the bags beneath his subordinate’s eyes made him instantly regret staying up so late. However, even after the few weeks they roomed together, the Cadet knew him better than most people. He knew that he wasn’t going to rest without progress.

The Captain nodded his head tiredly but didn’t turn around, so the Cadet could sketch his burns. The scars from the coding burns ran all the way up from his low back to the nape of his neck. He didn’t know many of the details of what they looked like because he only had a few encounters with a mirror and not enough time to study them. The brands on a clone’s back were an intimate thing. Burning metal inscribed every little detail about what you are and how you are made into your skin. For another person to even look at the design that made them unique was a rather personal endeavor that the Captain didn’t think many appreciated. He himself was uncomfortable with another person looking at his back to intently. Sure, many people caught him at a glance when he was changing his shirt, but few people really inspected it. The ones that did were mostly those who had put it there to begin with and the memories of that event was something every clone was too willing to forget.

The Cadet was patiently waiting so that he could go to bed. The man was tired and the Captain knew it, but his hesitation was growing longer and he knew he would have to make up a decision. Whether he wanted to or not, he knew his project could not continue without his branding code. He had to get them and their every detail no matter what. However, when he was making this plan he didn’t think about what it would feel like to actually do it.

“Come on, Sir,” PT-3149 gently urged. “I need to go to bed.” With that, the Captain slowly turned around so that the Cadet could start sketching the horrible scars that marred his skin. The anxiety built up in him but the Captain choked it down. He sucked in a shaky breath and closed his eyes as he felt the Cadet’s hand gently brush his hair away from his back so that he could see. His eyes traced the lines on his skin as the pencil started to sketch them down into the notebook. The Captain didn’t like being analyzed even though he had wanted it done to begin with. He needed that information to continue with his project. He needed it better than his own hand could do. It seemed even PT-3419 was acknowledging the tense air in the room and after a few moments of hesitation tried to pick up a conversation.

“Sir, are you alright-“

“Y-yeah, I just don’t like being reminded of the…. Yah know-“

“The alimentation procedures? Yeah, I don’t like remembering them either,” the Cadet mumbled. “Too many needles.”

“Too many men in lab coats,” the Captain concluded with a small smile on his face as he realized that his roommate was able to make the cloning process seem such a silly thing to fear. He heard the scratching of the pencil continue and silence filled the gaps in the room once more. ED-0001 crossed his arms against the back of his chair and nestled his head down into them tiredly. He took a deep breath in to soothe his firing nerves and smelt the soap he had used in the shower not an hour ago. He sighed as he closed his eyes, wishing that the Cadet would hurry up. Sensing his anxiety, PT3149 continued to keep conversation together to distract him. The Captain was grateful for his efforts.

“Sir, do you mind if I ask you a question?”

“Don’t call me Sir, Penelope. We are roommates for heaven’s sake. If I must hear formalities all day and night my ears will fall off,” the Captain sighed, hoping that light hearted fun would get his mind to a better place. It didn’t, but helped a little.

“I will keep calling you, Sir, until I know your name,” the Cadet retorted making the Captain frown. “With all of the time you spend trying to give me a name, why don’t you have your own?”

“I do have one, but I do not use it,” he muttered, as he turned his eyes down to the floor. There was a pause as the Cadet waited him to continue but he didn’t. He hadn’t thought about his name in years. It wasn’t an easy conversation and like his scars, it was one he would rather keep to himself. But his roommate was relentless.

“What is it? You can’t have a name and not tell me. Is it bad? Is it Egor or something?”

“No.”

“Then why have a name if you don’t use it?” his subordinate asked along with a small command for him to straighten his back. The scratching of the pen on paper continued even as the Cadet argued with him. The Captain sighed and straightened his back, feeling all of the vertebrae tighten in it. He turned his head and looked over his shoulder to where his subordinate was standing in his black under armor the soldiers used to sleep in. The tall clone was staring with full focus on his back to make the careful sketch of his scars. Even with his attention on his work, the Captain knew that he was listening full heartedly into the conversation. He understood what he was going to say and would not take it lightly. He had only been roommates with the Cadet for a few days, but even then, he knew that they were going to be great friends. He would possibly be the first friend that he ever had.

“There is a difference between being completely nameless and just choosing to be,” the Captain told his subordinate slowly. His words were heavy, and the Cadet’s dark eyes flickered up to him for only a short second before returning to his work. “Having a name gives someone an identity, unique to themselves. Even if you don’t use it, it is better to have one so you know who you are. You need a name, PT-3149,” the Captain continued softly as his voice faded to a whisper. Though his words were heavy, they weren’t loud. The weight they carried was enough to carry the point across. He was searching for a name to give the Cadet individuality. He didn’t want him imagining that the only thing he was worth was an expendable soldier in the Empire. They were much more than that, though PT-3149 seemed to have forgotten that fact.

He heard the pen stop for a second and he knew that the Cadet was going to ask why he didn’t use his own name if identity was so important to him. The Captain hadn’t told anyone his name or who had given it to him since he had left for the safety of the Empire’s mother ship for the chaotic mess of the Clone Troops. It was a safe secret between him and one other person who probably forgotten he existed at all. That person was there since the beginning, and understood him far better than anyone else in the universe, even before he was branded. They trained together, lived together, they did everything together until the one fateful day ED-0001 messed up. Now he was millions of miles away on a forgetful planet farming crop for the rest of his life.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” the Captain interrupted the Cadet as he went to ask the question he knew he would. The man instantly closed his mouth instantly as to not look like a gaping idiot. The scratching of the pen picked back up without second thought. “My name was given to me by someone very special. He is the only one that knows it. I would like to keep it that way. We have been apart for so long though, I don’t know if he even remembers me,” he chuckled like it was a joke. It wasn’t. And the Cadet didn’t laugh. Silence filled the room once more and the scratching of the pencil soon halted, and the Captain found his journal returned to him. He looked down to see that the page had a perfect sketch of his back on it. The writing was clear and each line was drawn with the precision of an architect. The Captain smiled back at his subordinate just to find that he had sneaked back off to his bed without a word. His long legs were curled up on the mattress and his tall form was scrunched up into a tiny ball just to fit. Though he appeared to be uncomfortable, he was already fast asleep.

The Captain frowned as he glanced back down to his journal. He glanced down to the bottom of the page where there was a scratchy signature similar to what an artist would put on the bottom of a painting or an architect on the bottom of blueprints. He saw the sharp letters and read them closely, memorizing the name of the man who had made the small piece of work in his journal. Pitt. The Captain grinned and gently closed his book and placed it back on the shelf above his desk. It appeared that his PT-3149 had found his name.

……….

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