LOCATION: Lothal
OBJECTIVE: Landing
TAGS: @ All your homies
Echoes of a War That Never Ended
The freighter
Resolute Warden dipped through Lothal’s upper atmosphere, her hull creaking with the strain of atmospheric reentry. Inside the cockpit, Captain JT-412—“Meteor” to his nonexistent squadmates—adjusted the flight controls with mechanical precision. His clone armor, painted in matte grays and chipped with age, clinked softly as he moved.
Approaching designated scan grid Aurek-Nine, he reported aloud, though no one answered. The ship’s co-pilot seat had been empty since launch.
Mission parameters: recon, resource assessment, and Separatist movement tracking. Protocol TR-1943. Active war zone precautions in place.
The landscape below unfolded in peaceful, golden fields and scattered townships, not a hint of war. The scanner pinged once. No droid activity. No shield signatures. No energy weapons in use.
Odd… Meteor muttered, fingers hovering over the sensor array.
The freighter landed on a landing pad outside a domed structure, all sandstone and glass, like something out of pre-war archives. The sign in front, written in Basic and Old Galactic script, read:
"The House of Balance — Repository of Republic Knowledge."
As the ramp lowered, Meteor stepped out cautiously, blaster holstered but ready. The warm breeze carried the scent of grass and flowers—not ash or plasma. Children played nearby. Civilians milled around. No troopers. No Jedi. No battle cries.
A man in elegant robes approached, eyes wide as if seeing a ghost. He looked at Meteor’s armor, the aging Phase II helmet under his arm, and asked, “Are you… a
clone trooper?”
Meteor blinked.
Captain JT-412, Republic Navy Intelligence. I’m here under Directive C-437 to assess Separatist presence on Lothal. Who’s your commanding officer?
The man stared, stunned. “The Clone Wars ended over nine
centuries ago. There are no Separatists. No Republic—well, not as you knew it.”
Meteor’s jaw tensed.
This is a combat zone. Your misinformation could be part of a psy-op. Where are the Jedi Generals stationed?
“You’re standing in what used to be a Jedi outpost,” the man said softly. “Now it’s a museum. We DO have a Temple nearby, I could direct you there… but it is fairly new.”
A silence fell between them, long and heavy.
They didn’t arrest him.
That was the first clue something was deeply wrong.
Instead, they
welcomed him. Offered him food. Clean water. A room inside the House of Balance, complete with a bed softer than anything he’d known on Kamino or the warfronts. A room with windows.
Meteor sat on the edge of it now, helmet in his lap, scanning the smooth stone walls. Holos projected from embedded projectors—scenes of clone troopers fighting alongside Jedi. Scenes he recognized. Some, he
remembered.
Only they were wrong.
The battles were labeled with dates centuries beyond his understanding. Clone units were described as “lost legions,” their records archived. And the Jedi? Gone. All of them, but these “Wardens” he had read about.
He leaned forward, tapping on one of the holos. It showed a younger version of a clone—his face, but not
him—leading civilians to safety during the Siege of Saleucami. The caption read:
“Heroism in Uniform: CT-6291 ‘Valor’ and the fading light of the Republic.”
Fading light.
He stood abruptly, pacing.
The locals called him “sir.” They asked questions with awe, not deference. They offered stories about the Jedi Order, stories told like old legends, half-wrapped in myth. They showed him memorials. Monuments.
They showed him
graves.
Meteor’s breath hitched when he found the memorial wall etched with clone designations. Thousands of them. All long dead. He ran a gloved hand over the names.
Then came the voice—soft, young, Lothali.
“You’re not like them, are you?”
He turned. A girl, maybe fifteen, stood nearby. Her clothes were simple but well-kept. She wore a pendant of the Republic crest—stylized, ceremonial.
No, I’m like them, Meteor said carefully.
I am them. I fight for the Republic.
The girl tilted her head. “But the Republic’s gone. It’s just... us now. People who believe in what it
stood for.”
He stared.
“But you…” she hesitated. “You don’t
know, do you?”
A pause.
Know what?
She raised her holopad and brought up a galactic timeline. It stretched far past the Clone Wars. Past the Empire. Past something called the First Order. Into years labeled “Reconstruction Era.”
“You’re in the wrong century, Captain.”
He said nothing.
He couldn’t.
Meteor stood in the quiet chamber that the locals called the Reflection Room. Its polished floor mirrored the murals above—paintings of Jedi, clone troopers, and citizens holding hands beneath the banners of a Republic long gone.
He sat cross-legged on the ground, helmet beside him, listening to the steady pulse of silence. It reminded him of the Kaminoan meditation pods. He thought it did, anyway. The memory was vivid—
too vivid.
A Kaminoan voice echoed in his mind. "Protocol implantation complete. Subject CT-9442 ready for deployment."
But something was off.
The voice wasn’t Taun We. Not Nala Se. And there was no rain in the memory—no Kaminoan cityscape, no thunder or pale oceans. Just sterile light. Dry air. A sense of vastness and...wrongness.
He opened his eyes, breathing heavy.
That memory hadn’t been there before. Or had it?
Meteor tapped into his suit’s built-in recorder and activated a secured file—his own journal logs, recorded during “missions.” But as he listened, his brow furrowed. The dates were inconsistent. Locations didn't line up. Some mission names were gibberish. Others referenced systems that had never been battlefields.
In one log, he described a firefight on Felucia. But in a later log, he mentioned being
born there.
He had never set foot on Felucia.
Unless…
They weren’t real.
He opened his encrypted neural sync backup, a classified feature all clones carried for memory reference—except his was bloated with strange tags: “Template Loop 03,” “Psych Reinforcement Cycle 19,” “Memory Stitch: Kamino Exile Protocol.”
And then came the breakthrough.
A locked file. Buried deeper than the rest. Labeled:
Origin: WildSpace—Facility Theta Prime.
He cracked it.
Images flooded his vision. Not of war—but of sterile domes nestled in rocky canyons, bathed in the dull light of a red sun. Kaminoans, thinner and older, working in silence. Clones in various phases of growth, none in full armor. No GAR insignia. No Jedi.
Just one phrase, repeating in his head in a clipped, clinical tone:
“Clone preservation initiative. Rebirth through relevance. The war lives on—
in their minds.”
He staggered back, gasping.
He had never been to Kamino.
Not the real one.
He was born in exile—on a secret Kaminoan colony, far from galactic eyes, raised in a fabricated loop of history. A war that had long since ended... kept alive in the minds of clones who never knew peace. Clones like him.
He whispered to no one:
What am I?
A voice behind him replied: “Someone they tried to forget. But someone the galaxy might still need.”
It was the girl again—now joined by a man in a robe, holding a data crystal.
The man offered it to him.
“Let us show you who you really are.”
Meteor sat alone in the quiet garden outside the House of Balance, his helmet resting in his lap like a hollow skull. The data crystal had revealed everything—footage of the hidden Kaminoan colony, test logs, psychological conditioning cycles, and even images of other clones just like him, walking those rocky corridors under the red sun.
He didn’t know if they were still alive. Or if they’d ever really
lived.
The truth was... he didn’t know if
he had.
All this time, he'd thought he was serving the Republic. Carrying out critical missions behind enemy lines. Reporting in, maintaining protocols, ensuring the war never slipped out of reach. His purpose had been absolute. His orders, clear.
But now?
He looked around at the children laughing nearby, at the civilians rebuilding homes, growing crops, sharing stories under the twilight sky.
No blaster fire. No emergency alerts. No Jedi commanders calling for support. Just... people. Living. Free.
And he didn’t know how to live among them.
A man approached. The same robed historian from earlier. He didn’t speak at first. Just sat beside Meteor and offered him a small cup of something warm. Tea, maybe. He accepted it with stiff, awkward fingers.
I’m not sure I’m real, Meteor said finally. His voice was quiet. Flat.
“You are,” the man replied.
I’m a copy. A manufactured tool. I don’t even know if my thoughts are my own.
“They are now.”
Meteor clenched his jaw.
You don’t understand. Every moment I’ve ever lived was orchestrated by Kaminoans who wanted to revive a war. My orders were a lie. My enemies—fictional. My victories—scripted. Everything I fought for…
He trailed off. His hands trembled. The helmet slid from his lap and landed in the grass with a soft
thump.
What do I do now? he asked, voice almost breaking.
What’s a soldier without a war?
The man looked out at the horizon, where the sun was dipping low over the Lothal plains. “Maybe you find something else to fight for. Not because someone programmed you to… but because
you choose it.”
Meteor didn’t respond right away. He stared down at his hands. Calloused. Scarred. Built for war, yes—but maybe also for something more.
I don’t know how to be anything else, he said.
The man smiled. “No one ever does at first.”
A few days later, he found himself walking in an open area, and the one thing he could recognize was a small group and one, two of them looked to be Jedi. Jedi? Are they really alive again?
Generals! Stopping himself short.
Sorry, force of habit.
Casca Pryce
was one such individual, though S.J. hadn’t seen him in quite some time. 
Balun Dashiell
were approached by another Forcer who introduced himself as
Junpei Kenobi
—a surname that the young Skywalker took immediate notice of. Junpei spoke of several Jedi practices that he characterized as the “old ways,” which Balun commented on. Sor’s chin tilted curiously as he listened, comparing the old traditions of the Jedi to what he knew of the Wardens; unlike orthodox Jedi, Wardens of the Sky took no issue with personal attachments or relationships.
Aric Siasides
as the latter joined their growing little group. “If you’re looking for a Jedi library, I believe your best bet is Warden’s Rest on Sanctuary. The system’s very close, and the route is safe—I’ve been along it several times on trade runs.”
