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“Sir, I would like to submit myself for disciplinary action.”
Methos narrowed his eyes at the clone standing firmly at attention in front of him, not even trying to guess what the ever-loving kriff was going on. Gimbal, one of the few clones out of his nascent company to never once stand on rank or protocol with Methos (or anyone else, for that matter), and here he was calling him “sir” and submitting himself for disciplinary action? Methos leaned against the doorway for a moment before he sighed heavily.
“You better come in and explain what you think you’ve done that warrants disciplinary action from me. It’s too early for guessing games, anyway.”
He stepped back into his spartan quarters and allowed Gimbal to pass him. The clone doctor entered after a moment’s hesitation. Methos sat down on the edge of his narrow bed, wishing he had the galaxy’s largest cup of caf right now. Gimbal returned to his attention stance. Methos rubbed his forehead.
“I’m a-quiver with anticipation, Gimbal. What is this all about?”
“Sir, I have betrayed your trust and violated your privacy. I believed that I was justified in doing so and that my reasons were both benign and beneficial to the positive health and wellbeing of the Century as a whole.”
A watchful tension suddenly filled Methos.
“What. Did. You. Do?” he demanded.
“You’re Gimbal, right?” The younger clone seemed unusually nervous, so Gimbal offered an encouraging smile as he set aside his tablet.
“That’s right. You’re Shank and… Sneak, yeah?”
“How does he do that?” Sneak muttered in astonishment. Gimbal turned his eyes on the other clone, his grin growing bigger as Sneak realized that he spoke out loud.
“I assume you mean ‘How does Gimbal keep us all straight when he barely knows us and we all look alike and sound alike’?” he asked in amusement.
“Um…” sputtered Sneak.
“Yes,” Shank cut in, trying to salvage the moment.
“Well, none of the vode look alike and sound alike to me. Not even the Twins, however much they play it up. Have they found names yet?” Gimbal asked curiously. “I know our new Jedi’s a bit anxious about it.”
“It’s actually the Jedi we’re here about.” Shank looked uncomfortable but determined.
“That so? What about him?”
“He just blew in and made all these big promises. Said we wouldn’t be stuck in maintenance anymore, that we’d get out and fight. But we haven’t done much of anything yet. And we’re starting to wonder if he’s… y’know… legit.” Sneak crossed his arms, a gesture that seemed to Gimbal equal parts aggressive and defensive.
“I’m guessing you two aren’t the only ones to be be wondering that,” Gimbal noted thoughtfully, leaning back in his chair. “I’m definitely glad you came to me with your concerns, but why me?”
“You’re one of the oldest clones still on Kamino, but you’ve also got experience. Out there. You’ve seen action, and you’ve seen Jedi in action, and you were almost the first clone Methos recruited,” Shank replied after sharing a glance with Sneak.
“I suppose saying that I have a good feeling about him won’t exactly help in this situation.” It was true, though; from the moment Gimbal had met Methos, when he’d helped Humble and 6389 and prevented Sever from being liquidated, Gimbal knew deep in his bones: Methos may not be nice, but he was kind. “You’re looking for some sort of tangible evidence that he isn’t just leading us all on.”
“Well… yeah. Pretty much sums it up.” Sneak had not uncrossed his arms, Gimbal noted.
Gimbal tapped a finger on the table thoughtfully for several long seconds. Sneak, Shank, and the other “Crazy Eights” had been woefully treated before Methos picked them. Frankly, he wasn’t surprised at their trust issues, and he could easily name a dozen or more of the company who probably had the same doubts about their new Jedi. This needed to be nipped in the bud quickly if the Century wasn’t going to fall apart before they even left Kamino. And... truth be told, he was a bit curious, himself.
“I’m going to need a couple things and a bit of help.”
“Did anyone ever tell Gaffer that his armor smells funny? I mean, what is that, anyway?” complained Sneak in an undertone. Snitch, in Ochi’s armor, didn’t bother to hide the snickers Gimbal managed to stifle.
“Pretty sure it’s blartree blossom today,” Gimbal replied as he led the other clones down a corridor to a doorway that Sneak and Snitch were most definitely not authorized to access.
“Today ? What, he has different scents for every day of the week?!”
“Just be glad that today was blartree and not stinkweed.”
“Now you’re pulling my leg.”
“Nope. He just likes a little variety. Where he gets the scents is none of my business, and it doesn’t hurt anyone.”
“It’s hurting me right now!”
“You’re soon to be a fully trained soldier in the Grand Army of the Republic, you di’kuut. Grow a little backbone and suck it up,” Gimbal advised him wryly, now completely unable to control his grin and thankful for the concealment of his own bucket. “Now shut up and just follow me.”
“Hopefully the Great Jedi Hope is too busy torturing Sigma Squad to catch us,” Snitch mused with far too much glee. “I can’t wait to get my hands on open Holonet access!”
Gimbal keyed in his authorization and opened the door to the private hangar. No cadets were allowed in here, only troopers, trainers… and Methos. The Jedi’s personal ship, the one he had arrived in, was parked amongst several other ships of various sizes and origins, though nothing larger than a small freighter in this hangar. In fact, it was the freighter to which Gimbal was headed.
“Hang on-” Sneak started, his body language uncertain.
“Not here,” Gimbal said tersely. He marched with precision and mission to the freighter, and soon they were at the entrance. He gestured for Snitch to handle the door.
“Eh, no problem here,” Snitch muttered softly. Sure enough, the door slid open after only a few moments with his multitool.
“I could’ve done that!” protested Sneak as they boarded the freighter. “Why’s he here again?”
Snitch clapped him on the shoulder.
“You’re a good slicer, Sneak. I’m the best. And if you want to know more about the Supreme Savior of the Galaxy without him finding out, you’re gonna need the best. And also because you had to ask why we’re on the freighter as opposed to slicing Methos’s personal ship.”
Gimbal could hear the cogs turning in the younger clone’s brain as he just about froze in place for a moment.
“If Methos wanted to keep transmission records off of Kamino’s datanet, he’d have to use an isolated communications device. But his ship probably isn’t powerful enough to get a clear signal all the way to Coruscant without a booster, and I didn’t see anything obvious.”
“Good. And?” Snitch prompted, arms crossed.
“And if anyone were to attempt to spy on him, his own ship would be an obvious place to monitor. The freighter would have a power core large enough to boost the signal as far as he wanted, especially if none of the other systems were running!”
“Exactly! There you have it. Now, we go to the cockpit, and you watch and learn, kid.”
Sneak pulled off his borrowed helmet. “Just so long as I don’t have to smell blartree the whole time.”
“That’s the spirit!”
Gimbal grinned at the byplay. These two would’ve found each other sooner or later, given their, ah, shared interests, so he was glad to be the metaphorical fly on the wall as Snitch brought Sneak under his wing for a little off-hours mentorship.
They made their way to the cockpit, and Snitch sat down in the pilot’s seat and pulled off his own bucket, setting it on the floor by his feet. He tapped at the controls, bringing up the power and then the communications display a few moments later.
“I’m pretty sure the com logs aren’t supposed to be empty,” Sneak point out dryly.
“‘Course not,” Snitch replied. “It’s not as if they built this ship right here in the hangar. Even if it were brand new, and it’s obviously not, there should be com records from both its departure from wherever it was built and its arrival here.”
“Which means the logs were erased.”
“You got it. Fortunately, nothing is ever really gone once it’s in a computer,” Snitch said smugly. He pulled out a small tablet computer and plugged a cable from it to the console. “Now we just run my very own restoration program, and gundark’s-your-uncle-”
Snitch cut himself off.
“Something wrong?” Gimbal prompted after a moment.
Snitch narrowed his eyes at the readout on his tablet. It all looked like lines of gibberish to Gimbal, but he was a doctor, not a slicer.
“For a Jedi, he knows his tech. Or he knows someone who does. Then again, he was a librarian before he came here-”
“Wait, he was a librarian?!” cut in Sneak a trifle shrilly. “A librarian? As in, a person who sits around in dusty archives and makes sure you don’t talk too loudly?!”
“You really need to read up on the Jedi,” Snitch drawled.
“Snitch…” Gimbal tried not to sigh. The other clone, fortunately, seemed to take the hint, un-subtle as it was.
“Jedi librarians aren’t just the sitting-around types from what I know. They’re also the guys who go out there into the galaxy to find stuff to add to the archives. And protect the archives, if it comes down to it,” he explained.
“Dare I ask how you found out Methos was one of these?” asked Gimbal.
“I accessed the file the Kaminoans keep on him after the rumors started going around that he was recruiting clones. Barest file you’d imagine, and you know the skinnies like to be thorough. All it had was his name, species, and what amounted to a some guesswork.”
“So, bottom line: does that mean we won’t be able to get the com record?”
Snitch blinked up at Gimbal momentarily.
“I got one more trick up my sleeve…” The slicer began tapping away madly, first on the tablet, then the console, then the tablet again. Gimbal couldn’t even begin to guess what he was doing, though Snitch’s eyes followed every move with what seemed to be surprise, and then perhaps a bit of awe.
“Did you just…”
“Yep. Quantum data still exists no matter how much the digital data is corrupted and/or expunged. Won’t give us all the details, but it’s still gonna be something.”
The console screen lit up with line after line after line of text. Snitch grinned in triumph.
“What are we looking at?” Gimbal asked.
“This is signal traffic routed through the long-range communications system. And just eyeballing it here, there’s been a lot of chatter. And the power draws during some of these periods are pretty significant.”
“So some of these calls went far away,” Sneak reasoned. “How far are we talking?”
“The Core Worlds, at the very least. And it wasn’t just a couple of minutes, either. There’s hours if not days’ worth of draw on that magnitude.”
“What time frame does this cover?” Gimbal stared at the wall of text, as if he could will it into coherency.
“I’d say it started right around the time he saved three cadets from getting liquidated.” Snitch cocked a smirk in Gimbal’s direction. “Can’t be any more exact than that with what I’ve got.”
It wasn’t exactly the definitive proof Gimbal was hoping to find that Methos wasn’t about to pull the rug out from all of them, but it certainly wasn’t nothing, either. And this also gave him an interesting idea to pursue…
After ensuring Gaffer and Ochi’s armor were returned to their proper owners, Gimbal left Snitch and Sneak to explain the whole story as promised. Hopefully, Sneak had the smarts to leave out his commentary on Gaffer’s choice of scents. Knowing that Methos was spending long hours on the coms lent credence to the Jedi’s claims that he was genuinely working on ensuring their freedom.
Nobody questioned Gimbal as he passed down brightly-lit corridors. Finally, he entered his old familiar medical bay. A frisson of guilt shot through him as he saw all the occupied beds and bacta tanks; too many brothers already injured in this new war, and he wasn’t here to treat them.
He made his way to a computer terminal and sat down. He took a deep breath and stared at the screen. This was his last chance to turn back before he did something.
His fingers hovered for a moment before he started typing. An identification and password belonging to one of the Kaminoans, granting him unfettered access to pretty much everything on the mainframe.
After all, Gimbal might have no slicing skills to speak of, but even the least computer-literate vode could enter an ID and password acquired when one of the cloners didn’t realize that a certain cadet was standing right behind him. Gimbal never really had reason to use his illicit knowledge before now.
He breathed out as the system blossomed before him. He’d never had this much access before. The temptation was almost overwhelming. Instead, he focused on his mission. A quick search turned up the file that the Kaminoans had compiled on Jedi Master Methos.
A quick smile lit up Gimbal’s eyes as he scanned over the information. Snitch had looked at the file, but that was before their Jedi had truly made himself interesting to the Kaminoans. There wasn’t a lot of data there, but there was definitely more than before.
His name, his species (baseline human, what a surprise there), his rank as a Master, current position as Jedi General, 68th Company, previous position as a librarian in the Archives at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Ah, and who trained him: a Jedi Master Ben-Ghi Ness (deceased).
Learn about the master, learn about the student. Gimbal clicked on the link.
If the file on Methos was bare, then the one on Ben-Ghi Ness was empty. Basically all the Kaminoans knew about him was his name, the date his death was reported to the Jedi ten years or so ago, and that he, like his student, was a librarian. They did, however, have one image.
Gimbal stared at the picture. To a casual observer, Ness seemed to be a fairly unremarkable near-human Jedi: long white hair over one shoulder, grey-cast skin, and bright blue eyes. But there was just something…
A chill spread through Gimbal. Despite the cosmetic differences, Ben-Ghi Ness had the same face as Methos.
As a clone whose brothers all looked alike, and a doctor on top of that, Gimbal knew how to spot the tiny differences that distinguish one from another. Instead, he kept spotting the similarities between the two men. The Kaminoans probably never even noticed that Ness and Methos had the same jawline, the same nose, the same shape to their eyes.
Was it possible that Ness and Methos weren’t just master and apprentice, but something closer? Gimbal frowned and flipped back to the Methos file.
The date that Methos began working in the Temple archives was the same date reported as Ben-Ghi Ness’s death. If this were one of the spy thriller holos that Snitch had “acquired,” it would seem that Ness and Methos to be one and the same, one identity discarded as needs demanded while taking up a new one. But the man in the decades-old image didn’t seem any older than Methos was now, and that would make Methos at least 60 standard years, if not older.
He was listed as baseline human. Even if Jedi aged more gracefully than non-Force-sensitives, there was no way Methos was sixty standard.
It didn’t make sense.
A more reasonable explanation would be that they were related. Father and son, maybe. While Jedi were basically forbidden from marriage, they could and did have offspring through more casual encounters. But if the relationship were that close, Methos would not be a baseline human, either.
Regardless, Gimbal suddenly felt overwhelmingly guilty, as if he’d just pried into some deep, dark secret and was blundering about like a drunken gundark.
Trying to distract himself, Gimbal looked up the file the Kaminoans were keeping on their little group.
68th Company, “Century”
Jedi General Methos
CC-5632 “Sever”
CM-0112 “Gimbal”
CT-1132 “Gaffer”
CP-2013 “Flight”
CT-5575 “Ochi”
And so on.
Then he spotted the link marked “Financial Documentation.” He clicked on it.
Spelled out was a summary of all the financial transactions related to the Century, from incubation to decanting to training to medical costs.
Gimbal frowned. Up until recently, all payments relating to costs incurred by members of the Century came from one account, which he assumed was the same Republic-sourced fund for all the clones. From the date Methos had saved Sever, Humble, and 6389, the money came from somewhere else. And the sum was staggering. Gimbal clicked on the account information.
It wasn’t the Jedi Order, as he thought. The money, somehow, all came from Methos personally. How in the name of sanity had a Jedi, notorious for eschewing personal wealth, come to have enough money to pay for the health and training of an entire company of clone soldiers?
He quickly logged out, hoping that his use of the stolen password had gone unnoticed. There was only one thing left to do: go to Methos himself and confess his part in tonight’s shenanigans.
“You seriously expect me to believe that you - you personally - sliced into the ship's com system?” Methos’s expression of dubious exasperation actually rather amused Gimbal, despite the circumstances.
“That is what I reported, sir.”
“And that you had no help whatsoever from any of your compatriots, that you did this of your own accord, and that you and only you should suffer the consequences?”’
Gimbal remained silent, staring straight ahead at the blank wall.
“You do realize that I can tell when I’m being lied to. Jedi are funny like that.” Methos’s voice remained light, but for the briefest second, Gimbal felt like he was surrounded by the whole ocean outside, flailing as its currents dragged him under.
He steadied himself and drew in a deep breath. He dropped his ‘good soldier’ routine and looked the Jedi full in the face.
“You came here and made big promises, Methos. Some of these boys - all of them, really - need to know that you aren’t just spouting empty words. I know, and some of us like Sever trust, that you have good intentions. But good intentions aren’t enough. You need to be able to back them up.”
“Is that so? And has your late-night research borne fruit?” The words carried a harsh, almost sarcastic lilt.
“They now know that you’ve been actively advocating on their behalf, and that you’ve taken on the cost of their training and well-being. Even the most cynical are willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and admit that you might actually be on the level with your promises.”
A flurry of emotions rippled across Methos’s face. Was that… chagrin? Embarrassment? Gimbal had seen Methos physically vulnerable, after he drained himself to save Flight’s transport ship from crashing. This was different.
“Is there anything else you’d like to confess while you’re here?” the Jedi asked, perhaps a bit too quickly.
Gimbal thought of the eerie resemblance between Methos and his master, Ben-Ghi Ness, and how the latter had died on the same day Methos started work at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant.
“Nope, I’m good.”
“Then we can get onto the punishment portion of this exercise.” A terrifyingly sweet smile crossed the Jedi's face as he stood up and walked to a cabinet. He pulled out a large object and pressed it into Gimbal’s arms.
“I expect you to read it all, cover to cover. Don’t try to skip anything because I’ll be testing your comprehension.”
The object was a genuine, honest-to-kriff book. Not a flash training module, not even a digital text, but an actual book. For a moment, Gimbal stared at it in shock. Actual books were rare. And, as it turned out, surprisingly heavy.
“And if you finish with that before we head off to Concord Dawn, you can report to Ninety-Nine’s Maintenance detail to help them with whatever they need.”
“No problem,” Gimbal said faintly.
As he left, book clutched in his arms, he could swear that he heard Methos muttering behind him, “I really need a beer…”