Chapter Text
These days, Echo was a very busy man. His to-do list was reflected in his flight records: Pantora, Pabu, Alderaan, Raxus, Pantora, [REDACTED], Pantora, Pabu, [REDACTED], Corellia, [REDACTED]. He was on his way back to Pantora, actually, though he carried no passengers this time.
Then there was light. It lasted too long to call it a flash; it was too bright to even hope for his eyes to adjust. Then it was gone.
[REBOOTING… 97%]
Rebooting? What the hell had happened? He had been alone on an empty ship in hyperspace.
[REBOOT COMPLETE]
The message blinked out of existence and abruptly, Echo could see again. It’s just that what he was seeing was so unbelievable, it seemed more likely that he was hallucinating.
If he was hallucinating, then he was really in trouble, seeing as one of the kaminoan scientists that replaced his Techno Union cybernetics with the sleeker kaminoan tech had helpfully let him know that the computer in his brain would prevent any hallucinations.
Echo was standing. In front of him was a holotable. Projected from the holotable was General Windu. The lights on the holotable’s panel indicated a live holocomm feed, not a recording.
Except that General Windu was dead.
Echo stared dumbly until General Windu’s brow started creasing. Then, feeling like every reg manual he ever perused was shouting at him, he snapped into a salute.
“General Windu!” he barked.
“At ease, trooper,” General Windu said.
“Oh my god,” someone exclaimed quietly, from somewhere behind Echo. It almost sounded like Fulcrum, except that Fulcrum was supposed to be somewhere on Onderon right now. Echo didn’t rule it out, though, since he himself was meant to be onroute to Pantora and General Windu was supposed to be dead.
“Sir, I’m afraid I must have experienced a malfunction with my cybernetics,” Echo admitted, wincing. His bucket, at least, covered his face, which must be flushed with embarrassment right now. “Why did you reach out to contact us?”
General Windu nodded once, solemnly. “Yes, I’m not surprised you’re confused. I can at least assure you that your cybernetics likely have not malfunctioned. We became aware that Count Dooku was showing interest in an old temple rumored to hold an artifact that is written to offer, quote, assistance from the future. We expected the artifact to offer more accurate or more extensive visions—I’m sure you can understand how that might offer a strategic advantage to the war effort. However, it seems to have summoned you instead.”
Echo blinked, processing that. A Jedi artifact did something weird, okay, he never claimed to understand all that Force stuff. But was General Windu seriously…
“Sir, are you seriously suggesting that I have been transported through time, back into the past?” Echo asked, feeling a little dizzy.
“I am, trooper.” His face didn’t even twitch. None of the generals would lie about something like this, but Windu especially was known for how steadfast he was.
“To that effect,” came a voice from behind Echo, which he had thought he would never hear again, “though your appearance in this time was unexpected, you can understand that we have quite the extensive list of questions for you.”
“General Kenobi,” Echo said, turning mechanically to face him, though he still kept the holo in his peripheral vision.
Standing next to General Kenobi, of course, were two people. To his left, Commander Cody, and to his right, General Skywalker. To Skywalker’s right stood Rex, and then Commander Tano, a full head and a half shorter than when he saw her last. Finally, to her right stood two shinies, one of which was holding a stone block covered in engravings that must have been the Jedi artifact.
Well, nothing for it. He was functioning on autopilot now while he tried to come to terms with the situation; he greeted each person in turn, with a nod to each.
“General Skywalker, Commander Tano, Commander Cody, Rex.”
After a beat, he threw in a nod towards the shinies.
Uh-oh, he had screwed up somewhere. Rex’s shoulders took on that tilt that showed he was offended. How the hell had Echo managed to offend him when he’d only been here for one minute?
(Well, [00:57] according to the chronometer programmed into his headpiece.)
“First, can we get your name?” General Skywalker asked, holding out a gentle hand.
Something in Echo withered quietly. General Skywalker had never treated him any different after his recovery on Skako Minor, but then Echo supposed that General Skywalker had known it was Echo they were going after. All of the Jedi had always been able to tell brothers apart, even as shinies, which was a skill even clones weren’t able to replicate except on their own batchmates. Something about the Force let the Jedi tell them apart easier, according to a brother who heard it from a brother who allegedly heard it from General Yoda himself.
Echo, even though he had only been in the past [01:02], had still thought that General Skywalker would be able to recognize him.
He laughed, bringing his scomp up to rub sheepishly at the back of his bucket. “Ah, yeah, I guess I look a lot different than the me you would know,” he said. “I’m Echo.”
The shiny holding the artifact stumbled, even though they had been standing still.
“You’re Echo?” their buddy exclaimed, catching the stumbling shiny by the elbow even as their gaze never wavered from Echo.
“Sure am. CT-1409, Echo. Pleasure to meet you.”
“But—but I’m Echo,” the stumbling shiny exclaimed, straightening up.
Oh. Oh, the dizzy feeling was back.
“Well, that makes a certain amount of sense,” General Kenobi said, raising one hand to stroke his beard. “You are the only one of us to have touched the artifact.”
General Windu’s holo glitched, and he looked over his shoulder sharply.
“Sorry, things are picking up over here. It sounds like you have a lot of work to do—send me the report when you’re done,” he said. A shout came from somewhere invisible to the holocamera, and General Windu disconnected before Echo could register anything other than the fact that it was a brother’s voice.
“Prove it,” Shiny Echo demanded. “Prove you’re me.”
Echo blinked. He held out his left arm. “You could always scan my Ident code.”
Every clone had a code tattooed on their wrist in the UV spectrum the kaminoans preferred. Most days, they forgot about it, since it wasn’t visible to humans. When scanned, it would provide a link to Echo’s file in the Kaminoan database.
“Captain, if you would?” General Kenobi prompted. Rex retrieved a scanner from his belt and approached Echo, who went ahead and removed his vambrace so his wrist could be scanned.
The scanner projected the results. CT-1409. He hoped that was enough proof for Shiny Echo.
Shiny Echo nodded tightly. “Right, then.”
Echo smiled at him on reflex, the way he smiled at all new recruits. Unfortunately, he still had his bucket on, so Shiny Echo couldn’t see it.
“Trust me, this is weird for me too,” he said.
Shiny Echo just stood there like a statue, something Echo remembered doing when he didn’t want to do the wrong thing and cause problems. Yikes. That coping mechanism would take a long time to shed.
“How far in the future are you from, exactly?” General Kenobi asked.
Echo did some quick math. He and Fives had joined the 501st about six months after the official start of the war. Seeing as Fives and Shiny Echo hadn’t even painted their armor yet, it couldn’t have been more than a week since they left Rishi. Being surrounded by all that Phase I armor again was weird, but definitely preferable to being surrounded by TK armor.
“About five years,” Echo answered. “I turned fourteen a few months ago.”
“Hey, that means we’re the same age!” Commander Tano cheered, perking up.
Echo chuckled. “Yeah, I guess we are, Commander.”
“In five years… is the war still ongoing?” General Kenobi asked.
Echo hesitated, staring at the general. What would be safe to tell him? Yes, the war was technically over, but the fighting was ongoing. The Republic they had fought for was gone, despite winning the war. The Jedi, including General Kenobi, were dead.
By this point, though, Echo was used to being the bearer of bad news.
“Why are you hesitating?” General Skywalker asked. “It’s a yes or no question.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” Echo bit out.
“Either the war is over or it isn’t,” General Skywalker rebutted.
“I’m trying to decide what is safe to tell you.”
“Safe?” General Kenobi echoed. Then he paled dramatically. “Did we lose?”
Jedi really just had a way of getting straight to the point you wanted to avoid, didn’t they. Echo had forgotten.
“Well, no. Listen, it’s complicated,” Echo prevaricated. “The war is over, technically, and we won, technically, but also everyone is still fighting and everybody lost.”
“What the hell does that mean?” General Skywalker asked.
Echo took a deep breath. This briefing didn’t need his panic. This was a chance to prevent everything; Fives was still alive, the Jedi Order was still strong, and the Empire was still years away.
His To-Do list coalesced into a shining datafile in his computer-mind.
[TEXT-FILE: TO-DO:
It was a good list.
“Can you call Kix in here, please? He needs to hear this part.”
Kix had gone missing at some point after Anaxes and before the Empire. Rex said that Fives had spoken to Kix shortly before his own death; he thought Kix might have found out about the chips as well, and been killed for it.
“Sure,” General Skywalker agreed, squinting. “Rex?”
“On it, sir,” Rex replied, tapping out a quick message on his comm.
Just to be safe, Echo knelt and plugged in to the holotable.
[SCOMP LINK: ESTABLISHED
INCOMING TRANSMISSIONS:
TRANSMISSION RECEIVER: STATUS: ON
>ADMIN ACCESS ENABLED
>RECEIVER STATUS EDITED
TRANSMISSION RECEIVER: STATUS: OFF
DATAFILE REPOSITORY:
>UPLOAD FILE?
>>YES
>DATAFILE “CLONE BIOCHIPS” DOWNLOADED SUCCESSFULLY
HOLOPROJECTOR: STATUS: ON
>DISPLAY DATAFILE “CLONE BIOCHIPS”?
>>YES
HOLOPROJECTOR: STATUS: DISPLAYING FILE “CLONE BIOCHIPS”]
“What is this?” General Skywalker asked, moving a few steps closer to the holotable to squint at the projection.
There wasn’t much to see, at the moment—the first page of the file was really just a cover page, a simple image of a clone’s head with no tattoos or deviations from the regulation haircut. Echo had given this presentation to almost every brother he and Rex managed to recruit to their cause. As the presentation continued, the image would zoom in and transition to a cross-section which exposed the biochip and showed how it was linked into the brain of every clone. Then they would move onto the fact that it was put there by the Sith, and then onto the list of orders that their slicers had uncovered. The surgery. Then the choice: to join up with Rex’s outfit, to desert the Imperial Army for retirement somewhere safe, to be imprisoned, or to die.
Echo was sick of seeing brothers die.
“I’ll explain once Kix gets here,” he answered.
They only had to wait about a minute, since the briefing room was in the wing adjacent to the medbay.
“You summoned me? Who’s hurt?” Kix asked, as he stepped into the room.
“No injuries to report. However, we are about to receive intel that we were informed you should be aware of,” Rex reported. Kriff, had they really all talked like that at the start of the war?
Kix scanned the room, his gaze clearly landing on Echo despite being shielded behind a bucket. He recoiled with his whole body.
“What the hell happened to you, trooper?” he exclaimed.
Echo smiled. “Nothing you can do anything about right now. I’ve got the intel Rex mentioned. I think everyone in this room needs to hear it, but I’ll let you all use your own discretion about who to tell outside of this room.”
Kix settled into parade rest, a nervous tell he shared with Jesse, and, honestly, a lot of younger troopers.
It was very weird to think of Kix as a “younger trooper”.
Echo turned his attention back to the holotable to avoid thinking about it. His scomp rotated slowly as he started moving through [DATAFILE: “CLONE BIOCHIPS”].
“Kix, you missed this part of my introduction, but I’m a clone trooper from the future who’s been brought to your time by a Jedi artifact retrieved on the mission just completed by the generals and the other men in this room. The shiny holding the artifact is me, actually. My name is Echo.”
Kix looked at Shiny Echo and then back at Echo. He nodded. Echo admired his ability to just roll with the crazy, something all medics seemed to share.
The holotable projected the cross-section, now. Kix leaned forwards with interest.
“This is a cross-section of a clone’s brain?” he confirmed. Echo nodded. Then, with alacrity, Kix stepped up to the holo and jabbed one accusing finger straight into the depiction of the biochip. “What’s that?”
“That is a biochip, implanted in the brain of every clone when we’re still in our growth tubes,” Echo explained. As he spoke, the chip lit up red in the projection. “It’s half organic and half tech, so it only shows up on a level five scan.”
“Level fives are intensive; nobody uses those unless you have to scan for cancer or other small anomalies, all of which the kaminoan scientists engineered out of us. I have to get approval from a general before I can authorize a level five medscan,” Kix said.
“Yeah. The kaminoans don’t want us knowing it’s there,” Echo agreed.
General Skywalker crossed his arms, the motion pulling Echo’s attention. The stormy expression he wore shocked Echo; he had never seen the man so angry.
“You all have chips in your heads?” he growled.
“As a Jedi, shouldn’t you know?” Kix asked back. “You ordered us.”
General Kenobi brought up a hand to stroke his beard. “Ah, I would appreciate it if none of you spread what I am about to say outside of this room.”
He received a handful of baffled agreements.
“The Jedi Master who placed the order for the clone army, Master Sifo-Dyas, died about ten years ago. The Jedi Order as a whole was unaware of your existence until I tracked Jango Fett back to Kamino shortly before the Battle of Geonosis,” he revealed. “We are still investigating why, exactly, Master Sifo-Dyas ordered the creation of the clone army, and to that effect we know very little about your origins and have only recently, with the installation of Master Ti on Kamino, learned anything about your upbringing.”
There were a few beats of silence as everyone processed that.
“What do the chips do,” Kix asked, in a voice so flat it could have leveled a mountain.
“This is the part most people don’t know, even in the future,” Echo warned. His scomp clicked over to the next page of [DATAFILE: “CLONE BIOCHIPS”]. They had been unable to recover any of the actual financial records from Kamino, so what was displayed was the coding for the voice-activation aspect of the chips, coded to the voices of LORD SIDIOUS and LORD TYRANNUS, helpfully labeled.
“Tyrannus was the other name on the financial records we discovered on Kamino,” General Kenobi volunteered. “We suspect that whoever he is, he assisted Master Sifo-Dyas with the funds for the clone army, since the Order could hardly afford such a thing.”
“Well, according to what Agent Fulcrum was able to dig up in the future I’m from, Tyrannus was the name that Dooku used as a Sith. Darth Tyrannus. Darth Sidious is his Master,” Echo said.
General Kenobi paled, and General Skywalker’s face dropped the stormy expression to adopt one of anguish instead.
“Wait, but,” Commander Tano interjected. “That would mean that the clone army was ordered by the Sith!”
“I’m afraid that may be what happened, my dear,” General Kenobi said, eyes locked onto the holoprojection. “The timing of Master Sifo-Dyas’s death is far too suspicious. To think that Dooku was already a Sith apprentice, ten years ago... he has been lost to us for far longer than anyone suspected.”
“If this chip was ordered and can be activated by our enemy, then I doubt it has any benign purpose,” Kix stated, crossing his arms. “What does it do.”
“When the Jedi Order asked, the kaminoans told them it limited aggression in the clones that Prime was apparently prone to,” Echo said. He clicked over to the list of Contingency Orders. “Obviously, that was a lie. In reality, the chips have the ability to overwrite the free-will of any clone, once activated. When one of these orders is issued, our brothers don’t have any choice except to obey. My, uh, cybernetic alterations meant that my chip was damaged—it didn’t activate. Everyone who did have theirs activate has described it like following the order was their own choice. They didn’t have any idea that they had been forced until enough time passed for them to reflect on their actions and realize what had happened. We have some evidence that the chips start to break down a while after activation, but we’re not certain why; it seems to happen at different rates in different clones. Rex’s theory is that it has to do with willpower, how willing any individual clone is to fight their chip.”
“These chips were used, in your future?” General Skywalker asked, furious again.
“Yes, sir,” Echo confirmed.
“How many of these Orders were given?” General Kenobi asked, sounding devastated. He held one hand up to the projector like maybe if he could touch the Orders then he could erase them.
“Just the one, as far as I know. Order 66.”
Immediately everyone looked to find it on the list.
[ORDER 66: HUNT DOWN AND EXECUTE THE JEDI AS TRAITORS]
Commander Tano clenched her small hands into fists. “No…”
“It can’t be!” General Skywalker exclaimed.
General Kenobi drew his hand back to himself like the holo had burned him, closing his eyes in pain.
“We must have done something. There’s no way the Jedi didn’t fight back!” General Skywalker shouted.
“You trusted us,” Echo said, quietly. “From what I’ve heard, the Jedi could tell something had changed, through the Force, but they didn’t expect the danger to come from us.”
There was a moment of silence. General Skywalker looked down at Echo with a kind of desperate despair painted across his face. Absurdly, Echo had the thought cross his mind that the General could probably benefit from having a bucket of his own to hide his expressions.
“My squad was on Kaller,” he said, as if possessed. He hadn’t planned to share this. “We’re all modified, in some way, and the only one of us who had their chip successfully activated was our sniper. The other clones turned on the Jedi, and we had no idea what was happening. They killed the General, and the Padawan Commander ran. Our sergeant let him escape, but had to report him dead to spare us from getting executed as traitors, as well.”
“That’s so wrong,” Commander Tano said. “What… what happened to the padawan? Do you remember their name?”
“Commander Dume,” Echo recalled. He had been so excited to meet their squad. He had been so young. “I don’t know what happened to him.” He had been all alone, and hunted, and around the same age as Omega. Had anybody come for him? Protected him? Echo hadn’t even thought about him again until now.
“If Count Dooku has the ability to give the clone army orders that they can’t refuse, why hasn’t he used it yet?” General Kenobi wondered, having regained some of his color.
“Well, Dooku wasn’t the one who sent out the Order. His Sith Master was. We think they were waiting for—” Echo cut himself off.
“Waiting for what?” General Skywalker pushed.
“I don’t think it’s safe to tell you anything more until we get the chips removed from the clones,” Echo said, intentionally making his voice hard the way he did to give orders in the field. “I don’t want to risk tipping off the Sith Master and having him activate the chips until we’re all safe.”
He switched the holo to the next display, which included surgery instructions for both clone medics and medical droids.
“Can you transfer that over to me?” Kix asked immediately.
“Of course,” Echo said, isolating the data and re-downloading it as a separate file. He had long-ago tied his vambrace comm to his headpiece, so he went ahead and sent the file to Kix’s frequency. Immediately, Kix’s comm pinged! with the incoming message.
“That was fast,” Kix said, slowly. Ah. Oops. Right, nobody was used to his abilities as a cyborg.
Echo fell back on an old joke. “Well, we ARC Troopers strive for efficiency.”
A stifled gasp came from behind him.
“You’re an ARC Trooper?” Fives exclaimed.
Echo pointed at him sternly. “Don’t go getting any ideas. Just because it happened in my timeline doesn’t mean you don’t have to work for it.”
Fives nodded rapidly.
“Okay, so we get all the chips out of the clones and then you’ll tell us who the Sith Master is?” General Skywalker broke back in, crossing his arms grumpily.
Well, Echo wasn’t actually sure that was a good idea. According to Fulcrum’s intel, Sidious had killed a good quarter of the Jedi High Council and beaten General Yoda. It would probably be safer to find a sniper's nest and assassinate the guy (like he had framed Fives for attempting). Not that Echo planned to tell that to General Skywalker.
“Sounds like a plan, General,” he said, instead. He deleted [DATAFILE: “CLONE BIOCHIPS”] from the holotable, re-enabled the transmissions receiver, and then removed his scomp, standing up.
“We’ll get started on those removals right away, then,” General Kenobi decided. “Kix, if you would be so kind as to share those instructions with the CMO of the 212th?”
“Of course, General Kenobi,” Kix said, saluting.
“One last thing,” Echo said. “Before any of you leave the room, I need you to promise that the information I’ve shared with you will go no further than the clones and the Jedi. No other natborns at all.”
Commander Cody balked at his tone. “Out of line, trooper!” he barked.
“No, it’s a reasonable request,” General Kenobi said, retreating to lay a steady hand on Cody’s shoulder.
“The Sith Master has an extensive spy network, at the very least,” Echo explained. “That means none of you are going to tell anybody who is not explicitly a clone or a Jedi.” He locked eyes with General Skywalker, deliberately waiting to continue until he was sure the Jedi was looking back. “And especially no droids and no senators.”
“Excuse me?” General Skywalker sputtered.
“If you tell that astromech of yours, I will slice him and remove the data from his memory banks myself,” Echo threatened.
“Excuse me?” General Skywalker repeated, voice significantly more threatening.
“In the future I am from, General, you are dead,” Echo stated. “I’m not letting it happen again.”