Nothing Left To Lose
We were shipping out on another job for the Abyss Watchers. Who was we? A handful of Grievous' Kalee guard and, well, me. I'm a bit easier to explain, and frankly, easier on the eyes. I'm a medic. I'm quite possibly one of the best battlefield medics in the Watchers.
Sure, for a lot of people, battlefield medicine generally means slapping a bacta patch over a blaster burn and having the wounded party call it a day, but sometimes you don't have the luxury of that option.
Sometimes you're out of bacta, like that mess with Thyferra. I really hope we get that worked out soon, because I like that particular miracle of science. It means my job is fewer boring blaster burns and a lot more of the interesting stuff.
Sometimes the patient's allergic to bacta. I knew a guy like that in another unit. Kept having to get cybernetics until he was more machine than man. Got him really depressed. I haven't heard from him in years. Maybe he decided to cash in his chips. Or maybe the battlefield cashed him in.
Once in a while, though, you get something interesting. Neuronic whips tended to make a patient more likely to go into shock, and Tehk'la blades had this nasty tendency to rip and tear through flesh rather than slicing a nice clean cut that would be more easily treated. I'm not here to do easy.
That's why I get called the second most important man in Grievous' unit, behind the man himself. It's why I'm not armed to the teeth like the rest of Grievous' guard. or Grievous. Seriously, you'd think a couple blasters and those big karking blades would be enough, but the man insisted on using a slugthrower rifle too. Some honor-and-glory rot about how taking a life should have an impact on you.
The contrast between us is rather stark. Grievous is over 2 meters tall. I'm a touch over 1.7. He's armed to the teeth. I carry a blaster pistol and a fire blade. Why the fire blade? Imagine, if you will, a light-knife, except designed as a tool rather than a weapon of war. Much more suited to the slicing of bagels than bodies, and just as good at cutting out stubborn locks or not-so-stubborn sections of wall. Grievous puts big huge gashes and holes and burns into the enemy. I...close gashes and holes and treat burns in friendlies.
When I first met Grievous, I was sure he was gonna punch my ticket. "This is ridiculous! How is this little person going to do anything but prevent me from achieving my proper glory? Bah, I should do away with you myself!" he scoffed, pulling those massive blades and pointing them at me. In response, I pivoted away from him and came back holding up the fire blade, doing my level best to show as little fear as possible. Grievous laughed to the rest of his guard and turned away, gesturing for me to follow with them. One of them told me a couple hours later that I'd somehow stumbled into exactly the right move, that there was an old Kalee saying about this. Something to the tune of "When you draw a sword on one who draws a knife and they do not flee, take caution." I'm sure it's more poetic in the native Kalee, but I'm a medic not a poet.
So, now that you know a little about me, and a little about my line of work, and who I work with...I can tell you about our latest job. We're meeting up with the 501st and Anakin Skywalker, to provide "intelligence, logistics, and medical support" to the 501st. I all but leaped out of my seat when I heard the news. Finally, I'd get to treat a species other than Kalee! Then I realized. They were clones. The 501st were clones. Which meant that rather than getting a bunch of different species with different body types, and so on...I'd be getting to treat...one. Two if one of the Kalee got sloppy.
Attached to that message was an eyes-only message to me straight from Spymaster Terrek, about the inhibitor chips, their function, and how I was going to be part of the Abyss Watchers' first move on the inhibitor chips in the active clone army and not just deserters.
"Riphath Althean," I heard from Spymaster Terrek. There was a cut in the recording there, like he was confirming that was actually my name. Look, when your parents name you "Remedy" in Durese and "Healing" in Arkanian, you know you have a limited number of things you can do with your life. Fortunately for me, 'combat medic in a shadow organization that pays absurdly well' is one of them. I'm making the last payment on my med school bills this week after a year of working for the Watchers. Look, you gotta find some way to pay those debts.
"You've been issued with some 'doctored' saline. It's got nanodroids in it, designed to disassemble the inhibitor chips in the brains of the clone troopers into harmless byproducts which are then excreted. Skirata's notes on the subject were quite clear. No negative effects in the immediate term or the long term. Given that they're clones, this should work on all of them more or less the same way. You should be able to find a way to make it work. I want results."
Well, kriff. That made my job a lot more interesting.
I was asleep as we passed the wrecks of some CIS cruisers in orbit over the planet. We apparently did an overflight of the enemy's positions, but I was in the refresher at the time. I figured tomorrow I'd be elbow deep in my fifth emergency and by week's end I'd be lucky to have enough time to change clothes and clean up maybe once. The battlefield doesn't care when you last slept, ate, or used the 'fresher. It only cares about whether you are ready immediately. If you are, there's a chance to save a life, sometimes your own. If you're not? Well, that chance could pass you by while you're catching forty winks on your way to the big long sleep of death.
We touched down with a bunch of supplies for the 501st and Grievous set his crew to moving them. He turned to where I was when he first gave that order, but I wasn't there. Look, for all my skiving off before the job starts, when the time comes I'm ready to roll. I was already establishing a forward aid station and liasing with the clone medics. They loaded the clone medical template to the datapad I ran my diagnostics through and I provided them with large amounts of that saline. "Look, you guys will get plenty of chances to go through your own supplies. Use ours. If you're establishing a line, flush it with my saline. You find a guy with dehydration, load him up with my saline."
"The hell are you, trying to load up my boys with this fierfek?" Well, here we go. The chief medic had a bit of a problem with my saline.
I simply pointed to my shoulder patch. The Abyss Watchers one. "I'm from the Abyss Watchers and I'm here to help. Ask General Skywalker how much he trusts Ciaran."
The medic seethed and went to ask Skywalker. I didn't hear the conversation; Skywalker must have been in another room at the time, but apparently whatever he'd said was something to the tune of "I trust her with my life and my future, anyone she sends, treat them like they're coming from me personally." I got a degree of deference from the chief medic then that I'd never experienced in an aid station before. I mean, I knew Ciaran and Skywalker had a thing, but I was under the impression that the whispers about her relationship with Padme and Anakin were just that; rumors people threw around because they were bored or wanted a fantasy or something.
Well, it was around that time that the counteroffensive happened. I have never met a man so happy to come under enemy fire as Grievous. Something about his whole glory nonsense.
Over the comm channel, I heard Grievous say that he would take down more of the enemy than Skywalker. Skywalker said that wasn't a fair challenge, he wasn't a Jedi and didn't have the Force. "That's right, Jedi. No lightsaber, no Force, no clone army. Oh, and something else I don't have." A shot rang out from across the base. "Anything to lose!"
The casualties came flowing in then, and I ended up presiding over the aid station, a position I wasn't entirely familiar with but ended up handling well enough, I figured. We saw Rex, Fives, Echo, some of the Kalee...it was a brutal counteroffensive. I was lucky I didn't have to see it. I saw enough of it in the wounds from blasters and blades to know I was glad I was at the aid station and not in the actual combat. We ended up seeing something on the order of a thousand troopers over the next week and nearly ran out of the special saline.
Finally, the counteroffensive withdrew. I don't know who won the competition between Grievous and Skywalker...which probably means Skywalker did, because there would be no end to Grievous' boasting if he had won. We left our supplies, did another overflight and informed Skywalker of the enemy's positions again. At least, I think we did. I rather direly needed the 'fresher around then, mostly because my uniform was starting to stick to me. It's a tough job, but someone's gotta keep all these crazy Kalee alive.
--Clone Wars log of Combat Medic Riphath Althean, entry for date 15 years 10 months and 8 days after the Great ReSynchronization
"Are you pulling my leg, Ciaran? Seriously? This isn't some joke? Somebody hiding their identity under a fake name? What kind of parents name their kid 'Remedy' 'Healing' and then expect him to do anything BUT be a frelling doctor? Oh, kark, the mic is still on, I'm gonna have to--"
--Deleted records from the office of Gulan Terrek.
A/N: So this was fun. Always fun to write from a grunt's viewpoint.
