Order 66

[Major Xeno]

Order 66

Epic FAIL for Palpatine. He shoulda checked twice.

Xxxx

Supreme Chancellor Palpatine grinned as his new apprentice, Darth Vader, left his office, to lead the assault on the Jedi Temple. He sat down in his chair, and activated the long-range Holonet receiver.

He scrolled down the list of names, finally settling on the first one under the folder “Clones.”

Xxxx

“Thank you, Cody,” the man replied, reaching down and gently taking the hilt from his friend and battlefield commander.

With his rough-spun tunic and no other armaments, he didn’t look like he belonged anywhere near the battlefield, blaster fire screaming back and forth around him, armored soldiers on the platform exchanging fire with metallic opponents within the city.

The man turned to the similar lizard mount next to him, and the man seated on top of it. The other man’s tunic was black leather and brown fabric, and he was younger than the other man.

“Come on, Tor, we’ve got a battle to win,” the first man said.

Grinning wildly, Tor Prudii spurred his mount, which raced toward the natural rock bridge leading off the platform along the cliff face. Obi-Wan Kenobi was only a handspan behind him.

As the two Jedi departed, Clone Commander 2224, given name Cody, glanced at the open sky near the cliff face the Jedi were traveling on. He turned to the trooper next to him and pointed to the LAAT/i gunship sailing along the cliff wall.

“Sergeant, get that gunship down here,” he said. “We need rapid entry on the upper levels.”

The trooper nodded and turned away, lifting a hand to the side of his helmet. As he did so, Cody’s handheld hypercomm began beeping. Settling his helmet over his head, he reached down and grabbed the device, holding it up in his right hand and triggering the device’s reception.

A cloaked and hooded figure appeared in washed-out blue over the projector plate. Shifting the device slightly, Cody stared into the holographic cowl and barely, barely, recognized the face of Supreme Chancellor Palpatine. Something had obviously happened to disfigure the chancellor’s face. It was no concern of his. He waited.

“Commander Cody.” Even Palpatine’s voice was disfigured; it was deeper now, more menacing. There was no hint of warmth or compassion at all.

“The time has come. Execute Order 66.”

For a moment, Cody was left to feel the unfamiliar, startling feeling that he had absolutely no idea as to what Palpatine was referring.

Then he flashed back to a brief moment during his commander training under A-17, Alpha. Another ARC, N-13, had entered the training room and held a brief, quiet conversation with Alpha. Cody hadn’t been meaning to listen in, but he was the closest to the two ARCs and could hear what they were saying.


They had been discussing a secret order to kill the Jedi that Tyranus had tried to pay the Kaminoans to indoctrinate into the clones. Due to some contingency payment that had been given to the Kaminoans before the army had even been created, the clones had never been indoctrinated with the order. He briefly tried to remember what order number it had been.

Then, as the number sixty-six flashed in his mind, his blood ran cold. Chancellor Palpatine had just ordered him to kill General Kenobi and General Prudii. His combat instincts told him that everything about this order was wrong.

“That’s a negative, Chancellor,” Cody said. He paused for a moment, then said, “Can’t comply with an order of that magnitude without the executive confirmation code.”

It was total osik, but it was the first thing that came to his waiting to hear anything else from the Chancellor, he switched off the hypercomm and threw it off the side of the platform. With cold apprehension coursing through his veins, he turned to see that the trooper was trying to get his attention.

“That’s a negative on the Larty, Commander,” the trooper replied. “The 501st is using it for special operations.”

Under normal circumstances, Cody would’ve simply tried to get another gunship. But something caused him to grab the trooper’s arm as he began to turn away.

“The 501st. They’re Chancellor Palpatine’s personal legion, right? They get all the missions he deems high priority?”

The trooper nodded.

Cody swore, violently. Releasing the trooper, he turned to the AT-TE on the platform behind him, whistling sharply to get the attention of the open-air turret gunner.

“Private!” he shouted, glancing at his helmet display’s ID scanner. He pointed to the LAAT/i gunship. “Blast that Larty out of the sky!”

“Sir?” the gunner asked.

“Did I stutter, trooper?” Cody shouted back. He turned around to review the scene before him. The lizard mounts of Kenobi and Prudii were scrabbling for purchase on the narrow ledge running along the cliff face.

Floating in midair, almost on their same level, the gunship was turning toward them, bringing its considerable arsenal of weaponry to bear on them.

Cody pointed to the gunship with his right hand. “Blast ’im!”

Without another word, the gunner complied. A blast of blue energy shot out of the swiveling turret, arcing through the air to crash directly into the cockpit of the gunship.

The forward section of the gunship disappeared in a ball of flame and smoke, and the entire vehicle dropped a dozen meters. What remained of its nose came up, and for a moment it looked like the gunship would recover itself.

[Major Xeno]

Then the concussion missile magazine detonated, ripping the remains of the gunship apart in a massive fireball that filled the center of the sinkhole. Flaming shrapnel bounced off the canyon walls and descended into the abyss kilometers below.

When the smoke cleared, he could not see either Kenobi or Prudii, and feared that in trying to save them, he had, in fact, killed them.

“Cody!” Kenobi’s shocked voice called across his helmet comlink. “What the blazes was that? Did you just shoot down one of our own gunships?”

Relief washed over the commander. “A bad bit of business, General Kenobi,” Cody replied. “It seems that the Chancellor’s put out a bounty on Jedi heads, and that gunship tried to cash it in.”

Xxxx

On the crystalline world of Mygeeto, blasterfire rained down on the damaged bridge spanning between the city and the landing platform. Two ovular missile turrets on spindly legs took up positions on the Separatist side of the bridge, hurling one proton projectile after another at the advancing Galactic Marines. One missile shot beneath a boxy Unstable-Terrain Armored Transport and detonated, pitching the vehicle over the side of the bridge in flames.

Battle droids advanced rigidly toward the center of the bridge, their blasters spitting hot red energy at the advancing clones. A Marine pitched forward, smoke pouring from the gaping hole in his chest plate. Jedi General Ki-Adi-Mundi took a step toward the fallen clone, his lightsaber sparking and hissing as it reflected one, two, three blaster bolts back in the direction they’d come. Taking advantage of the Jedi’s action, another Marine dropped into the cover the downed man had occupied, dragging him back behind cover.

Ahead of them, a trio of Armored Assault Tanks rumbled onto the bridge, firing their main turrets and sideboard laser cannons into the Marine group. Several Marines screamed as they were thrown bodily by the shockwave of the blasts, at least two sailing over the side of the bridge. Ki-Adi-Mundi stepped back behind the cover of a ruined UT-AT, his lightsaber humming as he assessed the situation.

Further back, clone commander 1138, Bacara, drove his helmeted head forward, hard, into the faceplate of an air battle droid that had risen up from beneath the bridge to ambush the Marines. The droid was stunned for a fraction of a second, long enough for Bacara to free his right arm. He grabbed the droid around the neck, then ran forward, driving it back into a piece of debris. A sheared-off metal pipe impaled the droid, which immediately locked up, releasing the clone commander.

Stepping back, Bacara watched the dying droid for a moment, then brought up his blaster carbine and slammed the butt into the droid’s face, shattering its visual sensor. He then turned toward the advancing line of Marines, took quick stock of the situation, and signaled for two nearby Marines to pull the PL-X missile launchers from the wreckage of the nearest UT-AT.

As they did this, Bacara’s helmet comlink began to beep at him, indicating a priority communication. With a glance and a blink to the correct eye-activated sensor, a voice broke over the sounds of the battlefield: “Execute Order Sixty-Six.”

Without even replying, the brusque clone commander shut off the communication, then began to run from one piece of cover to another, advancing toward Ki-Ad-Mundi. As he approached, he sent a comlink message to the Marine nearest Mundi, the one who had pulled the fallen Marine out of harm’s way. “Jenson! Where are the 501st troopers?”

Far ahead of him, Bacara saw the Marine look around at their side of the battlefield, then turn back and fire at an oncoming super battle droid. “Moving to the front, sir,” the Marine answered. “Heading to General Mundi’s position.”

Bacara swore, violently. “Get some men and meet me at the general’s location. The 501st are about to blow Mundi away.”

The Marine didn’t ask questions. “As you command.”

At the front of the lines, Mundi stepped out of his cover, his green lightsaber reflecting a super battle droid’s blaster bolt back into its own head, knocking the war droid over. Braving a hailstorm of Separatist fire, Mundi looked back at the covering Marines, including the six troopers on loan from the 501st.

“Come on!” he shouted, then began to move forward.

No one followed.

Mundi stopped in his tracks as he heard the scratch of heavy boots on the debris of the bridge. He turned slowly, listening to the clicking and whirring of the six 501st blasters as the troopers reconfigured them to fire faster bolts at closer range, then level them on the Jedi. Behind them, he saw a dozen Marines stand up from behind their cover, also leveling their blasters.

Then, seemingly defying the natural order of the universe, the Marines opened fire, their blasters aimed not at Mundi himself, but at the half-dozen 501st troopers. The blue-armored clones cried out in pain and outrage, pitching forward onto the bridge, all except for two. Of these two, one turned to fire back at the Marines, catching one of the overcoat-clad men in the shoulder and knocking him onto his back. The other trooper, the 501st sergeant, fired at Mundi.

The Jedi’s lightsaber immediately came about, parrying the blaster bolts. Most of them went wide, but two shot into the exposed back of the other 501st trooper. A gurgling sound escaped the falling man, before being cut off as a Marine’s sniper shot disintegrated his faceplate.

Before the 501st sergeant could loose another volley of bolts, Commander Bacara suddenly appeared behind him, and the hard splintering sound of a blade being driven through plastoid armor broke over the sound of the battle. The hardy clone commander then grabbed the bleeding trooper by his arm, pulled him to the side of the bridge, and shoved him off the side with a hard boot to the man’s back. The sergeant’s scream echoed down the chasm.

Xxxx

Felucia, in the Outer Rim.

A formation of armored Republic vehicles crunched through the fungal forests, consisting of an AT-TE, an All-Terrain Open Transport, two All-Terrain Attack Pods, another AT-OT, and another AT-TE bringing up the rear. A pair of strange, long-tailed birds passed over the convoy, drawing the attention of several of the troopers sitting in the open-backed transport.

[Major Xeno]

On the ground, Aayla Secura, Commander Bly, and several of the commander’s lieutenants walked under the nose of the lead AT-TE, moving to the right of the convoy to continue their patrol for any Separatist forces lying in ambush.

To the left of the AT-TE, one of Bly’s lieutenants marched alongside another clone, mounted on a Felucian gelagrub, a large blue ground slug. “We’ve been getting scattered reports of the 501st trying to take out the Jedi on varying fronts,” the mounted trooper said. “No word yet on casualties.”

Nodding, the lieutenant turned and jogged beneath the nose of the AT-TE, doubtless spooking the pilot into thinking he’d been mashed flat, and trotted to join Bly and Secura’s group. Once there, he communicated the information he’d received to the clone commander via their helmet comlinks.

As Aayla approached the overlook of a small valley, Bly signaled his men to form a protective echelon around the Jedi; there were units of the 501st on-planet, and he didn’t want them getting the better of their group.
At the crest of the overlook, Aayla stopped, looking into the valley, noting the silence of the native life. She tightened her grip on her lightsaber. “Bly, do you think it’s droids?” she asked.

“Worse,” the commander replied, stepping up beside her. “Us.”

The Twi’lek Jedi turned a perplexed expression to the clone commander, but before she could ask him what he meant, a rustling sound spooked a native bird into flight, temporarily distracting her.

In an instant, four clones wearing the distinctive blue-striped armor of the 501st Legion moved out of the underbrush, their blasters leveled at her. Bly and his lieutenants reacted immediately. Their blasters snapped to, and a vicious firefight erupted between them.

A 501st trooper let out a startled cry as a blaster bolt burned through his chest, spinning him around and dropping him to the moist ground. Two of Bly’s lieutenants dropped, one shot in the head, the other through the side of his stomach. The second man hit the ground, swore violently, and kept shooting.

The armored figure of Commander Bly stepped directly between Aayla and the traitorous 501st troops, the strobes of blaster fire casting harsh blue highlights on his armor. Then Bly’s entire body shook as though he’d been electrocuted and the commander pitched onto his back, black holes burned into his armor.

By now, Aayla was over the shock of the 501st attacking them, and was moving to attack. Her blue lightsaber erupted into existence, parrying the bolts of the two remaining 501st troopers; the third was a smoking heap of armor thrown against a tree when one of Bly’s crafty lieutenants threw a mine at the trooper, then shot it in midair.

The Jedi’s lightsaber cut down hard, shearing off the right leg of the leftmost trooper at the knee. The armored man screamed in pain, hopping away on his remaining leg, as Aayla swung into a full circle, her lightsaber coming back high and lopping off the trooper’s helmeted head. The man collapsed bonelessly to the ground.
Now moving past the last remaining trooper, Aayla gently swung her lightsaber backwards, laying open the clone’s back and pitching him forward onto his stomach, where a blaster bolt from one of Bly’s lieutenants burst his helmet like a rotten fruit.

Deactivating her lightsaber, Aayla turned to see several of Bly’s lieutenants kneeling around their fallen commander. One trooper had taken his helmet off, and Aayla was relieved to see Bly slowly getting to his feet, discarding his smoking breastplate. Her vision swam, and Aayla hugged Bly, ignoring the shock and surprise on his face.

Xxxx

Kashyyyk, homeworld of the Wookiees, Mid-Rim.

In the highest command center overlooking the Battle of Kachirho, Yoda, the Grand Master of the Jedi Order, stumbled forward, his gimer stick clattering to the wooden floor of the command center as the diminutive Jedi Master lifted his hand to his chest. He had always been able to feel the deaths of Jedi, even Padawans and younglings.

Death was what he was feeling now, both widespread and concentrated. Confusion and fear mingled with the feeling of death. Across the galaxy, Jedi were dying. But it wasn’t a pervasive death, not a wholesale purge of the Jedi.

The battlefield below rumbled with explosions as Yoda leaned against a branch of the Kachirho Tree, struggling to comprehend the wash of feelings and sensations flowing to him through the Force.

Xxxx

In the skies of Cato Neimoidia, Jedi Master Plo Koon soared through one of the canyon-cities that had been captured by the special forces unit of the 501st. The wind whistled over the airfoils of his Delta-7 Aethersprite starfighter, one of the few still in use by the Jedi. Behind him, a trio of ARC-170 starfighters cut through the air currents, sideslipping and changing altitude to avoid the “streets” of the city stretching across the canyon on vast bridges.

Inside the cockpit of the lead ARC-170, Clone Captain Jag glanced up from his instruments as the hooded form of Chancellor Palpatine appeared in holo above his console.

“Execute Order 66.”

The hologram winked out, leaving Commander Jag with a perplexed expression, and the question “What?” slipping out.

In the center cockpit behind Jag, his weapons officer called down to him, “Sir, the 501st are warning us out of their firing zone.”

Instinctively, Jag glanced down at his sensors. “Why? I’m not reading any Sep craft in the area.”

“No idea. They’re just warning us to get clear or risk being hit.”

Before Jag could reply, a blue burst of energy, a turret round from an AT-TE, rose up from one of the bridges and barely missed Plo Koon’s swerving fighter. Plo Koon spiraled through the city, dodging blaster fire from the 501st, as he weaved through buildings, avoiding any ground fire as he fled.

Swearing a violent Mandalorian oath, Jag led his pilots in a break away from the bridge, then circled around and opened fire on the attacking AT-TE, green laser fire shearing through the flexible joint of the main turret and sending the turret, with the gunner still aboard, falling into the canyon below.

[Major Xeno]

The AT-TE turret gained speed rapidly in its descent toward the bottom of the canyon.

Xxx

On the beaches of Kachirho, three Wookiees pumped explosive quarrel after explosive quarrel into the sides of a Corporate Alliance snail droid, until finally the besieged vehicle exploded, destroying the four battle droids near it, and pitching one high into the air. A pair of oncoming Wookiee air catamarans were forced to dodge to either side to avoid the flying droid-missile.

The catamarans soared over the beachfront, the Wookiees riding them firing hand bowcasters at the droid units below them. One well-placed shot tagged the reactor plate of a passing HMP Separatist gunship, blasting a hole into the side of the craft and sending it streaming toward the ground below.

From behind a seawall, a dozen HAVw AG Juggernaut turbotanks roared into the battle, the massive wheeled tanks dwarfing the other vehicles of the battlefront as they sprayed missiles and laser fire into the oncoming droid ranks. Equally-large AT-APs joined the charge, bringing the Separatist advance to a grinding halt and crushing back their front-line forces.

High above the battle, in the uppermost command center of the Republic, CC-1004, Commander Gree, stared through the green-tinted lens of his helmet at the vanishing hologram of Chancellor Palpatine. If the commander had any idea what ‘Order 66’ pertained to, he likely would have followed the order without question.

Perhaps Master Yoda knew about the order. Slipping the miniature holocomm back into his utility belt, Gree turned and walked toward the front of the command center, where Yoda, Chewbacca the Wookiee, and Chewbacca’s father Tarrful stood watching the unfolding battle. One of Gree’s subcommanders was also in the command center, relaying data down to the frontline units. The two clones exchanged a nod, then the subcommander resumed his duty as Gree took a knee beside Yoda.

“Master Yoda, I just received a holocomm call from Chancellor Palpatine, instructing me to carry out Order 66,” Gree asked respectfully. “Do you have any idea what he’s referring to?”

The diminutive Jedi Master looked at the clone commander, and Gree realized that he had never before seen the expression he was seeing on the Jedi’s face. It was pure, unparalleled fear.

“Fear I do,” Yoda said, “that played for fools, we all have been.”

Gree tilted his helmeted head to the side. “Played for fools?”

“Strong is the dark side right now,” Yoda replied. “Attempting to kill the Jedi, the Sith are.”

It clicked in the commander’s mind. “Order 66 is an order to eliminate the Jedi commanders.”

The green Jedi nodded once, his right hand plucking his lightsaber from his belt. “Ready, we must be, for our enemies to strike us.”

Nodding, Commander Gree stood up and recalibrated his blaster carbine, the weapon clicking and whirring as he changed its power settings to fire more powerful, slower shots at closer range. He turned his head to inform his subcommander of the events, just in time to see a blue blaster bolt strike the back of the clone’s helmet.

The subcommander pitched forward, falling out of the command center, his scream drowned out by the sounds of the battle below.

With time dilating to his perception, Commander Gree looked toward the walkway to the central command center to see a half-dozen blue-striped 501st Legion troopers marching at them, their blasters blazing. On instinct, Gree raised his blaster carbine and shot back, watching in satisfaction as his hastily-snapped shots took one of the attacking clones in the shoulder, spinning him around and throwing him off the walkway to the ground below.

But as he knew would happen, he felt hot fire burn through him, the shock of superheated tissues exploding knocking him backwards. He stumbled back, still firing, and watched another trooper crumple to the ground, a charred mass replacing his stomach. Another bolt caught him in the right shoulder, the impact spinning him around to fall onto his stomach, but as his vision cleared, he realized that he had already been on the edge of the command center, and he had nowhere to go but down to the beach, hundreds of meters below.

Gree refused to scream as he began the fatal plunge down toward the battle. But only a second into the fall, he felt as though he’d been seized by a tractor beam. He looked back over his shoulder to see Yoda standing on the edge of the platform, both hands in grasping positions toward the commander, and Gree knew that Yoda had saved his life.

As Yoda drew upon the Force to pull the commander back onto the platform, Gree heard the discharging of Wookiee bowcasters, and more screaming. His left hand grasped the edge of the platform and he pulled himself back up, his carbine clattering across the wooden floor. The second he looked up, he heard the snap-hiss of Yoda’s lightsaber igniting, then the Jedi Master was flying through the air toward the last two clones, their blaster shots flying wide as Yoda’s green blade burned through both their throats, cleanly decapitating the troopers.

Deactivating his lightsaber, Yoda looked around at the scene of carnage as Tarrful and Chewbacca queried one another about what they had just seen, then decided that leaving would be the best course of action. Tarrful stepped over to Gree and, demonstrating the remarkable strength of Wookiees, lifted the clone commander bodily and slung him over his broad, furred shoulders, while Yoda scrambled up Chewbacca’s arm to sit on his shoulder.

With their commanders secured, Tarrful and Chewbacca quickly made their way off of the command platform, heading into the relative safety of the Kachirho Tree.

Xxxx

So, in short, Order 66 backfires, most clones obey, but the most important (Badass) clones + Jedi live. Skywalker still dark side.

Tor Prudii is my OC, or Original Character

[Myrdraxxis]

I coulda swon Iv read this before, is this on FF.net?

[Major Xeno]

Well, N-13 is from I Refuse, and Tor Prudii is from my concept, Bloody Pirates. So I'm pretty sure it's mine.