Worth: A Star Wars Story

0. What's In a Name

17 BBY, Two Years Following the End of the Clone Wars

"Who let a Clone teach?" I had learned to ignore most of the Imps at the academy. All the new greys asked the same question whenever they saw me. I had more combat experience in my pinky than they had in their entire body, but none of that mattered to them. I was a Clone Trooper of the Grand Army of the Republic.

And I was worthless.

I had failed in my one singular purpose. Now, I was just one more cog in the endless machine - always cranking out new parts. Only, I was training the new parts.

A few of them called me "Instructor", some called me "Seetee", even more just called me "Clone", but I called myself "Kando". It was a name with a reminder attached to it that I picked out one day on Kamino, a promise that regardless of what the Kaminoans thought, that I had kando. I had worth. No one in that hangar knew what that word meant. I doubt many of them cared. I was one of the few remaining clones in the Empire. I was a constant reminder that the galaxy's greatest military was built on the backs of myself and several million of my brothers.

"You are getting all of those castoffs again, Clone," one of the grey-haired officers quipped from beside me. "Heard there are quite a few orphans in this batch and a handful of street rats. Sounds like just the group of cadets for you."

I bit my tongue at my initial remark that threatened to jump out of my mouth and slug him straight in the jaw. Instead, I turned to him and smiled, "Good. Always did like a challenge."

The officer grimaced as though I had just spit in his tea as I turned back to watch the shuttles land in the hangar bay, and I couldn't help but smile a bit to myself. I made them uncomfortable. I went against everything they had been taught about us clones. I was good at my job. I excelled with my students. The fact that I was supposed to be a screw-up, yet had one of the highest graduation rates in the academy was messing with their internal computers like they were some clankers that couldn't process an equation.

Clones = Incompetent

Kando = Competent

ERROR// Impossible... Clones =/= Competent.

It made me chuckle.

What came off those ships that day never did sit well with me. They were barely adults, if they were adults at all. Most of these kids looked no older than thirteen, and while I was a seasoned veteran by that point, my body was at least fifty or so. These were all still lanky kids who barely fit their own bodies yet. I looked over the cadets, most of them cushy Core Worlders from families who already used their favors putting a kid into the navy. There was one kid who stood out, though. He must have lied to make it into the academy because he looked no older than twelve. He was skinny, wrists knobby just below the sleeve of the uniform, dark-ringed eyes, and sunken cheeks. He met my eyes without hesitation, with a look in them that seemed to say, "Hit me with your best shot". He was street raised and tough. I didn't need to see his papers to know what they'd say.

Family: None

Occupation: None

It was always the same, and those kids either made the best-damned soldiers I ever trained or they flunked out in days. Something about him told me he was the former. There was a hunger there - not really ambition so much as pride. He was going to be a trooper if it killed him. I smiled a little bit at him and received half of one in return.

They sorted them like animals going into auction lots. Sure enough, the files that got transferred to my datapad were all files for pickpockets, orphans, slaves, and other kids who were down on their luck. One was the orphan of an Imperial captain, another some street rat from Jakku, but it was the one who I spotted earlier who caught my eye.

Family: Agent Tarth Ruana (Deceased), Unknown Human Slave (Possibly Deceased)

Occupation: Unemployed

The kid had an Imperial family, but for some reason, he was mixed up in this lot. I had my suspicions as to why, but chances are that the kid didn't even know who his father even was. I wandered over to him as I checked over the cadets and paused in front of him, datapad in hand.

"What's your name, kid?" I asked him, trying my best to be as intimidating as possible. I would be the easiest person they'd meet once they left the academy - not that they knew it yet.

"Cadet Number 65780, sir."

Something about that hit me. Most of them replied with a name. A real name. This kid either cared so little about himself that a new name was barely a change, he was an overeager kid, or he was ready to leave whatever he had been behind. I caught his eyes again. He was a fighter. Something told me he always had been. Kids shouldn't look like that, but there he was, looking up at me with the eyes of a man three times his age. He reminded me of someone I had known a long time ago.

More than that, names were everything. None of us went by our numbers during the Clone Wars, at least not to one another. I was Kando. There was Fox, Thire, Hound, Red, Grek, Tor... All names I had put in a box somewhere in the back of my mind until that knobby legged boy from Corellia brought them all back like a runaway speeder.

"I mean your name, Cadet," I pressed, glancing down at him as I lowered the datapad.

He seemed to hesitate for a moment before he replied, "Ithan Ruana, sir."

"I'm CT-7209, but you can call me Instructor Kando. I'm going to be shaping you into a soldier of the Empire. Think you can handle it?"

"Yes, sir. I do."

I couldn't help but smile at the conviction in his voice. It was like hearing a thousand long-silenced voices all at once in those four words.

A thousand long-silenced voices that all became one in particular from the depths of my memory that I thought I forgot a long time ago.

"Well, that name won't do at all. How about... Shiny?" The kid looked up at me with confusion plastered all over his face, but he simply gave me a nod. I don't think he quite knew what to do with it, but he accepted it.

I knew from the moment I met him that Shiny and I were going to get along just fine.

I stopped in front of my motley crew of cadets and watched their nervous faces all stare back at me like I was a dress wearing tap dancing bantha. They must have heard stories about Clones. Hell, the Clone Wars was only two years out by that point. I would have been more surprised if they didn't have some kind of reaction to my rather singular appearance. They reminded me of the little Clone Cadets that would be brought to Coruscant on training exercises, all wide-eyed and seeming to be simultaneously excited and scared in equal measure.

I could teach them. All I was going to need was time, and if they were half the fighters that I could tell Shiny was, then it was going to be a piece of cake.

"My name is Kando," I began as those faces all seemed to transform into ones much more familiar, taking me back again to a time that seemed so long ago, "but you can call me Commander or sir."