Star Wars: Scars

Part 2 - 5

Skate began laying all of the little Zabracks down after that, picking up a few respirator masks for some of the sicker looking ones and then he had Creed grab a few more blankets and wrapped them all up to keep them warm. Creed just did as he was told and watched. They all looked tiny, and half of them were already asleep by the time Skate had them all settled. A few, though, were beginning to shift and make a tiny mewling sound, like a cat, their faces all scrunched up. 

Creed didn't know what it meant, but it looked kind of funny and he giggled quietly, watching them. Skate looked over at him and smiled, but told Creed to go into the kitchen and get the two bottles in there and the regular milk. Creed fell quiet and nodded, heading off to find those items.

He walked back through the ship the short way, seeing Specter and the other two boys in the cabin of the ship. Both the cadet and the Zabrack boy looked pretty sick, but the cadet looked severely ill and Specter seemed to be attempting to get them apart for the moment. Creed glanced at the three as he passed by, but didn't intervene. 

Instead he kept on course for the kitchen, only to find the Zabrack adult already in there, looking for food. He jumped a little when Creed walked in, looking nervous, but Creed gave him a smile and that seemed to calm him down as he sat back down to eat. Creed moved to the fridge and pulled out the milk, then went hunting for the bottles Skate had mentioned. Why he and Specter had baby bottles onboard the ship, Creed would never know, but they looked pretty old and well used. There were only two, so Creed grabbed them and sprinted back to the medbay. 

He arrived to the sound of at least three of the babies crying and making that mewling noise as he entered. He brought the milk and bottles to Skate who carefully poured enough milk in each bottle to fill it up and handed the bottles off to the first two infants. The third wasn't crying as loudly and Creed watched as Skate scooped it up to keep it quiet until it could have it's turn. 

Creed then looked over at the remaining four, wondering at how alien they looked. There was one with pale grey skin and his eyes were all screwed shut. He seemed sound asleep. Two of them had a rusty reddish colored skin, one had cloudy grey skin and another had an orange tone of skin. Two of them had their eyes all screwed shut and the two that weren't gulping down the contents of the bottles looked asleep. They had humanoid forms, but the colors of their skin and the odd little bumps on their heads baffled Creed. They looked cute, yet cool and strange. 

"Creed, grab me some of the small respirators, okay?" Skate said, still rocking one of the red skinned baby Zabracks. 

Creed nodded and got what Skate requested, and Skate had him put the respirators on two of them and held one respirator for one of the babies that was still working on a bottle.

"Are they Zabracks?" Creed asked, looking up at Skate. 

Nodding, Skate looked down at them. "Yeah, but baby Zabracks are usually called kittens because they don't cry like human kids do, they make little mewling nosies, like baby cats," Skate told him. 

Creed nodded, looking down at the kittens and smiling. One of them was done with the bottle and Creed picked it up, handing it back to Skate who refilled it to feed the kitten in his arms. Creed touched the little red skinned kittens head now that he was done eating and he smiled when he saw that rubbing circles on the baby Zabracks head made him fall asleep. 

Then he noticed Skate watching him and stopped, pulling his hand back. Skate smiled at him, though. "It's okay. You can hold one of them if you want, just be careful," he said.

Creed nodded, but decided to wait. He looked back at the door, wondering about the other cadet and the older Zabrack with him.

"Who was the cadet?" he asked Skate, figuring he would know. 

Skate looked up at him, moving to sit down. "The cadet? That was Dawn. He's an assassin like you, but you probably don't know him."

Cocking his head, Creed gave him a curious look. "Why not?"

"Dawn is a twin. Which means the Kaminoan tried to get rid of him a long time ago. They probably kept the larger twin, but Dawn got culled off. I only know this because I saved the embryo and stuck it back in one of the gestation tubes until it had formed enough to be taken out. Then I took Dawn with me and left," Skate said, sighing softly.

"A twin?" Creed asked. "We're all clones, though, we don't have twins. We already look alike."

Skate looked up at him, thinking a moment before he answered. "You do all look alike, and you do all come from the same DNA, but in order to have twins a cell has to split into two. For example, you don't have a twin which means when they put the cell you came from in the gestation tube, it made one human being. Dawn, however, the cell he was made from split in half after it was put in the gestation tube, meaning that it was growing two human beings. Usually, though, because the Kaminoan cloning process isn't perfect, this results in one smaller embryo and one larger embryo, meaning that either one will survive and one won't, or one will be stunted in some way, and the other won't. In Dawn's case, his size is stunted, which is why he's so small."

Creed nodded thoughtfully as Skate explained. He'd never heard of this before and he suddenly wondered who Dawn's twin was. He hoped it wasn't someone awful and mean like 49 or Tsunami. 

"How come he wasn't on the ship when I got here?" Creed asked after a minute, now aware that the medbay was once more quiet as the kittens had calmed down and most were asleep, even in the one in Skate's arms.

"He got lost, so we had to go find him. He made friends apparently," Skate said.

Nodding, Creed looked at all the kittens. He looked up, though, when he heard the sound of steps behind him and looked back to see Specter enter the room, carrying Dawn, who looked like he'd passed out. The older Zabrack boy was tagging along, not looking too good himself. 

Carrying them both over to another bed, Specter laid down Dawn and motioned Creed over, noting that Skate was busy.

"Creed, get me two respirators, and if you can find the life support kit, bring that too," Specter said softly. Creed nodded resolutely and went to find those items. He returned with them a few moments later, bringing them to Specter. Specter affixed the respirator to both boy's faces and began hooking them both up to life support. The Zabrack boy looked slightly better than Dawn did, and Dawn looked absolutely pale and ill. 

Creed crawled up beside him and touched the cadet's hair. It was the same downy white as his own, but it was long and matted with dirt. Creed shifted to lay down beside the cadet, wondering if Dawn was nice. It would be wonderful to have a real brother again. Even though he had Specter and Skate, they reminded him too much of Haze and he didn't know if he trusted them yet, but if Dawn was nice, Creed could trust him. Plus, they were the same age.

Shifting down some, Creed tried to curl up next to Dawn some when he heard a thin but angry hiss and looked up to see the Zabrack boy glaring at him, one arm reaching protectively towards Dawn. Creed scowled and bared his teeth some, glowering at the zabrack. 

"Hey!" Specter cut in sharply. "Both of you knock it off. Tadem, Creed won't hurt Dawn, just share him, okay. Creed, don't hurt Tadem," Specter ordered. 

"Tadem" looked up at Specter and Creed did too. There was a brief pause and then Tadem nodded quietly and just curled up into Dawn's side, shooting Creed a bit of a look. Creed ignored it and settled down on Dawn's other side, curling up. He looked at Dawn's face as the cadet slept and tried to think of how things would be once he had a brother his own age. 

After a little while he began to doze off, closing his eyes, but his mind was still on Dawn. Creed hoped the cadet wouldn't be like the rest of his batchmates. All he wanted was a brother.