Star Wars Republic Commando: Knight of Honor ✓

Chapter 52

Author's Note: If you have any tips writing tips, please feel free to comment.

As always, I continue to hope that I am doing justice to the spirit of Star Wars as well the respective authors and characters from which I borrow. Again, I gratefully accept constructive criticism as a means to help me develop my skills further as a writer.

Mandalorian (Mando'a) words

Beskar'gam (BES-kar-GAM): armor

Buy'ce (BOO-chay, BOO-shay): helmet; Colloquially: pint, bucket

Ika (EE-kah): diminutive suffix written as 'ika - also added to a name as a very familiar or childhood form, e.g, Ord'ika - Little Ordo

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Chapter 52

For centuries, the palace guards were responsible for the safety of the royal family. I wasn't too keen on the Republic Army stepping into our territory, but at least they knew their limits. The Empire took away the only employment I've ever had, and now that I've been removed from that honor, I find civilian life is much more complicated than I ever imagined.

Chora Wsau, former Tochin palace guard

Tochin Moon III, 82 Days after Order 66

Three days was all the Skirata Nulls needed to supply Jas and Dusty with a ship, tech, new identities, and credits. The two men who were once members of Crimson Squad knew that they had to go in covertly and unrecognizable onto Tochin. 

It was a known fact now that desertion from the military was a crime punishable by death, and Palpatine was not going to waste resources holding trials for clone deserters. It seemed that an unofficial policy of "shoot on sight" had been instilled for much of the galaxy, and Jas could only assume that Harkin had implemented that policy as well.

Jas and Dusty knew it would have been too suspicious for both of them to go throughout the galaxy and onto Tochin together in beskar'gam so Dusty opted instead to disguise his distinctive dark hair and dark eyed Jango Fett features. 

He dyed his hair and slipped a pair of contacts into his eyes. Rather than be the blue-eyed blonde he was on Denon for the mission with Cerina Browlin, he now changed his hair to be that orange tint humans referred to as red. Just to make it look even more convincing, he added a couple of gray highlights to the hair by his temples to provide him with what he thought of as an air of sophistication. 

Dusty had even changed the shade of his eyes with the contacts as his irises no longer reflected the deep brown that was so familiar on every clone, but instead, they reflected a much lighter hue that resembled caf with creamer in it. Those small changes alone had transformed Dusty into a man that was not recognizable as a deserted clone. 

To finalize the character, Ordo and his brothers created an identity for Dusty, where he got to portray a similar persona to the one he had on Denon: he was a real estate mogul, and his current interest was in a certain Tochinite equinine farm that had burned down a number of years ago.

Jas' involvement with this mission required that he be less visual, but it was imperative that he continued to be a part of it. They had decided that it would be best for him not to alter his appearance in the event that he had an opportunity to contact Les'ika. 

Jas had also brought up the additional concern that they had no idea what kind of mental and emotional state she would be in after the death of her family, and altering his appearance might make earning her trust even more difficult when the chance comes for him to make contact with her.