he's a Clone War veteran that got the back of his head blown off and ends up on Cloud City since it's where people go when no one wants them anymore.
Lobot was a hero, but here's the scenario for why/how he would up being a cyborg controlled by Lando's samsung wristwatch:
Light-minutes out from the
clonemaster shipyard and the assault commandoes preparing to wreak havoc on the
clonemaster defenders, the main force of the Republic assault fleet lurked in
the magnetic shadow cast by the supermassive primary star of the system.
“Admiral, priority
alert from the comm frigate!”
“Put
them on,” Shrr Haalasi ordered, staring out the viewport at the approaching
field of battle bathed in the blood-red output of the star.
The squeak-crackle of feedback from
a narrow beam transmission filled the speakers in the admiral’s command chair
and earpiece before the channel cleared itself, and the panicked voice of the
communications officer filled the bridge.
“-peat: Overrode
jamming frequencies of clonemaster intelligence bureau, I need to speak with
the admiral immediately, we have to abort the mission!”
“You have him,
son. What is the cause for alarm?”
“Sir! Admiral.
Sir,” the officer stammered as he regained his composure, and an icy calm
flooded his speech. “We’ve broken through the comm jamming and decrypted the
frequencies the clonemasters have been using in this sector, we have to abort
the mission. We have confirmed deployment of a berserker-class division for
this garrison. The entire deployment is crewed with berserkers.”
Haalasi froze in
his chair for a fraction of a second, his hearts fluttering, and he barely
fought off the instinctive reaction to unsheathe his claws in defense. Only the
most seasoned officer in his fleet would have noticed the temporary loss of
control, and would have been terrified of his reaction.
“Repeat that
again, soldier. And make damn sure you have confirmation in triplicate.”
The voice over the
comm made an audible swallowing sound, trying to muscle down his own fear. “It’s
confirmed, admiral. I decoded the algorithms myself, and our entire pool of
cryptography droids nearly blew out their motivators alerting us. We have to
order the retreat immediately.”
Haalasi glanced
over at his executive officer, and could see the sorrow pulling at every muscle
of her face. The most miniscule shake of her head spelled out the fate of his
assault fleet if they sounded a general retreat. The clonemaster interdictors
would pluck every individual cruiser out of hyperspace and blast them into
slag, and that was only if they managed the full-reverse thrust out of the
gravity well of this near-supernova gigantic star. The attack was specifically
plotted to carve through the clonemaster defensive lines and straight on to the
hidden shipyards whose destruction were the key objective of the mission.
Kaalasi was handpicked to oversee the attack, and the only possible retreat was
predicated on breaking through the defenses of the shipyards, to carry the
fleet out of the gravity well.
The fleet was
assured victory under the admiral, even a pyrrhic victory would have been seen
as a success since the loss of these shipyards would end the ability of the
clonemasters to launch their suicide attacks on the inner core.
But not against
berserker clones. It couldn’t be done.
Even before the
wars broke out, it was long established that a clone could be grown only so
fast, less they risk a crop suffering from Force Madness. The jedi insisted it
was against the natural order of the living Force to grow a sentient biological
organism too quickly; the result being a thinking, freely acting individual
abandoned by the Force to an existence outside of that which filled the entire
galaxy. That exclusion, the sense of absolute solitude and abandonment by the
energy that bound everything together led to a level of insanity that was
unmatched.
The clonemasters
saw the raw power in that aberrance, and seized upon the potential inherent in
the intrinsic detachment of all that was.
Berserker clones
were the result of that experimentation and were deployed midway through the
war. The results were polarizing.
Uncommitted
systems rapidly pledged support to the Republic after the carnage of berserker
attacks on systems was revealed; and on the opposite end of the spectrum, even
more systems pledged allegiance to the clonemaster union if only to avoid the
deployment of that terrible weapon anywhere near their sector.
A berserker
emerged from the special decanting process with nothing but the rapid
subliminal education the clonemasters gave to all of their crops, but specially
modified to control this line with the most barely controlled infinite pool of
rage. Severed permanently from the connection that unified the rest of the
galaxy, a berserker was a universe unto itself. They knew no fear, no pain, no
happiness, no love, the only source of satisfaction was in the destruction that
the force-attuned beings had tried to build.
Jedi felt their
influence dampened, if not outright quashed while encountering them. A fully
committed berserker could shrug off anything but the deepest influence by the
force, wielded by only the most powerful Jedi in the Order. Journeymen,
Apprentices, Knights, even Masters had been slain by the elite berserker
clones, armed and armored in the most arcane of armor and weapons.
An entire division
of berserkers, one hundred thousand warriors specifically bred to bring about
the downfall of civilization, faced the assault fleet. Reflexes faster that any
species in his command, intelligence unmatched by only the elite of the command
corps, savagery unknown since the long-past Sith War. Haalasi had only one
choice to make.
“Mother,” he
whispered to ears he hoped were only his own while surreptitiously fingering
the talisman carried by most of his Trianii people, “I hope not to see you this
day, but if I do let it be with a welcoming embrace in the fields of After the
End.”
Haalasi steadied
himself, and cast a shrewd eye on the holograph of friendly and enemy ships
preparing for engagement. “Break silent running,” he barked to his command
staff. “Let our commandoes know what they’re going to be up against when they
break through. The more spread out the crew of those ships the better, and reload
Yx-Wingbombers with proton bomb charges, we have no plans to take on captives or
surrendered survivors. What we’re going up against do not plan on being any.”
He watched the
scurry of controlled chaotic activity ramp up on the bridge, and almost as an
afterthought gestured to his own communications officer to open a channel.
“Wide broadcast,
if you please, ensign. We need to let everyone know just what we’re heading
into.”
The young ensign
donned a set of earphones and dialed in a basic frequency, and flashed a
double-thumbs up.
Over the signal of
an open, unsecure channel, Haalasi cleared his throat, rubbing the smooth fur
that covered his larynx. “Berserker clones fall like any other target of a
blaster, one flesh burns like the rest. Today they fall just like any other
man. All weapons are free.”
Haalasi gestured
for the closure of the channel, and cast a slightly smug smirk at his first
officer. She shook her head and sighed, a small moment of humor before the
destruction began. Haalasi stood up from his chair and smiled. If this was the
end, the would greet it with open arms.
“When in maximum
range, turbolasers open fire.” He said, feeling the pull of the flagship as it accelerated into
hell.
No comments:
Post a Comment