Clone Force 99

"... Call themselves the Bad Batch, they do."

When they heard the Jedi, the two members of Hell Squad exchanged a glance. They had been through almost three years of war, and had heard the troopers give nicknames for themselves, their brothers, their units, and even their legions. But Bad Batch was new.

Clearly, the Jedis noticed their surprise, because as soon as General Yoda disconnected, General Shaak Ti gave Dageer a datapad.

"Everything you will need to know about Clone Force 99 is here."

"Clone Force 99? As in..."

Brain couldn't refrain from asking. After all the number 99 was all too familiar to him. But the Jedi just shook her head.

"Go through it on your way to training bay A-12. And take your whole squad, commander. Delta Squad will be there too. As you will discover, the Bad Batch can be quite... difficult to deal with. That's why we chose Hell Squad to take over their training."

Dageer stared at the Togruta. As soon as she said the name of this unit, something has clicked inside his head.

"This has to do with the Third Battle of Kamino, doesn't it?"

General Shaak Ti nodded.

"How long will this training take? Hell Squad is needed outside. There is a war still going on."

The Jedi frowned ever so slightly. Few, or no clones, in the entire Republic army would dare to make as many questions as Dageer was. His squad members were slightly more disciplined than him, but they too always questioned their orders. That said, they never disobeyed them, or at least not in a way that jeopardized the Republic's plans. Maybe that was a consequence of everything Hell Squad went through, she thought.

"They already completed their basic training. Hell Squad will need to show them what they can't learn here. After all, our instructors haven't seen battle in many years. As for the time... A month. That was the time you would stay here recovering."

"Understood."

The two clones turned around to leave when General Shaak Ti stopped them, and glared straight at their eyes.

"Commander Dageer, remember something... I know why you want to get back into the war so quickly. And the Republic knows everything you and your men have done for us, and what you still have to do. But it's for those same reasons that we need more units like Hell Squad. So Ryloth doesn't happen again, and so this war can end sooner."

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Looking at the backs of the two soldiers, General Shaak Ti frowned harder. She didn't like Hell Squad. In her opinion, they were too unstable after the Battle of Ryloth. They questioned orders, or followed them not in the way they were supposed to do. A survivor of the 303rd Attack Legion had betrayed the Republic, and several others showed signs of losing control over their emotions. For clones breed to battle, this wasn't normal. But, above all else, she didn't like them because of Ragout.

She liked the young Jedi very much. She had taught him a thing or two back in the Jedi Temple, when he was just a youngling. And she had been very good friends with his master. She and General Di had been padawans at the same time, and their masters were close too. She didn't like seeing the apprentice of her oldest friend being so attached to a group of clones.

More than once, when Hell Squad had been brought up by the Jedi Council - and that happened a lot, especially during military meetings - Ragout defended the unit to the point of creating disagreements with his fellow Jedi Masters.

Special units had a very high death rate, for obvious reasons. They were always in the fiercest of battles, or alone behind enemy lines. Few units survived more than a few months, and only two had been alive since the start of the Clone Wars: Hell Squad and Delta Squad.

Ragout was too emotionally close to Hell Squad, who could die at any time in some obscure corner of the galaxy. He would surely suffer deeply if and when that happened. And pain and anger were dangerous companions, very close to the Dark Side.

Sighing, General Shaak Ti turned back to the hologram table, and to all the documents she had to go through. She might dislike Hell Squad, but she had to admit that the Republic needed them. It was incredible that seven men, insignificant before the millions that composed the Clone Army, could make such a difference.

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"I have the information you wanted, Your Highness. About Hell Squad."

"Tell me."

"It is as you predicted, my lord. They are a lot more independent than normal clones. The emotional impact of the fall of their legion seems to have overridden their inhibitor chips, but the Kaminoans guarantee that there is no way for them to break away from your control. The most that will happen is that they might disobey orders from others, but not you, my lord."

"Uhm... Interesting..."

"Should we bring them in and fix their chips? Or deal with them?"

"No. I am curious to see how they will develop. Tell the cloners to keep them under their watch. The data could be useful. Meanwhile, have you already chosen who will test the... command?"

"Yes, my lord. We are ready to implement it."

"Good, good. Puny Jedi Order, your time is coming. Hahahahahahaha!"

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"Who are they, sir?"

"Dageer? Did the Jedi tell you the same she told me?"

Dageer and Brain soon joined the rest of Hell Squad, as well as Delta Squad, outside training bay A-12. Boss frowned when he saw the datapad in Dageer's hands. Clearly, he didn't like the idea of becoming an instructor.

"Yeah."

The commander only nodded, still focused on the datapad. Brain, Tech, Metal, Dab, Cell, Three-four, Scorch, Fixer, and Sev all looked at the two of them, impatiently. Up till now, only Dageer and Boss knew what was going on.

"Who are they, sir?"

Dageer looked at Boss, and his brother gave a small nod of encouragement.

"Clone Force 99. Named after 99. You all knew him. He died during the Third Battle of Kamino. During the battle, several of our installations here were damaged or destroyed, and one of the core pieces of the clone production was stolen by Ventress, although General Skywalker got it back. However, the small time the sample was out of the machines, a batch of embryos died. Only four of them survived. Deformed and... defective, but with some special abilities."

He spit it all out in one breath, frowning all the time, especially when he called them 'defective'. He didn't like to refer to his brothers with those words, but that was what it said in the datapad General Shaak Ti gave him. The troopers around him were all looking stern, having understood why their two squads had been chosen to train the Bad Batch.

"What abilities?"

"You will see."

Dageer didn't want to get into more details. He and Boss had already read the files of the Bad Batch, and knew that the squad was undisciplined, disrespectful, and arrogant. However, the two made a silent agreement of letting their men decide what they thought of the Bad Batch after they had talked with them. After all, that would affect how the training would progress.

Seeing several heads nodding, Dageer opened the doors of the training bay to find the weirdest group of clones he had ever seen.