Master Sifo-Dyas stood alone on the observation balcony above Kamino’s endless storm-washed oceans, watching rows of white-armored soldiers march in perfect synchronicity. To the Kaminoans, they were a triumph of biology. To Sifo-Dyas, they were a fragile shield against a future only he had glimpsed.
His visions had grown sharper—blinding flashes of metallic swarms blotting out suns, mechanical armies tearing through Republic worlds. Not droids… drones, faster and more ruthless than any Separatist model he had yet encountered. And always, in these visions, the clones failed. Not because they were unskilled… but because they had been designed like ordinary soldiers.
He could not allow that.
So quietly—carefully—he made “suggestions” to the Kaminoan genetic architects.
Sharper tracking algorithms. Predictive targeting routines. Neural reflex patterns optimized for reading machine motion. Everything necessary for a clone to become a perfect antidote to automatons.
And then… the flaw.
A subtle misalignment in organic-neural targeting subroutines. Barely perceptible, almost elegant. It would make them devastatingly lethal against autonomous combatants—yet strangely inaccurate when firing upon living, unpredictable beings. A quirk. A safeguard. A compromise against a horror only he had seen.
“It is not in the original specifications,” Lama Su observed, her voice carrying no judgment—only curiosity.
Sifo-Dyas smiled faintly. “War changes. We must prepare for what is to come, not what has already been.”
But the change came with a cost he did not foresee.
Hours turned to days, days to months. Every spare moment he pored over the clone schematics, refining, correcting, adjusting—trying to perfect the imbalance he believed would one day save the Republic. His visions pressed against his mind like a tidal wave. His obsession grew.
And in that obsessive storm of preparation…
…he failed to see another storm gathering.
A presence watching him from afar.
A former friend, now cloaked in shadow.
A whisper in the Force, familiar yet sharpened by darkness.
Count Dooku.
Sifo-Dyas sensed him only once, fleetingly—like a cold breeze passing behind him in an empty hall. He dismissed it as fatigue, another side effect of endless visions and sleepless nights.
Had he looked deeper, he might have seen the danger.
Had he trusted the Council, he might have found allies.
Had he not buried himself in the code of the clones, he might have lived.
But his mind was on the future—on those metallic armies only he believed in.
And so, Sifo-Dyas never realized that as he tampered with the fate of the clone army…
someone else was already tampering with his fate.
And in the shifting shadows, Dooku smiled.
The perfect army had been created.
And the perfect blind spot had been exploited.
Leave a Reply