Odds

"Odds" is a short story which appeared in Star Wars Insider 87, written by Karen Traviss and illustrated by Robert Hendrickson. It is set 65 to 67 standard days after the end of Republic Commando: Triple Zero, 460 standard days after the First Battle of Geonosis, and features Mereel, Atin, Kal Skirata, and Prudii. It was reprinted as a bonus story in Republic Commando: True Colors, under the extended title of "Republic Commando: Odds".
==Plot summary==
Omega Squad is separated, with Atin and Prudii on the planet Olanet, home to a Separatist droid factory. They silently break into the factory to adjust automated settings in construction of battle droids. Prudii substitutes a data wafer and does some additional wire cutting to trick the computer into adding too much carvanium to the durasteel used in creating the droids, making them brittle in combat but appear normal during inspection. Extracted data from the wafers gave them a figure of roughly a million droids running off the lines per year per factory, well below the claims of the droid army of "quadrillions". They find the claims to now be propaganda and wonder why there are only 3 million clones to fight them.
Back on Kamino, N-7 (Mereel) seeks the missing Kaminoan scientist Ko Sai who has defected to the opposite side of the war, creating distrust among the Nulls to the Kaminoans. He would narrow down the search to cloning capitals Khomm and Arkania to find her. He recalls the failed experiment by the Kaminoans that nearly killed him and his brothers, before Kal Skirata saved them. N-7 decides to find out what has really been occurring between Kamino and the rest of the galaxy and sneaks into a regular clone trooper suit. He blends in with troopers getting diagnostics at one of the computer terminal ports. A normal check would take 30 seconds, but after several minutes of downloading data into his HUD, several troopers and a Kaminoan become suspicious. N-7 escapes by explaining a slow data response and pretends to proceed to get the problem fixed, blending back into the crowd of troopers.
On the Special Ops Freighter TIV Z766/2, Prudii and Atin fire six torpedoes at a droid transport now full of defective droids, destroying it before jumping to hyperspace. When Atin questions him, Prudii explains that it was necessary to not garner suspicion on the part of the droids that would have expected an attack.
En route to a rendezvous at Drall RV point, Mereel, Skirata, and Ordo all uncover a message between Lama Su and Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, stating no further clone production unless more are commissioned and reveals plans for cloning facilities on Coruscant.
At the rendezvous point, both parts of the team exchange information and report to Jedi General Arligan Zey on their findings. Skirata suggests a sector-by-sector sweeping of the galaxy to win the war, but Zey informs the Nulls that the Chancellor's plans are to remain scattered engagements. Skirata also questions Zey about Republic intel inflating the numbers of the droid armies to make voters support a bill for the war, to no clear answer. The team discusses their odds and 200 to 1 kill ratios before concentrating on the new mission: Ko Sai.
==Appearances==
==Continuity==
Since the release of this short story, many fans of the clone troopers from the Republic Commando series were questioning the number of clone troopers quoted by the characters as 1.2 million instead of 3 million. If Odds was to retcon Triple Zero, it appears to have failed according to disgruntled fans in the forums at TheForce.net and StarWars.com.
The notion that there were only around hundred million droids blatantly contradicts The Story of General Grievous II: Lord of War and the Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith Incredible Cross-Sections, both of which state that there were several quintillion battle droids. It's also claimed that the factory is one of the largest outside of Geonosis. However, the droid production rate is much lower than what can be observed in the Geonosis factory in Attack of the Clones which has been described essentially as obsolete.Inside the Worlds of Star Wars: Attack of the Clones Also, other sources points to extremely vast factories (such as The New Essential Guide to Droids, which states that there are millions of droid factories and that the Techno Union had dozens of mechworlds alone). However, it is possible that the information found by the clones was false or outdated.
==Sources==
*The Essential Reader's Companion
==Notes and references==
Category:Legends short stories from Star Wars Insider
Category:Star Wars Insider 87 articles
Category:Republic Commando
Category:Short stories republished with novels