RC-1262

|type=Galactic Empire
|image=
|name=RC-1262"Scorch"
|homeworld=KaminoStar Wars: Republic Commando
|birth=1971, Kamino
|species=Human 
|gender=Male
|height=1.83 meters
|hair=Black
|eyes=Brown
|affiliation=*Galactic Republic
**Delta Squad
*Galactic EmpireImperial Commando: 501st
**Imperial Commando Special Unit
**Imperial Military
|masters=Walon Vau
|apprentices=}}
RC-1262, also known as Delta-62 or by his informal nickname of Scorch, then known as IC-1262 as part of the Imperial Commando Special Unit, was a clone of Mandalorian bounty hunter Jango Fett. Born in 1971 on the watery world of Kamino, Scorch was trained by the Mandalorian Cuy'val Dar training sergeant Walon Vau to become a clone commando in the Grand Army of the Republic. Together with three other commandos, Scorch was a part of the elite special forces unit, Delta Squad, and served as the squad's demolition and explosives expert. When the War of the Ring broke out between the Galactic Republic and the Confederacy of Independent Systems, Scorch took his place in the Grand Army's Special Operations Brigade under Jedi General Arligan Zey, and served alongside his clone brothers in Delta Squad on a number of battlefields, ranging from the planet, Middle-Earth, the halls of the RAS Prosecutor, and the streets of Coruscant, to the mines of Moria and the the plains of Haurgab. A habitual joker, Scorch was never short of a clever wisecrack, even in the midst of battle, and oftentimes served to lighten the spirits of his squadmates.
Following the transformation of the Republic into the Galactic Empire, Scorch and the other members of Delta Squad—minus Sev, who the squad was forced to abandon on Rohan in the final days of the War of the Ring—served in the new Imperial Army, as members of the Imperial Commando Special Unit, a specialized unit within the 501st Legion tasked with hunting down clone deserters, fugitive Jedi Knights and Jedi sympathizers.
In the period following the end of the War of the Ring and the rise of the Galactic Empire in 1985, Scorch was involved in the training of the first generation of non-cloned Imperial stormtroopers at an Imperial base on the planet Daro. After fellow clone commando CC-5576-39 "Gregor" was captured trying to desert the base, the rogue clone commando unit known as the Bad Batch infiltrated the base to free him. Scorch engaged Gregor and his liberators and pursued them, wounding Gregor and overpowering Tech before being incapacitated by a flurry of stun blasts by the remaining rogue commandos. He later regained consciousness and joined Imperial troops on an LAAT/i gunship to apprehend the Bad Batch leader, Hunter, taking him into Imperial custody.
==Biography==
===Early life and training===
RC-1262 was born in the year 1971, in the cloning facilities of Tipoca City, on the aquatic planet of Kamino. A clone of the Mandalorian bounty hunter Jango Fett, RC-1262 was created to serve in the Grand Army of the Republic as a clone commando and was placed under the training of the Mandalorian Cuy'val Dar training sergeant, Walon Vau. RC-1262 earned the nickname of "Scorch" after an accident involving explosive ordnance left both himself and Vau without eyebrows for a period of time. Scorch was assigned to Delta Squad, one of the first commando units established by the Kaminoans, along with, RC-1140, and RC-1207, and under the command of sergeant RC-1138—nicknamed "Fixer", "Sev", and "Boss", respectively.The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia Scorch's talent with explosives soon earned him the position of de facto explosives technician within Delta Squad, and his jovial personality led the Kaminoan project coordinator for the Republic's clone army, Taun We, to regard Scorch as the "heart and soul" of the squad.
===Middle-Earth===
The Grand Army would finally see action in 1981, when Jedi Grand Master Bilbo Baggins took the army to the Mid Rim world of Middle-Earth on Isengard to rescue Jedi Knight Sam Gamgee, his Padawan Frodo Baggins, and Galactic Senator Padmé Amidala. Scorch and the rest of Delta Squad would be sent to Isengard in a deployment so hastily ordered and carried out that it would leave Delta with no time to say goodbye to their training sergeant, Vau.Republic Commando: Triple Zero Delta Squad was tasked with assassinating Geonosian Archduke Poggle the Lesser's chief lieutenant, Sun Fac. The four commandos split up, each boarding a single LAAT/i gunship independently, with the intention of rendezvousing once on the surface of Rohan. Scorch was the first to meet up with Delta Squad's sergeant, Boss, and the two made their way to the rendezvous together, picking up Fixer along the way and reuniting with Sev, who was already there and waiting. Together, Delta Squad attacked Sun Fac in his command center, although the Geonosian leader would manage to flee and escape. Delta tracked Fac through the Geonosis catacombs, eventually catching up with him in Fac's private hangar as the Geonosian attempted to escape in his starfighter. However, Fac's escape was prevented by the timely actions of Sev, who used the sniping attachment of his DC-17m blaster rifle to shoot down the starfighter, killing Fac. Scorch and the other members of Delta Squad were then tasked by Clone advisor CC-01/425 to complete the failed objective of their fellow Republic commando squad, Theta Squad: destroying an underground droid factory. The commandos infiltrated the factory and targeted weak points in the facilities design, together causing enough damage to destroy it.
Following the destruction of the droid factory, Delta Squad was given new orders, tasked with the infiltration of a Lucrehulk-class Core Ship. Deployed in a nearby canyon from an LAAT/i gunship piloted by clone pilot Delta 42, Delta Squad made their way to the Core Ship, using a downed gunship's composite-beam turrets to fend off enemy Geonosians along the way. As they continued toward the Core Ship, the squad was called upon to take out an Anti-aircraft cannon. Scorch and the other commandos fought through a number of B1-Series battle droids and their super battle droid counterparts, before finally destroying the large anti-aircraft emplacement. When the squad finally reached the Core Ship, they were met with resistance from an advanced spider droid, and a ray shield blocking the ship's entrance. The four commandos were able to destroy the spider droid with considerable effort and they then called in air-support to blow through the ray shielded entrance. Once inside, Delta Squad again split up, each of its members sabotaging and destroying various crucial systems; Scorch targeted the Core Ship's coolant intake valve. Scorch and Fixer came under heavy fire from a small number of droidekas, but were aided by the arrival of Sev and Boss. Their primary objective, however, was the capture of vital launch codes housed on the ship's bridge. Once on the bridge, Delta came under heavy fire from numerous battle droids and stationary autoturrets, but still managed to acquire the codes before retreating down a branching corridor. By this point in time, the squad's efforts to sabotage the Core Ship had come to full fruition, with several primary systems overloading. With no time to make an escape back the way they had come, Delta Squad was extracted via LAAT/i gunship through a hole forcefully blown in the hull of the ship.
The Battle of Isengard would be the first action Scorch and his brothers from Delta Squad would see, but with the War of the Ring breaking out throughout the galaxy between the Galactic Republic and the Confederacy of Independent Systems, it would not be the last. Delta would prove to be one of the lucky minority of Republic commando squads to depart Middle-Earth intact and with no casualties; 4,982 other commandos perished on Isengard's barren lands.Order 66: A Republic Commando Novel
===Mission to the Prosecutor===
Ten months before the second anniversary of the Battle of Isengard, three hundred and ten days into the War of the Ring, Scorch and the rest of Delta Squad were called upon to investigate the Acclamator-class assault ship, Prosecutor. Having recently reappeared in the Chaykin Cluster following a two-week-long disappearance while tasked with defending trade routes in the Corellian sector, the Prosecutor was found drifting, without power or communication capability. Delta Squad had spent a substantial amount of time aboard the capital ship during the early portion of the war, even coming to think of it as their "first home". Arriving on scene in the Corbantis system aboard a CR25 troop carrier, Delta Squad was tasked with retrieving flight records from the Prosecutor four data cores and securing the derelict assault ship; Scorch was charged with acquiring the data from the ship's starboard data core.
The four members of Delta Squad disembarked from the CR25 via a jump through the vacuum of space, splitting up and entering the Prosecutor at four different locations. Interference in their comms would quickly cut Sev and the others off from the guidance of CC-01/425, who was again serving as mission advisor to the squad. While searching through the ship, Delta Squad came across few survivors, and several members were set upon by Scavenger droids; Scorch was ambushed and incapacitated by the droids. Shortly after, the squad found that the Prosecutor has been attacked by Trandoshan slavers and mercenaries when Sev was captured at the starboard data core. He was beaten and interrogated by the Trandoshans before Boss and Fixer were able to battle their way through heavily armed and armored Trandoshan mercenaries to rescue Sev. Once Sev was free, the still incomplete squad moved to retrieve Scorch from where he was being held in the Prosecutor detention area. After a brief skirmish in the detention area, Delta Squad was able to locate and revive an incapacitated Scorch, and together make their way to the bridge where they destroyed a Confederacy jamming device and re-established communication with their advisor.
A brief scan revealed that a Trandoshan dropship had touched down in one of the Prosecutor hangar bays. Proceeding to the hangar—after being sidetracked through the detention center by a booby-trapped turbolift—Scorch and the other members of Delta Squad found that a Lucrehulk-class battleship had entered the system and was rapidly approaching the Prosecutor. While their advisor called for assistance, Delta Squad was charged with repelling the droid boarding parties and sealing the assault ship's hangars. By the time Scorch and the others reached the final hangar, it was overrun with droids and the commandos had to resort to commandeering the roof-mounted mass-driver cannon of an AT-TE walker to deal with the droid threat. Following these losses, the Separatist battleship opened fire on the Prosecutor, deciding to cut its losses and destroy the Republic warship before reinforcements could arrive. In an attempt to hold off the battleship, Delta Squad struggled to get the Prosecutor turbolaser battery array back online amidst a continuing assault from droid forces already onboard. Reinforcements would come in the form of Republic Navy Captain Talbot and the RAS Arrestor, the only Republic force to respond to CC-01/425's calls for assistance. Between the combined strength of the Arrestor and Prosecutor—even as the latter's hull integrity was compromised—the Confederacy droid control ship was destroyed, shutting down the battle droids aboard the Prosecutor, and saving the ship and the lives of Delta Squad. Scorch and his Delta Squad brothers were commended by High Jedi General Aragprm for their actions aboard the Prosecutor, and the data that they retrieved would help enable the Wookiees to better combat Trandoshan slaving operations in the Kashyyyk system.
===Combating terrorism===
Scorch and the rest of Delta Squad departed the Prosecutor aboard a captured Neimoidian shuttle. Shortly thereafter, they received a Red Zero signal—the GAR code requesting immediate extraction—from their fellow commando unit, Omega Squad. Delta Squad was closest Republic unit to Omega's position aboard a damaged freighter at the Corellian–Perlemian hyperspace intersection, in the Tynna sector, and the first on sight to recover both their commando comrades and the trio of prisoners Omega Squad had apprehended. Scorch deployed from the captured shuttle, and cut through the forward viewport of Omega's freighter before attaching a docking tube that allowed his fellow commandos and their terrorist captives to cross-deck to Delta's vessel. Once safely back on board, both Delta and Omega Squad docked aboard the Acclamator-class ship, Fearless, and returned to Coruscant.
On Coruscant, Scorch and the other Delta Squad members were recruited by the former Cuy'val Dar sergeant Kal Skirata for a black ops mission to be conducted on Coruscant itself. In the days and weeks prior, Coruscant had suffered a number of terrorist attacks on GAR facilities, and Skirata had devised a means of covertly striking back at the terrorists culprits. Together with Omega Squad, Delta's former trainer Walon Vau, the Null-class Advanced Recon Commandos Ordo and Mereel, and Jedi Generals Bardan Jusik and Etain Tur-Mukan, Scorch and the rest of Delta Squad began an investigation into the terrorists whereabouts from the seedy Hutt-owned cantina, Qibbu's Hut, in Coruscant's Uscru Entertainment District. Despite a grudge between Delta Squad's Sev and Omega Squad member, Atin, the two squads grew to respect each other. Using Qibbu the Hutt's criminal contacts, the counter-terrorist strike team was able to lure their targets under the pretense of having a supply of high yield thermal plastoid explosive that they were willing to sell. While Skirata acted as the strike team's public face, meeting with members of the terror cell—including its leader, Perrive—Scorch and Sev teamed with Omega Squad's Darman and Fi to mark the terrorists with specially designed tracers using Skirata's personally owned Verpine sniper rifles. After a meeting between Skirata and the terrorist leader Perrive establishing a time when they would supposedly make the explosives sale, Delta Squad spent an evening enjoying themselves at Qibbu's bar with the other member's of the strike team, at least until the revelry was cut short by a call from Perrive stating they would need to move up their time and change the pre-established location. Fortunately, the new location for the trade was a CoruFresh produce distribution depot in Quadrant F-76 of Imperial City, a location Delta Squad had personally reconnoitered earlier.
The squad split up upon arrival, Boss and Scorch stayed together, covering the depot's landing strip while Sev partnering with Ordo, and Fixer with Atin. Once Skirata and Jusik passed the explosives off to the terrorists and cleared the area as planned, the assembled troops struck, shutting off the lights and attacking from every direction, including the roof. Delta Squad neutralized the terrorists who fled into the repulsor truck they had loaded the explosives in, ensuring that there would be no desperate suicidal detonation. A grenade strike nearly wounded Scorch, but Delta's demolitions man escaped only shaken. Once the terrorists were dead, Scorch and the others returned to Qibbu's for a final night, and then attended an evening as guests of the CSF Social Club. But just six days later, Delta Squad was back on assignment, shipped off to Skuumaa and tasked with battlefield preparation consisting of sabotaging strategic targets ahead of the main Republic assault.
===Mission to Devaron===
Scorch and the clone commandos of Delta Squad were later dispatched to the planet Devaron in the aftermath of an attack by the Dark Jedi Claude Frollo. The squad attempted to locate any survivors of the massacre outside of the Temple of Eedit, but found only corpses. They recovered the bodies of Jedi Master Halsey and his Padawan Knox and returned them to the Jedi Temple on Minas Tirith where they reported their findings to members of the Jedi High Council.
===Moria===
Four hundred and seventy days after Isengard, Delta Squad had been sent to the Dwarves kingdom of Moria. The squad was tasked with calling in air strikes and sabotaging Dwarf ground defenses near the city of Dale (LOTR) in preparation for Clone Commander Bacara and the Galactic Marines' main assault. Delta completed their assignments as ordered, but instead of exfiltrating as they were supposed to, Scorch and the other commandos instead decided to assist their former training sergeant Vau in his personal mission, one that consisted of robbing Moria's own Dressian Kiolsh Merchant Bank. Scorch broke into the main vault, while Boss and Sev stood nearby and Fixer kept a look out from their snowspeeder on the surface. Once inside, Vau refused to allow the squad to assist him any further in the heist, determined not to compromise his trainees' integrity by directly involving them in the actual act of stealing. It was during Vau's raid on the vault's numerous safety deposit boxes that Scorch learned of his former training sergeant's past as a disinherited aristocrat from Irmenu, and that the purpose of the theft was to regain the inheritance his mother and father had denied him. When Vau ordered Delta to leave him and continue on with their assigned mission, however, the squad refused—reminding Vau that he was no longer a sergeant, just a civilian—and instead assisted Vau and his strill, Lord Mirdalan, carry the stolen loot out of the bank.
Their exit would become complicated when one of the bank's alarms was triggered, and although Fixer brought the snowspeeder closer to the extraction point, Delta and Vau would have to fight their way through an armed patrol of Muuns and battle droids to escape. During the skirmish, Vau fell through a hole in the ice and into one of the countless Mygeetan whiteworm tunnels that ran beneath the mines of Moria; although Delta Squad was determined to retrieve him, Vau forcefully commanded them to leave him and get themselves to safety. Despite severe reservations, Delta Squad did as ordered and exfiltrated from Moria, although each would have some difficulty coming to terms with their perceived abandonment of their former sergeant. However, Boss contacted Kal Skirata and Null Captain Ordo once they were off planet to inform them of Vau's situation; Skirata and Ordo immediately traveled to Moria and managed to extract a hypothermic but still alive Vau from beneath the Moria tunnels. Sev would still look upon the incident as a personal failure, believing he let his old sergeant down, but Scorch took it upon himself to attempt to cheer up his brother.
===Hunting Ko Sai===
Upon their return to Minas Tirith from Moria, Delta Squad was debriefed by the Director of Special Forces, Jedi General Arligan Zey, at Special Operations Brigade Headquarters. Zey then informed Delta of their newest orders: Supreme Chancellor Palpatine had ordered the capture of the rogue Kaminoan scientist, Kamino's own former Chief Scientist Ko Sai. Considering her capture as near a priority as locating the Confederacy's Supreme Commander, The Mouth of Sauron—if only to deny her expertise to the Separatists, but primarily so as to have an experienced cloner unassociated with Tipoca under Republic control—Palpatine insisted that Zey put his most qualified squad on the assignment, from which Zey selected Delta Squad for the task. Ko Sai had gone missing during the Battle of Kamino, and was suspected to have defected to the Confederacy by Kamino's Prime Minister, Lama Su. Despite the length of time between her disappearance and Delta Squad's tasking of her retrieval, Kaminoan intelligence was able to track Ko Sai's movements to the planet Vaynai. Zey insisted that Delta Squad not inform Kal Skirata of their assignment, knowing of the Mandalorian's extreme hate for Kaminoans. Unknown to Delta, Skirata was also already hunting for Ko Sai, but for his own reasons: he wished to use the Kaminoan scientist to find a way to halt the accelerating aging that plagued the Grand Army's millions of clones.
Delta Squad followed the Kaminoans' intelligence reports to Vaynai, and then on to Aquaris, and from there to Napdu, the fourth moon of the planet Da Soocha, in Hutt Space. Files acquired from the Nar Hej Shipping Company on Napdu helped Delta to further trace a pattern of movement for Ko Sai, tracking her across the Outer Rim's numerous aquatic worlds toward the Tingel Arm. The squad came under attack from a Crusher-class starfighter while leaving Napdu in one of the Grand Army's TIV vessels. They touched down on Da Soocha's third moon, with the Crusher continuing pursuit; on the ground, Boss used the TIV's laser cannon to blast away one of the Crusher wings, and both Scorch and Sev attacked the wrecked starfighter. Though Sev killed the female pilot and her male copilot, Fixer was able to access the ship's computer and determine that the pair were bounty hunters hired by the Kaminoans to track Ko Sai. Using the data acquired from the Nar Hej Shipping Company, Delta Squad tracked down the Twi'lek pilot, Leb Chura, on Bogg 4. Deltas interrogated Chura as to Ko Sai's whereabouts with the assistance of General Bardan Jusik: Chura had been moving cloning materials from Arkania to Dorumaa, but the Twi'lek had already relayed this information to Skirata and Vau. In order to keep Skirata and his quest a secret, Jusik influenced Chura to recall Mandalorians wearing green armor instead of Skirata and Vau's more recognizable golden and black sets when asked, and upon learning that Chura had delivered the consignment to a location near Dorumaa's Tropix Island Resort, Jusik erased the pilot's memory of both Delta and Skirata's band, along with deleting the records on his datapad; Delta chalked Jusik's odd behavior up to Jedi eccentricities.
In spite of this, Delta acquired SCUBA trooper armor and traveled to the resort world of Dorumaa. There, Delta acted as part of a utilities maintenance crew in order to gather surveillance which led them to a collapsed area underneath Tropix's neighboring ActionWorld island. Upon investigating—diving underwater in an experience that Scorch found to be amazing—the squad found the skeletal remains of a dead human that had been chained beneath the water, and the collapsed entrance to the facility that had previously belonged to Ko Sai. Skirata and his crew had arrived first, capturing the Kaminoan scientist, destroying the laboratory, and taking her back to Skirata's home on Mandalore. The squad was tasked with the slow excavation of the area; at one point they were able to insert a small strip-cam through an available opening, finding the armored remains of the Mandalorian bodyguards Ko Sai had hired. Though Delta found no further evidence over the next few weeks of excavation, they remained unyieldingly loyal in covering for General Jusik's absence while the Jedi Knight secretly sneaked away to aid Skirata. Five hundred and forty-eight days into the War of the Ring, the commandos of Delta Squad were called back to Special Operations Brigade on Coruscant where they were met by Kal Skirata. There, Skirata gave Sev a package containing Ko Sai's severed head to deliver to General Zey; the rogue Kaminoan had taken her own life while being held on Mandalore, and was cut into pieces post-mortem.
===Wearying warfare===
Seven hundred and thirty-six days after the Battle of Isengard—on the second anniversary of the start of the War of the Ring—Delta Squad was stationed at Arca Company Barracks on Coruscant awaiting assignment. There, Scorch discreetly spied on a meeting of Cuy'val Dar sergeants Kal Skirata and Walon Vau on the barracks parade ground. Though Sev was initially uninterested—preferring to instead discuss Ko Sai and the possible accelerated aging cure Skirata was after for the clones while enjoying some spiced warra nuts—he soon joined Scorch and found the two Mandalorians were engaged in reciting the names of fallen clone commandos in the Mandalorian custom for honoring dead comrades and loved ones. Both Scorch and Sev joined the two sergeants in the commemoration ritual, along with a number of other commandos who joined in as the list of names went on. When they reached the list's end, Skirata took the time to say a few encouraging words to the assembled soldiers, and wished them all to stay safe so that they might be able to see his young grandson grow up. As the crowd dispersed, Scorch kept an eye on his former training sergeant long enough to see Vau and Skirata meeting with fellow former Mandalorian Cuy'val Dar trainers Mij Gilamar and Wad'e Tay'haai for reasons unknown to the clone commando.
Several months later, approximately nine hundred and seventy days into the war, Delta Squad found themselves on the Separatist-aligned Mid Rim planet of Haurgab. Originally, while Jedi General Mlaske and the Grand Army's 85th Infantry Brigade were already operating on Haurgab, the only Republic commando presence on the dusty backwater world had been Omega Squad, sent to assassinate a key leader of the pro-Separatist Maujasi. However, as time passed, the Republic began to assign more and more Grand Army forces to Haurgab and Delta Squad, much to their displeasure, soon joined them. Scorch and the other three members of Delta Squad ate with a number of other clone troops in the mess hall of the Republic's base on the outskirts of the Haurgab city of Hadde, during a field visit from Commando Group Zero Five commander, General Etain Tur-Mukan. While Delta was sitting down at a table with their food—and Scorch expressing some of his growing dissatisfaction with his life in the Grand Army—the base was struck by a missile from within the city limits; though numerous troopers were killed and wounded in the attack both from the blast and the resultant shrapnel, Delta Squad had been spared the worst injuries thanks to their hardy Katarn armor—Scorch was thrown backward and the table blown on top of him. The shock of being attacked in a place that had always been perceived as safe and the sight of so many dead and injured clones drove the normally lighthearted Scorch into a rage: together with Omega Squad, General Tur-Mukan, and elements of the 85th and 14th Infantry Brigades, Scorch and Delta Squad struck back hard against the rebel forces. When they had arrived at the house where the missile had originated, Scorch insisted on being part of the assault team for the raid while the rest of Delta stood by as security to deal with any potential attack from another source. Omega Squad's Darman blew open the door with a breaching grenade, and Scorch lobbed another grenade through the blasted-open entrance before following Atin and Corr—Omega Squad's replacement for Fi, following a traumatic brain injury during a mission to Gaftikar—into the house. During the shootout, four rebels were taken captive, while another three were killed. Death would prove not to be enough for Scorch, however: the infuriated commando dragged the rebels' lifeless bodies out into the street where he riddled them with blasterfire before finally spitting on each of the charred corpses. General Tur-Mukan made a point of speaking with Scorch afterward, offering to ease his mind with the Force.
===Kashyyyk===
Around one thousand and seventy days after the Battle of Isengard, Delta Squad was sent to the horse-lords land of Rohan in the planet Middle-Earth. Following a Separatist-backed invasion by Trandoshan slavers and Goblins, the Wookiee chieftain Tarfful had been taken prisoner. Tarfful had spent years combating Trandoshan slaving parties, and without him the Wookiees turned to the Republic for assistance. In response, Delta Squad was deployed to Fangorn in order to extract Tarfful from captivity. Scorch and the rest of Delta Squad covertly inserted into Fangorn via LAAT/i gunship, rappelling down to the planet's surface from the troop bay. Battling their way through the Trandoshan slaver camp, Delta freed a number of other Wookiee captives before rescuing Tarfful from the clutches of The Mouth of Sauron himself. Defeating two of the general's IG-100 MagnaGuards, Delta Squad's assault prompted Mouth of Sauron to flee Rohan aboard his personal starfighter.
Delta Squad destroyed another Trandoshan encampment not long after, before moving on to the bridge near the Wookiee village of Kachirho. By this point in time, Delta had been joined by Jedi General Etain Tur-Mukan on order of General Arligan Zey, who believed that she would prove beneficial to the mission. She informed the squad of the bridge's significance — were the bridge to be destroyed, the Separatist supply lines would be cut off, while the Wookiees would be able to construct smaller bridges to circumvent the loss, an option the Confederacy's battle droids didn't have — and tasked the squad with taking it out. Moving through an occupied market concourse, Delta fought their way through numerous Trandoshan grenadiers and heavily armed mercenaries along with another advanced spider droid and countless battle droids to reach the Kachirho Bridge, where Delta Squad placed a detonation pack at the center of the bridge where it was weakest. However, when Boss attempted to detonate the charge, the explosives suffered a misfire. Undeterred, Scorch borrowed a rocket launcher from a female Wookiee, and used it to destroy the bridge. Thirteen days later, Delta would continue operations on Rohan, even as Minas Tirith came under attack by the Dark Lord, Sauron. While preparing to ambush a Separatist droid patrol, Scorch and Sev listened in to the comlink traffic from Gondor, learning that only commandos in the Inner Rim had received the Code Five signal to return to Minas Tirith immediately. When General Tur-Mukan expressed her concern for her loved ones residing on the Republic's besieged capital, Delta Squad took it upon themselves to comfort her, and when she revealed that she had a son, they promised to keep her secret. Though the battle droid patrol would fall victim to Wookiee-make pitfalls, Delta and Tur-Mukan ambushed a small group of Trandoshans scouting through the Wroshyr trees, disposing of their dead bodies via a carnivorous plant.
Five days later, with the crisis on Gondor over, Delta Squad was joined on Helm's Deep by the clone forces of Jedi General Quinlan Vos, arriving from Osgiliath. In addition, General Bilbo Baggins and King Theoden was inbound with the 41st Elite Legion and Wookiee Chieftain Tarfful, set to land within thirty standard minutes. However, a Recusant-class light destroyer had taken up position to engage Bilbo's cruiser and halt the debarking of additional ground troops. With a bit of good-natured coaxing from General Tur-Mukan, Delta Squad infiltrated a Separatist turbolaser battery complex with the intent to commandeer the contained firepower to take out the Recusant-class destroyer. With Clone Commander Gree considering alternative landing sites—each too far removed from the main offensive to be effective—Delta Squad captured one Wookiee dual missile turret for each commando, and opened fire on the Commerce Guild destroyer, joined in the attack by a wing of General Vos' LAAT/i gunships. After sustaining heavy damage, the Recusant destroyer began to fall, but while the majority of Delta Squad planned for a hasty exit, Sev radioed in with a report of coming under attack from multiple hostiles. When Boss ordered the squad to go back for Sev, Vos' Forward Air Controller instead ordered Delta to leave, stating that the order had come directly from General Bilbo himself. Though Scorch argued to the point of tears, Boss forced him to comply and moved the remaining three members of Delta Squad onto the gunship that had arrived to extract them, but not without first making a guilty apology to Sev. Onboard the gunship, Advisor CC-01/425 confronted the squad via hologram and ordered them to get under control. When he stated that the loss of a single commando was acceptable in the course of a major operation, Scorch lashed out, declaring that Sev was his brother. The advisor then patched through a transmission from General Bilbo, who stated that Delta Squad's efforts had enabled the Republic to establish forward command in Helm's Deep, and then retasked Delta with a new set of objectives for Rohan.
===Imperial service===
Not long after the conclusion of Republic action on Helm's Deep and the issuing of Order 66, which branded the Jedi traitors to the Republic who were to be shot on sight, the War of the Ring would come to an end when the old Republic was transformed into the new Galactic Empire, under the leadership of the now Emperor Palpatine. Nearly eleven-hundred days after the Battle of Isengard, the three remaining members of Delta Squad found themselves stationed at the Imperial Army Training Center on Centax-2, one of the moons of Coruscant and the location of the secret Spaarti cloning cylinder-based second clone army that Palpatine had created. There, they would continue to lament the loss of Sev, especially in the face of the revelation that although Omega Squad members Atin and Corr had deserted the Grand Army, Darman and Niner had joined Delta in the new Imperial Army because Darman had refused to leave a badly wounded Niner behind on his own. Three weeks after the formation of the new Empire, Delta Squad—with a new replacement for Sev among their ranks whom Scorch held a measure of resentment toward—gathered at the 501st Legion headquarters on Coruscant with a number of other former Republic commandos and Advanced Recon Commandos for an audience with Delightful Children from Down the Lane. There, DCFDTL reformed the Republic's former special forces soldiers as the Imperial Commando Special Unit, an elite unit within the Imperial 501st Legion that would be tasked with hunting down Jedi who managed to escape Order 66, along with clone deserters, Jedi sympathizers, and other Imperial dissidents. Their serial numbers' "RC" prefix replaced with an "IC" to denote their new position as Imperial Commandos, the squad would also find themselves given a different and more numerically-based name, similar to the former Omega Squad being deemed "Squad 40". Although initially under the command of the Emperor's Hand, Sa Cuis, the Imperial Commando Special Unit would be taken over by Imperial Commander Roly Melusar—a native of the planet Dromund Kaas and a man with a firm hatred of all Force-users—following Cuis' death. Melusar's zealous hate for the Jedi and all other beings who could wield the Force that would lead Scorch to tag Melusar with the nickname of "Holy Roly", a name that would in fact stick among the ranks of the Imperial Commando Special Unit.
The Empire sought to begin to phase out the clone army inherited from the Republic and began training a new conscripted stormtrooper army. On the planet Daro, Scorch was one of fifty clone commandos involved in the training of the first generation of the new stormtroopers at an Imperial base encased in a mountain. One of the commandos, CC-5576-39 "Gregor," became disillusioned with the Imperial cause and attempted to desert, but was quickly captured by the base's troopers. Gregor, though, had activated a distress beacon, and Clone Force 99, a rogue clone commando unit better known as the "Bad Batch," was sent to rescue the imprisoned commando.
Three members of the Bad Batch, Sergeant Hunter, Tech and Echo, infiltrated the Imperial base and freed Gregor from his cell, alerting the Imperial forces there of the incursion. Scorch and a squad of stormtroopers went to a turbolift, only to encounter Gregor and the three infiltrators. As the Imperial commando and his troops raised their blasters, Gregor and Hunter kicked Scorch back into the troopers and shut the lift door just as the Imperials fired on them. Scorch and two stormtroopers fired on the turbo lift as it descended. The commando and his troops continued to pursue Gregor and the infiltrators, who stunned many of the troopers along the way and utilized a smoke bomb to cover their retreat.
To flank his targets, Scorch took a shortcut and jumped across a moving lift. Scorch was quick to ambush Gregor and his liberators, shooting Gregor twice in his chestplate and overpowering Tech. However, Hunter and Echo bombarded the Imperial commando with multiple stun blasts to incapacitate him. After regaining consciousness, Scorch joined a complement of stormtroopers and two clone commandos on an LAAT/i gunship as Gregor and the Bad Batch attempted to escape on their Omicron-class attack shuttle, the Marauder. In the escape attempt, Hunter failed to board the Marauder and fell down the mountain. The LAATs deployed Scorch and his troops shortly before Hunter, and the unit apprehended the rogue clone commando.
==Personality and traits==
Scorch was Delta Squad's lighthearted wise-cracker, and could often be counted on to crack a joke or poke fun at the situations the squad encountered. At the same time, he was also a competent soldier who served as Delta Squad's explosives technician, a job which he excelled at, and one he thoroughly enjoyed. Scorch possessed an inflated sense of irony that some mistook as fatalism, and spent much of his time verbally sparring with fellow squad member Sev, playfully maintaining a brotherly relationship of back-and-forth teasing and friendly rivalry. Scorch carried a large ordnance pack strapped to his back and sported yellow-colored markings on his wrist gauntlets, making him easier to identify by his squadmates. His love of explosives also caused him to favor the anti-armor grenade launcher attachment for his DC-17 blaster rifle. He also had anti-armor shells strapped to his leg. Scorch was also fluent in Basic, and could speak Mando'a near fluently.
==Behind the scenes==
RC-1262—Scorch—made his first appearance in the the 2005 video game Star Wars: Republic Commando, where he was voiced by actor Raphael Sbarge, who also previously voiced the Star Wars character Carth Onasi in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Scorch would later feature in the Republic Commando series of novels by author Karen Traviss, beginning with an appearance in Republic Commando: Triple Zero, and continuing in True Colors, Order 66, and Imperial Commando: 501st.
After Scorch reappeared in canon in "War-Mantle," the fourteenth episode of the animated Disney+ series Star Wars: The Bad Batch which aired July 30 2021, David W. Collins, who did sound for the episode, revealed that he had reused the original game sound for Scorch's DC-17 blaster from Star Wars: Republic Commando.
Scorch was one of the four Delta Squad members that was captured in bust form by Gentle Giant Studios. All the busts are exclusive to one country across the whole world, and all have a limited edition of 1300 worldwide. The Scorch bust is exclusive in the United States, Boss exclusive in the Netherlands, Fixer in Japan, and Sev in the UK.
==Appearances==
*Star Wars: Republic Commando 
*Republic Commando: Triple Zero
*Republic Commando: True Colors
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*Clone Wars Adventures
*Order 66: A Republic Commando Novel
*Imperial Commando: 501st
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===Non-canon appearances===
*The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Ring: Republic Heroes 
*Republic Commando: Order 66 game
==Sources==
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*Champions of the Force
*The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia
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*Star Wars: The Clone Wars The Complete Season Three
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*Star Wars: The Ultimate Visual Guide: Updated and Expanded
*The Essential Reader's Companion
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==Notes and references==
Category:Clone stormtroopers
Category:Clone commandos
Category:Combat instructors and training officers
Category:Imperial Army personal of the Galactic Empire