RC-1138

"Alone against all these droids...heh, they don't stand a chance."

- RC-1138

RC-01/138—simplified as RC-1138 and also known as Delta-38 or by his nickname of Boss—was a clone of Mandalorian bounty hunter Jango Fett. Born in 32 BBY on the watery world of Kamino, Boss was trained by the Mandalorian Cuy'val Dar training sergeant Walon Vau to become a clone commando in the Grand Army of the Republic. Placed in command of three other commandos, Boss lead the elite special forces unit Delta Squad as their sergeant. When the Clone Wars broke out between the Galactic Republic and the Confederacy of Independent Systems, Boss 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 deserts of Geonosis, the halls of the RAS Prosecutor, and the streets of Coruscant, to snowy Mygeeto and the the plains of Haurgab. Following the transformation of the Republic into the Galactic Empire, Boss and the other members of Delta Squad—minus squadmate RC-1207, who the squad was forced to abandon on Kashyyyk in the final days of the Clone Wars—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.

Early life and training
"Identified my squad leader today. RC-1138 repeatedly tops squad in weapons and tactics testing and broke my arm in melee test."

- RC Batch Delta: Report: W Vau, Traning Sergeant

RC-1138 was born in the year 32 BBY, in the cloning facilities of Tipoca City, on the aquatic planet of Kamino. A clone of the Mandalorian bounty hunter Jango Fett, RC-1138 was created to serve in the Grand Army of the Republic as a clone commando and, following a course of flash training, was placed under the direct training of the Mandalorian Cuy'val Dar training sergeant, Walon Vau. As his training progressed, Three-Eight proved himself an incredibly capable soldier, consistently scoring the highest of his clone bothers in weapon and tactics training. During a test of his melee skills with his training sergeant, Three-Eight broke Walon Vau's arm. With these accomplishments in mind, Vau assigned RC-1138 to Delta Squad, one of the first commando squads established by the Kaminoans, where he would serve as it's sergeant, and thus came to be known as "Boss" to his three squadmates, RC-1140, RC-1207, and RC-1262—known informally as "Fixer", "Sev", and "Scorch", respectively.

Geonosis
The Grand Army would finally see action in 22 BBY, when Jedi Grand Master Yoda took the army to the Outer Rim world of Geonosis to rescue Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi, his Padawan Anakin Skywalker, and Galactic Senator Padmé Amidala. Boss and the other members of Delta Squad would be sent to Geonosis 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. The four commandos split up, each boarding a single LAAT/i gunship independently, with the intention of rendezvousing once on the surface of Geonosis. Aboard his gunship, Boss spoke with Clone advisor CC-01/425, with the latter introducing himself and reminding Delta Squad of its tasking, assassinating Geonosian Archduke Poggle the Lesser's chief lieutenant, Sun Fac. As the gunship landed, it was assaulted by a single Geonosian warrior; Boss was helpless to stop it from quickly killing another clone trooper who had ridden with him in the troop bay.

Once on the ground, Boss was called upon to destroy an armored bunker on his way to rendezvous with the other members of his squad, a task he completed utilizing a thermal detonator. Upon reuniting with his other squadmates, Boss and the rest of Delta Squad attacked Sun Fac in his command center, although the Geonosian leader would manage to escape. Delta tracked Fac through the Geonosian catacombs, eventually catching up with him in Fac's private hangar as the Geonosian attempted to escape in his starfighter. Fac's escape was prevented by the timely actions of Delta Squad's sniper, Sev, who used the sniping attachment of his DC-17m blaster rifle to shoot down the starfighter, killing Fac. While hunting for Sun Fac, Delta Squad had engaged a number of spider droids while their fellow Republic commando unit, Theta Squad, blew through a door in the catacombs. Boss had been in contact with Theta's demolition expert, RC-1136, and had emphatically encouraged the commando to make haste. Once the door was down, Delta was given leave to enter and fire on the Geonosians inside, while Theta moved off to destroy a droid factory. Once Sun Fac was dead, Delta Squad was informed via their advisor that Theta Squad had failed in their objective; three of the four commandos had been killed, leaving RC-1136 the only survivor. Boss and his Delta squadmates infiltrated the factory—their route taking them through an area filled with Geonosian eggs—and successfully destroy it by targeting specific weak points in the factory's design.

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 Boss and his squad were called upon to take out an anti-aircraft cannon. The commandos fought through a number of B1 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—with Boss making note of his desire never to have to engage one again—and they then called in air-support from Delta 42's gunship to blow through the ray shielded entrance. Once inside, Delta Squad split up, each of its members tasked with sabotaging and destroying various crucial systems: Boss struck at the battle droid storage racks. When Scorch and Fixer came under heavy fire from a small number of droidekas, it was Boss and Sev who were able to rescue them without incident. Their primary objective, however, was the capture of vital launch codes housed on the ship's bridge. 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 the ship.

The Battle of Geonosis would be the first action Boss and his brothers from Delta Squad would see, but with the Clone Wars 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 Geonosis intact and with no casualties; 4,982 other commandos perished on Geonosis' red sands.

Mission to the Prosecutor
"The Prosecutor was our first home. We were stationed there for a long time."

- Boss

One day before the second anniversary of the Battle of Geonosis, three hundred and sixty-seven days into the Clone Wars, Boss 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, and Boss had even come 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.

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 Boss 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 attacked and captured at the starboard data core where Boss had been waiting to meet him, and Boss was forced to flee into the ship's maintenance shafts. Despite this, Boss was able to complete his original objective, battling through heavily armed and armored Trandoshan mercenaries and the ship's very own autoturret defenses that had been sliced by the Trandoshans, before rendezvousing with Fixer and proceeding to rescue Sev. Once Sev was free of the violent interrogation from his Trandoshan captors, the 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—Boss 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 Boss 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 events, 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. Boss and his Delta Squad brothers were commended by High Jedi General Mace Windu 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.

Rescue of Omega Squad
"Boss receiving. Sorry, we had to stop and ask for directions. My boys are now going to show you how to do an extraction properly, so take notes because you might blink and miss it. There's a Sep ship with missiles up the spout about three minutes behind us." "Can we bring some friends?" "The more the merrier. We're going to align with your cockpit, slap an isolation seal on the viewport, and Scorch will cut through. Then you shift it fast, and we RV with Fearless for caf, cakes, and hero worship. Got it?"

- Boss and Niner

Delta Squad departed the Prosecutor aboard a stolen, unarmed Neimoidian vessel, and shortly thereafter received a Red Zero signal—the GAR code requesting immediate extraction—from fellow their commando unit, Omega Squad, near the Kelarea system. Omega was trapped aboard a damaged freighter along the intersection of the Corellian and Perlemian Trade Routes, with no power, limited oxygen, and a trio of prisoners suspected of terrorist activity, which they had captured during an earlier Traffic Interdiction Operation. With no other Republic forces close enough to provide the much-needed assistance, Delta Squad took it upon themselves to respond. Boss consulted with Jedi General Etain Tur-Mukan en route, discussing the best plan for extracting Omega with a Separatist ship moving on their location at the same time. Delta Squad arrived on scene and quickly set about rescuing their fellow commandos, while General Tur-Mukan arrived with the Acclamator-class ship, Fearless, just in time to destroy the enemy ship before it could attack. Once Omega was safely on board, Sev nearly provoked a physical confrontation with Omega Squad member Atin; Boss made no move to intercede, leaving it to Omega Squad's sergeant, Niner, to break up the budding conflict before it could come to blows. Both Delta and Omega Squads then docked aboard Fearless and returned to Coruscant.

War on terror
"Vau made you into very impatient boys. Yes, this is where it gets boring. And you know what? You won't be any less dead if you get it wrong. And I really hope Vau schooled you well in this, because I'll be pretty hacked off if you get trigger-happy and blow this op.''" "''We're pros, Sarge. We know how to do this."

- Kal Skirata and Boss

Upon setting down on Coruscant, Delta Squad disembarked from Fearless along with Omega, and were met by former Cuy'val Dar training sergeant, and now military advisor to Special Operations Brigade, Kal Skirata. Unfortunately for Boss and the others, Skirata overheard Scorch's disparaging comments made at the expense of his advanced age, and ordered the squad to perform fifty pushups. Once they were finished—although Skirata teased that they had only completed forty of the fifty he'd assigned—the commandos of Delta and Omega offloaded the three prisoners into a waiting speeder piloted by Skirata's Wookiee associate, Enacca, bound for interrogation at the hands of Delta's former training sergeant, Walon Vau. A transport arrived soon after to take Delta and Omega back to Arca Barracks. At 1500 hours, Delta met with Skirata and Omega Squad in one of Special Operations Brigade Headquarters' briefing rooms, where Skirata attempted to ease the tension between the two squads, insisting that Atin and Sev leave behind their grudge and shake hands. When the Null-class Advanced Recon Commando Captain known as Ordo arrived at the meeting, Skirata informed both Delta and Omega that they would be involved in a black ops strike against a terrorist cell operating on Coruscant.

Delta Squad, along with Omega and the other members of the covertly assembled strike team—now including Jedi Generals Tur-Mukan and Bardan Jusik, along with Vau and Vau's pet strill, Lord Mirdalan—moved into the top floor of Qibbu's Hut, a shady cantina and hotel in Coruscant's Entertainment District, owned by an associate of Skirata by the name of Qibbu the Hutt. Over the following days, Boss and the other members of Delta Squad would take part in a rotating surveillance watch with the members of Omega, and despite conflicts between members of the two squads where their distinct personalities clashed, the two squads worked together effectively and even came to develop a respect for one another. Using Qibbu's criminal contacts, the strike team was able to lure their terrorist targets—who they determined hailed from Jabiim—under the pretense of having a supply of five-hundred-grade thermal plastoid explosive that they were willing to sell. 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 members 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 Galactic City, a location Delta Squad had personally reconnoitered earlier. Together with the other strike team members, Boss and Delta Squad donned their armor again for the first time since the operation had truly begun, and moved out to end the terrorist threat.

At the CoruFresh depot, Boss and Scorch took positions covering the northern landing strip. 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 had all been killed—the assault taking no more than nine standard minutes in total—Boss 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 would be 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
"There were no survivors on Devaron. Everyone was killed, including Master Halsey and his Padawan."

- RC-1138, reporting on the fate of Halsey

Boss and the clone commandos of Delta Squad were later dispatched to Devaron to search for survivors of the engagement. Finding none, they recovered the corpses of Halsey and Knox and returned them to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. The Jedi High Council concluded that the deaths of the Roonan Jedi and his apprentice were a sign of a new threat to the Republic; their suspicion was confirmed when security footage of the massacre, including Halsey's death, was recovered.

Mygeeto
"Is Vau alive?" "Unconfirmed. We lost his signal. He had kit with him that General Jusik felt you would want to recover." "What kit?" "He cleaned out a bank vault. Credits, jewelry, bonds, the works. Two bags." "Last known position?" "Sending you the coordinates now, with our last good ground radar scan of the terrain."

- Kal Skirata and Boss

Four hundred and seventy days after Geonosis, Delta Squad had been sent to the Outer Rim world of Mygeeto. The squad had been tasked with calling in air strikes and sabotaging Mygeetan ground defenses near the city of Jygat 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, the commandos instead decided to assist their former training sergeant Vau in his personal mission, one that consisted of robbing Mygeeto's own Dressian Kiolsh Merchant Bank. While Fixer held position near the squad's snowspeeder on the planet's surface, Boss and the other two members of Delta Squad followed Vau into the underground halls of the bank, where Scorch proceeded to electronically disable the locks on the main vault's door. Once inside, however, 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 Boss 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, Boss refused, reminding Vau that he was no longer a sergeant, just a civilian, and instead assisted Vau and his strill carry the stolen loot out of the bank.

Unfortunately for both Delta Squad and Vau, their exit would become complicated when one of the bank's alarms was triggered. 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 crystal-worm tunnels that ran beneath the frozen surface of Mygeeto; 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 Mygeeto, although each would have some difficulty coming to terms with their perceived abandonment of their former sergeant. Boss, however, contacted Kal Skirata and Null Captain Ordo once they were off planet to inform them of Vau's situation at the behest of General Jusik; Skirata and Ordo immediately traveled to Mygeeto and managed to extract a hypothermic but still alive Vau from beneath the Mygeetan ice.

The hunt for Ko Sai
"She's been gone for a year, sir. Why make the move so late in the day?" "I'm not privy to that information, Sergeant. But the intel we do have, via the Kaminoans, suggests that she's passed through Vaynai within the last six months." "Who's tracking her, sir?" "You."

- Boss and General Arligan Zey

Upon their return to Coruscant from Mygeeto, Delta Squad was debriefed by Jedi General Arligan Zey, the Director of Special Forces, in his office within Special Operations Brigade Headquarters. As Delta's squad sergeant, the difficult task of explaining the complications surrounding the squad's extraction from Mygeeto fell to Boss, though he was able to keep from implicating Vau in any criminal activities with a series of carefully answered half-truths to General Zey's questions. When satisfied with Boss' accounting, Zey passed along the compliments of General Ki-Adi-Mundi to the squad before detailing their next assignment: 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, General Grievous—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 would insist 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 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. During this time, Boss was also battling a cold, from which he suffered a soar throat and repetitive cough; when Sev mentioned his annoyance at Boss' continual coughing and throat clearing over the shared comlink, Boss promised to gargle with bacta at his first opportunity. 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, which Boss was piloting. 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, killing the female pilot and her male copilot to Boss's annoyance—dead, they couldn't be interrogated. However, 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. Boss and the others 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. In spite of this, Boss and his brothers acquired SCUBA trooper armor and traveled to the resort world of Dorumaa. There, they 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, 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 Clone Wars, Boss and the other Deltas 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; the rogue Kaminoan had taken her own life while being held on Mandalore, and was cut into pieces post-mortem. Sev then delivered Ko Sai's head to General Zey for confirmation of death, neglecting the details of how it had come into Delta's possession while still telling Zey as much of the truth as he knew using tightly wound word games.

Mission to Haurgab
"So what's the General here for, then? Other than visiting her favorite squad?" "She hands out candy. Every time she visits a squad in the field, she takes treats for them. Just like Skirata." "Maybe he'll teach her to garrote folks as well as he does, too."

- Boss and Sev, while eating in a GAR mess hall on Haurgab

Approximately nine hundred and seventy days into the Clone Wars, Boss and the other members of 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. During a visit from General Etain Tur-Mukan—having replaced Bardan Jusik as commander of Delta Squad's Commando Group, Zero Five Commando, following his resignation as a Jedi General and his departure from the Jedi Order—the four members of Delta Squad joined a number of other clone troops in the mess hall of the Republic's base on the outskirts of the Haurgab city of Hadde. While Delta was sitting down at a table with their food—trading jokes and theories on assorted topics—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. 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, and together with Omega Squad, General Tur-Mukan, and elements of the 85th and 14th Infantry Brigades, Boss led Delta Squad in a retaliatory strike 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; recognizing the catharsis that confronting the responsible party would bring, Boss obliged his brother and he and the rest of Delta stood by as security to deal with any potential attack from another source. 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. Boss again kept Scorch from being interfered with, holding Sev back from attempting to comfort the angry commando until he had finished.

Kashyyyk
"I'm not leaving him, Boss. You go if you want to. Not me." "This is an order." "Screw orders. Omega wouldn't leave a man." "Scorch…" "You'll have to shoot me." "Losing one guy is bad enough. I'm not losing two. Don't let me down now. Shift it, Six-Two." "I'll never forgive you for this, Boss. Or you, Fixer. We're brothers, for fierfek's sake. I'd never leave you."

- Scorch and Boss, following an evac order after Sev loses contact under fire

Around one thousand and seventy days after the Battle of Geonosis, Delta Squad was sent to the Wookiee homeworld of Kashyyyk in the Mytaranor sector. Following a Separatist-backed invasion by Trandoshan slavers, 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 Kashyyyk in order to extract Tarfful from captivity, in a mission that would see Delta under the oversight of Advisor CC-01/425 yet again. Boss and the rest of Delta Squad covertly inserted into Kashyyyk via LAAT/i gunship, rappelling down to the planet's surface from the troop bay. Once on the ground, the squad moved through the planet's dense jungle until coming upon the camp of the Trandoshan slavers. Battling their way inside, the squad was ambushed in a narrow corridor by Trandoshan mercenaries on the overhead catwalks, forcing them to make an escape through a maintenance shaft toward a landing zone. After securing the landing zone, the commandos caught a glimpse of a Belbullab-22 starfighter, matching it's profile to General Grievous' ship, Soulless One. Continuing through the slaver's base, Delta freed a number of imprisoned Wookiees on their way to locate Tarfful before Delta's advisor tasked the squad with another objective: confirming Grievous' presence on Kashyyyk. Climbing a tower close to the General's landing pad, Boss and Delta managed a visual confirmation on the General himself, before nearly being attacked by one of Grievous' IG-100 MagnaGuards. Rushing down the tower, Delta Squad found Tarfful being escorted to Grievous' fighter by two MagnaGuards; although Tarfful was able to successfully destroy the droids on his own, Grievous fled the planet in his starfighter, leaving behind another pair of MagnaGuards. Though Grievous had initially wanted the Wookiee chieftain alive for questioning, now that the opportunity had been taken from him, the commander of the Separatist Droid Army instead ordered Tarfful dead so as to deny the Republic the valuable intelligence Tarfful possessed. Boss and the other commandos of Delta Squad engaged the deadly droids in an effort to protect Tarfful, although the Wookiee warrior refused to back down from his attackers. Together, the commandos and their Wookiee ally defeated the droids, and Tarfful was taken to Coruscant in order to enlist further Republic assistance.

Delta Squad destroyed another Trandoshan encampment not long after, before moving on 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, Boss and 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. Though he was understandably angry at the setback, Scorch borrowed a rocket launcher from a female Wookiee, and used it to destroy the bridge. Thirteen days later, Delta would continue operations on Kashyyyk, even as Coruscant came under attack by General Grievous. While preparing to ambush a Separatist droid patrol, Scorch and Sev listened in to the comlink traffic from Coruscant, learning that only commandos in the Inner Rim had received the Code Five signal to return to Coruscant immediately. When General Tur-Mukan expressed her concern for her loved ones residing on the Republic's besieged capital, Boss and the others took it upon themselves to comfort her, and when she revealed that she had a son, they promised to keep her secret, with Boss going so far as to say, "We didn't even hear you tell us that. We know nothing." Though the battle droid patrol would fall victim to Wookiee-made 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 Coruscant over, Delta Squad was joined on Kashyyyk by the clone forces of Jedi General Quinlan Vos, arriving from Boz Pity. In addition, General Yoda 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 Yoda's cruiser and halt the debarking of additional ground troops. With a bit of good-natured coaxing from General Tur-Mukan, Boss and 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 turbolaser 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 Yoda 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 tearful, guilty apology to Sev within the private confines of his helmet.

Onboard the gunship, Advisor CC-01/425 confronted Boss via hologram and ordered him to get his squad under control. The advisor then patched through a transmission from General Yoda, who stated that Delta Squad's efforts had enabled the Republic to establish forward command in Kachirho, and that the Republic would continue to rely on their skills in the coming battle. Delta Squad was then retasked with a new set of objectives for Kashyyyk.

Imperial service
"Would you have shot Etain if she'd still been with us when Order Sixty-six went down?" "Academic. She wasn't." "Did you get a chance to ask Dar why he's still here?" "Yeah." "And? What, then?" "All he said was that he couldn't leave Niner behind."

- Scorch and Boss at the Imperial Army Training Center, soon after the rise of the Galactic Empire

Not long after the conclusion of Republic action on Kashyyyk and the issuing of Order 66, which branded the Jedi traitors to the Republic who were to be shot on sight, the Clone Wars 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 Geonosis, Boss, Fixer, and Scorch 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—gathered at the 501st Legion headquarters on Coruscant with a number of other former Republic commandos and Advanced Recon Commandos for an audience with Darth Vader. There, Vader 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 were replaced with an "IC" to denote their new position as Imperial Commandos, and 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 Boss remarked would likely stick and, in fact, did among the ranks of the Imperial Commando Special Unit.

Personality and traits
"Ah, one of the 'deluxe' models. Come to save us with your superior training?" "This 'deluxe model' is the only thing standing between you and a bloody death, so you'd best be showing some respect, trooper."

- Boss puts a disrespectful clone trooper in his place aboard the Prosecutor

RC-1138—nicknamed "Boss" for his role as the leader of Delta Squad—was an incredibly gifted soldier. Scoring higher than most of his clone commando compatriots during his training on Kamino at a young age, Boss impressed his Mandalorian training sergeant, Walon Vau, with his prowess. Though a natural leader, Boss was relatively taciturn and often when he did speak, it was usually to issue an order to his squad. Boss had earned the respect and loyalty of his Delta Squad comrades, and did his best to repay their faith in him with strong, effective leadership. He cared a great deal for his squadmates, like most other clone commandos, viewed his team as brothers. Interestingly, despite being raised and trained by Cuy'val Dar sergeant Walon Vau, Boss would come to speak with Jango Fett's own Concord Dawn accent and speech patterns —though this trait was common to the flash-learned standard clone troops, as well.

Behind the scenes
RC-1138, or Boss, made his first appearance in the 2004 novel Republic Commando: Hard Contact by author Karen Traviss, a tie-in to the then upcoming 2005 videogame, Star Wars: Republic Commando, where Boss would predominantly feature as the player-controlled character. Traviss would later feature Boss and all of his Delta Squad comrades in her Republic Commando series of novels, including Triple Zero, True Colors, Order 66, and Imperial Commando: 501st. Boss would also receive an entry in the 2008 reference book, The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia.

Boss's numerical designation, RC-1138, is yet another homage to George Lucas's first film, THX 1138. In Star Wars: Republic Commando, Boss was voiced by actor Temuera Morrison, who portrayed Jango Fett himself and a number of other prominent clone characters in the Star Wars films Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. There is an Easter egg in the Star Wars: The Force Unleashed demo, released on August 21, 2008, in an area of the TIE fighter facility. If a pile of crates is stacked and used to jump up to a ledge, Boss' orange-painted helmet can be found. This may be a reference to a similar Easter egg in Star Wars: Republic Commando in which Boss discovers a discarded lightsaber on board the assault ship Prosecutor.

Boss was captured as a Star Wars Miniatures: Champions of the Force figure. Boss, along with the rest of his squad, appeared as an action figure alongside three Geonosian warriors. Boss still can't be found in his own official box but plenty of online websites sell prepackaged Boss with his weapons. In Star Wars: Dark Forces an Imperial commando in service of the New Order says, "Delta 1138 is Down." However it is unconfirmed if they are referring to Boss. Boss was one of the 4 Delta Squad members that was captured as a bust by Gentle Giant. Each bust is exclusive to a single country over the whole world, and all have a limited edition of 1300 worldwide. Boss' bust is exclusive in the Netherlands, Fixer in Japan, Sev in the UK and Scorch in the United States.

Appearances

 * Republic Commando: Hard Contact
 * Star Wars: Republic Commando
 * Republic Commando: Triple Zero
 * Republic Commando: True Colors
 * Order 66: A Republic Commando Novel
 * Imperial Commando: 501st
 * Imperial Commando: 501st

Non-canon appearances

 * Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes
 * Republic Commando: Order 66 game
 * Star Wars: The Force Unleashed video game

Notes and references
IC-1138 RC-1138 RC-1138 RC-1138