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 Battle of Geonosis, and features N-7, Atin, Kal Skirata, and Prudii.

Plot
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 occuring 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 garnish suspicion on the part of the droids that would have expected an attack.

En route to a rendevous at Drall RV point, Mereel, Skirata, and Ordo all uncover a message between Lama Su and Chancellor Palpatine, stating no further clone production unless more are commissioned and reveals plans for cloning facilities on Coruscant.

At the rendevous point, both parts of the team exchange information and report to Jedi General Zey on their findings. Skiraka 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. Skiraka 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.

Behind the scenes
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 recton Triple Zero, it appears to have failed according to disgruntled fans in the forums at TheForce.net and StarWars.com.

Inconsistencies with established canon

 * The notion that there was only around hundred million droids blatantly contradicts Story of General Grievous II: Lord of War and the Revenge of the Sith: Incredible Cross-Sections, both of which state that there were several quintillion battle droids. However, it is possible that the information found by the clones was false or outdated.