CT-6221-54

"All he does is mumble about politics and never offer anybody else in the unit a ride on his tank even in the freezing rain. You'd think fighting in the galaxy's deadliest war would've taught that labrat some company etiquette. Emperor should've kept him with the stormies like the rest of his kind."

- Another member of Hardliner's Imperial Army tank company CT-6221-54, also known by his nickname "Hardliner", was a clone trooper that served in the 7th Sky Corps and later the 327th Star Corps. He later transitioned to the Imperial Army as a tank commander before retirement.

Military service
Corporal CT-6221-54 "Hardliner" fought with the 212th Attack Battalion of the 7th Sky Corps at the First Battle of Geonosis to the Battle of Sarrish, fighting in most of these battles as an Advanced Recon Force (ARF) trooper.

Following the Battle of Sarrish, Hardliner's company was sent to reinforce the 87th Sentinel Corps at Theed against a Separatist invasion force; during the battle, a TX-130 fighter tank's crew was wiped out by a thermal detonator, after which he manned the tank and single-handedly held back multiple droidekas and super battle droids as the other 212th and 87th troopers retreated to the defensive line, an act he'd be awarded for. He was then relocated to the 327th Star Corps, with whom he fought in the Battle of Felucia until the end of the war.

When the war came to an end (or rather, diverged into many smaller wars), Sergeant Hardliner was once again relocated to a tank company in the Imperial Army, who noticed the clone's heroic actions with the fighter tank years earlier in his records and was in dire need of skilled tank operators. He was deployed to the rainy Mid Rim agriworld Di-Noza as the commander of a TX-130T, where he engaged forces of the Di-Nozan Revolutionary Army.

Civilian life
After more than a decade of active deployments since the First Battle of Geonosis, Sergeant Hardliner was eventually forced to retire on Coruscant after years of avoiding the Imperial Military's "de-cloning". Dissatisfied with Coruscant's low precipitation (which he had grown to love from his time on Kamino and Di-Noza), and instead opted to become a storm chaser, traveling around the galaxy documenting various dangerous storms and reporting his findings to local weather services and news networks, all while still living up to his nickname and maintaining his strong political opinions. He eventually grew depressed knowing that he would never live a "typical" civilian lifestyle, and gradually fell into alcoholism throughout the course of his storm chasing career.

During a routine storm hunt, Hardliner encountered a chemist who once worked for the Separatists; after the chemist defused an irate Hardliner, the chemist revealed to Hardliner that he was part of a team that was working on a cure for the clone's rapid aging, as a "reward" for clone troopers that deserted to the Separatists during the war. The scientist found this abhorrent and deserted the project, planning to spread the cure to all of the Republic's clone troopers, however by the time he perfected the formula, the war was already over. Instead, the scientist traveled across the galaxy at random, giving the cure to clone troopers that he hoped to come across in his mission. Obviously, Hardliner was skeptical about the idea of ingesting a chemical substance inexplicably handed to him by an individual he knew nothing of other than the fact that he served an enemy force, though after much debate Hardliner was eventually convinced to bring his fellow storm chaser to the scientist's star yacht, where he administered the cure. Hardliner noticed a slight increase in energy and mood as time went on, but beyond that noticed no significant changes.

More than a decade later, just after having finished watching a live recording of the Galactic Concordance's signing, Hardliner, who was understandably impacted by the Empire's defeat, looked at himself in the mirror, was confused as to why he wasn't as impacted by aging as the few clone troopers (who were all Imperial generals) present at the signing, until he remembered his encounter with the Separatist scientist. Optimistic that he was given a second chance at life, Hardliner (now thirty seven years old, though appearing as though he were in his healthy fifties whereas most other Kaminoan clones had now succumbed to the complications of aging) ironically retired on Di-Noza, where he met his wife and bore a son, who would grow up to serve the Resistance as a starfighter pilot.