501st: An Imperial Commando Novel

by Karen Traviss

  “So you definitely want him alive,” Ennen said. “Despite general orders.”

  Cuis nodded, looking more distracted by his datapad. “Yes. Even I can’t get answers out of a dead man, although I know some who think they can.”

  Darman thought briefly of Fi and then stifled the image. There was no reaction from Cuis. If he was a Force-user, and not on the hit list, then what was he? Jusik had mentioned dark Jedi and Sith, although Darman had never paid much attention to the conversation. Now he wished he had. He wondered if there were Force-users who didn’t have to take sides at all.

  Then he remembered why he was wondering that, and reminded himself that the son he thought about wasn’t his son, but another Darman’s, and it didn’t break his heart not to see him, and he wasn’t terrified that he might not be able to raise him. He felt nothing. He didn’t dare.

  Why am I doing this? What if the Jedi I go after are just like Bard’ika?

  They wouldn’t be. They’d be like the ones who killed that other Darman’s wife. They’d be like the ones who had rules so callous that Jedi weren’t allowed to have families, and the ones who tried to had to live a lie. So he had nothing to search his conscience for.

  He didn’t ask himself how he would feel about hunting down his brothers, because he knew that they would never be found. It was academic.

  “Now, when you detain this man, there’s no need to be discreet,” said Cuis. “We want even the most obscure cesspits in the Empire to know that there really isn’t any place we can’t keep an eye on.”

  The shuttle lifted off. It wasn’t a LAAT/i, and its distinctive noise wasn’t yet burned into Darman’s subconscious as the promise of immediate extraction or welcome supplies. That would come in time, he was sure.

  He settled back in his seat and tried not to think beyond the moment. If he thought ahead—asked himself what he was doing here, asked why he didn’t desert now that Niner had recovered and could leave, too—then he’d have to think about his future, and that was impossible now without having to face his immediate past.

  His past hurt too much. It hurt so much that he wasn’t even sure he had what it took to be a good father.

  But that was another Darman.

  Kyrimorut, Mandalore

  It was saliva, strill saliva—a puddle of it in the flagstone passage outside the central living room, the karyai.

  Ordo saw it a fraction of a second too late when he glanced up from his datapad as he walked. He skidded. Walon Vau was back, and so was his strill, Mird. Ordo could smell its pungent musk everywhere.

  “Shab.” He doubled back to the kitchen to grab a mop, cursing to himself. “Disgusting shabuir.”

  “You don’t mean that, Ord’ika,” said Vau. He was filling a bucket from the faucet in the kitchen. “You know you’re glad to see Mird back. I’ll clean up the mess.”

  The drooling culprit sat with its head in Ny’s lap, grumbling happily. Ny indulged it with a handful of cookies, apparently oblivious to the volume of slobber a happy strill could generate.

  “I got you a bantha bone, Mird’ika.” Ny bent over to whisper in its ear. Ordo admired her ability to inhale that close to the creature. “But the bad men took it. Yes, they did, they took your bone! Their akk ate it. Naughty akk! I’ll get you another one, shall I? Nice big bone?”

  Mird rumbled approvingly. Ordo forgot nothing; he recalled every detail of the times the strill terrorized him as a child in Tipoca City. He’d come close to shooting it. So had Kal’buir. But now Mird was as much an ally as anyone else at Kyrimorut, and even Skirata admired its intelligence and devotion. Ny seemed to dote on it almost as much as Vau did.

  But it still stank. Nothing would ever change that.

  “So stormies are bad men, are they, Ny?” Vau asked, soaking a floor cloth and wringing out the water. “How bad?”

  “If they’d spotted the Jedi, I’d have found out the hard way,” she said. “Can Mird have pups?”

  “Mird can bear pups and sire them.” Vau headed for the passage with the cloth. “But don’t ask me how hermaphroditic reproduction works in practice. All I know is that if Mird meets the strill of its dreams, then they end up with a litter of little strills.”

  “And I bet they’re adorable,” Ny said, ruffling the loose skin on Mird’s jowls. “Little balls of wrinkly golden fluff. Just like you, Mird’ika.”

  Mird yawned, showing off a fearsome mouthful of teeth. Strills were possibly the least adorable animal on Mandalore, and Ordo struggled to see what Ny found so appealing. Mird had six legs, lethal claws, a massive square head with a huge jaw that could bite through skull bone, and folded skin that looked several sizes too big for its body. It could fly, too, provided it had some high point to launch from. The animal was admirable—and loyal—but beauty and fragrance were two qualities it lacked. Human males found its scent offensive; Ordo certainly did. Human females and other species didn’t seem to notice it, which probably explained why such a smelly animal could be such an efficient hunter.

  “You boys having a crisis meeting?” Ny asked, still making a fuss of Mird. “Anything I can do?”

  “Just a routine briefing,” Ordo said. “One of Mereel’s business contacts located Dar and Niner, so we have work to do.”

  “Is Niner okay? How about poor Darman? How is he?”

  “Back on the job. Both of them. Beyond that—we have to find out.”

  “At least Kal can relax now.”

  “Not until we get them home.”

  “That should be easy for you, though. Shouldn’t it? You’re the extraction and retrieval experts. No door closed to you, and all that.”

  “In theory, yes.”

  “You’re a very cautious lad, Ordo.”

  “That’s because I watch plans go to osik every day.”

  Ordo was desperate to ask Ny a more personal question, but Besany had forbidden him to raise the topic of her opinion of Kal’buir. Trying to marry them off was premature, Besany warned, and there was a chance it would scare Ny away.

  Ordo couldn’t see why everyone was skirting around the issue. A’den had decided the two of them were a good match, the rest of the brothers agreed, and Kal’buir needed a wife. If he didn’t get a move on, Vau might move in. Ordo had never known Vau to show the slightest interest in another living being, but he’d watched enough holovids to know that romance sprang from the most unlikely shared moments, and Mird was in danger of becoming one of those.

  “Something on your mind, Ordo?” Ny asked. “You look like—”

  She was cut short by a yelp from Mird. It threw up its head and trotted to the kitchen door, tail whipping. Ordo heard footsteps—light shoes, not Mando cetare—and Scout appeared in the doorway. After a few sniffs of the girl’s robes, the strill slunk back to Ny as if disappointed.

  “What’s that?” Scout edged into the kitchen and stared at Mird from a cautious distance. “Is that the strill?”

  “Lord Mirdalan,” Ny said. “Mird, meet Scout.”

  “Wow.”

  “It’s okay, it’s safe to touch him … her … it. Whatever. Sorry, Mird, it just feels rude to call you it when you’re such a sweetie.”

  Mird basked in the attention. Scout didn’t look convinced that the strill was harmless—a wise girl, because it wasn’t—but she squatted down and petted it anyway. Mird rubbed its head against her face, stopping short of slobbering over her. Ordo got the feeling it was working out who this stranger was that had upset Kal’buir so much.

  “He’s very friendly.” Scout rubbed Mird’s ears and got a long rumble of delight. “Kina Ha will be fascinated.”

  “It,” Ordo said. “And it might be a good idea to keep it away from Kina Ha. Mird doesn’t like Kaminoans.”

  “Well, looks like Vau left me holding the baby.” Ny waved Ordo away. “Go on. Get to your boys’ club meeting.”

  “Females aren’t excluded. You can join in if you like.”

  “Someone’s got to get dinner on the table.” />
  Ordo wondered if the strill had sensed Scout as a Jedi and thought Etain had come home. It was hard to know what went on in a strill’s head, but Mird was intelligent enough to know Etain was dead because it had seen her body. Perhaps, like a grieving human, it thought it saw her now, even when it knew that couldn’t possibly happen.

  Is that what Darman’s going through, too? Does he keep seeing Etain in crowds? Does he forget for a moment, see something that would make her laugh, then remember she’s dead?

  How does he go on? How does anyone go on?

  Ordo couldn’t get the idea of bereavement out of his head since escaping from Coruscant. He’d never lost brothers in combat, not like the other clones had, and he found himself trying to imagine what life would be like if he lost the people he loved. The idea of life without Kal’buir or his brothers was almost too much to think about. And now he had a wife, too, another person to fear for and fret over. The more you loved, the more pain lay in wait. Vau seemed to have the right idea. If you didn’t love anyone, you couldn’t be hurt or bereaved. Life was a trade-off between loneliness and inevitable peaks of joy or agony.

  Ordo walked into the main room that formed the hub of the Kyrimorut complex, the living area where the clan ate, argued, and generally entertained themselves. The usual war council was assembled—Skirata, Vau, Gilamar, Ordo’s brothers, and Jusik. Fi, Corr, and Atin obviously had better things to do, probably with Levet, who was teaching himself to farm with the aid of an instructional holobook and some very confused nuna.

  “Ord’ika—take a seat, son.” Skirata nursed a steaming mug of shig. The tisane smelled like behot herb. Kal’buir was in need of comfort, then. “We’ve got a lot to catch up on.”

  Skirata wasn’t a man who liked formality, but Ordo could see why Ny thought he’d suddenly caught a dose of organization. She hadn’t lived in barracks; she didn’t know the routine. Even Mandalorians needed a little structure in their lives, however anarchic they looked to aruetiise. The day had to start with a din’kartay, an assessment of what was happening and what everyone needed to do next, and sometimes that was just a chat over breakfast. Sometimes—like now—it was much more serious, an operational planning session.

  Gilamar sat on a veshok stool, warming his hands by the log fire that burned in the center of the room. “Who wants to start? Walon, I take it you had no luck finding leads on Sev.”

  Vau didn’t even shake his head. It was hard to read the man, and if Ordo hadn’t known better, he might have thought that Vau didn’t care much about the missing member of Delta Squad.

  “Nothing,” he said. “It’s near impossible to do anything on Kashyyyk at the moment anyway, now that our beloved Emperor’s crushed the Wookiee clans and let the slavers in. Enacca’s still on Togoria organizing a resistance. But she’s made finding Sev her personal mission, and I feel a little …” Vau trailed off. “Shall we move on?”

  “Hard to do that when we’re going to be working out how to get Dar and Niner back, Walon. Can’t ignore Sev.”

  “But we know where they are.” Vau’s tone was very final. “First things first.”

  “Okay.” There was a long silent pause. Gilamar didn’t sound convinced. “Uthan’s started analyzing the kaminii’s samples. I think we should get her to create an antigen for the FG thirty-six virus, if she hasn’t already worked that out, which she probably has. It’s too dangerous—Palpatine’s got it, even if he doesn’t know what it’ll do when dispersed.”

  “And you trust her?” Vau said.

  “As much as I trust anyone who’s not one of us and makes weapons of mass destruction for a living.”

  “Do you trust her to create what she says she’s going to create, and not just poison us all?”

  “I don’t know,” Gilamar said. “But I don’t think she knows, either. I’d like to give her a reason for working for us beyond being scared we’ll shoot her if she doesn’t.”

  “I don’t think she’s going to be won over by our rough Mando charm,” Skirata said. “Or the justice of our cause. Or even credits. This is a psy ops job.”

  “Well, I’ll start working on her for an antidote. She can re-create that original virus anytime. She’s got all her research with her. We ought to have control of that, just in case.”

  Skirata nodded, still subdued. He’d been that way for a couple of days, ever since he set eyes on Scout. “Jaing, finance report?”

  At least Jaing looked happy. He radiated satisfaction. “Even at the lowest interest rate in the galaxy, we’re making fifteen billion creds a year,” he said. “That’s about two hundred million a week, even without compound interest. A week. Not a bad return for a paltry credit skimmed off every bank account in the system.”

  They were unthinkable numbers, so far beyond the personal needs or imagination of anyone in the room that they were almost meaningless. Ordo could only think of the things that credits could never buy.

  Jusik was a natural optimist, though. He applauded. “Oya! We can do a lot with that.”

  “I bet even Walon can’t imagine that much waadas, and he was born stinking rich.” Skirata drained his mug. “But isn’t that going to get noticed sooner or later?”

  Jaing winked. “Not split across thousands of separate accounts and invested in companies across the galaxy, no …”

  “Ah, my clever boy. My very clever boy.”

  Nobody seemed particularly excited about so much wealth. Ordo, like all the clones, had never needed credits until he left Kamino, and even then all his needs had been met by the Grand Army’s budget. And men like Skirata came from a frugal culture. Nobody was about to rush out and buy a stable of racing odupiendos or a luxury yacht. It was all ret’lini—just in case, a Plan B, the classic Mando mind-set of always being ready for the worst. The fortune was insurance against a rainy day, intended to be spent on whatever it took to resettle as many clones as possible.

  So far … it’s just us, Yayax Squad, and Commander Levet. But it’s early days yet. More will come.

  “So we can afford to buy a lot of loyalty,” Skirata said. “Mereel, you think this Gaib is reliable?”

  “He hasn’t let me down yet,” Mereel said. “He works with a tech droid called Teekay-O. They’re the ones who led us to Ko Sai, remember. They know who’s selling, who’s buying, and who’s shipping what and where, and how much. So they did a bit of digging for us, and what better way to spy on the Empire than through its procurement contracts?”

  “What do they want?”

  “Credits, like any mercenary.”

  Skirata didn’t even have to ask how much. It didn’t matter, as long as it wasn’t anything that drew attention to Kyrimorut. “So Dar and Niner are Five-oh-first Legion. Vader’s Fist, my shebs. Who is this Vader, anyhow? Never heard of him.”

  “Palpatine’s right-hand man. Red lightsaber, Teekay-O says.”

  “Shab, another Sith. Same old feud. Why don’t all the Sith and Jedi move to some planet nobody’s ever heard of and slug it out in private, and leave the rest of the galaxy in peace?”

  Skirata didn’t even glance at Jusik, not even to say that present company was excepted. He seemed to have erased the idea that Jusik had ever been a Jedi. Ordo wondered how Jusik saw himself, though. He never did things by half. Ordo wondered if Jusik put so much effort into being Mando to atone for some sense of guilt at having been a Jedi. He really seemed to reinvent himself.

  “Anyway, saber-jockey infighting apart,” Mereel said, “Vader’s set up a special assassination unit of former Republic commandos and ARCs within the Five-oh-first solely to hunt Jedi, deserters, and sympathizers.”

  “That’s us, I think,” Jusik said. “Now we know where Dar and Niner are, though, it’s just a matter of collecting them, isn’t it?”

  Skirata shrugged. “It shouldn’t be too hard, but we don’t have the freedom to come and go that we used to have. We’re the enemy.”

  “And how does that stop us, exactly?” Vau asked. “It’s not as i
f Zey ever gave us his blessing to do what we did. He didn’t know about most of it, for a start.”

  Skirata studied his datapad. “If we work out what missions they’re tasked for, we might not even have to land on Coruscant. Just show up and tell them their taxi’s arrived.”

  “I don’t think the Empire’s seen me before,” Prudii said, deadpan. “Or Kom’rk. Eh, ner vod? The great thing about being a clone is that we’ve got literally millions of places to hide. Grab the right armor, and no mongrel’s any the wiser.”

  “Son, you know how many times we’ve pulled that stunt?” Skirata asked.

  “Yes. You know how many times it’s worked?”

  Kom’rk inspected his fingernails. “Well, that’s another problem they’ve brought upon themselves—it’s not like they can take our DNA to prove who we are. Or stick us in a lineup.”

  “Well, they could,” Mereel said. “Because we devlop differences but—”

  “Okay, point taken.” Skirata didn’t start the paternal lecture about not taking risks. This was possibly the most straightforward operation they’d ever faced. All they had to do was locate their missing brothers and show up on the day with transport; no guards to slot, no doors to blow open, no hostiles to battle through. By the time the Empire realized Dar and Niner were gone, they’d be home and dry at Kyrimorut.

  And Darman would be reunited with his son.

  “Any other business?” Skirata asked.

  “Yes, what are we going to do about Dred Priest?” Jusik said. “Not that I know the man, but you do.”

  Gilamar looked as if he was going to spit. “He’s a hutuun. I don’t care how good a soldier he is. He talks that supremacy osik, and we don’t need his kind on Mandalore.”

  “Shysa would never listen to him, anyway,” Skirata said. “He’s too smart. Everyone knows Mandalore’s never going to be a galactic empire again. Shab, we haven’t been a major power for millennia.”

  “And we don’t want to be.” Gilamar was on his favorite topic now, unstoppable. “Empires are doomed from day one. Whatever happens, however well they start out—they get too big and go rotten. They all fall. They’re all overthrown. It’s the cycle of nature. Let’s stay on the margins, moving in the gaps the big boys leave.”