501st: An Imperial Commando Novel

by Karen Traviss

  “What?” Rede said.

  “Never mind. Everybody—in position.”

  Niner watched Dar drop down from the walkway on his rappel line and hug the wall as he made his way to the cantina doors. It took him seconds to slap detonite on the weak spots and take cover. Niner checked the POV icons: Rede was lined up on the skylight in the cantina roof, and Ennen was fixed on the big transparisteel window. Fired from the Deece attachment, the stun grenades would punch a hole in anything before exploding in a harmless but disabling ball of deafening, blinding light.

  “Go!” Niner said.

  Dar could always rig a spectacular detonation for rapid entry. He hadn’t lost his touch.

  Boom.

  Niner ducked as the det went off and sent the doors crashing in. They rushed into smoke, tactical lamps raking the unlit counter and reflecting off bottles and mirrors. Niner could hear boots clattering and shouts of “Clear!” Then wood splintered somewhere. He found himself face-to-face with Rede. He gestured left; Ennen appeared and pointed behind them to the kitchens. But they didn’t get that far, because the familiar vzzzm of a lightsaber cut through every other sound and made them all turn at once. The mirror behind the bar was lit with soft blue light.

  “Counter,” Ennen said. “Under the counter.”

  He dived for the open end of the bar and opened fire. Niner was still waiting for the booby trap, the ambush, the feint. From his position, it looked as if everything was happening simultaneously: a figure rising from behind the counter, the white flashes of a Deece emptying its magazine, a blue shaft of energy that left an afterimage and tumbled to the floor.

  Ennen kept on firing. It seemed like minutes before he stopped. It could only have been seconds. The silence was sudden and complete.

  “That’s for Bry,” he said. He stepped over something, crunching on broken glass, then grunted.

  Niner braced, expecting him to trigger a device. That was the kind of stunt a smart operator would pull, a sacrificial act to take Imperial troops with them just as Camas had tried to do. Maybe the Jedi who’d been stranded here had been ordered to do maximum damage. It didn’t sound very Jedi-like to Niner, but then neither did trying to overthrow Palpatine by violence, and they’d done that, too.

  But he’s a Sith. Does that make it okay, or not?

  “Can’t detect any explosives,” Ennen said, standing up again. “Let’s see who this joker is.”

  The noises sounded as if he was rifling through the guy’s clothing. Less than three minutes from entry to finish; something to impress the locals. Imperial stormtroopers didn’t mess around. Niner opened his comlink. “Anskow? Building secure. We’ll check for booby traps, just in case.”

  “Maybe we should have done that first.” Rede peered over the counter. “Did they leave just the dumb Jedi behind? Or are they all that useless?”

  Ennen stood up, fanning out a sheaf of identichips one-handed. “Stang,” he said. He tossed the chips to Niner and strode out. “Stang.”

  “What’s up with him?” Darman asked.

  Niner looked through the IDs. They were all taxi pilot licenses, each with the same image but with different names. He turned over the body and shone his lamp in the face. There was enough left for a positive ID.

  “I think we just got a random thief,” he said. “Which explains why he didn’t put up a fight. Probably all he could do was to switch on the lightsaber and wave it around.”

  He searched for the hilt and found it in the carpet of shattered bottles.

  “How could he get hold of it?” Rede asked.

  “Were you around for Order Sixty-six?”

  “I wasn’t deployed then.”

  “It was chaos. Jedi cut down everywhere. Buildings on fire. It wouldn’t take a criminal genius to grab a lightsaber from the debris, just an opportunist.”

  “Okay, job done,” Darman said, and walked out. “Well done, anyway, Rede.”

  Anskow looked at the IDs and spent some time on the comm checking with someone. He even took fingerprints from the body. His embarrassed expression told Niner what information he was getting back from his control room.

  “Well, he took a guy’s hand off with that saber thing,” he said at last. “What were we supposed to think?”

  Niner shrugged. “Better safe than sorry. We won’t bill you.”

  It was an anticlimax, but it wasn’t the first foul-up Niner had been involved in, and it wouldn’t be the last. There’d be some questions about how the guy might have come by the lightsaber, and someone—not them, he was sure—would be tasked to check the man’s contacts just to make certain there was no real Jedi connection somewhere. Niner put it out of his head and climbed back into the LAAT/i. He’d file a report later.

  Lawful warning given, suspect failed to surrender, drew lightsaber, neutralized by Trooper IC-4447 Ennen.

  What a dumb way to die, all for a stolen speeder and a dangerous souvenir. Idiot. Did he have a family? What a rotten pointless end for his folks to have to live with.

  It was just a speeder. A couple of months in jail, maybe. Not worth losing your life for. Some people just ran, even though it must have been obvious they wouldn’t get away. The LAAT/i lifted off the platform and they headed back to barracks.

  “You okay, Ennen?” Niner asked.

  Ennen was sitting on the starboard side bench, arms folded tight across his chest, head tilted back so that his helmet rattled on the durasteel panel of the bulkhead.

  “Yeah. Fine.”

  He wasn’t. Niner knew it.

  Darman took off his helmet and scratched his chin. “Ennen, if that guy had really been a Jedi, it would have been a good take. Don’t beat yourself up.”

  “Kriffing moron,” Ennen muttered. “He was asking for it. What kind of carbon-flush thinks it’s a good idea to wave a lightsaber around at a time like this?”

  “A moron who wasn’t carrying a blaster?” Rede said.

  Darman turned on him. “If you don’t take a lightsaber seriously, ner vod,” he snarled, “you’re going to end up dead.”

  “Udesii, Dar,” Niner said. “Let’s all relax. Nothing we can do about it now.”

  Niner kept an eye on Ennen’s POV icon all the way back to base. It stayed fixed, as if he was staring at the deckhead, although that was no guide to where his eyes were directed or even if they were open. When the gunship landed, Ennen was the first man out, and he stalked off as if he had something pressing to attend to. Niner knew he’d have a tough job ahead of him to knit this squad together as tightly as he had Omega. He let Ennen go. The doors to the ’freshers slammed shut behind him. There, at least, a guy could have a few minutes of privacy.

  He’d come out when he was ready. Maybe Dar could take him out for that ale later. The open invitation to the old Coruscant Security Force staff club still stood for all Skirata’s squads, and it was as good a place as any.

  “Let’s hang around and wait for him,” Darman said. “So he knows we don’t go off and leave a brother when he’s in a mood.”

  “What’s udesii?” Rede frowned at the scratches gouged in his armor by the broken glass. “I’m trying to keep up with your slang.”

  Poor kid. “It’s Mandalorian,” Niner said. “It means take it easy. Calm down. Relax.”

  Rede looked to Darman. “Ner vod,” he said. “Buddy?”

  “Brother,” Darman said. “My brother. Or my sister, come to that.” Rede just gave him a puzzled look. “Ennen’s been a long time.”

  Yes, he had. Niner walked up and down the corridor a couple of times. “Nobody takes that long in the ’freshers. I hope he hasn’t fallen in.”

  “I’ll go see how he is.” Darman walked in and called Ennen a couple of times, but the doors closed before Niner heard any reply.

  He waited, watching Rede fussing over his armor. Before long, the kid would be only too happy to see damaged plastoid as battle honors.

  “You’ll never keep that pristine,” Niner said helpfully. “In fact, t
he more—”

  Bdapp.

  The crack of a discharged blaster stopped him dead. The ’fresher doors muffled it, but the sound was too loud and too distinctive to be anything else. Niner pushed through the doors before he thought about it. Darman was hammering on one of the stalls.

  “Ennen? Ennen! Open the shabla door, will you?”

  Niner tried to smash the locked door with his boot while Darman scrambled over the top of the partition. He froze as he looked down into the stall, gripping the top of the duraplast panel.

  “Fierfek.”

  “Is he breathing, Dar?” Niner knew the answer. Darman had seen enough casualties. If he froze, it was because there was no point in doing anything else. “Please—don’t tell me he’s done something stupid.”

  Darman dropped back, saying nothing, and rammed his shoulder against the lock. This time it gave way.

  Ennen would probably have felt he hadn’t done anything stupid at all. For him, it was the right thing. The man sat there, staring sightless at the ceiling, helmet on the floor, no visible marks on his face but clearly dead. His DC-15s sidearm had fallen halfway under the stall partition.

  “Rede, get the med droids,” Niner called. Obvious or not, someone medically qualified had to pronounce him dead. “Tell them to bring a gurney.”

  Darman didn’t say a thing. A suicide was unusual in the commando ranks. Niner couldn’t recall another one, but then he wasn’t sure he would have been told about it. He didn’t know how often the meat-cans decided they’d had enough, either. All he knew was that he’d failed one of his men, and that he’d never forgive himself for letting Ennen struggle on without realizing how close to the edge he was.

  What tipped him? Capping a civvie? Or not capping a Jedi?

  More commandos started showing up. You couldn’t discharge a weapon in the barracks without drawing attention.

  “Beat it,” Niner snapped. “He’s gone. Ennen’s topped himself, poor shabuir. Now get back to whatever you were doing. It’s not a kriffing cabaret.”

  Rede seemed uncertain whether he was in the get-lost category or not, and hovered until Niner beckoned him back with a jerk of his thumb. Two med droids whirred into the ’freshers with a repulsor gurney and emerged minutes later with Ennen’s body covered by a sheet.

  “Well, he’s not miserable anymore,” Niner said, not sure what was appropriate at a time like this. “It’s terrible, but at least it’s over for him.”

  “I didn’t know he was that far gone.” Darman sounded numb. He stared at his hands. “I was going to take him out and get him to talk about it all.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t think he was the talking type.” Niner had to report the incident to Melusar now. What happened in these cases? He’d never dealt with a suicide before, and he couldn’t even recall if there were any regs to cover it. At least they had a commanding officer who’d make sure Ennen got the funeral rite that he wanted, though. “I should have sorted him out a lot sooner. Shab, I should have …”

  Darman kept taking one of his gauntlets off and sliding it back on his hand again, over and over. He wasn’t really paying attention to Niner.

  “That’s the last time,” he said, “that I ever put off doing something until later. There’s never going to be a later.”

  He picked up his helmet and made for the doors. Niner had thought Dar was doing okay and surfacing from the worst of his despair, but anything could tip him over the edge again now. There were only so many times you could lose those close to you before you snapped. Even if Ennen had been hard to get to know, he was still a squad brother.

  “Dar, where are you going?” Niner went after him. “Hey, hang on—”

  Darman slowed and turned. “It’s okay, ner vod. I’m not going to top myself. I’ve got something to live for.” He went to put on his helmet. “And I’m going to call him the first chance I get.”

  Kyrimorut, Mandalore, ten hours after Zey’s arrival

  Vau was back, and he was mad.

  Ordo watched the conversation between him and Kal’buir skid downhill without brakes. Vau’s expression of smug good humor evaporated two steps down the cockpit ladder of Gilamar’s shuttle, and Ordo was pretty sure the words Zey’s turned up alive had something to do with it. Gilamar and Atin carried on unloading the lab supplies as if they’d seen these fights before, which they had. The Skirata and Vau Show had been a staple diversion during the off-duty hours on Kamino.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Vau boomed. He never shouted. He was an Irmenu aristocrat, heir to Count Gesl before his father disowned him, and the gentry did not yell like common folk. They could be loudly disapproving, though. The entire homestead could hear the two veteran sergeants letting rip. “What do we need Zey for? Do you understand the risks? You lunatic.”

  “You think I invited the shabuir to drop in for caf and cakes?” Skirata had no problem with yelling. “He’s here. I don’t like that any more than you do. But he is, so deal with it until we solve the problem.”

  Skirata stormed off. Ordo gave him a couple of minutes to cool from a rolling boil to a slow simmer, then went after him.

  Vau didn’t dislike Zey as far as Ordo knew. He’d almost seemed to enjoy the verbal sparring necessary to get one over on the general, even knowing that Zey was aware he was being conned somehow. But there was a place for Jedi, and that was not Kyrimorut.

  I agree. We all do. But we don’t seem to be able to avoid them.

  Skirata leaned on the wall by the roba pen, throwing his three-sided knife into the thick veshok gatepost a few meters away. One of the roba, an old boar with an impressive beard of reddish hair dangling from his multiple chins, stopped rooting in the mud with the others and stood on his hind legs with his front trotters on the wall to see what was going on.

  “It’s okay, ner vod,” Skirata said to the animal. He sent the blade thudding into the same spot on the post everytime and took three paces to retrieve it. “It’s not time for the butcher yet. Just venting steam.”

  “Vau will see sense.” Ordo had an unnerving feeling that the roba was following the conversation. “Look at it logically. Zey has as much to lose as we have by revealing our location.”

  Skirata retrieved his blade again and flicked the sharp point with his thumb. “More. And I’d see to that personally.”

  “Jaing’s right. There’s always an advantage to be gained from these situations.”

  “Only out of necessity. I never wanted to see another Jedi as long as I lived. But I can’t seem to get away from them.” Skirata inhaled, held his breath, and let the knife fly again. Ordo often wondered what went through his mind when he did that. “And if you think Vau’s mad now—watch what happens when I tell him we’re thinking of doing a deal with Altis.”

  Skirata patted his arm and went back into the house, leaving Ordo leaning over the roba pen wall. The dilemma was painful. The general principle of putting an end to Jedi influence in the galaxy—or Jedi dominance, depending on how serious a threat Mandalorians considered them to be—was always based on anonymous Jedi, or at least Jedi who were disliked. But faced with poor little Scout, the venerable Kina Ha, and a fairly pleasant man they knew well, putting an end to anything became brutally hard.

  That didn’t mean Ordo wouldn’t do it, of course. He just wasn’t sure how badly he might feel about it afterward. But he’d been trained to kill dispassionately because threats had to be removed, and he could see no real difference between a threat you didn’t know and a threat with a familiar face.

  And what was known—the location of Kyrimorut—couldn’t be erased any other way, unless Jusik had more Force tricks up his sleeve.

  Ordo realized he was now standing almost nose-to-nose with the roba boar. The animal looked up into his face and grunted. In that moment of eye contact, he felt a connection to the animal much the same as looking a human being in the eye, and wondered how he’d feel when he eventually came to eat it.

  Is that it? Is it just not knowing
that makes killing okay?

  Ordo shook himself out of the mental debate and went to see how unloading was progressing. Cov and his brothers had volunteered to convert an outbuilding into what he called a “bug farm” for Uthan, and the four clones were puzzling over a plan sketched on a sheet of flimsi.

  Only a few months ago, Uthan would have cheerfully unleashed a pathogen specifically designed to kill them—and Ordo, and all his brothers. Now she was treating them like favorite nephews. Yes, knowing did seem to make all the difference to some folk.

  Uthan certainly seemed pleased with the haul of equipment and lab supplies, managing a smile whenever she pried open a crate. She might have been pleased to see Gilamar back, of course, and Ordo took heart from that; everyone knew there was a burgeoning romance there, and nobody minded. Somehow, the sheer impersonality of her mission to wipe out clones took the sting out of it. The matter of mass slaughter was closed. She had her comeuppance before she even got around to her crime.

  Vau could come to terms with Jedi made safe by mutually assured destruction, then. Some fights to the death could be stopped and turned around. Kal’buir certainly seemed to have overcome his ingrained hatred by placing Scout and Kina Ha in a slot marked Not Really Jedi.

  Ordo wondered if it was ever possible to explain to an outsider—aruetii in the most literal sense—how deep an enmity could run. More than four thousand years of wars, betrayals, and massacres; how could the two sides ever trust each other? It was as deeply embedded in both factions as the religious schism of Sarrassia, except there was a third side in the hostilities, and that was Sith. Sometimes they were lumped in with the Jedi as a variation on the Force-user theme. Sometimes they were enemies, uncomfortable allies, or even employers of the Mando’ade. Ordo doubted that many of the Grand Army’s clone troopers could have seen it this way, but there was something timeless and inevitable about a Sith Lord using an army effectively made up of Mandalorians to attack the Jedi yet again. Only the date had changed.