Order 66

by Karen Traviss

  “I’d find it impossible,” Jusik said carefully. He wondered if the separation was good for either her or the baby. “But I understand. All the time Darman has to fight, so do you.”

  “If anything happens to me—”

  “Jedi casualties have been few and far between in this war.”

  “Hear me out. If I don’t come back, make sure the Jedi Order doesn’t find Kad.”

  Jusik fiddled with his high collar. Armor wasn’t half as restricting as a business suit. “Nothing’s going to happen to you,” he said. “Like I said, we lost a lot of Jedi at Geonosis, but very few since.”

  “Bardan…”

  “They’ll have to get past Kal’s small army first. But yes, if you want my word—I’ll give my life to protect him.”

  Etain made a little “uh” sound and when Jusik turned away from the mirror, she looked on the brink of tears.

  “I don’t expect you to—”

  “I know, but I expect me to.” By the time he returned from his mission, she’d be back on duty, and Laseema, Besany, or Skirata would be here holding the fort. “Now, no foolish heroics. May the Force be with you, Etain.”

  Jusik didn’t look back. When he took his leave of someone, there was always a final moment when he had to break eye contact, a degree of pain to be faced, so he always got it over with fast. Moving through the city unnoticed was second nature to him now; all transactions by cash credits, multistage journeys by public transport, avoidance of areas with security cams. He could mind-rub and disable surveillance holocams with a thought, but he didn’t want to leave a wake of renegade Force-using behind him.

  And if there were any loose ends despite his care… Jaller Obrim could probably tie those up.

  The Valorum Center looked like a midmarket spa from the outside, and only the impressive security—double gates, and a sequence of doors that could have doubled as an air lock on Mustafar—gave a hint that it was a judicial psychiatric unit. Not all its guests were criminals; many were a danger only to themselves, but they were all there because the courts had ruled that they needed locking up. It attracted surprisingly little attention, but then there were any number of government buildings with unwelcoming façades springing up on Coruscant these days, and it wasn’t a residential area.

  Jusik presented his identichip to a droid at the gates that looked more like an ion cannon emplacement. It scanned the details and swung back to let him pass.

  It was very easy to fake a civil service ID if you had a civil service contact willing to give you his or her chip for electronic cloning and modification. Besany Wennen’s original chip had now spawned bogus employee identities across the whole tangled spectrum of Republic administration. A bureaucracy that didn’t actually know how many staff it employed on any given day was ripe for infiltration. The last time Jusik had sliced into the payroll system, the full-time workforce alone stood at eight million, more than twice the size of the Grand Army.

  Denel Herris was just another pen pusher who might or might not have existed. Jusik wore him like a coat.

  “I won’t keep you long,” he said, looking suitably harassed as the deputy chief administrator with PELBION, DR. S. on his ID badge led him through the soothing pale green corridors. “Just preparing a response for the health minister. Another hoo-hah about dangerous patients being released into the community too early.”

  “I’m still not sure how we managed to mislay your request. I’m very sorry.”

  “No matter.” Jusik already had the ground plans for the facility—courtesy of the unsuspecting utilities administration—but it did no harm to record the layout, too. He clutched his comlink in his hand while he walked as if waiting for some important transmission, but the integral holocam was active, recording in detail to be examined later. “Will I be able to see the director at such short notice?”

  Say no. I won’t mind. I could bluff my way through it, but…

  “He’s out of the office today, I’m afraid.”

  “Well, I’m sure you can give me the figures.” Jusik strode on, trying not to look as if he knew where he was going. “Just how much of a risk are the patients you have here? How many are actually a threat to other citizens? Aren’t they mainly troubled souls more likely to throw themselves off buildings?”

  “Mainly.” Pelbion was a thin human male in his fifties who kept looking over his shoulder as they passed through each set of security doors, as if he was expecting an attack. “But we do accommodate some high-risk patients on a short-term basis. The truly dangerous ones are then transferred to the isolation facility on Jevelet. And I can assure you that our clinical assessments of risk are much, much more exacting than some other institutions. We do not put faith in pharmaceutical cures or convincing interviews with assessment panels.”

  The facility was remarkably quiet and empty. Jusik had somehow expected something more like a hospital, with at least droids moving around, but this wasn’t a place where visitors or activity seemed to be encouraged, and the doors were all locked. The farther into the complex that Jusik walked, the more unsettled he felt. This was a miserable place for a Force-user; Jusik could sense emotions. Wave after wave of anxiety, fear, wild elation, and even occasional oddly misplaced certainty swept over him almost like whispers emerging from each locked room. He’d never been this close to so many people all in… all with… he wanted to say torment, delusion, insanity, but that wasn’t it at all. Some were very unhappy, but some were very happy indeed, quite manic in fact. It took a lot to rattle Jusik, but this shook him. It was made worse by seeing nobody, just sensing them. He felt surrounded by ghosts.

  “What proportion do you release into the community?” he asked Pelbion, trying to center himself again. Sometimes he envied ordinary beings. All they had to do was look. But he didn’t dare try to shut out the clamor of emotions because he was seeking one mind, one person who he had reason to believe was being held here.

  He was looking for Dr. Uthan. If she wasn’t here, then he’d run out of secure facilities to search, and the trail had gone cold.

  “Only three percent ever leave this institution,” Pelbion said. “We take quite extreme cases, after all.”

  Jusik concentrated. It was like sifting through a thousand conversations going on simultaneously, looking for one word, but he couldn’t walk every corridor without arousing Pelbion’s suspicions. Ahead of them, a med droid and a female Mon Cal in a pale lemon lab coat wandered down the corridor deep in conversation before turning left into an office. Jusik was beginning to think there was nobody else walking free in the building, and he felt oddly comforted by seeing them. He could hear voices, too; muffled by distance and heavy doors, but snatches of senseless conversation he tried to follow despite himself.

  He even thought he heard some words of Mando’a. The human brain had a wonderful ability to zero in on the apparently familiar. He strained to listen to the voice—a woman, alternately crying and cursing by the sound of it—and some of the words seemed to be Mandalorian, but some were totally alien. He could have sworn he heard chakaar. No… it was shekker. Whatever that was, it wasn’t Mando’a. He had to move on.

  Don’t get distracted. You have a mission.

  Anxious for some focus to his search, he tried to open up a line of questioning. There was no mind influence he could use yet because he had no idea how to frame the question; if Uthan was a patient here, then Pelbion wouldn’t have her in a cell marked SECRET PRISONER.

  “I would find this job very depressing,” Jusik said, knowing that might flush out a fuller response that he could steer and pick apart. “Most medical staff have some expectation of curing their charges. The best you can do is to stop them being a danger.”

  “Or keep them in as content a state as we can manage,” Pelbion said, defensive, opening yet another pair of doors under the scrutiny of a chunky droid armed with a stun stick. “That’s a goal in itself.”

  Jusik felt the opening. “They must all be wretchedly unhappy.”
/>
  Uthan would be, if she was here. The Nulls had already picked up intelligence that the geneticist was selectively breeding soka flies to keep herself busy, although there was no guarantee she would be allowed to keep insects in this pristine, sterile place. The building smelled of that particular cleaning fluid that Jusik associated with dentistry—a faint spicy scent that caught the back of his throat.

  “No, some are very happy in their delusions,” Pelbion said. He seemed content to chat aimlessly, perhaps because it seemed to appease Jusik. “So much so that I envy some of them.”

  There were a lot of angry people in here, too—anger that seemed without focus for the most part. Whoever was behind one set of doors made Jusik step up his pace to pass them faster, so strong was the urge for bloody destruction that emanated from them. If any Jedi wanted to learn about the dark power of rage, then this was the place to bring the younglings.

  “Any you feel sorry for?” Jusik asked. He needed a break now; he scanned as best he could for beings that felt more like himself, more normal. “Do you feel that any of us might be in that state, but for providence?”

  “Oh, we have a dozen physicians in here, at least,” Pelbion said. “It’s quite sobering to look them in the eye. And beings who think they’re doctors, and some of them seem more competent than the qualified ones…”

  Jusik forced a smile. You want to tell me more.

  Pelbion blinked at Jusik’s careful manipulation of his mind, unaware of it but reacting to a thought that wasn’t his. He didn’t discuss individual patients. It jarred with him, but there was something in there, something else not so much troubling him as bothering him.

  Jusik nudged him a little more.

  You want to tell me about the patients you’re not sure should be here. You want to take me to them.

  “Some of them… well, even I wonder if they should be here,” Pelbion said at last. He was walking with purpose now, not just ambling along at Jusik’s side, as if herding him toward the most impressive aspects of the facility and away from the worst. “They’re so internally consistent about their imagined lives that I have to remind myself why they’re here.”

  Show me.

  You want to show me.

  You want to show me how tough your job can be, so I file a favorable report on this facility.

  Jusik had to nudge Pelbion again. It was risky. The man wouldn’t realize he was being influenced by a Jedi technique, but he might decide he wasn’t feeling too well and call a halt.

  A faint breath of familiarity brushed Jusik, and he found himself staring at cell doors bearing the number 7885 in black letters. He’d never met Uthan. He couldn’t feel her, but he could feel someone normal, someone sane, someone who didn’t belong.

  “Like this one?” Jusik said, gesturing to the cell.

  “No, his family committed him after he had an… unfortunate incident at home.” Pelbion seemed to be debating with himself. “Okay… follow me.”

  But the sane person’s in there…

  For some reason, that distracted Jusik for a moment, the sudden realization that there was someone nearby who wasn’t disturbed or crazy at all, but locked up anyway. The sense of betrayal and hopelessness was now overwhelming, and he could hardly leave it alone. Something deep inside said, Help him, help him, you can’t just walk away.

  But he did; this mission was critical. He abandoned a being in need.

  As cell blocks went, the Valorum Center’s Hesperidium Wing was comfortable and—apart from the smell of cleaning fluid, and all those security doors—didn’t look that institutional. Jusik followed Pelbion into what seemed to be an older part of the building with higher ceilings, and then through more doors. Jusik recorded it all. Had any of the Nulls been with him, gifted with eidetic memories because the Kaminoans thought it would make them better troops, they’d have memorized the route and every detail along the way instantly.

  Pelbion stopped outside a set of doors and fumbled for a passkey. “Yes, this woman troubles me,” he said, as if answering Jusik. Pelbion didn’t respond the same way as most beings to mind influence, that was clear. “She’s perplexing.”

  Jusik knew even before the doors opened that he’d find a sane but disoriented woman in there. He could feel her: not quite as he expected, dulled somewhat, but not in need of psychiatric care—yet. When the doors parted, revealing a second toughened transparisteel set within, it was all he could do not to cheer.

  The cell—quite a pleasant suite, actually, but without any natural light—was full of small transparent cases stacked on a counter. Black specks moved around inside them.

  Soka flies.

  Pelbion lowered his voice conspiratorially. “She thinks she’s a Separatist scientist working on a doomsday virus. It’s really very impressive, because she obviously has scientific training and a brilliant mind. She almost had me convinced at one point that she’d been kidnapped by Republic forces on the Outer Rim, shot in the back, and brought here to be forced to reveal her secret research.”

  “Quite extraordinary,” Jusik said. Uthan recalled the Qiilura raid, all right. “What a detailed delusion.”

  “According to her file, she was committed by the Public Safety Department because they thought she might actually be qualified enough to create some plague for real. I must say she’s doing some fascinating genetic research on those flies, even without proper lab facilities. We help her out occasionally, you know…”

  “Good grief.” Oh joy. “Should you be telling me this? Isn’t it classified?”

  “I don’t think you can classify psychotic episodes, Master Herris… although scarring shows she really has been shot by a projectile at some time.”

  Jusik stepped into the room. A well-groomed middle-aged woman with red-streaked black hair glanced up from her makeshift desk and looked hard at him, datapad in hand.

  “This gentleman is from the Coruscant Health Administration,” Pelbion said, smiling nervously at her. “Just showing him around. How’s the breeding program going?”

  Uthan—it was definitely her—raised one contemptuous eyebrow. “You might be medicating my meals, you mediocre quack, but my brain is still functioning better than yours,” she said wearily. Then she fixed on Jusik again. “So you’re from the government, are you? Well, I’m a prisoner of war, and as such I have rights. I demand a lawyer—again. My name is Dr. Ovolot Qail Uthan and I’m being held incommunicado.”

  Jusik gave her a slightly pained but compassionate smile, his best. The Chancellor was a clever man; what better way to hide Uthan than this, in plain sight, letting her tell her story in an imprisoned community where everyone had a crazy story?

  “Of course you are, madam,” Jusik said. “I’ll get right on it.”

  She’d be out of here, all right, only not the way she’d hoped.

  “Absolutely consistent,” Pelbion said on the way out. Jusik disrupted a few surveillance holocams as he went, fogging the images. “Every detail.”

  “Sad,” said Jusik. No, brilliant. Wonderful. Hope for my brothers. “Now, about those figures…”

  “Right away, Master Herris,” said Pelbion.

  It probably wasn’t necessary to rub the man’s memory, but Jusik erased enough of their conversation to reduce his visit to a minor annoyance that would be quickly forgotten the natural way.

  All the way back to the apartment—four changes of speeder bus, a couple of long walks, and doubling back once or twice, just in case—Jusik felt his triumph being tarnished slowly by a small nagging, worrying voice.

  It wasn’t the welter of disturbed minds that left him most unsettled, or even coming face-to-face with a woman whose job was, effectively, genocide.

  It was finding that she was not the only wholly sane person being imprisoned in Valorum. And there was nothing he could do about the other one. He couldn’t pursue the man’s case, because Herris now had to disappear. He’d made too much of a splash as it was.

  There were always casualties in war. N
ot all of them occurred in combat.

  Hadde-Rishun road, Haurgab, 1510 hours local time

  “Dar! Dar! Get down!”

  Hordes of heavily armed Maujasi had come out of nowhere, and now Omega were stuck in the remains of the ancient fort, under fire and running out of luck.

  The convoy had vanished except for the vehicles still burning in the pass. Darman threw himself flat as another mortar whooshed overhead and detonated somewhere behind the crumbling wall, ripping more chunks out of it. Darman found himself looking at the world from a ninety-degree angle, noticing that the front wall providing cover didn’t look so solid now, either. Voices filled his audio link.

  “Where the shab did they come from?”

  “Told you, kriffing tunnels.”

  “At’ika, can you move the remote? Come on, look for a route out. We can’t sit up here all shabla day waiting to get picked off.”

  “On it, Sarge—can you see that?”

  “Oh shab…”

  Niner rarely swore. Things had to be worse than Darman thought. He scuttled on all fours across the ground, pushing the ammo crate out of the way. When he checked his HUD icons, the view from the remote wasn’t encouraging. From a position nearly two hundred meters above them, it showed the terrain in all its depressing reality: a sheer drop on three sides, and a long rocky slope down to their rear, the only access to the old fort. It was also the only route out. The fort had been a great vantage point in its heyday and easy to defend, but even four Republic commandos couldn’t hold out here forever against hundreds of Maujasi.

  “I’m calling for extraction,” Niner said.

  Darman began calculating how far they’d get if they tried to storm their way out. “Who the shab is going to lift us out of this?”

  “The Eighty-fifth have larties.”

  “Let’s see if they have a window in their busy manicure schedule.”

  The view from the remote showed Maujasi moving around to the rear of the peak. It would take them maybe half an hour to pick their way up the long slope, longer if Darman made life more interesting for them by bringing down some rock on their heads.