The dark side could be very dark indeed in Mandalore. Jusik didn’t shy from it. “May she find rest in the manda.”
“Do you believe in that possibility?”
Jusik saw nothing incongruous about the manda, the Mandalorian collective consciousness, the oversoul for want of a better word, even if he knew most Mandos didn’t take it literally. “I use the Force, Mij. I’m prepared to give a lot of things the benefit of the doubt.”
“Do your old buddies think you’re lost to the dark side now?”
“Probably. I just wish they’d stop worrying about light and dark, and learn the difference between right and wrong instead.”
Gilamar laughed loudly. Jusik was glad he could get a laugh out of him after making him remember grief, but he suspected that the man never forgot it for a minute.
“What’s the joke?” Fi asked, appearing in the doorway. He was wearing his gray undersuit, no plates. “Is it the one about the Hutt and the trash compactor?”
“Just conjuring tricks.” Gilamar took out his datapad. “Now see how far we get with this today.” It was a program that flashed up images of objects, from the everyday to the obscure, and Fi had to name them. He still had a problem with that, and it seemed to be the source of much of his frustration. “And don’t say thingie, because thingie will not do, soldier.”
“I’m not a soldier anymore,” Fi said quietly. His eyes flickered as the images scrolled. “Table… anti-armor round… bantha…”
No wonder he felt like a child again. He was doing better, but it was all about what Fi regarded as normal for Fi, not the average human male. Jusik tried to imagine waking up with no Force powers. He’d still be smart and capable, but with his extra edge missing he’d feel blind and deaf, he knew.
“That’s an improvement,” Gilamar said, showing Fi the collated results. Jusik didn’t know if they made any sense to him. It was all numbers. “You’re one of nature’s miracles, even if you do need a haircut. Now let me check your blood.”
Fi submitted to the probe pressed into his fingertip, watching Jusik with one eyebrow raised until Jusik got the hint and gave him some of the fruitbread.
“Sergeant Kal used to tell us every day that we would do the best because we were the best,” Fi said, chomping enthusiastically. “Good enough isn’t good enough.”
“He didn’t mean it that way, Fi.” Jusik ruffled his hair. He’d spent so many hours with his hands on Fi’s skull, healing him, that he knew the contours of it better than his own. “He was instilling self-esteem.”
“Only way from best is down.”
“Oh, you are a little ray of sunshine today, aren’t you?” Gilamar said, tapping Fi gently on the nose like a naughty akk pup. Gilamar was a mercenary, and he’d trained some fearsomely hard men, but sometimes Jusik could see the physician he’d once been. He doubted that Gilamar had ever been the simple country doctor that he claimed, though. “Now, look at your progesterone levels. Still higher than normal. Are you pregnant? Have you been throwing up?”
“No. But I get cravings.” Fi frowned. “Will I get stretch marks?”
Jusik always paused now to work out if Fi was being funny or if it was some odd disconnection in his brain. It had become a weather gauge of his recovery. But this was the old Fi, back for a while.
Gilamar kept a straight face. “Yeah, say good-bye to your figure. Everything sags from now on in.”
Jusik rejoiced silently at Fi’s improved mood. “Is the progesterone a problem, Mij’ika?”
“No,” said Gilamar. “Every human’s got progesterone. Males can’t make testosterone without it. But it might explain how you’ve been able to get Fi’s brain to repair itself—it’s been shown to aid healing in brain trauma. Your Force shenanigans might be stimulating secretion.”
“You’ll have to bill me later, Bard’ika,” Fi said. “I’m a bit boracyk until payday.”
Jusik took out a cash credit and shoved it in Fi’s hand. Creds—largely untraceable—were no problem in the alternate morality of Skirata’s renegade gang. Jusik was only occasionally surprised at how quickly he’d come to see it as acceptable. “Ba’gedet’ye. Here’s something to tide you over.”
Fi studied it. “Did you rob a bank?”
“No, Vau did.”
“Where am I going to spend it? Nearest shop is Enceri, and I can’t drive a speeder… yet.”
There was a heartfelt plea in the statement. Fi was imprisoned here without transport. “Parja can drive you in the meantime.”
“She’s had to powder my shebs like a baby too often. It’s time I grew up again.”
Fi got up and rummaged in the conservator, head down. While his back was turned, Gilamar mouthed a silent warning: He needs a break. Jusik nodded.
“Well, I must be going—I’ve got an embryologist to threaten.” Gilamar pulled on his gauntlets and helmet. “The barve said he’d have the research ready for me today.” He winked at Jusik. “We’re getting there. Nothing definitive yet, but we’ll have a very good data library for Uthan to work from.”
Fi watched Gilamar go and stared at the doors for a long time afterward. “Talking of pregnant,” he said, “Dar still doesn’t know about Kad, does he?”
“No,” said Jusik.
“It’s wrong. It’s not fair to him.” Fi stood up. “Can we go to Keldabe? I can’t keep hanging around Parja’s workshop. She’s got a business to run.”
Jusik knew that Parja would have thrown the business out the window and lived on water and dead borrats if she had to choose between the workshop and Fi. But Fi wanted to be out and about. Keldabe seemed to do him good, even if it sometimes seemed overwhelmingly complex to him.
“If you’re good,” Jusik said, “I’ll let you take the speeder controls. And you can visit the barber. But no brawling if we run into Sull.”
Fi grinned. “It’s just like old times.”
Yes, it was. They were just two young men having a day on the town. It didn’t matter at all that one had been a Jedi and the other had been a clone bred to serve him.
Mandalore was like that. It was a great leveler, and a fresh start.
Special Operations Brigade HQ,
Coruscant
“How have you been keeping, Kal?” Zey asked.
Skirata sat down without being invited. Zey knew him well enough by now not to take offense at his lack of respect for rank. He’d even laid out caf. Outside the window, a platoon of clone troopers selected for commando cross-training were being put through unarmed combat drills by Tay’haai and Vau. Vau kept saying he wasn’t GAR personnel any longer, but it was awfully hard to tell. Where would any of them have ended up without the army?
“Not bad, General,” said Kal.
“You had your leg fixed, I see.”
“It was slowing me down.”
“I’d ask how the family was, but that would put you on the spot, wouldn’t it?”
“Not really.” Skirata took a gulp of the caf. Zey was probably still angling to find out what had really happened to Fi. Why did it bother the man so much? He didn’t care what happened to clones, except in that theoretical Jedi way. Skirata decided to lob in a verbal grenade, just to show Zey that mundane beings could beat Jedi omniscience. “My daughter’s still missing.”
Zey did a freeze-and-turn that told Skirata he hadn’t been expecting that, and didn’t feel the need to hide his reaction. “I didn’t know you had a daughter,” he said. “I’m very sorry. Can we help?”
“When I say missing,” Skirata went on, satisfied at having scored a point, “I mean that she appears to not want to be found. Ruusaan’s over thirty, so she can look after herself.”
“How do you know she’s all right?”
“She was still using her identichip up to a month ago.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m her father, and fathers know that kind of stuff.” Skirata wondered if it had been a good idea to remind Zey that his skills ran to slicing into secure records. Sh
ab, Zey knew the kind of stuff the Republic asked the Nulls to do. Zey was the one who did the asking, obliquely enough to be deniable, of course. “Just keeping a watchful eye and all that.”
“I meant your grandson. When I asked about family, that is.”
Skirata had never taken Kad anywhere near Zey for fear of the Jedi sensing the baby’s latent Force abilities. Skirata didn’t trust Jedi not to abduct and indoctrinate him, and he was never sure if gossip about Etain and Darman ever reached Zey’s ears. The man heard a lot more than he let on.
“Kad’s terrific,” Skirata said carefully. “He’s into everything. A real handful. Look, I can see this social chitchat is a trial for you, General. What do you want?”
“The Treasury needs some special Null expertise.”
Skirata felt his gut somersault. If he hadn’t already had warning from Besany that Jaing’s spyware had been detected, it would have done a lot worse. Zey must have felt his reaction in the Force. It was too strong to miss.
“Yes, I know they’re not where they should be, Kal,” Zey said, guessing wrong. “My professional blind eye is still turned to their extracurricular activities, whatever they might be.”
The nice thing about the Force was that it was so vague. Etain had told him that. All Zey knew was that either the mention of the Nulls or the Treasury had made Skirata jumpy, and he opted for Nulls. Ha. So much for omniscience, Jedi.
“I have such wayward kids,” said Skirata. “What do they need to do?”
“Jaing and Mereel are the information technology specialists, aren’t they? They’ve certainly cracked a few Separatist systems.”
And yours. “Correct.”
“Then I need them to investigate a very clever program that was installed on the Treasury mainframe. It erased itself as soon as the technicians started trying to isolate the code, and they have no idea what it was doing, but it shouldn’t have been there, and Intel fears a Separatist sleeper in the camp.”
“Okay, I’ll call them in and you can brief them. Who’s vetting the Treasury staff? Do they have any idea where it was introduced into the system?” Skirata actually needed to know. If Zey could sense his panic and urgency, he wouldn’t be far wrong. “It might be a long shot, even for my boys, but they’ll do their best.”
It could be worse.
Zey nodded. “The Treasury wants its own senior auditor on the job, too. Some woman called Wennen.”
Then again, maybe it couldn’t.
Skirata’s immediate reaction was that Zey was shaking him down. He knew; or at least he looked as if he knew. “So you want us to look for spy programs and dodgy staff.”
“Yes. I’m recalling Omega and Delta from Haurgab, and not just to stop General Tur-Mukan from nagging me to death about the fruitlessness of the operation. They’ve both done urban ops here and they know how to hunt operational terror cells. Apparently Intel were involved in something at the Treasury that didn’t pan out, and to which I’m not privy, so word’s come down from the Chancellor’s office that they want the job done right.”
“Nice to see they have faith in Special Operations.”
So now Skirata knew something that Zey didn’t: that Intel had sent some hapless spook after Besany, a spook who never made it home again. Skirata, proud of his well-honed paranoia, juggled a range of scenarios in his brain that began to feel like the hall of mirrors at the Republic Day carnival. Was Zey shoving him into this position to force a confession, knowing about Besany’s and Jaing’s involvement? Or was he an unknowing instrument of Intel, and they knew now what was happening? It had the whiff of a technique that Jaller Obrim favored—breaking down family murder suspects by getting them to do a news conference begging for their loved one’s safe return.
And Jaller says he’s amazed how often they can sail through it…
There was always the possibility that it was an honest and logical coincidence. Jaing and Mereel were the best at slicing. Besany was the senior agent for defense budget investigation, and if the Seps wanted to glean any information, it wouldn’t be data about street cleaning in the lower levels. And yes, Omega and Delta had operated undercover on Coruscant, the only Republic commandos who had, and they were way better at it than Intel’s bantha-brained operatives.
It made sense, but Skirata’s gut said that setups always did.
How could he refuse?
He couldn’t. But he could shake Zey a little and see what fell out. Pretending that Besany knew nothing of the Nulls would be too big a cover story to maintain. The operation at the GAR procurement center was too easy to check out.
“I know Wennen,” Skirata said. “She was on an undercover op and my boys crashed into it. Bit of an awkward moment, but it all ended friendly enough. Not a face any man would forget, either.”
“Oh, she won’t mind the Nulls trampling all over her turf, then.” Zey betrayed no reaction. He really did sound as if it was just an annoying concession to keep the Treasury quiet. “Some civilians can be very judgmental about clones.”
And Jedi can’t, of course. “Yeah, I hear Master Vos is judgmental about our lads, too.” Skirata seethed; come the glorious day, arrogant shabuire like that would be the first up against the wall. “I’ll get right on it.”
“Do you really think of them as your boys?”
It was one of those out-of-the-blue questions that Zey was increasingly prone to. Skirata couldn’t work out if he used it as a tactic, or if his job had become so stressful that he had a million things buzzing around his head the whole time.
“They’re my sons,” Skirata said. So what if the man knew he’d adopted the Nulls? It was Mando business, outside the petty rules of aruetiise, and nothing Zey or even Palpatine did or said could change the fact. “And I’d die for them.”
Zey refilled his caf and didn’t look up. “That’s very moving. I realize how much you care for them.”
“No, I mean they are my sons. Legal heirs. I adopted them under Mandalorian law and custom.”
Now that caught Zey with his kute around his ankles. He blinked a couple of times, seeming lost for words. Skirata noticed how gray he was looking now, and not just his hair.
“Well, I can’t think of a regulation that prohibits it,” Zey said at last, and winked. “And if I could, you’d just ignore it.”
“I’m glad we understand each other, sir,” Skirata said, and left.
Covering his tracks by randomizing his route back to the apartment had become routine for Skirata now, which was a bizarre irony in itself. He changed speeders, took different skylanes, and even walked. As he set the speeder of the day to pick up the skylane’s automated control, he commed each Null and summoned Besany. Maybe Jusik would make it back from Mandalore in time, too. This wasn’t quite a crisis meeting, but it was definitely more than keeping up to speed. He had to implement the standby for ba’slan shev’la now—the Mandalorian tactic of strategic disappearance, vanishing to regroup and pop up again when least expected.
No, this is making a run for it.
I’m going to need to break it to Omega now.
Who else? Who else can I safely tell now that there’s a safe haven for them if they want to desert?
Skirata’s mind raced. Omega had a vague idea that there would be a future for them, but they didn’t know the full story of the hunt for gene therapy, and Skirata had never actually spelled out that he wanted them to desert, to do a runner. He had no idea how they’d take it.
And Zey… he wanted to hate the man as easily as he’d hated other Jedi, but it was impossible not to see Zey as a man stuck in a system that stank, trying to influence it from the inside, and who’d never chosen his path in life any more than the clones had.
Don’t go soft on them. A Jedi can walk out. A Jedi can say no. Bard’ika did.
After a fuel-wasting detour or two, noting the extra clone troopers on duty outside public buildings, Skirata landed close to the Kragget and walked the rest of the way. It was like going home. Home was something
he hadn’t defined for many years, not even narrowing down a planet, but the Kragget and the apartment now felt almost as safe a haven as Kyrimorut, maybe more so; the bastion on Mandalore wasn’t full of armor noises, cooking smells, and boisterous conversation—yet.
He cut through the restaurant, scanning quickly to see who he didn’t recognize, a Mando habit that had stood him in good stead. He knew all but three of the diners, and two of them were in CSF uniform, cops on their meal break.
Captain Jaller Obrim sat at his usual table, working through a pile of nerf strips. The two men exchanged casual pats on the back.
“What’s up?” Obrim asked.
“That obvious, eh?”
“Yes, Kal. It is.”
“Things are getting a bit warm.” If Skirata couldn’t confide in Obrim—a man who’d bent every single police regulation to help Skirata, not to mention the law itself—then he could trust nobody. “You know my vacation plan?”
“Winter sports, you mean?” Obrim knew about Kyrimorut, even if he didn’t have the exact location. “Got a firm date in mind yet?”
“Might be earlier than expected. Before the big melt.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah.”
“Why don’t we have a chat somewhere quieter, Kal? Maybe I can give you some skiing tips—”
A conversation interrupted them, and they both turned at the same time. Laseema had appeared with a tray of meals, working her shift even though she didn’t need to. The Twi’lek insisted on earning her keep. At a table near the kitchen doors, a man—one of those Skirata hadn’t recognized, the one in civvies—said something to her. She put the tray on a vacant table.
Skirata only caught scraps of the sentence.
“…hey, I was just being friendly. You Twi’lek girls… well, it’s kind of nice for us patrons to see your—”
The man had his arm resting on the table. He didn’t finish the sentence. Laseema drew a blade from nowhere and slammed it into the tabletop, pinning his sleeve with a loud thud. She reached forward with her free hand and grabbed his collar, almost pulling him out of his seat.
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