“I see that arrests have been swift,” Zey said.
“Some stupid clerk, General,” said Vau. “So Skirata is not your traitor, even though he is a light-fingered little scumbag who’d steal your teeth if you smiled at him. But I don’t think you’ll see a continuation of his dishonest habits, because he now understands the error of his ways.”
Scorch translated into plain language. So Vau had given Skirata a good hiding for causing trouble, and made him swear not to rip off Republic funds and kit again. That was… unexpected. Scorch had always had Skirata down as the alpha Mando, even if he had to stand on a box to head-butt Vau.
“I’m relieved.” Zey nodded, shoulders relaxing visibly. “I didn’t want to think I was that far misguided about his motives.”
“We still have a job to do, General. The suspect—this tax clerk the RDS is holding. The Chancellor can set up as many internal enforcement agencies as he wishes, but I have no faith in anyone’s interrogation ability but my own. I’d like to talk to her.”
“Good luck,” Zey said. “I’m just the Director of Special Forces. My wishes count for nothing.”
“Exactly. So RDS won’t share information with us any more freely than Intel does, so I’m planning to stroll over there and extract her if need be.”
Zey spread his hands in mock helplessness. “My authorization will get you no farther than the front doors.”
“No, I mean authorize me for the retrieval.”
“That’s extreme.”
“So are the rumors I hear about a big enemy assault coming soon. I’ll grab every source I can get.”
Zey clasped his hands in front of him in that Jedi way, looking slightly sideways at Vau.
“Trying to sense any dark side in me, General?” Vau asked.
“You don’t feel remotely dark. Quite serene, actually.”
“I’ve been told that before, and that should set off your warning bells, jetii. Your senses need recalibrating. None of you can feel darkness right under your noses.”
“Okay, agreed. Do it. If it goes wrong—you’re on your own.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
It was another nonconversation that had not taken place about a subject that wasn’t for discussion; deniable. Zey strode off at high speed, boots thudding, cloak flapping like wings, a giant hawk-bat of a man.
“What do you want us to do, Sarge?”
Vau summoned Mird back to his side with a silent gesture. “Nothing.”
“Sarge, we can—”
“No. You can’t. Sorry. This crosses the line from soldier to… well, I don’t want you involved with this. I needed Zey to know what I was doing, but it’s better you don’t ask why, either.”
“Okay, Sarge.” Scorch activated his helmet comlink, wondering if Vau didn’t think they were good enough to take on RDS. “I’ll get the schematics of the security cells, and we’ll have you an operational plan inside half an hour.”
“Scrap the plan, Scorch, but the schematics would be very welcome. Get some rest. Kashyyyk is going to wring you dry.”
“Okay, Sarge.” They had time to give him a bit of help. “We wouldn’t foul up, honest.”
“I know. But this is too dirty and political even for special ops. Concentrate on Kashyyyk. Real soldiering to be done there.”
Vau gave him a thumbs-up gesture and walked away toward the accommodation wing. So what did he know about a big assault? There was always one coming, and Vau was good at leaving everyone wondering just how much he knew, just enough revealed to make folks take notice of him.
He knew an awful lot about Jedi, that was for sure.
Scorch slapped down his own curiosity and told it to behave. He didn’t care how Vau knew. He was just glad that he did, and he trusted him, because Vau’s words always came back to him from those first days on Kamino.
Everything I do from this moment on is to make sure you survive to fight. Even if I don’t.
“Yes, Sarge,” Scorch said. “We know.”
Kyrimorut, Mandalore
“I want to come with you,” Fi said. “I can go, can’t I, Parja? Please?”
All Fi knew was that things were going badly wrong back on Coruscant. Jusik was packing up to go back, a day sooner than he’d said. He never broke his word; if he said he’d stay four days, then four days it was.
But he looked preoccupied as he stowed his bag in the burn-streaked Aggressor starfighter he used as a runabout. Jusik’s metamorphosis from modest Jedi Knight to Mandalorian bad boy—not just in appearance—had been dizzyingly fast, as if he’d swapped one set of passionate beliefs for another without pausing to think. Maybe that was what being raised in a cult did to a man. He only knew how to surrender himself to an ideal. Fi knew how that felt, and how adrift you could feel when that certainty was snatched away.
Jusik’s taste for fast, dangerous transport hadn’t changed one bit, though. The Aggressor was the bounty-hunter special, with a decent hyperdrive and even holding cells.
“Your call, F’ika,” said Parja. “Just remember that you’re a deserter, or you’re dead, or you’re stolen Republic property, whichever way they look at you. So you better not get caught if you do go.”
Jusik fastened his bag, seeming not to hear. “One good thing about being a Jedi was that I never owned enough stuff to worry about packing. Now I’m working out what I need to get rid of to travel light.”
“Me?” Fi said. I know, I’ll slow you down.
“Now, I never said that…”
“I swear I won’t be a burden.”
“I’ve just commed Kal’buir. We’ve got a few problems to sort out. At least Dar knows about Kad now, and… well, that’s resolved.”
“So why are you rushing back?”
“We’re in the final phase now, Fi. We’ve got a lot to do before we can pull everyone out, and Skirata needs all hands on deck.”
“You said I was as fit as an average human.” Fi made his mind up; he was going to go, even if he had to make his own way to the Core. “I’m probably as fit as Kal’buir, and you’re not stopping him.”
Jusik looked at Parja as if he was appealing to her to back him up. She didn’t.
“Bard’ika, I’d rather he stayed here with me,” she said. “But he can make his own decisions, and I’ll still be here when he comes home. No Mando woman ever stopped her man going to war.”
“You could come, too,” Fi said. “And it’s not exactly a war.”
“You don’t need me holding your hand any longer, Fi. Besides, someone’s got to keep this place going, and I’ve got the workshop to worry about, too.”
“It’ll be a few weeks. That’s all.”
Jusik looked over his shoulder for a moment, as if he’d heard something, then shrugged and slammed the cargo hatch shut. “You’re not going to give up, are you?”
“No.”
“Take him, Bard’ika,” Parja said. “I’ll worry myself sick about him every minute he’s away, but forcing him to sit it out won’t help him get better.”
Jusik didn’t answer. He walked around the blunt tail section of the fighter and looked as if he was checking the airframe, but Fi knew him well enough to see that it was just marking time while something else—not the ongoing argument—was taking his attention.
“What’s wrong?” Parja asked, drawing her blaster from her belt.
She did it casually, as if she was going to clean it. But when she flicked the charge button, Fi caught on. They had company. Nobody should have been able to find them here, but Jusik had sensed something.
“Maybe nothing,” Jusik said, but he had his hand on his belt, too, and that meant he was feeling for his lightsaber. It was weird to see a Mando in traditional beskar’gam even handling that weapon. Jusik rarely activated it now, but like any soldier he defaulted to what he’d been trained to do. The body remembered; it didn’t need the conscious mind. Jedi started lightsaber training when they were four years old.
Fi hadn�
��t drawn a blaster in earnest for a long time, and the short custom WESTAR-20 still didn’t feel right in his grip. Jusik turned to face out toward the field, scanning the landscape with slow care.
“Get down,” he said. “Fi, Parja, find some cover.”
Parja grabbed Fi’s sleeve and forced him behind the protection of one of the Aggressor’s twin manipulator arms.
“I thought we were hidden here,” Fi whispered. “Nobody’s supposed to be able to find us.”
Jusik took a few steps forward. Fi heard his boots crunching on the gravel.
“There’s two of you,” he called out. “You’re not sure if you’re really bitter enough to kill me, or if you’re desperate for help. I can even pinpoint your position.”
The fields didn’t answer. There were no engine or drive sounds, not even in the distance, just the sound of wind hushing the trees, and the distant rhythmic bark of a shatual buck announcing he was in town and looking for does.
It was a shame Jusik wasn’t wearing his buy’ce. He could have sent Fi some coordinates to aim at. Come to that, Fi wasn’t wearing his, either.
“Come on, I know what a clone feels like in the Force,” Jusik called. “You’re all different, vode, but I can still sense the things you have in common.”
The seed heads on the grass fifty meters ahead rustled and shivered. Parja squinted down the optics of her blaster.
“I think I got ’em,” she said. “Stang, that Jedi of yours is a human rangefinder. I reckon it’s that shabuir Sull and his crazy buddy.”
“Can you see them?”
“No, just the movement.”
“Hold fire, then, cyar’ika.” Fi tried to follow her aim. He’d been a top-grade sniper. He felt the reduction to ordinary skill levels keenly. “They’re ARC troopers. They’re not that incompetent.”
Jusik had always had an odd reckless streak. For the most part he was a methodical man, good at engineering and fixing things. But then he’d go and do something crazy, almost as if he wanted to test himself. Fi recalled a terrifying highspeed speeder bike ride through Coruscant on Jusik’s pillion. Now Jusik walked slowly across the open ground and out into the knee-high grasses, making himself a target. Parja shifted her weight slightly, down on one knee with her elbow supported on a strut of the Aggressor’s airframe.
“All right, get it over with,” Jusik called. He held his arms away from his sides. “Parja, Fi? You will not open fire. Hear? Not unless Sull or Spar starts it.”
A few moments later, the grass parted, and two figures in green beskar’gam got to their feet.
“Osik,” Parja said, adjusting her aim, “they were two meters to the right of where I thought they were.”
“They’re good at throwing you off.” Fi had promised Sull he’d kill him if he messed with Jusik, and he was going to make good on that if the shabuir so much as twitched. “And they’re too good at tracking us. We’re getting sloppy.”
Fi broke cover and went to back up Jusik, blaster still aimed. Parja covered him. Disappointingly, neither ARC had laid down his own weapon.
“If you’ve come to put a round through me, go ahead,” Jusik said. Fi thought he was pulling some clever ruse, but then it dawned on him that he was serious; Bard’ika was standing there like a target, asking for some weird martyrdom. “If it gives you closure, do it.”
Fi stepped into his path. “Bard’ika! Enough.”
“Fi… either I believe in what I’m doing, or I don’t.”
Spar pulled off his helmet. “You’re really full of it, Jedi.”
“I’m not a Jedi now, but I was, and so I have to bear some of the guilt.”
Spar holstered his blaster, and Sull followed suit. Fi didn’t move. Parja walked up and pulled him aside.
“What’s your problem?” she demanded, scowling at the two deserters. “Go spray your testosterone elsewhere. You don’t even know how to be Mando’ade. But if you want a lesson, I’ll give you one. It’s more than putting on the beskar’gam.”
“How did you find us?” Jusik asked.
“You fly a fighter like that, you get attention,” Sull said. “Try parking it under cover next time.”
Jusik put out his hand to shut Fi up even before Fi had formed the words, which was just as well. “You make a good point, ner vod. I was careless. What do you want from us?”
“We hear that Skirata might be onto something.”
“ARC gossip, eh?”
“Is it true? Can he stop us aging so fast?”
“Not yet.”
“So it’s true that he’s trying.”
“If your gossip is that reliable, then you know the answer, and you know he’d help any deserter.”
Sull looked at Spar. “Did he help you get off Kamino?”
Spar just raised an eyebrow. “He’s okay, the old barve.”
“We want in,” Sull said. “How do we get to see him? Is he recruiting?”
“Room for eight in an Aggressor.” Jusik gestured over his shoulder at the starfighter. “We’re heading back to Coruscant. If you’re up for some work, we’ve got plenty of jobs to keep a bored ARC trooper busy.”
Jusik was insanely trusting. Fi wanted to grab his shoulders and shake him, and explain that he couldn’t just dump two renegade Alpha planks on Kal’buir like that—or on Ordo—but whatever Jusik picked up from the Force usually seemed to work out.
Except for forgetting that we need to camouflage all vessels, right away. Even here, even on Mandalore.
“Okay,” said Sull. “Let’s go.”
Jusik popped the hatches and ushered them into the small cargo area. Parja nudged Fi with her elbow, hands on hips, chin down. Now that Fi was on the brink of leaving, the reality of being parted from her hit him hard. He missed his brothers, he felt useless, and he needed to get something back in his life—but he’d craved a girlfriend for so long.
I’m ungrateful. I get what I want, and then I forget what it was like to be that lonely.
“Well, I said you were worth fixing up, and Jusik and me, we fixed you up, so…” She looked resigned. “Want me to pack some food for you?”
“Just… well, my backpack.”
“You be careful.”
Fi was a little disappointed that she didn’t beg him to stay. Maybe that really was how Mandalorian women did things: they gritted their teeth and got on with it while the men were away, if they weren’t off fighting themselves. They didn’t fuss and make parting even harder.
“You know I love you,” he said. Shab, he couldn’t remember the words of the contract. He had to open his datapad. “Now marry me.”
Parja was still wearing her workshop overalls, spattered with lubricant, pockets ratting with tools. She wiped her hands on her pants and held out her hand to him to grip it in the Mandalorian way, hand to wrist. Fi took it.
“You know the words, F’ika?”
“I can read them out.”
“Okay,” Parja said. “We read them together.”
She looked into his face. He found that he could repeat her words with just a fraction’s delay, and do a pretty good job of making the pledge together, without the need to look at the words on his ’pad.
“Mhi solus tome,” she said, and he joined in. “Mhi solus dar’tome, mhi me’dinui an, mhi ba’juri verde.”
It was a very simple pledge, a contract, a business deal in its way: We are one when together, we are one when parted, we share all, we will raise warriors. There wasn’t anything more that needed saying.
“Is that it?” Fi asked.
“Yeah, you’re stuck with me now.”
“Okay. That’s good.”
“Yeah, you’ll do, too.”
Jusik stuck his head out the hatch. “Fi, did I miss something?”
“We’re married,” Fi said. Did he feel different? Yes, he really did. “You can see Parja blew our savings on her wedding gown.”
“You mir’sheb.” She gave Fi a big, noisy kiss. “You’re lucky you’ve got a missus w
ho knows how to replace a manifold gasket. Now, Bard’ika, you bring him back in the same or better condition, or this galaxy won’t be big enough to hide from me.”
It was always best to leave fast once you decided to go. Long drawn-out good-byes were painful; Fi discovered that for the first time in his life, and although it hurt, it was nothing like the pain of thinking he’d live and die lonely. It was a pain he could savor, to remind himself what he now had and what was worth living and fighting for.
The Aggressor lifted clear. Parja was still visible for a few seconds, a tiny figure in brown, then a dot. The camouflaged bastion just looked like uneven ground from the air.
“Aren’t you supposed to celebrate?” Jusik asked, engaging the autopilot. Sull and Spar were aft in the hold. “I think it’s really sad to marry and then part.”
“It’s not forever. And we had the honeymoon already, I suppose.”
“Even so… okay, we can do the drinking and carousing later.”
That was a nice thought. Everyone could attend then. There was an end in sight—of sorts—to the war, and even if Skirata never found a way of slowing the aging process, Fi would live the years he had left to the fullest.
Coruscant stood between him and that happier time. But he was back in action again, and that made him feel whole. He gazed out the viewport at the starscape before the Aggressor jumped to hyperspace, and thought of Sicko, the TIV pilot killed helping Omega board a Separatist ship. Space was a big, lonely place to die.
“Bard’ika, I think Kal’buir is going to go nuts when you turn up with these two,” he said, diverting himself from thoughts of Sicko. “They found us. The bastion’s supposed to be off the chart. And how do they know about the aging cure? Why trust them enough to bring them along?”
Jusik gave Fi that look, as if he was wearing a sun visor and letting it slide down his nose so that he could look over the rim. “If they’re secure in the hold, they’re not wandering around blabbing about how they found us, are they? And Spar’s almost certainly still got contacts in the ARC ranks. I’d put my bets on Maze talking to his ARC chums about Ko Sai’s head showing up in a box…”
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