“That’s disgusting.”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t think that I feel sorry for her. She never saw us as anything that could feel pain. But when I look back at the things I’ve done that seemed normal at the time…”
“That’s war, Fi. You don’t have to feel bad about it. You really didn’t have a choice. She did.”
“You can tell what I’m thinking, can’t you?”
“Sometimes.”
“You’re a good brother, Bard’ika.”
Fi calculated the time to Triple Zero; they’d be landing by nightfall in Galactic City. Now he was starting to get that tingle in his gut, like pre-battle anxiety, because Parja was right. He wasn’t just returning to base. He was sneaking back as a man who didn’t exist, and he couldn’t afford to be caught.
It was like operating behind enemy lines. He’d had plenty of experience at that.
Coruscant, Triple Zero, was now enemy territory.
Laseema’s apartment,
Coruscant
Etain watched the doors, mouth dry and stomach knotted. She could feel Darman coming closer, and Skirata, too.
She knew their impressions in the Force so well that she could pin them down pretty accurately. There were variations from day to day, but they always had the same cores: Skirata, a whirlpool of intense loves and hatreds, and Darman, generally at peace with the world. Today, though, she could feel the change in both of them, from Darman’s anguish and uncertainty, and from Skirata’s raw pain.
But she still wasn’t ready for what she saw when the doors parted.
“Kal, what happened to you?”
Skirata looked terrible. He was slightly bent over, as if his chest or stomach hurt him, and his face was a mass of cuts and fresh bruises. Someone had given him a thrashing. Vau. She’d thought the two sergeants had settled their long-running feud, but it seemed to have erupted again.
“I got what was coming to me,” he said, his voice distorted by swollen lips. “Not the first time, either, and it won’t be the last.” He pushed Darman ahead of him with a careful hand. “Go on, son. You’ve got someone to meet.”
“Kal—”
“Et’ika, just grab this time with Dar and Kad, and I’ll sort myself out. You don’t know when you’ll next get a chance. I’ll be back in the morning, and Laseema’s staying with Jaller’s family for the night.”
Kal’s injuries had rescued her from an awkward moment. Darman hadn’t spoken to her since he walked out of her cabin on Nerrif Station a few days ago, and she’d had no idea how to break that ice again. But that was suddenly forgotten now. Darman’s embrace was desperate. He buried his head in her shoulder, hugging her so hard that it almost hurt. Etain looked past him to see what Skirata was doing, but he was already gone. She heard his footsteps fade outside.
“Kad’s asleep,” she said. “I’ll wake him.”
“Is that bad for him?”
Darman was already the anxious father. “Of course not,” she said. “He sleeps when he’s tired. But it’s hard to get him into a routine because we don’t have one.”
“Laseema looks after him?”
“Yes, she’s wonderful. And Besany helps out, and Bardan and Kal. But… it’s time he knew his dad.”
“Okay.” Darman swallowed. “I’m ready now. I really am.”
“I don’t know what else to say, Dar.”
“Nothing you need to say. We can’t change what happened, so it makes sense to forget it and start again.”
That was Darman all over; he never bore grudges, and was the most easygoing of men. If anyone thought clones were identical, all they had to do was look at Darman and his brothers to see that they were as diverse as any random group of human beings.
“Am I forgiven?” she asked.
“Yes.” He stepped back and pinched his top lip, a little nervous gesture that she’d seen in Skirata from time to time. In ordinary civilian clothes—no fatigues or armor that marked him as a standardized product of Kamino—Darman looked like any other being Etain might see on the walkways of Coruscant, and that promised the same possibility for her. “It was me, Et’ika. I hit Kal’buir.”
It was hard to take in. “What?”
“I really hurt him. He didn’t even try to defend himself. He just let me go crazy, and kept saying he was sorry.”
The thought of Darman even losing his temper seemed utterly alien, let alone doing that much harm to someone he loved—to anyone, in fact. It was a different kind of violence from the kind he was used to in combat.
Is it? Am I so steeped in Jedi belief that violence is acceptable if it’s not done from hate or anger that I can’t see something fundamental?
“What started it?” she asked.
“He told me everything he kept from us. Everything. Ko Sai’s research, the new clone army… so I called him a liar. I told him I couldn’t trust him. And with him not telling me about Kad, I just… hated him for a moment. No, not even him. I just lost it completely, about everything, just like Scorch did.”
It was the first time Etain had realized how broken some of the clone troops were. It was one thing haranguing other Jedi about the clones’ inherent humanity; it was another to recognize that it had a negative side, too. Etain had come to see them as invulnerable because she recognized their superior qualities, and forgot that, in time, the intensity with which they fought would shatter them as surely as it would any other being. It just took much longer.
“How can he forgive me, Et’ika?” Darman asked.
“Because he loves you—you’re his son.” It wasn’t the punches that would leave the scars on Skirata. She knew that. It was losing Darman’s trust. “Have you forgiven him?”
Darman glanced at his own hands. The ferocity of his attack showed in the cuts and bruises on his knuckles. “Of course I have. I didn’t mean any of it. I was just out of it for a few minutes.”
People always claimed they didn’t mean the things they said in the heat of the moment, but usually they simply didn’t know they thought those things, or would dare say them aloud. “Do you think he’s keeping any other secrets from you, Dar?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter now.”
Love and trust weren’t necessarily the same thing. Etain decided to change the subject. “Let’s see if Kad’s awake.”
He wasn’t; he was sleeping peacefully, and they stood watching him for a while, mesmerized, until Etain picked him up and handed him to Darman. Kad woke and looked up at Darman with endearing wide-eyed surprise. Could he tell this wasn’t Ordo or Mereel? Maybe he could. He grinned—he grinned at everyone, of course—but this seemed different somehow. Maybe she was imagining it. He’d reacted strongly to Darman when he held him before.
“That’s Da-da,” Etain said. “Say Da-da, sweetie.”
Darman just burst into tears. Etain did, too.
There wasn’t a lot to say, just a lot to feel, so neither of them tried to rationalize it. They spent the rest of the late afternoon and evening playing with Kad and pretending that there wasn’t a war outside waiting for them, that they were just any ordinary young family. They even recorded a family holoimage for the years to come. It was an exotic, heady fantasy for people who were anything but ordinary, and wouldn’t be allowed to be ordinary without a fight. Etain pondered the irony of desperately wanting not to be special.
“I’m glad you called him Kad,” Darman said at last.
“Are you happy that he’s growing up as a little Mandalorian?”
“Will he be able to use the Force?”
“Jusik and I are starting to show him how to control it. Well, to hide it, really. I don’t want the Jedi Order taking him.”
Darman’s expression hardened a little. “Would they do that?”
“With a benign smile, but yes. They would.”
“It’s not all nice, the Jedi Order, is it? It’s not quite the image we were given on Kamino.”
“Not all Jedi are the s
ame.”
“I still want Kad to be Mandalorian.”
“So do I.”
Etain held Kad’s hands and walked him to Darman, but he pulled away and tottered toward his father with a big adoring grin on his face. Darman let him clamber over him, looking equally besotted.
“He looks like you,” Darman said, ignoring the fact that Kad was the spitting image of himself. Kad had wide dark eyes and black hair, like Darman and all his brothers. But his nose was narrow and slightly upturned, like Etain’s. “I should have been there when he was born, shouldn’t I? I’ve seen it in the holodramas.”
“Real life isn’t as tidy as that,” Etain said. “And I’m glad you weren’t there, in a way. It wasn’t my finest hour.”
“Did it hurt?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe.”
It was funny how physical pain could be completely forgotten. As Etain watched Darman coming to terms with a baby son when he was no more than a kid himself in so many ways, she was struck by how much he reminded her of Skirata as he handled Kad and talked to him, even down to the faces he pulled to make him laugh. Humans did some things instinctively, and not even cloning and the heartless regime on Kamino could suppress that, but the rest of parenting—they had to learn the hard way.
She’d never known Jango Fett, but his genome hadn’t dictated everything in Darman. Skirata’s influence was plain. In every sense of the word, Skirata was Dar’s father, and had laid down the foundations for the kind of father that Darman would be.
Aliit ori’shya tal’din. Family was definitely more than bloodline—and more than midi-chlorians.
Chapter Eleven
Besany Wennen’s apartment,
Coruscant,
999 days ABG
The Mandalorian language has more terms of insult than any of the more widely spoken galactic tongues. But whereas most species choose insults that are based on parentage or appearance, the majority of Mandalorian pejoratives are concerned with cowardice, stupidity, laziness, dull conversation, or a lack of hygiene. It reveals the preoccupations of a nomadic warrior culture where bloodline matters less than personal qualities, faces are largely masked, and a clean, efficient camp is crucial to survival.
—Mandalorians: Identity and Language, published by the Galactic Institute of Anthropology
“I can’t carry on like this, Ordo.”
Besany hadn’t slept well. She’d woken and started tidying her apartment in the middle of night. Ordo had no idea what was normal for a human female, but it made sense to him that if you couldn’t sleep, you used the time productively. Tidiness was essential to good discipline.
She was very upset, and she seemed more upset that he’d carried on sleeping while she couldn’t.
“I know it must be very stressful,” he said, watching her scrubbing frantically at the breakfast dishes. “But I don’t think you should stay here. It’s too dangerous.”
She whipped around so hard that her hair flew. “I meant Jilka. She’s under arrest, and terrible things might be happening to her, and it’s my fault. Ordo, sweetheart, I know this is daily routine in your job, but it’s not everyday in mine.”
Ordo was still unsure what evidence might link Jilka to Besany. The woman had no idea what was going on. However hard RDS tried, they couldn’t beat out of her what wasn’t in there to be revealed, although beings said all kinds of things under torture just to get it to stop. He poured himself another cup of caf, and wondered where Mereel and Jaing had got to. Watching his brothers come and go reminded him how tied to Coruscant he was most days.
“Ordo, are you listening?”
“Yes, it’s a pity about Jilka.”
“Pity? Pity?” Besany was strikingly beautiful, with a bone structure so perfect that it seemed manufactured; but when she got angry, it all turned to ice, tight-lipped and unforgiving. “I’m the guilty party. My friend’s in some RDS prison cell in my place. I can’t let that happen. I just can’t.”
“So what do you plan on doing?” Ordo didn’t think the two women were that close, but Besany seemed to have no friends at all other than Jilka. “Turn yourself in, and tell Palpatine’s minions the whole story? Implicate Kal’buir? Bring down the escape plan?”
“But she’s innocent.”
Besany wasn’t a soldier, and she wasn’t used to the idea of expendability. Ordo wasn’t completely inured to it, either, but he accepted there was sometimes a call to be made between doing the right thing in the short term, and making a bigger difference in the longer run. It was a call he hadn’t had to make at that level of personal involvement—yet.
And there was the small matter that he was besotted with Besany, and didn’t know Jilka at all.
He tried hard to experience his beloved’s anxiety for her friend, but he knew he was like Kal’buir: there was a circle of those he would sacrifice everything to save, and anyone outside that had to save themselves.
“It happens all the time,” Ordo said. “We had to let a company of troopers get creamed because we couldn’t alert them to an attack without letting the Separatists know that we’d cracked their encryption.”
“We? Personally?”
“No.” Would I have done that? Ordo didn’t know.
“Then you don’t know what it’s like to be in my shoes.”
Besany’s problem was that she was very moral. He liked that about her. It was why she refused to turn a blind eye to the exploitation of clones; it was why she put her own safety on the line. But it was also why she couldn’t handle seeing Jilka arrested in her place. And, apart from rescuing Jilka, there was no way of easing Besany’s conscience.
Ordo was more worried about what Jilka might feel forced to say to the RDS interrogators. Skirata was supposed to have done something about that, if it wasn’t already too late, and now Ordo had his own moral dilemma: should he tell Besany that Jilka might be silenced for good by the very people Besany had taken the crazy risk for in the first place?
He needed to say something tactful. He racked his brain for the kind of words Skirata would use in these circumstances.
“This might sound harsh,” he said carefully, “but you wanted to do your bit in a war. This is what war is like. The consequences cost lives, our friends might suffer unfairly, and it’s not like any other job. It’s as extreme as life gets. There are no rules, and you don’t go home at the end of the day with your life set back to normal for another day in the office tomorrow.”
It was all true. Ordo was quite pleased that he had managed not to say it was tough luck, and that in the time that Jilka had been detained, thousands of clone troopers had been maimed or killed, also without deserving it.
“Yes.” Besany let out a breath through her nose, a resigned sigh. “But if it was me in there, I’d want to think someone was going to try to do something to help me.”
“Maybe they will,” Ordo said. “And if they do, we won’t know the result until later.”
She could make what she wanted of that. If he lied to her, though, could he live with it any more than she could? Would she hate him when she found out?
There was a knock at the door, and Besany jumped.
“I’ll handle it,” he said, and drew his sidearm.
Any routine callers—she didn’t have many, mostly delivery droids with groceries—would use the door-comm from the ground level. To knock on the door, they had to be in the building already, and Besany wasn’t someone who mixed with the neighbors.
Ordo motioned her to stay away from the window, then moved silently down the short hallway to the front door. He checked the security cam, but could see nothing except the smooth velvet pile of the carpet stretching down the corridor to the turbolift, and the spotless cream walls. That was what he expected. He flicked the power setting on his blaster to maximum, and then something caught his eye.
For a split second, his mind said oil leak, but the black tarry liquid issuing from the ventilation panel just above the floor level was one he’d seen befo
re. He held his blaster on it anyway while it settled in a pool with an odd, almost domed meniscus.
“At least you knock now,” he said.
The pool re-formed itself into a large predator like a direcat, with a glossy black coat and long double-tipped fangs. It blinked orange eyes at him.
“That’s so you don’t get agitated and shoot again,” it said in a rich, liquid, male voice. “But that was Jinart who you shot last time. I am Valaqil.”
Besany appeared in the doorway. She should have stayed put until Ordo had told her the apartment was secure. “I thought you said you were leaving the last time we met.”
“I’ve come back,” Valaqil said. “Not that we owe your kind anything, but Qiilura is now recovering from the human occupation, and your nasty little sergeant has kept his word to leave us in peace. So I keep my side of the bargain. Run while you still can.”
“Could you be more specific?” Ordo didn’t like Gurlanins all that much, although he accepted it was as an irrational prejudice. He had no reason to distrust them, because they did exactly what they said they would, but shapeshifters made him uneasy. “We’ve got a lot of things to run from at the moment.”
“Very soon, Palpatine will unleash a huge clone army, the one he’s been building on Centax Two.”
“We worked that out,” Besany said.
“He’s not preparing to use it against the Separatists.”
Now that was a fascinating twist. “What makes you say that?” asked Ordo.
“Because I have been to Centax Two, and I have seen deployment plans, to ensure that Qiilura wasn’t on the list.”
A shapeshifter was the most feared spy of all. Gurlanins could assume any shape, stow away on any ship, and infiltrate anywhere. They communicated telepathically with one another. They might not have had a civilization with weapons and technology, but they were very bad enemies to make.
“Want to expand on that?”
“Soldier, you can’t even see what’s in front of you, can you?”
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