Star Wars: Republic Commando: Triple Zero rc-3

by Karen Traviss

  They all stopped in midcrunch. Fi noted Jusik wasn't eating, just watching the sergeant with a rapt expression. The young general had a very bad dose of the Skiratas. As diseases went, it was one of the best to catch.

  “So do we get to drop them, or do we have to do the boring thing and let them stroll off?” Boss asked. Niner gave him one of his funny looks, the kind that said he thought a bit of quiet contemplation was called for. Niner and Boss didn't see their newly reduced roles in quite the same way: Niner liked to lead by being certain, and Boss seemed to like being first. “This is a tracking job, right?”

  “Vau made you into very impatient boys,” Skirata said. “Yes, this is where it gets boring. And you know what? You won't be any less dead if you get it wrong.” He picked up some shuura fruits and lobbed one each to the Delta team. “And I really hope Vau schooled you well in this, because I'll be pretty hacked off if you get trigger-happy and blow this op.”

  Boss looked hurt. Fi didn't think Delta ran to such delicate emotions. “We're pros, Sarge. We know how to do this.”

  “What did I tell you?”

  “Sorry. Kal. It's just that we haven't even seen the enemy yet.”

  “Welcome to anti-terror ops, hotshot. They aren't droids. They don't line up and march at you. Didn't you listen to any of my lectures?”

  “Well—”

  “They can kill you and not even be on the planet when it happens. But you can track and kill them the same way. This is about patience and attention to detail.”

  “Delta's really good at that, so I hear,” Fi said. Sev gave him that blank cold stare. It simply provoked Fi all the more. “That's why they do their op planning with finger paints.”

  Skirata lobbed a rolled-up ball of flimsi at Fi and it hit him in the ear—hard. “Okay, Ordo is going to score some credible explosives over the next few days, because that's going to be handy if we need to infiltrate the cells. And we'll start surveillance of the drop point now because we don't have a time window when the explosives were due to be picked up. Four shifts—Fi and Sev as Red Watch, relieved by Dar and Boss as Blue Watch, relieved by Niner and Scorch as Green Watch.”

  Fi noted Atin's process of elimination. He looked as if he'd been doused in cold water. Fi suspected he'd wanted to be paired with Sev, and for all the wrong reasons.

  “That leaves you and Fixer as White Watch, so you stay focused,” Skirata said, giving Atin a friendly prod in the chest. He'd spotted it, too. But then, Skirata spotted everything. “One watch on observation, one on intel collation, and two stood down.”

  “What about everyone else?”

  “Ordo's going undercover to find our mole, and Bardan and Etain will join the normal shift rotations until we need to break into a new phase. If needed, Vau and Enacca will turn to as well, and give us a hand.”

  Jusik—looking convincingly unsavory in ordinary clothing and with his hair unbound—checked his snazzy S-5 blaster. Yes, Zey would go nuts when he saw the bill for this op. “Can we use the Force, Kal?”

  “ 'Course you can, Bard'ika. As long as nobody notices. Or as long as you don't leave witnesses, anyway. Same goes for lightsabers. No witnesses. Might look a bit obvious.”

  “When do we start?” Boss asked.

  Skirata looked at his chrono. “Three hours. Time to eat, I think.”

  Sev elbowed Fi, a little too hard to be friendly but not hard enough to start a fight. “So, you and me. The brains and the mouth. Don't get me killed.”

  “I'm slumming it. I usually work with ARC captains.” Watching normal people leading normal lives? I'd rather charge a droid line. What happened to my certainty? Do the others feel like this? “But there's a war on, so sacrifices have to be made.”

  “Can you do the dumb-trooper act?”

  “You mean you're not doing it now?”

  “I hope you're as good as you talk, ner vod.”

  “Count on it,” Fi said, and noted that Darman had wandered off in the direction of Etain's exit. “Sometimes I'm not very funny at all.”

  * * *

  Etain felt she had held out pretty well, all things considered.

  It was only when she closed the refresher door that she let herself vomit uncontrollably until tears spilled down her face and into her mouth. She ran water into the basin to cover the sound, and choked on her sobs.

  She'd been so convinced she could handle it. And she couldn't.

  Ripping into Orjul's soul had been even harder than outright physical violence. She had stolen his conviction from him, which was no great evil until set in the context of the fact that he would, she knew, die very soon without even the comfort of his beliefs, broken and abandoned and alone.

  Why am I doing this? Because men are dying.

  When do the ends cease to justify the means?

  She vomited until she was convulsed by dry heaves. Then she filled the basin with cold water and plunged her head into it. When she straightened up and her vision cleared, she looked into a face she recognized. But it wasn't hers: it was the hard, long face of Walon Vau.

  Everything I've been taught is wrong.

  Vau was all brutality and expedience, as clear an example of the dark side for a Jedi as any she could imagine. And yet there was a total absence of conscious malice in him. She should have sensed anger and murderous intent, but Vau was just filled with … nothing. No, not nothing: he was actually calm and benign. He thought he was doing good work. And she saw her supposed Jedi ideal in him—motivated not by anger or fear, but by what she thought was right. She now questioned everything she'd been taught.

  Dark and light are simply the perpetrator's perception. How can that be right?

  How can Vau's passionless expedience be morally superior to Ski rata's anger and love?

  Etain had struggled for years with her own anger and resentment. The choices were to be a good Jedi or a failed Jedi, with the assumption—sometimes unspoken, sometimes not—that failure meant the dark side awaited.

  But there was a third path: to leave the Order.

  She wiped her face on the towel and faced a hard realization. She remained a Jedi because she knew no other life. She pitied Orjul not because she had tortured him, but because he had been robbed of the one thing that held him together, his convictions, without which he had no direction. The truth was that she pitied herself—devoid of direction—and projected it onto her victim by way of denial.

  The only selfless thing I have ever done that was not centered on my own need to be a good, passionless, detached Jedi was to care about these cloned men and ask what we're doing to them.

  And that was her direction.

  It was so very clear; but she was still raw and aching within. Revelation didn't heal. She sat on the edge of the tub with her head resting on her knees.

  “Ma'am, what's wrong?” It was Darman's voice. It should have been the same as every other clone's, but it wasn't. They all had their distinct nuances in accent, pitch, and tone. And he was Dar.

  She could sense Darman across star systems now. She'd wanted to reach out to him in the Force many times, but feared it might distract him from his duty and endanger him, or—if he knew it was her and didn't welcome it—annoy him.

  After all, he'd had the choice of staying on Qiilura with her. And he had opted to stay with his squad. What she felt for him now, the longing that had developed only after they parted, might not be mutual.

  He called out again. “Are you okay?”

  She opened the doors, and Darman peered in.

  “I don't want to be ma'am right now, Dar.”

  “Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt—”

  “Don't go.”

  He moved a couple of steps into the room as if it were booby-trapped. She had been here before; she had been utterly dependent on his military skills when her life was at stake. He had been so focused, so reassuring, so competent. Where she had doubts, he had certainties.

  “So you still don't find it any easier, then,” said Darman.
/>
  “What?”

  “Giving in to anger. You know. Violence.”

  “Oh, any Jedi Master would have been proud of me. I did it all without anger. Anger makes it the dark side. Being serene makes it okay.”

  “I know it must have been hard. I know how Sergeant Kal reacted when he had to—”

  “No. I was harming a stranger. No personal dilemma at all.”

  “It doesn't make you a bad person. It has to be done. Is that what's upsetting you?”

  “That, maybe. And having doubts.”

  She didn't want to be alone with all that in her head. She could have meditated. She had the strength of will and the ancient skills to pass through this turmoil and do what Jedi had done for millennia—detach from the moment. But she didn't want to.

  She wanted to risk living with those terrible feelings. The danger suddenly seemed to lie in denying them, just as she tried unsuccessfully to deny what she felt for Darman.

  “Dar, do you ever have doubts? You always said you were certain of your role. I always felt you were.”

  “You really want to know?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have doubts all the time.”

  “What kind?”

  “Before we left Kamino, I was so sure what I had to do. Now … well, the more I see of the galaxy … the more I see of other people, the more I wonder, why me? How did I end up here, and not like the people I see around me in Coruscant? When we win the war, what will happen to me and my brothers?”

  They weren't stupid. They were highly intelligent: bred for it, in fact, and if you bred people to be intelligent and resourceful and resilient and aggressive, then sooner or later they would notice that their world wasn't fair, and begin to resent it.

  “I ask that, too,” Etain said.

  “It makes me feel disloyal.”

  “It's not disloyal to question things.”

  “It's dangerous, though,” Darman said.

  “For the status quo?”

  “Sometimes you can't argue with everything. Like orders. You don't have the full picture of the battle, and the order you ignore might just be the one that should have saved your life.”

  “Well, I'm glad you have doubts. And I'm glad I do, too.”

  Darman leaned against the wall, all concern. “Do you want something to eat? We're going to risk Qibbu's nerf in glockaw sauce. Scorch reckons it's probably armored rat.”

  “I'm not sure I can face crowds right now.”

  “You might be overestimating the popularity of Qibbu's cuisine.” He shrugged. “I could probably get the cook to stun the thing with my Deece and send it up by room service.”

  That was Darman all over: he had a relentlessly positive nature. It was her job to inspire him, but he'd been the one on Qiilura who had made her get up and fight time after time. He'd changed her forever. She wondered if he had any idea how much he was still changing her life now.

  “Okay,” she said. “But only if you keep me company.”

  “Yeah, eating armored rat alone is probably asking for trouble.” He grinned suddenly, and she felt illuminated by it. “You might need first aid.”

  Niner's voice interrupted from down the passage. “Dar, you coming with us or what? Fi and Sev are supposed to be on watch.”

  “No, I'll get something sent up. They can head on down with you. We'll do the duty.” Darman cocked his head as if to listen for some rebuke. “That okay?”

  This time it was Skirata's voice. “Two steaks?”

  “Please.”

  “Not something safe, like eggs?”

  “Steaks. We fear nothing.”

  Suddenly Etain felt an urge to laugh. Fi might have been the comedian, but Dar was genuinely uplifting. He wasn't trying to suppress pain.

  She also found him distractingly handsome, even though he looked identical to his brothers. She adored them as friends, but they were not Darman, and somehow they didn't even look like him. Nobody else ever would be that precious to her, she knew that.

  “Well, what shall we do now?” he asked.

  “Not lightsaber training, for a start.”

  “You really whacked me with that branch.”

  “You told me I had to.”

  “So you take orders from clones, do you, General?”

  “You kept me alive.”

  “Ah, you'd have done fine without me.”

  “Actually, no,” said Etain. “Actually, I wouldn't have done fine at all.”

  She looked him in the eye for a few moments, hoping that Darman the man would react to her, but he simply stared back, a bewildered boy again. “I'd never been that close to a human female before. Did you know that?”

  “I guessed as much?”

  “I wasn't even sure if Jedi were … real flesh and blood.”

  “I wonder sometimes, too.”

  “I wasn't scared of dying.” He put his hands to his head for a moment and then raked his fingers through his hair, that gesture she'd seen in Skirata. “I was afraid because I didn't know what I was feeling and—”

  The service droid buzzed to be let in.

  “Fierfek.” Darman's shoulders sagged a little. He got up and took the tray from the droid, looking pink-faced and annoyed. He peeled back the lids and inspected the contents as if they were unstable explosives, and she felt the moment was now lost.

  “Is it dead?” Etain asked.

  “If it isn't, it's not getting up again anytime soon.”

  She chewed a test-mouthful thoughtfully. “Could be worse.”

  “Ration cubes …”

  “Oh, that brings back memories.”

  “Now you know why we'll eat anything.”

  “I remember the bread, too. Ugh.”

  He prodded something in the container with his fork, looking concerned. “You did reach out to me in the Force, didn't you? I wasn't imagining that.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Why?”

  “Isn't it obvious?”

  “How would I know? I'm not sure if I know that much about you.”

  “I think you do, Dar.”

  Darman suddenly took exceptional interest in the remains of the steak, which might have been nerf after all. “I don't think anyone believed females would matter to us, given our life expectancy. And it wasn't relevant to combat.”

  That was freshly agonizing. Of all the injustices piled on these clones who had never been given choices, that was the worst: the denial of any individual future, of hope itself. If they beat the odds of battle, they were still doomed to lose the war against time. Darman would probably be dead in thirty years, and she wouldn't even be halfway through her life by then.

  “I bet Kal thought it was important.”

  Darman chewed his lip and averted his gaze. She wasn't sure if he was embarrassed or if he simply didn't know what she was really asking.

  “He never mentioned what to do about generals,” he said quietly.

  “My Master never specifically mentioned soldiers, either.”

  “I hear you ignore orders anyway.”

  “I was afraid I'd never see you again, Dar. But you're here now, and that's all that matters.”

  She held her hand out to him. He hesitated for a moment and then reached across the table and took it.

  “We could be dead tomorrow, both of us,” she said. “Or the next day, or next week. That's war.” She thought of the other Fi, whose life had ebbed away in her arms. “And I don't want to die without telling you that I missed you every day since you left, and that I love you, and that I don't believe what I was taught about attachment any more than you should believe that you were bred only to die for the Republic.”

  This was breaking all the rules.

  But the war had broken all the rules of peacekeeping Jedi and a civilized Republic anyway. The Force wouldn't be thrown into turmoil if a mediocre Jedi and a cloned soldier who had no rights broke just one more.

  “I never stopped thinking about you, either,” said Darman
. “Not for a moment.”

  “So … how long does it take two squads to finish their meals in the bar?”

  “Long enough, I think,” said Darman.

  11

  I’d rather have little Jedi like Barden and Etain working with us than the likes of Zey. They're sharp, no preconceptions, no agenda. And they're more concerned with pulling their weight in the team than all this philosophical osik about the dark side. Zey might be a seasoned man, but he seems to want respect from me just because he can open jars of caf with his mind.

  –Kal Skirata, having a quiet drink with Captain Jailer Obrim, well away from prying eyes

  Retail sector, Quadrant B-85, nine days later, observation vehicle in position overlooking warehouse space, 1145 hours, 380 days after Geonosis

  Jusik was enjoying himself.

  “So,” he said, and let the trendy dark visor slide down his nose so he could look over the top. “Do I look like a low-life taxi pilot?”

  “Pretty convincing,” Fi said. He wondered if Jusik ever had the sense to be scared. “Do I look like a fare?”

  Sev, sitting beside Jusik in the taxi's front seat, had a detached DC-17 scope balanced on the vessel's console and patched into a datapad by a thin yellow wire. He was pinging, as Skirata called it. Each time a delivery transport or other craft passed through the dead-end canyon of warehouses that lay beneath the retail levels above, Sev checked the registration transponder against CSF's database. He also checked the cargo with the scope's sensor scan.

  Fi was impressed by the ease with which Fixer and Atin had set up the remote link without CSF spotting it. They hadn't even had to call in Ordo to sort it out. Ordo had melted into the city again two days ago, no mean feat for an ARC trooper captain.

  Fi tried not to wonder where he might be. It was bad enough thinking about Sicko.

  “Okay, that one was routine. Garment delivery.” Sev made a low rumble in his throat, almost like an animal. “What do we look like from the outside now?”

  “At the moment, one Rodian taxi driver reading a holozine while he's parked and waiting.”

  Fi could see out, but nobody could see in—or at least they could see something that wasn't actually in the taxi, thanks to the thin film of photoactive micro-emitters coating the interior. “Clever stuff, this gauze.”