501st: An Imperial Commando Novel (10 page)

“Yes,” Darman said. “I do.”

Darman didn’t think of himself as ordinary folk, though. He’d been raised to understand he was
optimized
, the best raw material trained in the best way to be the best at his job, and now he fell back on the most important childhood lesson that Sergeant Kal had taught him. He could do anything he set his mind to; not because he started with the advantage of the genes of one of the toughest fighters in the galaxy, not even because he was fed and trained to a peak since childhood, but because he had acquired the right mental attitude. Skirata called it
ramikadyc
—in a commando state of mind. It was a soldier’s unshakable belief that he or she could do anything, endure anything, take any risk, and succeed. It was stronger than muscle. It made the body do the impossible.

I’m not in pain. Any pain that I feel is temporary
.
Nothing can touch me. This is happening to someone else. I just observe it as I pass
.

That mantra kept Darman going when all he wanted to do was lie down and die. He’d felt that way more in the last few weeks than he ever had in his life. Kal Skirata had taught his young commandos an armory of
ramikadyc
techniques for resisting interrogation, a way of shutting out reality to become someone else who wasn’t in that terrible place you found yourself in.

Some visualized putting their pain and fear in a box, or concentrating on its physical reality so minutely that it fragmented and ceased to register; some simply imagined they were somewhere else. And pushed beyond the breaking point by hunger, thirst, or exhaustion, Darman had been taught to focus only on the next moment that he could bear to think about—the next second, next step, next hill, next meal—time after time, until he’d come through the ordeal.

Darman wasn’t in physical pain, but he hurt more than he could stand. Until he worked out the best way to stop that for good, he shut down.

I know what happened. I see it every night when I close my eyes. But it didn’t happen to my Etain, and it didn’t happen to me. It was some other couple. It was a holovid. It wasn’t us
.

Cuis walked straight up to Niner and handed him a datachip. It was impossible to pick out the squad sergeant from four identically armored men, so Darman decided he was right. He’d work on the assumption that Cuis was a Force-user. There were probably a lot of them he didn’t know about. It made him feel distinctly uneasy.

I don’t like your type. I don’t like your type at all
.

Of course he could just be reading Niner’s body language. Niner moves forward a fraction, Spook decides he’s in charge … 

Cuis turned away from Niner and stared right at Darman. Then he walked up to him and held out his hand for shaking. Nobody had ever shook clones’ hands, except
the decent Jedi officers. It was unmilitary, for a start. And when Darman did the instinctive thing and gripped that hand, the feeling he got was … unsettling.

He’s testing me out. I’ve seen Jedi do that. Felt Etain do it. I know that feeling. Yes, he’s a Force-user
.

Darman wasn’t sure if he disliked the sensation in his mind because he felt spied upon, or because it was another painful reminder of
her
. Cuis let go quickly and shook hands with the others as an obvious afterthought.

“Jilam Kester is confirmed as being on Celen.” Cuis’s eye movements—or lack of them—told Darman that he was trying very hard not to look at him now, so he had
felt
Darman’s reaction, all right. “This contains your charts, building plans, and informant contact details. Bring him back alive.”

Niner inserted the chip into his datapad. “What is he, then? Padawan? Minor Knight?”

“He’s not even a Force-user. But he knows where they are, and he’s been getting them out via a refugee network. He’s an Antarian Ranger.”

“Never heard of them.”

“They’re one of the Sector Rangers groups. Antarian Rangers are ordinary law enforcement officers who worked with the Jedi.”

Darman was instantly fascinated, especially as he’d never seen them tasked to do any jobs in the war. That in itself was odd. “If they worked for the Jedi, then why didn’t we come across them? They weren’t even on our briefing list.”

Cuis nodded. “The Jedi Council didn’t
acknowledge
them, but they certainly used them. Rangers want to be Jedi but have no Force powers. So they tag along when Jedi need extra support, or do the dirty jobs nobody else wants. None of the glory, all of the danger. Sad little creatures. What a miserable existence, putting your life on the line for those who don’t even admit that you exist.”

“Disgraceful,” Niner said. Only Darman knew him well enough to wonder if he was being literal or sarcastic.

“What others abandon, we protect,”
Cuis took out a datapad from under his cloak. “That’s the Sector Ranger motto, you know. I often wonder if they’re being deliberately ironic.”

“So you definitely want him alive,” Ennen said. “Despite general orders.”

Cuis nodded, looking more distracted by his datapad. “Yes. Even I can’t get answers out of a dead man, although I know some who think they can.”

Darman thought briefly of Fi and then stifled the image. There was no reaction from Cuis. If he was a Force-user, and not on the hit list, then what was he? Jusik had mentioned dark Jedi and Sith, although Darman had never paid much attention to the conversation. Now he wished he had. He wondered if there were Force-users who didn’t have to take sides at all.

Then he remembered why he was wondering that, and reminded himself that the son he thought about wasn’t
his
son, but another Darman’s, and it didn’t break his heart not to see him, and he wasn’t terrified that he might not be able to raise him. He felt nothing. He didn’t dare.

Why am I doing this? What if the Jedi I go after are just like
Bard’ika?

They wouldn’t be. They’d be like the ones who killed that other Darman’s wife. They’d be like the ones who had rules so callous that Jedi weren’t allowed to have families, and the ones who tried to had to live a lie. So he had nothing to search his conscience for.

He didn’t ask himself how he would feel about hunting down his brothers, because he knew that they would never be found. It was academic.

“Now, when you detain this man, there’s no need to be discreet,” said Cuis. “We want even the most obscure cesspits in the Empire to know that there really isn’t any place we can’t keep an eye on.”

The shuttle lifted off. It wasn’t a LAAT/i, and its distinctive noise wasn’t yet burned into Darman’s subconscious
as the promise of immediate extraction or welcome supplies. That would come in time, he was sure.

He settled back in his seat and tried not to think beyond the moment. If he thought ahead—asked himself what he was doing here, asked why he didn’t desert now that Niner had recovered and could leave, too—then he’d have to think about his future, and that was impossible now without having to face his immediate past.

His past hurt too much. It hurt so much that he wasn’t even sure he had what it took to be a good father.

But that was another Darman.

It was saliva,
strill
saliva—a puddle of it in the flagstone passage outside the central living room, the
karyai
.

Ordo saw it a fraction of a second too late when he glanced up from his datapad as he walked. He skidded. Walon Vau was back, and so was his strill, Mird. Ordo could smell its pungent musk everywhere.

“Shab.”
He doubled back to the kitchen to grab a mop, cursing to himself. “Disgusting
shabuir
.”

“You don’t mean that,
Ord’ika,”
said Vau. He was filling a bucket from the faucet in the kitchen. “You know you’re glad to see Mird back. I’ll clean up the mess.”

The drooling culprit sat with its head in Ny’s lap, grumbling happily. Ny indulged it with a handful of cookies, apparently oblivious to the volume of slobber a happy strill could generate.

“I got you a bantha bone,
Mird’ika.”
Ny bent over to whisper in its ear. Ordo admired her ability to inhale that close to the creature. “But the bad men took it. Yes, they
did
, they took your bone! Their akk ate it. Naughty akk! I’ll get you another one, shall I? Nice big bone?”

Mird rumbled approvingly. Ordo forgot nothing; he recalled every detail of the times the strill terrorized him as a child in Tipoca City. He’d come close to shooting it.
So had
Kal’buir
. But now Mird was as much an ally as anyone else at Kyrimorut, and even Skirata admired its intelligence and devotion. Ny seemed to dote on it almost as much as Vau did.

But it still stank. Nothing would ever change that.

“So stormies are
bad men
, are they, Ny?” Vau asked, soaking a floor cloth and wringing out the water. “How bad?”

“If they’d spotted the Jedi, I’d have found out the hard way,” she said. “Can Mird have pups?”

“Mird can bear pups
and
sire them.” Vau headed for the passage with the cloth. “But don’t ask me how hermaphroditic reproduction works in practice. All I know is that if Mird meets the strill of its dreams, then they end up with a litter of little strills.”

“And I bet they’re
adorable,”
Ny said, ruffling the loose skin on Mird’s jowls. “Little balls of wrinkly golden fluff. Just like you,
Mird’ika
.”

Mird yawned, showing off a fearsome mouthful of teeth. Strills were possibly the least adorable animal on Mandalore, and Ordo struggled to see what Ny found so appealing. Mird had six legs, lethal claws, a massive square head with a huge jaw that could bite through skull bone, and folded skin that looked several sizes too big for its body. It could fly, too, provided it had some high point to launch from. The animal was admirable—and loyal—but beauty and fragrance were two qualities it lacked. Human males found its scent offensive; Ordo certainly did. Human females and other species didn’t seem to notice it, which probably explained why such a smelly animal could be such an efficient hunter.

“You boys having a crisis meeting?” Ny asked, still making a fuss of Mird. “Anything I can do?”

“Just a routine briefing,” Ordo said. “One of Mereel’s business contacts located Dar and Niner, so we have work to do.”

“Is Niner okay? How about poor Darman? How is he?”

“Back on the job. Both of them. Beyond that—we have to find out.”

“At least Kal can relax now.”

“Not until we get them home.”

“That should be easy for you, though. Shouldn’t it? You’re the extraction and retrieval experts. No door closed to you, and all that.”

“In theory, yes.”

“You’re a very cautious lad, Ordo.”

“That’s because I watch plans go to
osik
every day.”

Ordo was desperate to ask Ny a more personal question, but Besany had forbidden him to raise the topic of her opinion of
Kal’buir
. Trying to marry them off was
premature
, Besany warned, and there was a chance it would scare Ny away.

Ordo couldn’t see why everyone was skirting around the issue. A’den had decided the two of them were a good match, the rest of the brothers agreed, and
Kal’buir
needed a wife. If he didn’t get a move on, Vau might move in. Ordo had never known Vau to show the slightest interest in another living being, but he’d watched enough holovids to know that romance sprang from the most unlikely shared moments, and Mird was in danger of becoming one of those.

“Something on your mind, Ordo?” Ny asked. “You look like—”

She was cut short by a yelp from Mird. It threw up its head and trotted to the kitchen door, tail whipping. Ordo heard footsteps—light shoes, not Mando
cetare—
and Scout appeared in the doorway. After a few sniffs of the girl’s robes, the strill slunk back to Ny as if disappointed.

“What’s
that?”
Scout edged into the kitchen and stared at Mird from a cautious distance. “Is that the strill?”

“Lord Mirdalan,” Ny said. “Mird, meet Scout.”

“Wow.”

“It’s okay, it’s safe to touch him … her … it. Whatever.
Sorry, Mird, it just feels
rude
to call you
it
when you’re such a sweetie.”

Mird basked in the attention. Scout didn’t look convinced that the strill was harmless—a wise girl, because it wasn’t—but she squatted down and petted it anyway. Mird rubbed its head against her face, stopping short of slobbering over her. Ordo got the feeling it was working out who this stranger was that had upset
Kal’buir
so much.

“He’s very friendly.” Scout rubbed Mird’s ears and got a long rumble of delight. “Kina Ha will be fascinated.”

“It,”
Ordo said. “And it might be a good idea to keep it away from Kina Ha. Mird doesn’t like Kaminoans.”

“Well, looks like Vau left me holding the baby.” Ny waved Ordo away. “Go on. Get to your boys’ club meeting.”

“Females aren’t excluded. You can join in if you like.”

“Someone’s got to get dinner on the table.”

Ordo wondered if the strill had sensed Scout as a Jedi and thought Etain had come home. It was hard to know what went on in a strill’s head, but Mird was intelligent enough to know Etain was dead because it had seen her body. Perhaps, like a grieving human, it thought it saw her now, even when it knew that couldn’t possibly happen.

Is that what Darman’s going through, too? Does he keep seeing Etain in crowds? Does he forget for a moment, see something that would make her laugh, then remember she’s dead
?

How does he go on? How does
anyone
go on
?

Ordo couldn’t get the idea of bereavement out of his head since escaping from Coruscant. He’d never lost brothers in combat, not like the other clones had, and he found himself trying to imagine what life would be like if he lost the people he loved. The idea of life without
Kal’buir
or his brothers was almost too much to think about. And now he had a wife, too, another person to fear for and fret over. The more you loved, the more pain lay in wait. Vau seemed to have the right idea. If
you didn’t love anyone, you couldn’t be hurt or bereaved. Life was a trade-off between loneliness and inevitable peaks of joy or agony.