501st: An Imperial Commando Novel (29 page)

Claws tapped on the flagstones in the passage. The door edged open.

“You heard it too, Mird?” Jusik whispered. The strill had its own kind of radar, a predator’s sensitivity to every noise and smell. “How’d you know I was awake?” Jusik swung his legs out of bed and pulled on some clothes. “Come on. Let’s see what it is.”

Mird seemed to know where the sound was coming from. Jusik buckled his belt and lightsaber out of pure habit, and followed the animal past the kitchen to the main back doors that led out onto open country. Thaw or not, the air felt bitterly cold. Mird stood completely motionless, nose pointing into the breeze, and grumbled quietly in its throat. Someone was walking around the perimeter, occasionally cracking twigs in the undergrowth, and for a moment Jusik feared the worst—that the bastion had been found. But Mird’s reaction—calm, more
worried
than defensive—told him it wasn’t a stranger prowling out there, and what he sensed in the Force was a troubled spirit.

It was probably Arla, or maybe even Uthan unable to sleep. No … 
Arla
. It was Arla. Poor woman, she was coming off those stop-a-bantha tranquilizers, and she was in no shape to be wandering around in the cold and dark in a strange place. He’d bring her back inside.

Mird trotted on without prompting, leading Jusik through the trees. They made enough noise not to startle her. Jusik tried to imagine what might have made her venture outside, and wondered if it had been such a good idea to leave doors unlocked. He spotted her standing on the bank of the stream that formed a natural boundary to the north.

“Hey, Arla,” he called. Despite the racket he was making, she still flinched. “You’re going to catch your death of cold. Come indoors.”

Jusik ambled up to her, making a point of looking harmless. He wondered why some could live with horrific memories and others couldn’t.
Poor Arla
. They’d done the right thing getting her out of that place. It
wasn’t going to be easy adjusting to life outside, but it had to be better than an institution.

He was about a meter from her now. She was radiating so much tension in the Force that he almost expected her to panic and run, but she turned to face him almost casually, right arm at her side, left hand in her tunic pocket.

It was then that she raised her arm and he saw the weapon—wood, a metal bar, he wasn’t sure which. In the stretched fraction of a second before it hit him, he defaulted to being a Jedi, and sent her crashing backward with a Force blow that was pure reflex.

He should have seen it coming.

Niner now had to think on his feet.

The longer Ordo and the others were on Coruscant, the more they risked getting caught. He had to deliver that datachip if nothing else. He also had to get Dar in a position where he’d desert with him, right there and then. There’d be no second chances or asking for a week to think it over. If Ordo had to come back and run the gauntlet of Imperial security checks again, the risks would be even higher than hanging around.

It couldn’t wait. He watched nervously as Darman dawdled over his plate of noodles, and the moment he twirled the last strands around his fork and slurped them, Niner took the plate away and stood up.

“Practice range,” Niner said. “I really need to sharpen up.”

It was stand-easy time, and they’d have the SU range to themselves for a while. Darman just gave him a look and didn’t argue. They knew each other well enough to gauge what was a problem and when it needed to be discussed elsewhere.

“Okay.” Darman took the plate back and placed it on the tray of a service droid as it passed on its never-ending
trawl for dirty dishes, cutlery, and spills. “Let’s see what we can do. But remember the new guy’s showing up in an hour.”

Shab
. Niner had forgotten about Rede. Well, they could get this over and done with by then, and then he could worry about how to handle Rede.

“An hour’s plenty.”

The interior range was soundproofed, ringed by handy booths and storage areas that were ideal for avoiding interruptions. Niner switched to his secure helmet link as he walked down the corridor, inaudible to Darman.

“Ordo? It’s me. Where are you?”

Ordo was obviously standing by. There was hardly a second’s delay. “Four klicks from your position,
ner vod.
”

“I’m about to break the news to Darman. It’d be a good idea to give us a time and a place. Things are getting complicated here.”

This time, the link went quiet for a few moments. “Where might you be able to hang around in full armor without looking too obvious, and where a freighter could lay up?”

“Is that what you’re driving today?”

“Ny Vollen’s crate.
Cornucopia
. It’s a CEC
Monarch
, thirty meters length overall, beam ten meters, total draft fifteen meters.”

Niner couldn’t recall seeing the ship. He tried to visualize something that size and where it might hang around for a while without looking out of place. The first thing that sprang to mind was an industrial zone, but that wasn’t somewhere a commando in full black rig could loiter without drawing attention in daylight. Then there were commercial areas, maybe the megastores with loading areas the size of small neighborhoods.

“Can we do this when it’s dark?” Niner checked his chrono. “Seven hours, roughly.”

“Yes.”

“How about one of the waste processing plants?
They’re full of vessel holding areas. Or a repulsortruck park.”

“Repulsortruck park makes sense. You won’t be hanging around long, anyway. Report in on the hour, and we’ll fine-tune the RV time and location.”

“Copy that.”

“Very convincing,
Ner’ika … 
Ordo out.”

Darman nudged him. “You’re up to something.”

“Maybe.” Niner checked that the range was clear, switched on the
DO NOT ENTER
safety sign, and steered Dar into the end stall. “Bucket off.”

Darman took off his helmet, powered it down completely, and stuffed his gauntlets into it. “I get the idea,” he whispered.

“Dar, I’m going to have to mention some painful things.”

Darman looked like he was trying hard to be unconcerned. “Okay, I promise I’ll stop eating things that give me gas.”

“Serious.”

“Yeah, I was afraid of that.”

Niner hadn’t spelled it out before. They both knew all too well what had happened the night of the Jedi Purge, and he thought that the less he reminded Darman of his misery, the safer it would be. Darman seemed not to want to talk about it, either. Now he had to.

“Dar, your kid needs you. We have to get out of here. Sorry. I don’t know how else to say it.”

Darman looked away for a few moments, focusing on the blasterproof wall. “I know,” he said at last. “But I still feel like I’m running out on my buddies.”

“Do you still want to … leave?” Niner was wary of saying the D word, even when he was sure he couldn’t be heard. “We decided we would. All of us.”

“Yeah. I remember.”

“You want to see Kad again, don’t you?” Niner knew as soon as he said it that he’d stepped through thin ice.

Dar’s eyes glazed with tears. “You know what?” he
said. “I don’t know if I can look at him. When I look at him, I’ll see her and everything we never got a chance to have as a family, and I don’t think I can handle that.”

“But he’s your son.” Niner understood exactly what he meant. “You’ll pick him up, and all that father stuff is going to flood in. You’ll want to be with him for exactly that reason—because he’s yours and Etain’s.”

It was the first time Niner had dared say her name for ages. In fact, he wasn’t sure he’d said it at all since the night she was killed. Her death hung over him and Darman like a permanent pall of smoke that they could both see but never mentioned, because its presence was so overwhelmingly obvious.

Dar shut his eyes for a moment and pinched the bridge of his nose. “How am I going to keep him safe? What if the Jedi come back?”

“If they ever do, they’ll have to find him first, and then they’ll have to get past Skirata. And the Nulls. And
me.
”

The longer they waited to escape the less urgent it seemed, except for the fact that Kad was growing up without his parents. Niner wavered between looking forward to a new life and fearing that he’d waste it because he wouldn’t know what to do with it.

“What did they do with her body?” Darman asked. A dam seemed to have burst, spilling out questions that must have been eating him alive. “I don’t know where she is. Did they take her? I can’t get it out of my head. I don’t even know how to find out.”

It seemed as good a time as any to tell him.

“I’ll ask Ordo,” Niner said.

Darman looked up very slowly. “You’re in touch with the Nulls.”

“Yes.”

“When were you planning to tell me that,
ner vod?”
Darman hadn’t been told he had a son for eighteen months. He didn’t take kindly to being kept in the dark, and Skirata had the scars to prove it. “That explains a lot.”

“No, it doesn’t—”

“I knew it. You’ve been acting weird.”

“I swear they only made contact today. That’s why we’re standing here now.”

Darman wasn’t catching on fast enough. “Cut the
osik
. Tell me.”

“They’ve come to get us out.”

Darman’s gaze flickered. “They’re taking a big risk.”

Skirata always talked about cage-farmed nuna. It was hard to set them free, he said, because they’d been born in a cage and bars were all they knew. They’d often scuttle back to the cage when set loose, as if the sheer scale of the open fields overwhelmed them. Niner thought he saw that nuna look on Dar’s face.

“That’s why we need to get moving,” he said. “We’ve got a few hours yet.” He tapped his helmet. “Jaing seems to have a hundred ways of getting into government systems. The man’s
inventive.
”

“Okay,” Darman said again. “Can I talk to him? Can I talk to Ordo? Why did he contact you, and not me?”

It didn’t take a mind reader to work out what Darman wanted to ask.

“His spy couldn’t find your helmet to slip the comlink in,” Niner said. “You want me to ask him … about Etain?”

Darman put his helmet back on. “Yeah. Do that. Thanks. Look, I better go meet Rede. Ennen’s not up to being sociable yet.”

Niner watched him go, and realized that losing a wife was a different kind of grief. Mourning a brother killed in action was bad, and it never got any easier; commandos just found ways to cope with it day by day, and Ennen would, too. But there was no expectation of definite events in a shared life, none of the stuff that a couple assumed would happen to them—having kids, seeing those kids grow up and have kids of their own, and finally growing old together. Things that Darman had started to expect would happen to him would now never take place, even if he married again. The future with Etain had been glimpsed before a door had slammed
shut. That somehow seemed even more cruel than just missing a brother in that general he’s-not-there kind of way.

Niner put his helmet on and activated the comlink, still wary and half expecting to be intercepted. “Ordo, you there?”

“Receiving,
ner vod.
”

“Darman needs to know what happened to Etain’s body.”

Ordo was silent for a few moments, as if he’d had to think about it.

“We took her back to Mandalore, and she was cremated in keeping with her custom.”

“Jedi custom.”

“
Kal’buir
wanted it.” Ordo sounded almost ashamed. “Her ashes haven’t been scattered. We’re waiting for Darman to come home.”

Niner felt a familiar ache behind his eyes and shut them tight until the feeling passed. “I’ll let him know. Niner out.”

Back at the mess hall, Darman and Ennen sat huddled at a table with a clone who had to be Rede. It was hard to explain to randomly conceived beings, but despite looking almost identical, this man was a stranger. The sameness got filtered out, leaving only the small variations—lines, gestures, tone of voice—as distinguishing features. Niner hadn’t got the measure of Rede’s yet.

And he was
one year old
. More or less.

Almost everything he knew, and every skill he had, was the result of flash learning. He just hadn’t been alive long enough to undergo any of the basic training that took up the first years of a Kamino clone’s life. He was going to have a tough time in special operations.

“Sergeant.”
Rede sat bolt-upright. “Trooper TK Seven-zero-five-five-eight, Sergeant.”

“You’ll probably end up calling me Niner.” He sat down. “Small-squad habits. Did you volunteer?”

“No, Sergeant. Aptitude assessment.”

“But how do you feel about joining us?” The lad had
to learn that he was free to say what was on his mind. “Happy? Annoyed? Upset at being separated from your old buddies?”

Rede paused as if it was a trick question.

“I’ll miss them,” he said. “But it’s an honor to serve in the Five-oh-first, especially in the commando corps.”

Honor wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Niner knew just how it felt to start over in a completely new squad among complete strangers. “Fair enough. Can you shoot better than the other Centax guys?”

“We can always use more range time.”

Good attitude
. Niner was aware of Ennen frowning at him. “So what do you think our overall objective is?”

“To neutralize insurgents, political agitators, and other security threats seeking to destabilize the new government, Sergeant.”

It sounded like something Rede had learned. Poor kid; how could anyone cram enough into a human being in one year to make them functional but without turning them into basket cases? It still didn’t sound right to Niner. And now there was a whole army of beings below him in the victims league. He wasn’t sure if that made him feel better or much, much worse.

“I’ll ask you that again in six months, if you’re still with us,” Niner said.

Ennen drained his cup of caf and got up. “If we’re still alive.”

Rede looked to Niner with an expression of grim anticipation, as if he was expecting some guidance. “What do we do now, Sarge?”