501st: An Imperial Commando Novel (5 page)

Privately, the decision had already been made.

Shysa was making plans for a guerrilla war against the Empire. He could already see that it would be an unwelcome lodger in years to come. Kal Skirata—
Kal’buir
, Papa Kal—didn’t want anything to do with Shysa’s secret army. He had enough trouble of his own. But then he’d never wanted the Empire here, either.

It had come anyway. Everyone knew where this would end, and only
when
remained in doubt.

“Ordo, you know
Kal’buir
is as dear to me as he is to you,” Jusik said carefully, steering a couple of meters above the riverbank. “But do you think he’s wise to let Ny bring Jedi here?”

Ordo read his datapad and didn’t comment on the irony of the question. He seemed remarkably relaxed about things now. “It’s not without risk.”

“How do you feel about having a Kaminoan around?”

“We coped with having Ko Sai as a houseguest …”

“Actually, we didn’t, and she didn’t handle it too well, either. She killed herself. And Mereel—she just pressed all the wrong buttons in him.”

Jusik realized that was the most stupid phrase he’d come out with in a long time.
Wrong buttons
. No, that didn’t even come close. Mereel, like all the Nulls, was just a faulty product as far as the Kaminoan clonemasters
were concerned, something to be put down like an ailing farm animal before they went back to the drawing board. Any normal kid would have been deeply traumatized by that kind of treatment. But kids who had been engineered to be perfect black ops troopers, ferociously intelligent killing machines—their reactions were likely to be a lot more extreme.

Jusik still marveled at how normal the Nulls managed to be most of time. Mereel was charming and affable, a ladies’ man, always the one with the jokes. And then something would trigger the other Mereel, the tormented and haunted child buried within, and he’d change instantly for a moment before snapping back to his old self. It was as if all the Nulls knew this damaged animal within them only too well, and built new personalities on top to keep it on a leash.

“Sorry,” Jusik said. “I’m not making light of what happened to you.”

Ordo shrugged. “Mereel took it the worst. But we’re all messed up.” His frank assessment of his own mental health was almost touching. “Imprecise term, but it sums up the effect Kamino had on us.”

“Have you discussed it with
Kal’buir
?”

“Yes, and I agree with him. Kina Ha’s genetic material is too valuable to pass up just because we have nightmares about the
kaminiise
.”

Jusik chewed over the implications of that again as he parked the speeder as close as he could to the
Oyu’baat
cantina. Kina Ha was another long shot in the bid to find a way to reverse the clones’ accelerated aging, and all of those so far had unraveled into dangerous missions and betrayals. If the Kaminoans had engineered some of their own kind to live exceptionally long lives, then there was something—some set of genes, some technique—that Dr. Uthan might exploit to reset the clones’ aging process to normal. Yes, Jusik could see how important it was; Skirata lived for his clone sons, and giving them a normal life span had become a sacred quest. But
this … 
it had to be traded off against the risk
of Kyrimorut’s location leaking, and whatever would happen to Ny Vollen’s regard for Skirata when she worked out that he would turn Kina Ha into soup if he thought it would save his boys.

That’s going to hurt Ny. Maybe him, too
.

“Let me ask you a question,
Bard’ika,”
Ordo said. “Does it trouble you that Kina Ha is a Jedi?”

“Why should it?”

“Old memories.”

“Not bothered at all.”

Ordo looked dubious. “But Kaminoans aren’t a compassionate species, so what kind of Jedi will she be?”

Jusik thought about it. He’d never heard of a Force-sensitive Kaminoan. And one who lived for centuries, maybe even millennia—that made her a one-off in every sense. “A lonely one, I think.”

Ordo raised one eyebrow. “Inside, I’m crying. Really. So is
Kal’buir
, I’m sure.” Then he dropped the subject. Jusik decided that Ordo thought it was perfectly normal to try to erase your past because he’d done it, too, or as best he could. He seemed to be worrying that the arrival of real Jedi might shake Jusik’s resolve.

No. No, it won’t. Now now
.

Keldabe was a few hours’ flight time south of Kyrimorut and the climate was much milder. The snow hadn’t reached this far. Jusik ambled through the narrow streets and down alleys overhung by rickety buildings, relishing the sheer impossibility of the city. One moment he was in a street that hadn’t changed in the best part of a thousand years, all time-twisted wooden frames and ancient plaster, and the next he was in the shadow of a stark industrial warehouse or a polished granite tower. Keldabe was an anarchic fortress of a city on a granite outcrop on the bend in the Kelita River, almost completely surrounded by the Kelita River, a natural moat that changed from picturesque calm to a torrent within a kilometer. Jusik loved the place. It captured everything about Mandalore for him, and he was
happy that intelligence gathering would bring him down here more often.

The clones had to keep their helmets on, of course. No Mandalorian cared if his neighbor was a deserter from the Grand Army, but the Imperials were around, and the last thing anyone needed was a clone stormtrooper coming face-to-face with a man who looked exactly like himself.

The stormies, as everyone now called them, hadn’t come into town yet. They probably wouldn’t venture into the
Oyu’baat
anyway. It was the oldest cantina on the planet, open for business when the Mandalorians fought against the Old Republic, which was also the last time anyone seemed to have changed the menu.

The place was clean but somehow enticingly
seedy
. The smells that wafted out when Jusik opened the doors were an adventure in themselves. He felt the thrill of ages, because everything happened here; as a Force-sensitive, the echoes called to him as vividly as if he’d been present when the events took place. If Mandalore had a government of any kind, then its business was done in the
Oyu’baat
’s booths and at its long counter as chieftains of the clans debated, reached agreements, and struck deals.

So the
Oyu’baat
was the obvious place to hear gossip about the Imperial garrison. Mandos tended not to keep secrets among themselves, and it saved a lot of high-risk observation time just to sit and listen—and enjoy an ale.

Jusik took off his helmet and bought a mug of
ne’tra gal
. He didn’t look much like his wanted poster behind the counter—all bounties were posted there, for the benefit of patrons who were in the hunting business—but nobody would have turned him in anyway. Jusik was a Mandalorian now, just another adult taken into the fold like so many others, whose past no longer mattered and wasn’t discussed. But maybe they left him alone because anyone who knew his past also knew that he was under the protection of Kal Skirata. Jusik remained wary.

Ordo kept his helmet on and settled in a booth. Jusik
ordered a bottle of ale for Ordo to take away. The barkeep gave Jusik a sympathetic look.

“Clone on the run, eh,
ner vod?”
Locals knew why some men kept their helmets on. He held the glass mug of
ne’tra gal
at arm’s length until the foam settled. “Don’t worry. Imperials don’t come in here. Made sure of it.”

The barkeep didn’t say how he’d achieved that, and Jusik didn’t ask. He could hear a group of men convulsing with laughter. The word
kyrbes
—mythosaur skull, the
Mand’alor
’s traditional crown—jumped out at him.

Well, they thought the thing was funny, too. Jusik decided to gather a little intel.

“Vode
, what’s going on with that skull?” he asked. “Why are the Imperials moving in?”

One of the group, a thickset man in his fifties with deep brown armor and knuckles tattooed with
Mando’a
runes, was laughing so hard that he started coughing. He tried to answer. But every time he almost got a word out, the guffaws overtook him and he bent over with his hands braced on his knees. His friends were in the same state. One of them could only manage a wheezing
hurr-hurr-hurr
sound. The whole cantina was watching now.

“You don’t know what that is?” the man said eventually. He wiped tears from his cheeks with the back of his hand. “Really?”

“Really. We don’t usually go south of the river, so we’ve never seen it before today.”

“Go on, Jarkyc, tell him.” One of the group shoved the man in the back. Mando humor could range from sly to unashamedly lavatorial, so Jusik couldn’t guess what was coming. He just sensed in the Force that Jarkyc found something both hilarious and confusing. “It’s the best thing I’ve heard all year.”

Jarkyc got his breath back and cleared his throat. “It was the dumbest idea.” He jerked a thumb at one of his companions. “Hayar’s idiot brother thought Mandalore could attract adventure tourists. He built the skull as a theme park years ago. A place where folks could be entertained
with mindless
aruetyc osik
. Needless to say, it never opened.”

The men started laughing again. Jusik couldn’t piece it together. “So why are the Imperials interested in it?”

“We’ve been bad boys. We told them it was an ancient Mandalorian temple that held great magical power for us simple folk, and so …” He took more wheezing gulps of air. “Well, they wanted to build the garrison in there, on account of it having so much
significance
to us. So we
sold it to them.
”

The whole cantina erupted in raucous laughter.
Beskar
gauntlets hammered on tables. Yes, a combination of
aruetyc
gullibility, playing dumb, and getting paid a good price for it was a fine Mando prank.

“Mythosaurs weren’t that big, were they?” Jusik said.

“Maybe not, but
they
don’t know that, do they?”

“Aruetiise,”
Hayar said. “They’ll believe any old
osik
you tell them. They think we’re superstitious savages.”

“Hey, retract the
superstitious
bit!” someone shouted over the laughter. “Think we should leave some offerings at the temple, just to show how pious we are?”

Other drinkers joined in. “What, the ones with five-minute detonation timers, or the incendiary sort?”

“Proves that someone on Kamino forgot to use Jango’s brain cells.”

“Nah, it’s not the
clones
. It was that garrison commander—some aristo from Kemla.
Kaysh mirsh solus
.”

It was a lovely Mandalorian insult:
his brain cell’s lonely
. Mandalorians had more words for
stupid
and
stabbing
than any other language, and Jusik couldn’t help thinking the two were somehow inextricably linked.

“So what does that tell you?” Jusik asked Ordo, sliding into the booth.

“I’d take a guess that the Empire wants to inspire awe and wonder among the natives,” Ordo said. “Or they think it’s going to curry favor with us. Either way, it tells me that whoever’s making the decisions doesn’t know Mandalorians very well. And that means it’s not Palpatine,
because I think he
does
understand us, in an exploitative sort of way.”

“Like
Kal’buir
says, it’ll be about
beroyase bal beskar
—Palps wants our mercenaries and our iron ore.” Jusik drained his ale in eight gulps. He’d never enjoyed ale on Coruscant, but it all felt very different here. He was filling out, putting on weight and muscle, and he felt happier being
Bard’ika
than he ever had in his life. “I wouldn’t mind taking a closer look at the skull.”

“It’s like watching a speeder wreck, isn’t it?”

“I’m having one of my
feelings
from a previous existence.”

Ordo shrugged and pocketed the unopened bottle of ale. “Come on, a quick walk around town to see who’s about, and then you can go admire the
kyrbes.
”

A walkabout normally resulted in buying odds and ends they couldn’t get in Enceri; engine parts for Parja’s workshop, toiletries for Dr. Uthan, and candies for everyone. Jusik hoped Mij Gilamar included dentistry in his prodigious range of medical skills, because clones and sugary food went hand in hand. Their accelerated aging seemed to demand a lot of calories.

By the time they found a safe observation point for the grotesque mythosaur theme park, Ordo had already chomped his way happily through a half-kilo bag of candied nuts and was starting on the second.

“You’ll regret that when your
beskar’gam
doesn’t fit anymore,” Jusik said, watching the skull from the speeder’s side screen.

“I’ll burn this off
easily.
”

“Yeah, that’s what I used to say.”

Jusik was beginning to wonder if his Force senses were getting slack. He had an uneasy feeling about the garrison, which he filed under O for Obvious, but there was something else bothering him. He watched the procession of stormies, construction droids, and Imperial officers—who certainly got their new uniforms faster than Jusik ever received kit requests in the Grand Army—and
looked for anything out of the run of normal-for-despots.

“I see they’ve got Mando help,” he said, focusing on a figure in red
beskar’gam
. It was always hard to tell a male Mando from a tall female because the armor often obliterated the curves and gave women the same gait as the men. But he was sure it was a male. “Well, as long as Shysa hasn’t gone public with his resistance, what can they do?”

Ordo shoved his bag of nuts in the speeder’s dashboard compartment and held his hand out for the electrobinoculars. “Let me look.”

“There. The guy in red, black undersuit, talking to the Imperial.”

Ordo froze. “Ah.”

“Something wrong?”

“In a way.”

“What?”

“Gilamar won’t be happy. You don’t know who that is, do you?”

“If I did,
Ord’ika
, I wouldn’t have handed you the electros.”