501st: An Imperial Commando Novel

by Karen Traviss

  “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?”

  Sarge wasn’t Niner, but it was a start. Niner felt a pang of guilt that he wasn’t going to be around to look after Rede. He just hoped Ennen would latch on to him in the days to come. It was hard to look the guy in the eye and make reassuring noises when Niner knew he’d be gone by tomorrow morning.

  “We start planning the next mission,” he said. “Ennen, show Rede his locker and bunk. I’ve got an errand to run and then I’ll join you. Dar? I want a word.”

  He made it sound as if he was going to give Darman a private dressing-down. Like all lies, he didn’t enjoy it much, but it was temporary, because by this time tomorrow they’d be on their way to Mandalore, or even making themselves at home in Kyrimorut.

  Niner had never seen Mandalore. It was weird to have a spiritual home he’d never visited, and a real home-town—Tipoca City—that he never wanted to visit again unless he was dropping in to bomb it back into the sea.

  He walked out onto one of the barracks landing platforms with Darman and leaned on the safety rail, staring out into the forest of towers and apartment blocks whose foundations were more than a kilometer below. He’d never noticed there were so many surveillance holocams in the city before. Once they’d been a useful source of information; now they were a threat.

  And he was sure there were more cams installed than there’d been six months ago.

  “Dar, I spoke to Ordo,” he said. “When you get home, there’s something you’ll need to do … something you’ll want to do first, I think …”

  Niner tried to imagine what it would feel like to hold the ashes of someone you loved, whether that gave closure or just ripped open wounds that hadn’t even begun to heal. If it was him—

  If it was him, he’d just see how little life had left him with.

  9

  I take nothing for granted. The Empire may well have millions of troops, but it is still a fragile thing, still in its infancy, and there will always be those who want to overthrow it. But they will look ahead to the time when they are powerful enough to do so; they have no idea that their best time to strike is now, while I have still to consolidate my power. As always, the ignorance and apathy of the populace works in my favor.

  —Emperor Palpatine, to his secretary droid

  Kyrimorut, Mandalore

  Skirata could hear someone having a furious argument with General Zey, distant and muffled. But Zey was already dead, and that fact bothered him so much that he decided he had to be dreaming.

  He was. He woke up in the chair but the yelling went on, because it was real. There was a brawl in progress. It took him a couple of moments to surface and work out that one of the voices was a woman’s.

  Shab, Jilka’s finally snapped with Besany …

  He scrambled to his feet and ran down the passage, nearly tripping over Mird as they met halfway. If there were intruders, the strill would have ripped them apart: so this trouble was domestic.

  “Menav ni! Menav ni, taan!”

  Jilka didn’t speak Mando’a—no, it wasn’t Mando’a, it was Concordian. That was Arla screaming blue murder and demanding to be let go. Skirata flung open the door to the rear lobby, instinctively letting his knife slip from his sleeve into his right hand. He found Jusik holding a wild-eyed Arla in an armlock.

  Now Skirata could see she was Jango’s sister. Her eyes had that same insatiable, wounded anger.

  “Sorry, Kal’buir.” Jusik’s face was streaked with bleeding scratches. Arla froze, panting as if she was getting her second wind. “It was all I could do to get her back in here without breaking something.”

  “Shab.” Skirata leaned out of the door and yelled. “Mij’ika? Mij’ika, you awake? Medic!”
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  Arla elbowed Jusik in the chest the moment he slackened his grip. “You stay away from me, Mando,” she spat. “I’ll cut your kriffing throat. I promise you. And you, Granddad, you come anywhere near me and I’ll gut you.”

  Skirata could hear the clatter of boots approaching. Arla jerked her head back into Jusik’s face with a loud thwack. The next second, she went completely limp and Jusik lowered her carefully to the floor, blood trickling from his nose. Skirata wasn’t sure if she’d stunned herself or simply collapsed. Gilamar appeared in the doorway with his medic’s bag and looked from Skirata to Jusik and back again.

  “She’ll be okay,” Jusik said. He wiped his nose on the back of his hand. “It doesn’t hurt. Ask Ruu.”

  “What?”

  “Force stun. Sorry, but I had to do it.” Mird wandered over to sniff Arla and lick her face, but she was out cold. “It’s kinder than breaking her wrist.”

  Skirata tended to forget just what a range of combat skills Jusik held in reserve. “I don’t think that would have stopped her. What happened?”

  “I found her wandering outside, really agitated, and when I tried to get her to come back indoors, she went berserk and took a chunk of wood to me. She certainly knows how to scrap.”

  Gilamar held a hypospray up to the light to check it, then squatted over Arla to jab it into her arm. “This is what comes of stopping her meds abruptly,” he said. “Now I know why they dosed her up to the eyeballs. I’ve got to find something to replace the sebenodone and taper the dose off properly.”

  “You can translate that into Basic for me sometime,” Skirata said. He beckoned to Jusik and examined his injuries. His nose was bent slightly to one side. “Is this going to keep happening? I can’t help but hear Vau telling me he told me so.”

  “Just because she’s a convicted murderer, it doesn’t mean this episode is her normal behavior,” Gilamar said. “She’s coming off a tranquilizer that would paralyze a Hutt, she’s traumatized, and she’s scared. There’s nothing to suggest we can’t get her past this stage.”

  “I feel so much better knowing that,” Skirata said. Yes, it was his idea—and Jusik’s—to spring her from the asylum, knowing full well that her file said murderer. He’d killed more than once himself, so he couldn’t get too sniffy about anyone else’s criminal record. “Just how dangerous is she?”

  “Dangerous enough.” Jusik submitted to a cold-pack on his nose, and stood with his head tilted slightly back. Gilamar tilted it forward again. “I can’t keep wrestling her like this.”

  “Well, first thing we do is lock the doors, and put a lock on her room, for everyone’s safety,” Skirata said. This was a complication he didn’t need, but he was stuck with it now. “You okay, son?”

  “I’ll live.”

  Everyone had woken up now and came to see what the commotion was about. A small crowd assembled at the door, led by Fi and Vau.

  “Let’s move her,” Fi said. He and Parja didn’t seem remotely surprised. Skirata had to admire his family’s ability to take absolutely anything in stride. “Don’t want her regaining consciousness with a crowd around her, do we?”

  Vau shook his head. “Told you so.”

  “Yeah … so you did.” Skirata had to look away as Gilamar eased Jusik’s nose back into line. He felt that pain as the cartilage moved back into place with a definite shlick sound. “But we can’t dump her back on a medcenter, and even if we find any Fett kinfolk on Concord Dawn, they won’t be able to cope with her in this state. So we need a solution.”

  “What makes you think we can cure what the Valorum Center couldn’t?” Vau asked.

  “We’ve got a vested interest in freeing her. They just wanted her off the streets.”

  Gilamar seemed to be putting on a show of good humor. He wasn’t happy at all, though, and Skirata didn’t have to be a Jedi to sense it. “Kal, making crazy people un-crazy is a long job if it’s trauma that’s driven them nuts. Brain chemistry imbalances are relatively easy. You just top up the oil, pharmaceutically speaking. Bad experiences aren’t as fixable.”

  “Maybe I can do it,” Jusik said, his voice distorted by his broken nose. “I’m good with brains.”

  “He brings Fi back from the dead, and suddenly he’s a brain surgeon.” Gilamar winked at him. “Can you visualize what’s happening in her brain that causes the problem? That’s how you fixed Fi, isn’t it? Seeing something in your mind’s eye and manipulating it with the Force.”

  Jusik shrugged. Skirata was suddenly aware of Scout. She’d slipped through the press of bodies and was watching Jusik intently, as if he was saying something that nobody else could hear.

  “It has to be possible,” Jusik said. “The brain’s a machine. Thoughts, feelings, memories—it all comes down to chemical and electrical switches going on and off. I think we manipulate that a lot, but don’t realize we’re doing it.”

  “We?” Scout asked.

  “Force-users.”

  Something had grabbed her imagination. Skirata could see it written all over her face. “Show’s over, ad’ike,” he said. “Time to get your beauty sleep.”

  While everyone else started drifting back to their rooms, Scout looked back at Jusik again as if she was going to ask him a question, but thought better of it. Besamy hung around.

  “I’m going to keep her sedated until we can get some sebenodone,” Gilamar said. “But that will just keep the lid on her at best, and maybe do her real harm at worst. That stuff’s got a lot of permanent side effects. Now, I’m going back to bed, and we’ll take a look at her in the morning.”

  Nobody had asked many questions about who Arla had killed. Skirata noted, as he occasionally did, that aruetiise had a different take from Mandalorians on the violent side of life. For millennia, they’d done the jobs that were too dangerous or difficult for other folks’ armies, and hunted the galaxy’s most violent criminals. Killing happened. And when you made your living that way, there was always somebody waiting to kill you. In the more genteel, better-fed parts of the galaxy, a single killing kept the news and the neighbors enthralled with horror for weeks. Here … it was simply part of existence, and only the circumstances mattered. There was no glamour to being a killer, and no stigma, unless the killing had been ori’suumyc—“way beyond,” too far outside the rules of acceptable Mando conduct.

  Arla was assumed to have her reasons until proven otherwise. But she wasn’t a Mandalorian, despite her illustrious brother, and Skirata reminded himself that he knew almost nothing about her.

  “What did you do to start her off?” Besany asked Jusik.

  Jusik looked a little indignant. “Nothing, other than being male.”

  “I try not to imagine what would make a woman that scared of men.” Besany fussed over Jusik’s nose and made him a mug of shig. He drank it with difficulty. “And what would tip her so far over the edge.”

  “Well, she doesn’t stand a chance of getting any better until we find out.”

  “Maybe she’s always had mental problems,” Skirata said. “We’re assuming an awful lot. If everyone who had a horrific childhood turned into a psycho, half the galaxy would be at each other’s throats.”

  It sounded callous as soon as he said it, and he didn’t mean it that way. Besany hovered on the edge of a frown. “Has Ordo called in?”

  “No. It’s all on schedule.”

  “Oh well. I suppose he’ll let us know in his own good time.” Besany yawned. “It’ll be good to have Darman and Niner around again. The place doesn’t feel complete without them. Good night, Kal’buir.”

  It was three in the morning. Skirata wondered what an uneventful life felt like. But his boys were coming home, and he had a brand-new son in Jusik, and that kept the hurdles he had to face in some kind of perspective.

  This is who it’s for. This is why it’s worth it. Work through the problems one at a time. Eventually …

  “How are you feeling, Bard’ika?” Skirata ruffled his hair. “You want a painkiller?”<
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  “I’ll be okay, thanks,” Jusik said. “Not the first black eye I’ve had.”

  “You should spend more time healing yourself, you know. It’s not selfish.”

  “Fi still needs therapy. And I’m sure I can do something for Arla. I’ve just got to work out how. Kal’buir, if you could feel things in the Force … the misery that just flows out of her is terrible. It’s like she’s permanently crying.”

  Skirata found it revealing that Jusik talked about his powers in such technical terms—therapy. He saw his Force abilities in terms of the real world, like a tool that obeyed the laws of physics and could be understood and explained. He’d never been all that mystic. Sometimes Skirata felt his powers embarrassed him because they weren’t logical, and that he needed to nail them down and define them.

  If only they’d all been like him. If the Jedi had all been like Jusik, we’d never have been at war with them.

  “Get some sleep, Bard’ika,” Skirata said.

  He walked past Arla’s room just to check things were back to what passed for normal. Mird was curled up right in front of the door, one golden eye open and watching Skirata, nostrils flaring briefly as it sampled his scent. The strill usually slept at the foot of Vau’s bed. It had either been put on sentry duty or decided for itself to guard Arla’s door.

  Ny’s really got a soft spot for Mird. Bantha bone indeed …

  He missed her already. He hoped she was getting on all right with the Nulls. Mird grumbled as if to reassure him that everything was under control, and that he really ought to get some rest now.

  Rest wasn’t easy. Skirata checked his chrono to work out Coruscant time, and decided that Ordo would be calling in soon. Then there was Uthan to deal with before she got too distracted by Gibad’s fate to focus on what needed doing.

  I’m a real piece of work sometimes, aren’t I?

  For some reason, he thought of Dred Priest, probably because he was a piece of work, too, and wondered if the chakaar had heard that his Cuy’val Dar comrades were around. Everyone at the Oyu’baat knew; Skirata had to assume Priest did as well. He wasn’t sure just how much of a risk Priest might be.