And she owed her troops. She owed them like she owed Darman, RC-1136, whose last letter—a real letter, written on flimsi in a precise, disciplined hand, a mix of gossip about his squad and little longings for time with her—was sueded with constant reading and refolding, and kept safe inside her tunic, not in her belt. The snow crunched under her boots as she waded to the road cut through the drifts by constant traffic. It was a brilliantly sunny day, blindingly bright, a lovely day for a walk if this had been a normal life and she had been an ordinary woman.
It’s hard not to tell him. It’s hard not to mention the baby when he asks how I am. His baby.
But Skirata forbade her to tell him. She almost understood why.
Jinart continued her progression of controlled leaps. She probably hunted that way, Etain thought, pouncing on small animals burrowed deep in the snow. “Skirata will be furious if you miscarry.”
Maybe not. He was angry enough when he found out I was pregnant. “I’m not going risk upsetting Kal. You know the politics of this.”
“I know he means what he says. He’ll have a warship reduce Qiilura to molten slag if I cross him.”
Yes, he would. Etain believed him, too. Skirata would rip a hole in the galaxy if it improved the lot of the clone troops in his care. “Just under three months, and then I won’t be your problem any longer.”
“Local months or Galactic Standard months?”
Etain still felt queasy each morning. “Who cares? Does it matter?”
“What would your Jedi Masters do to you for consorting with a soldier?”
“Kick me out of the Order, probably.”
“You fear such trivial things. Let them.”
“If they kick me out,” Etain whispered, “I have to surrender my command. But I have to stay with my troops. I can’t sit out this war while they fight, Jinart. Don’t you understand that?”
The Gurlanin snorted, leaving little clouds of breath on the icy air. “To deliberately bring a child into this galaxy during a war, to have to keep it hidden and then hand it over to that—”
Etain held up her hand for silence. “Oh, so you and Kal have been talking, have you? I know. I was mad and selfish and irresponsible. I shouldn’t have taken advantage of Dar’s naïveté. Go ahead. You won’t be saying anything that Kal didn’t, just minus the Mando’a abuse.”
“How can he possibly raise the child for you? That mercenary? That killer?”
“He’s raised his own, and he raised the Nulls.” I don’t want that, believe me. “He’s a good father. An experienced father.”
Etain was too far ahead of Levet for him to overhear, but she had the feeling that he would be conveniently deaf to gossip anyway. Now she could see the crowd of farmers massed at the gates in the perimeter fence, silent and grim, hands thrust into pockets. As soon as they spotted her, the rumbling chorus of complaint began. She knew why.
We armed them.
Me and General Zey… we turned them into a resistance army, trained them to fight Seps, made them guerrillas when it suited us, and now… it doesn’t suit us anymore. Throw ’em away.
That was why she had to face them. She’d used them, maybe not knowingly, but they wouldn’t care about that academic point.
“Commander Levet,” she said. “Only open fire if you feel your men are in danger.”
“Hoping to avoid that, ma’am.”
“They’ve got DC-fifteens, remember. We armed them.”
“Not full spec, though.”
A cordon of clone troopers stood between Etain and the crowd, as white and glossy as the snow around them. In the distance, she could hear the grinding of gears as an AT-TE armored vehicle thudded around the perimeter of the temporary camp set up to oversee the human evacuation. The clone troopers, each man with Darman’s sweetly familiar face, had their orders: the farmers had to leave.
They handled humanitarian missions surprisingly well for men who’d been bred solely to fight and had no idea of what normal family life was like. Well, not much different from me, then. As she came up behind them, they parted without even turning their heads. It was one of those things you could do with 360-degree helmet sensors.
In the front of the crowd, she recognized a face. She knew nearly all of them, inevitably, but Hefrar Birhan’s eyes were the most difficult to meet.
“You proud of yerself, girl?”
Birhan stared at her, hostile and betrayed. He’d given her shelter when she’d been on the run from the local militia. She owed him more than kicking him out by force, tearing him away from the only home he’d ever known.
“I’d rather do my own dirty work than get someone else to do it,” said Etain. “But you can start over, and the Gurlanins can’t.”
“Oh-ah. That’s the government line all of a sudden, since we served our purpose and cleared the planet for you.”
The farmers had weapons, as farmers always did, most of which were old rifles for dealing with the gdans that attacked grazing merlie herds, but some also had their Republic-issue Deeces. They held them casually, some just gripped in their hands, others resting in the crooks of their arms or slung across their backs, but Etain could feel the tension rising among both them and the line of troopers. She wondered if her unborn child could sense these things in the Force yet. She hoped not. He had enough of a war waiting for him.
“I preferred you to hear it from me than from a stranger.” Not true: she was here to hide her pregnancy. She couldn’t help thinking that the awful duty served her right for deceiving Darman. “You have to leave, you know that. You’re being given financial aid to start over. There are established farms waiting for you on Kebolar. It’s a better prospect than Qiilura.”
“It’s not home,” said a man standing a little behind Birhan. “And we’re not going.”
“Everyone else left weeks ago.”
“’Cept two thousand of us that haven’t, girl.” Birhan folded his arms: the sound of the AT-TE had stopped, and every wild noise carried on the still, cold air. Qiilura was so very, very quiet compared with the places she’d been. “And you can’t move us if we don’t want to be going.”
It took Etain a moment to realize he meant violence rather than Force persuasion, and she felt a little ripple of anxiety in some of the troops. She and Levet had been authorized—ordered—to use force if necessary. Jinart slipped forward between the troops and sat on her haunches, and some of the farmers stared at her as if she were some exotic pet or hunting animal. Of course: they’d probably never seen a Gurlanin, or at least hadn’t realized they had. There were so few of them left. And they could take any form they pleased.
“The Republic will remove you, farmer, because they fear us,” Jinart said. “In this war, you now count for nothing. We use the power we have. So go while you can.”
Birhan blinked at the Gurlanin for a few moments. The only four-legged species the farmers saw were their animals, and none of them talked back. “This is a big planet. There’s plenty of room for all of us.”
“Not enough for you. You wiped out our prey. We’ve starved. You’re destroying us by wiping out our food chain, and now it’s our turn—”
“No more killing,” Etain snapped. Levet eased through the line of troops and stood a little in front of her to her left: she could sense his readiness to intervene. Gurlanins didn’t have weapons, but nature had made them efficient killers. They’d all seen plenty of evidence. “These are difficult times, Birhan, and nobody gets a happy ending. You’ll be far safer where you’re going. Do you understand me?”
His gaze fixed on hers. He was frail and worn out, his eyes watery and red-rimmed from age and the biting, cold air. He might have been only the same age as Kal Skirata, but agriculture here was a brutal existence that took its toll. “You’d never shoot us. You’re a Jedi. You’re all full of peace and pity and stuff.”
“Try thinking of me as an army officer,” she said softly, “and you might get a different picture. Last chance.”
Th
ere were only so many ultimata she could give them, and that was the last. The compound gates opened with a metallic scrape, and Levet moved the troops forward to edge the crowd away. It was cold; they’d get fed up and wander home sooner or later. For a moment the sense of hatred and resentment in the Force was so strong that Etain thought the Qiilurans might start a riot, but it seemed to be just a staring contest, which was unwinnable against troops whose eyes they couldn’t see. There was also the small matter of penetrating a wall of plastoid-alloy armor.
Levet’s voice boomed from the voice projector in his helmet. Etain could have sworn that nearby branches shivered.
“Go back to your farms and get ready to leave, all of you. Report to the landing strip in seventy-two hours. Don’t make this any harder than it is.”
“For you, or for us?” someone yelled from the crowd. “Would you abandon everything you had and start again?”
“I’d willingly trade places with you,” Levet said. “But I don’t have the option.”
Etain couldn’t help but be more interested in the clone commander for a moment. It was an odd comment, but she felt that he meant it, and that unsettled her. She was used to seeing Darman and the other commandos as comrades with needs and aspirations that nobody else expected them to have, but she’d never heard a regular trooper openly express a wish for something beyond the GAR. It was uniquely poignant.
They’d all rather be somewhere else even if they’re not sure what it is. All of them, like Dar, like me, like anyone.
She felt Levet’s brief embarrassment at his own frankness. But there was no gesture or head movement to indicate to anyone else that he was being literal.
I can’t think of the whole galaxy any longer. My thoughts are with these slave soldiers, and that’s as much caring as I can manage right now. I want them to live. Sorry, Birhan, I’m a bad Jedi, aren’t I?
Etain had made that mental deal a long while ago. It wasn’t the Jedi way, but then no Jedi had ever been faced with leading a conventional army and making brutally pragmatic combat decisions on a daily basis. No Jedi should have, as far as she was concerned, but she was in it now, and she’d make what difference she could to the men around her.
“I’ll give you three more days to report to the landing area with your families, Birhan.” Etain wanted to look a little more commanding, but she was small, skinny, and uncomfortably pregnant: the hands-on-hips stance wasn’t going to work. She put one hand casually on her lightsaber hilt instead, and summoned up a little Force help to press insistently on a few minds around Birhan. I mean this. I won’t back down. “If you don’t comply, I will order my troops to remove you by any means necessary.”
Etain stood waiting for the crowd to break up. They’d argue, complain, wait until the last moment, and then cave in. Two thousand of them: they knew they couldn’t resist several dozen well-trained, well-armed troopers, let alone a whole company of them. That was the remnant of the garrison. They were keen to finish the job and rejoin their battalion, the 35th Infantry. It was one of those things Etain found most touching about these soldiers: they didn’t want to be doing what they called a “cushy” job while their brothers were fighting on the front line.
She knew the feeling all too well.
Birhan and the rest of the farmers paused for a few moments, meters from the line of troopers, and then turned and trudged away in the direction of Imbraani, silent and sullen. Jinart sat watching them like one of those black marble statues on the Shir Bank building in Coruscant.
Levet cocked his head. “I don’t think they’re going to go quietly, ma’am. It might get unpleasant.”
“It’s easier to charge battle droids than civilians. If it does, we disarm them and remove them bodily.”
“Disarming can be the rough bit.”
Yes, it was quicker and simpler to kill. Etain didn’t enjoy the amoral pragmatism that always overtook her lately. As she lost her focus in the unbroken carpet of snow ahead of her, she thought the black specks that began to appear in her field of vision were her eyes playing the usual tricks, just cells floating in the fluid. Then they grew larger. The white blanket bulged and suddenly shapes began forming, moving, resolving into a dozen or so glossy black creatures exactly like Jinart.
They were Gurlanins, proving that they could be anywhere, undetected. Etain shuddered. They trotted after the farmers, who seemed oblivious to them until someone turned around and let out a shout of surprise. Then the whole crowd turned, panicking as if they were being stalked. The Gurlanins seemed to melt into the snow again, flattening instantly into gleaming black pools that looked like voids and then merging perfectly with the white landscape. They’d vanished from sight. Several farmers were clutching their rifles, aiming randomly, but they didn’t open fire. They didn’t have a target.
It was a clear threat. You can’t see us, and we’ll come for you in the end. Jinart had once shown what that meant when she’d taken revenge on a family of informers. Gurlanins were predators, intelligent and powerful.
“You can’t feel them in the Force, can you, ma’am?” Levet whispered. One of the clone troopers seemed to be checking his rifle’s optics, clearly annoyed that he hadn’t spotted the Gurlanins with the wide range of sensors in both the weapon and his helmet. “At least we’re working with the same limitations for a change.”
“No, I can’t detect them unless they let me.” Etain had once mistaken the telepathic creatures for Force-users, feeling their presence tingling in her veins, but they could vanish completely to every sense when they chose—silent, invisible, without thermal profile, beyond the reach of sonar… and the Force. It still alarmed her. “Perfect spies.”
Levet gestured to one of the troopers, and the platoon fanned out beyond the perimeter fence. “Perfect saboteurs.”
General Zey thought so, too. So did the Senate Security Council. Gurlanins were on Coruscant, in the heart of the Republic’s intelligence machine, maybe in a hundred or even a thousand places where they couldn’t be seen, and where they could do immense damage. If the Republic didn’t honor its deal with them sooner rather than later, they could—and would—throw a huge hydrospanner in the works, and nobody would see it coming.
“I’m new to this,” Etain said. “Why do we seem to create enemies for ourselves? Recruiting spies and then alienating them? Isn’t that like handing someone your rifle and turning your back on them?”
“I suppose I’m new to this, too,” said Levet. They headed back to the headquarters building. Poor man: he’d only seen a dozen years of life, and all he’d ever known was combat. “I stay away from policy. All I can do is handle what comes down the pike at us.”
Etain had to ask. “Would you really swap places with a farmer?”
Levet shrugged. But his casual gesture didn’t fool her Jedi senses. “Farming looks quite challenging. I like the open spaces.”
They often said that, these men gestated in glass vats. Dar’s brother Fi loved negotiating the dizzying canyons of buildings on Coruscant; the Null ARC troopers like Ordo didn’t care for confined spaces. Etain let Levet go on ahead and slowed down to concentrate on the child within her, wondering if he might turn out a little claustrophobic, too.
It’s not genetic. Is it?
But will he die before his time? Will he inherit Dar’s accelerated aging?
She’d been worried first for Darman, and then for herself, but her anxieties were now largely taken up by the baby and all the things she didn’t know. Kal Skirata was right. She hadn’t thought. She’d been so set on giving Darman a son that—Force-guided or not—there were too many things she hadn’t considered carefully enough.
Accelerating the pregnancy is convenient for me—but what about him?
She no longer had a choice. She’d agreed to hand over the baby to Kal’buir, Papa Kal. He must have been a good father; his clones clearly adored him, and he treated them all as if they were his own flesh and blood. Her son—and it took all her strength not to name him—w
ould be fine with him. He had to be. Her Force-awareness told her that her son would touch and shape many lives.
Kal won’t even let me give him a name.
She could make a run for it, but she knew Kal Skirata would find her wherever she hid.
I want this baby so badly. It’s only temporary. When the war’s over, I’ll get him back, and… will he even know me?
Jinart brushed past her legs, reminding her suddenly of Walon Vau’s hunting animal, a half-wild strill called Lord Mirdalan.
The Gurlanin glanced back at her with vivid orange eyes. “The last of the farmers will leave in a few days, girl, and after that—you concentrate on producing a healthy baby. Nothing else.”
There was plenty more to worry about, but Jinart was right—that was enough to be going on with. Etain went back into the house, settled into meditation, and couldn’t resist reaching out in the Force to touch Darman.
He’d feel it. She knew he would.
Mygeeto, Outer Rim,
vaults of the Dressian Kiolsh Merchant Bank,
470 days after Geonosis
Walon Vau enjoyed irony, and there was none more profound than seizing—as a soldier—the inheritance his father had denied him for wanting to join the army.
On the metal door of the deposit box, a cupboard with a set of sliding shelves, was an engraved plate that read VAU, COUNT OF GESL.
“When the old chakaar dies, that’ll be me,” Vau said. “In theory, anyway. It’ll pass to my cousin.” He looked over his shoulder, even though the sensors in his Mandalorian helmet gave him wraparound vision. “Didn’t I say thin out, Delta? Move it.”
Vau wasn’t used to anything other than instant obedience from his squads. He’d drummed it into them on Kamino, the hard way when necessary. Skirata thought you built special forces soldiers by treats and pats on the head, but it just produced weaklings; Vau’s squads had the lowest casualty rates because he reinforced the animal will to survive in every man. He was proud of it.
True Colors Page 3