By the time the bodies were trussed with fibercord, they could have passed for lumpy carpets in bad lighting.
“A’den’s been told that the assault on Eyat is probably going to be in a week’s time,” Niner said, seeming unconcerned. “So it wouldn’t matter if we left them here.”
“No, we bury them.”
“Okay, okay.”
“I mean it.”
“Dar, am I arguing?”
It would have made more sense to run; the longer they waited here, the more at risk they were. It wasn’t hot outside, and with the environment controls in the apartment turned right down and the windows sealed, it might have been a couple of weeks before the neighbors smelled that anything was amiss.
But that wasn’t good enough, even if they had been sent to shoot Sull.
Fi wandered into the kitchen. The conservator door sighed open and then shut again; he came out with a plate of food in one hand and a single fritter cake in the other, which he held up to Darman.
“Eat,” he said. “Go on, or I’ll sulk.”
Darman accepted the cake and chewed, but it stuck in his throat like sawdust. He had an urge to call Etain. It was the first time he’d ever felt the need to seek comfort from someone outside rather than from his immediate circle of brothers, and it made him feel disloyal, as if their reassurance and support were no longer enough for him.
“You should talk to Kal’buir,” Niner said quietly. “He killed a commando by accident. Remember? He probably knows better than anyone what you’re going through.”
“I’m not going through anything.” Darman suddenly felt transparent and exposed. “I’m just getting jumpy waiting for the cops to show up. How nobody heard the blaster noise I’ll never know.”
“The place is well insulated,” Fi said gently. “Pretty well soundproof, except for the floors creaking.”
Darman knew he wasn’t fooling anyone, and retreated to the kitchen to wait for darkness on the pretext of clearing out the cupboards. Yes, he’d talk to Skirata. Whatever Kal had been through was worse: he’d shot a commando in training during a live-fire exercise, one of his own boys, and even though everyone knew accidents like that happened, Skirata was never the same afterward. It had to be much, much harder to live with causing the death of someone you cared about. The covert ops troopers were relative strangers.
But Darman had heard that ARC troopers were ready to kill clone kids rather than let Sep forces take them during the attack on Kamino, not for their own good or to save them from anything, but to deny them as assets to the enemy. Would Sull have hesitated to kill a brother clone who got in his way? Darman doubted it.
It was all getting too blurred and messy lately. He longed for the good old days, when the enemy was just tinnies and very easy to spot.
“Okay, let’s make a move,” said Niner.
Niner brought a speeder right up to the front of the apartments—so that was what had taken two hours, then, acquiring more transport—and they moved the bodies like rolls of carpet. A few people were about on the street but they took no notice, probably thinking someone was moving house. Then Fi went to collect Darman’s speeder while Niner and Darman waited in the vehicle with the bodies in the back.
It was just a simple drive back to the camp. Darman felt he could manage that, and began fretting about digging graves in the dark. He certainly didn’t plan to leave the corpses overnight. He had an image of the Marits making a stew out of them, and it wasn’t funny at all. It disturbed him in a way he hadn’t thought possible, making his mouth fill with unwelcome saliva as if he was going to vomit, but he had to hold it together long enough to work with the lizards until the assault on Eyat began.
“Nice strong cup of caf when we get back,” Niner said. His voice had every single intonation then that Skirata’s did, all reassurance and concern. “You’ll be okay, Dar.”
What if they weren’t actually going to kill me? I never waited to find out.
“Sarge, do you suppose they’d just come to arrest Sull?”
“No,” Niner said firmly. “They came to execute him. And even if they’d arrested you, they’d only have been taking you back so someone else could kill you. So stop replaying the holovid in your head and accept it was them or you, ner vod’ika.”
Sometimes Darman thought that he alone knew what was going on in his mind, and then one of his brothers would tell him exactly what he was thinking. On balance, exposed or not, he was more comforted to know he wasn’t alone or going crazy.
They drove out of town with Darman occasionally directing Niner, who was working from the holochart in his datapad. Fi followed behind in the other speeder. It was all going fine—fine under the circumstances, anyway—until the red and green strobing lights of the local law enforcement patrol vehicle shot past them.
“He’s in a hurry,” said Niner.
“Late for his caf break…” That was what Captain Obrim always said when he saw one of his CSF speeders misbehaving. Darman glanced in the rearview to check that Fi hadn’t dropped too far behind. “Doesn’t look like they get too much trouble in this place. Not exactly the lower levels of Triple Zero.”
“Everywhere’s got its lower levels, Dar.”
He felt that if he kept chatting like a normal person, everything would be all right. He thought that right up to the moment when the police speeder braked and came to a halt, the illuminated matrix between its rear jets flashing a single word: STOP.
“Osik,” Niner muttered. “I think he means us.”
“Tell me this isn’t stolen, ner vod.”
“It’s not. And we’re not over the speed limit, either.”
Niner slowed down. Darman could see Fi dropping farther behind to stop outside a tapcaf.
“Now, nice and calm,” Niner said.
“Let’s hope he thinks we’re twins.”
“How many folks know what clones look like, anyway? Especially here.” Niner activated the comlink deep in his ear by clicking his back teeth; Darman felt his own embedded earpiece vibrate for a moment as it started receiving the signal. Then Niner lowered the side viewport and put on his sensible-but-blank expression as the red-uniformed officer walked up to the speeder with one hand on the blaster at his belt. “Good evening, Officer. What’s the problem?”
“Keep your hands where I can see them, sir, and show me what you’ve got in the back.” The officer leaned slightly to stare at Darman. “You—step out of the vehicle and put your hands on the roof.”
For a moment Darman thought Niner was going throw the door open and knock the guy down, but he gritted his teeth and popped the rear hatch.
Fi’s voice filled Darman’s skull. “He’s on his own, Dar. I can drop him from here.”
“Wait…”
Darman got out of the speeder slowly and left the door open for a rapid retreat, but he edged far enough down the length of the speeder to keep an eye on Niner. The officer leaned into the small cargo space at the back of the speeder, still keeping his hand on the butt of his blaster as if it was some comfort to him. He didn’t seem to realize that turning his back on a suspect—two suspects, in fact—was risky, and Darman looked hard to see if he had some headset linking him to another officer nearby.
But there was nothing. He was simply not used to dealing with serious criminals—or commandos.
“Had a report of a speeder being used to remove items from a residence, sir,” the officer said. His voice was muffled as he leaned in, one hand taking some of his weight on the tailgate. “This one, in fact. Now, what do you reckon you’ve got here—”
The moment the cop moved his hand to the tightly wrapped body in the cargo area, his fate was sealed. It was almost as if they’d drilled for it: Niner jumped him and pinned him flat, facedown, arm locked around his throat to silence him, while Darman stepped in and checked him for comlinks. Fi was now right behind them in the other speeder, shielding the tussle from view.
Unlike the holovids, there was no quick blow to the
head to render someone conveniently unconscious while you made your getaway, with no harm done beyond a headache when they regained consciousness. This was just a poor cop, like any of Obrim’s team. He’d stopped the wrong men at the wrong time. Darman’s eyes met Niner’s, and he knew he should have simply shot the cop as his instinct told him to, but he couldn’t.
Fi stepped in and rifled through the array of weapons on the officer’s belt. “Ah,” he said—the only word spoken in the whole incident—and selected a stun baton. He shoved it into the cop’s armpit; it crackled just as Niner let go of him. The man stopped struggling and convulsed a couple of times.
“There,” said Fi. He hauled the officer onto the curb, where he slumped in a heap, hidden from the oncoming traffic by the other speeder. “Sorry about that, Sarge.”
“It’s okay, I broke contact before I got a shock…”
“Time to bang out, fast.”
“Sorry.” Darman jumped back into the passenger’s seat. There was more traffic around than he expected, but Niner shot straight out into it and burned toward the city exit. “Sorry, I should have—”
“No harm done,” Niner said.
Fi overtook them and disappeared into the distance. Darman took out his DC-15 and kept it cradled in his lap, checking in the rearview until they were clear of the city limits. He was starting to worry that he’d lost his nerve. He’d never hesitated over taking a shot before. His thought process wasn’t supposed to kick in and start arguing with his risk assessment.
I could have compromised this mission. And that means I put my brothers at risk.
“If you’d shot him, it would have been another mess to clean up,” Niner said, veering away from the road and weaving through the trees. “Can’t leave civvy cops dead all over the place. It’s not Galactic City, is it?”
“You’re telepathic, Sarge.”
“I was thinking what Skirata would have said, actually.”
“We’ve still left a cop in Eyat who’s seen us up close.”
“Well, next time he sees us we’ll have our helmets on, so a fat lot of good that’ll do him.”
A’den and Fi were already waiting in the makeshift ops room when they reached the rebel camp, which appeared to be in darkness like the rest of the base. All the windows were shielded by blackout material. Inside the fragile-looking house, the two of them were sitting at the table and gazing forlornly at a datapad, and A’den had his hand held against his ear as if he was concentrating on a signal he could barely hear.
Fi didn’t look up. A’den did.
“Wow, you’re good,” the Null said wearily. “How many stiffs have you racked up tonight? Two troopers and a cop. You’re going to beat your own dumb record at this rate.”
“We never killed a cop,” Niner said.
Fi simply looked over his shoulder at them. “I didn’t plan to. Stun batons are tricky things if you don’t know the medical history of your target.”
“Oh, great. Great.”
Fi tapped his datapad, and a crackling stream of audio filled the room: it was voice traffic from a police control room, judging by the jargon and codes.
“Say again, three-seven. Last call shown on the onboard log was a vehicle stop on Bidean Way.”
“No clear surveillance holocam view available…”
“Confirm ID on the suspect speeder. Rental, fake identichip used to secure it…”
“Hey, did anyone know he had a heart problem?”
Fi silenced it again and got up. “Atin’s digging a hole. I’ll go and help him. I’m good at digging holes, really deep ones.”
A’den shrugged and went back to listening to the circuit. “I think the cops got excited when they found the stun baton burn on their buddy. Joining up the dots to work out that it was actually a covert commando team cleaning up a spillage is a step too far for them, thankfully.” He leaned backward as far as his chair would go and grabbed another datapad. “Now take a look at these aerial recce images.”
Darman took the pad, but Niner was still focused on the previous issue. “So, Sergeant, what would you have done differently?”
“I’d have shot the cop,” said A’den.
“And that would have solved the problem how, exactly?”
“It wouldn’t have changed a thing. It just worries me that you put being nice before doing the job right. We do extreme stuff. That means some unlucky saps get caught as collateral damage. Deal with it.”
Darman knew A’den was right, and he was troubled by the fact that he’d hesitated; he was reacting to an internal template of police as Jaller Obrim’s kind—allies, comrades, friends—and it was wholly wrong and a recipe for disaster at some point in the future. He couldn’t afford to judge anyone by their uniform. He couldn’t even assume all Jedi were on his side now. If he found out that Zey was tasking Special Operations personnel to deal with deserters like that, he wasn’t sure how he’d take it.
“I realize you’re the explosive ordnance man,” A’den said, “but can’t you manage to interpret aerial images?”
Darman jerked out of his thoughts. “Okay.”
“Well?”
Darman stared at the flat images of what looked like the two-dimensional map of a city with a chron that showed it was recorded a few hours earlier. It was part of Eyat, not as a schematic of the construction that the Marits had worked on, but a real image. He could see tiny dots moving along roads. A large compound in the heart of the city was packed full of repulsor trucks and armored vehicles of various types that hadn’t been there a few days earlier when Omega was inserted. There was even mobile anti-air cannon. He handed the datapad to Niner for inspection.
“They’re getting ready for our visit, then…”
A’den nodded. “No doubt their Sep allies have aerial reconnaissance of the accumulation of Republic souvenirs we’ve given the lizards. We can both spy on each other, when we know where to look.”
So Eyat was bracing for a Marit assault. “Other cities?” Darman asked.
“All doing the same. I’m not sure if they understand how the lizards here cascade things. But it’s unlikely they’ll know about Leveler until she’s looking for a parking space.”
A warship had been identified to deploy to Gaftikar, then. It was imminent. “Leveler.”
“With a few thousand of the Republic’s finest embarked, Thirty-fifth Infantry and Tenth Armored. Just to soften up Eyat and a few other major cities to allow the Marits to move in, then pull out when the dust has settled.”
Eyat wasn’t well defended at all. From what Darman had seen, even one ship was overkill. “Shenio Mining has enough resources to roll over Eyat and the government on its own without any military support if it wants to strip-mine the place that badly.”
“Yeah, but you know how companies like to look like they’ve been invited legally, or else people scream that it’s corporate invasion.”
“It is corporate invasion,” Darman said.
“Maybe there’s some strategy, some big picture we’re not privy to,” A’den said. “But in the end, all wars are about someone wanting something the other guy’s got. If I thought that throwing a hydrospanner in the works would change the nature of the galaxy, I’d do it, but this is the way life works, chum. Let’s just do the job and hope we stay alive long enough to move on.”
Niner didn’t seem bothered. He looked much more interested in the recce data. Darman left the two sergeants to their own devices, retrieved his entrenching tool from his backpack, and went in search of Fi and Atin.
In the quiet night air, it was easy to follow the sound of a shovel biting into the soil with that familiar metallic chinking sound. Fi and Atin—totally silent—were hacking away in a clearing fringed by small bushes, somewhere that roots would be less of a problem. Darman paused to look at the two bodies and joined in the digging by the faint, shielded light of a glow rod laid on the ground.
Two meters was deeper than it sounded. The three of them eventually stopped to stare
down into the pit.
“Should we have dug two graves?” Atin asked.
“Sergeant Kal said that Mando’ade use communal graves if they bury at all.” Darman racked his brain, trying to remember what else Skirata had taught them about disposing of fallen comrades. He didn’t care about what the book said about concealing signs they’d ever been there. This was about respect for men who were one simple designation prefix away from being him. “And no soldier wants to be separated from his brothers.”
“Unless they’re particularly di’kutla,” Fi said.
Atin squatted down over the bodies. “Okay, let’s roll them in.”
“Can’t we lower reverently instead?” Darman went over to the pile of purple armor and pried the ID tallies from the breastplates. When he ran his pocket sensor over them, they gave him the readouts CT-6200/8901 and CT-0368/7766. There was no indication of what they actually called each other, of course; the Grand Army didn’t give a motla’shebs about how clones liked to be addressed, on the record at least. He did what he’d been avoiding for the last few hours, and interrogated the copy of the Nulls’ database that Ordo had given them all back on Triple Zero. Once he knew their real names, he would feel even worse. But he needed to if he was going to give them any sort of farewell rite. “They’re… Moz and Olun.” And this was the worst bit. “Jaing trained them at one time.”
If Moz and Olun had harbored any ambitions beyond surviving the war, Jaing might have been the only one who knew what they were. Those dreams probably didn’t include getting killed by another clone. Fi and Atin lowered them into the pit, still wrapped.
“Ni su’cuyi, gar kyr’adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum,” Darman said. It was the ritual remembrance of those who’d passed on, recited daily with the names of all the people the mourner committed himself to immortalizing: I’m still alive, you’re dead, I’ll remember you, so you’re eternal. Sergeant Kal said that Mando’ade got straight to the point, even in spiritual matters. “Moz and Olun.”
Fi threw a few handfuls of dirt into the pit, then picked up his shovel. “You know you’ve got to recite that every day for the rest of your life now, don’t you?”
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