Etain drew her lightsaber out of her pocket and simply let Ko Sai see the hilt.
“Come anywhere near me or my child,” she said, “and you’ll find out just how little I’ve embraced the peace and serenity they tried to teach me at the academy.”
Skirata winked at her. “Mandokarla…”
Mereel sat Etain down on a wide, deeply upholstered bench against the wall and shoved a few cushions behind her back. “He says you’ve got the right stuff.”
So she was back on Skirata’s good side, for the time being anyway. The meal turned out to be an assortment of dumplings, grains, and noodles smothered in various spicy sauces, preserved meats, and a pot of small red fruits swimming in what looked like syrup—the only thing she didn’t try. Bralor seemed to have raided the contents of her store cupboard to feed her guests. Etain devoured it in the full knowledge that her stomach would rebel later.
The meal was taken in grim silence, which could have been exhaustion, but Etain sensed that Skirata was more crushed than tired. He drained a little syrup out of the pot into a small glass and gulped it down.
“Rav still makes good tihaar,” he said hoarsely, and then started coughing. It was the throat-searing, colorless fruit alcohol that he had a taste for. “Best painkiller there is.”
“You haven’t been taking your daily dose, Kal’buir.” Ordo sounded a little strained, as if the realization of what he’d done to Ko Sai’s research was now catching up with him.
“I found I could sleep without it.” Skirata wiped his plate clean with a chunk of dumpling speared on a fork and chewed as if it hurt him. “Anyway, time for a sitrep. Work out what we do next. We’ve got Fi in bacta, we’ve got to go back through the Tipoca research stuff and see where we can pick up, and we’ve got confirmation that the Republic’s got its own clone program without Kamino’s involvement. And I’ve got to persuade Jinart to keep up the pretense that Etain’s helping the Gurlanins get back on their feet now that the farmers have gone.”
“She’ll do that,” Etain said. “She really thinks you’d maneuver Zey into trashing the planet if she doesn’t cooperate.”
Skirata finished his last dumpling. “Oh, I really would.”
“Leave the research to me,” Mereel said. “I think I know where to start shaking down Ko Sai. I’ll go through the Tipoca data with her and see what sets her off. She’s devastated about losing her own material. It’s really broken her.”
“Can’t you just compare the trooper genome with Jango’s and see what’s different?” Etain asked.
“That only tells us which genes have been added, mutated, or removed,” said Mereel. “It doesn’t tell us what’s been turned on or off. You can even turn them down, and make them work just a little. It’s about expression—how the machine gets built from a blueprint—and that’s messy, because if you tinker with one gene, it can have an effect on another set that’s got nothing to do with the area you’re working on. And then there’s identifying what aging really is, because it’s not just one factor. Am I boring you yet?”
“No,” Etain said, but wasn’t sure that she wanted to be depressed any further by the size of the task. It would have been daunting enough even before Ordo destroyed the datachips. “But I suppose if it was easy, Arkanian Micro would be doing this, too, and Kamino wouldn’t be able to charge top price.”
“She can’t be the only one in the galaxy who can do this kind of work,” Skirata said. “There have to be others.”
“Best bet is to look for a gerontologist and an embryologist with an interest in genetics. But it’ll cost.”
Skirata shrugged. “If I invest the fund right, we’ll be able to buy as many scientists as we need.”
The word fund worried Etain. “Zey’s going to spot the black hole in the budget sooner or later, Kal.”
“It’s not from the GAR budget, ad’ika.” He gave her a knowing smile. “Okay, it’s sabacc-on-the-table time. I have a slush fund. Creds from my Cuy’val Dar payoff, invested sensibly. Creds the Jabiimi terror cell paid me in that explosives sting. And now upward of forty million from a little expedition of Vau’s, which I need to convert to cash creds and launder fast so it can earn interest and get invested again.”
Etain wasn’t an accountant, but it didn’t sound like a lot of credits compared with the many trillions needed to run an army. The word launder registered on her but failed to shock any longer. “Is that going to be enough?”
“To establish a safehouse here and an escape route? Yes. To develop a gene therapy to counter the aging? I don’t know. Possibly not. So I’ll build up as much in the coffers as I can.”
Etain had to admire his determination. She’d had no idea that he’d moved from anger and I-wish to calculation and action. The Force hadn’t shown her the entirety of the man, just his headlines.
Venku kicked again, and she put her hand on her belly. “You okay?” Skirata asked, all instant concern. “He’s kicking,” she said.
“Ah, he’ll be a limmie player. Meshgeroya. The beautiful game.”
“I think he’s permanently angry that I’m putting him through so much, actually.”
She thought of the way Ko Sai looked at her, that clinical curiosity, and understood Skirata’s initial anger. It scared her, too.
Ordo and Mereel took turns to pat Skirata on the shoulder before returning to Aay’han for the night—maybe because it was more comfortable, or they might have been guarding his valuables—and Skirata settled down in one of the chairs with his weapons laid out on a small table right beside him. He didn’t use a bed, Etain had found, not since his first days on Kamino. It couldn’t have been good for him. No wonder his ankle played up so much.
“I’m going to wander around the place,” Etain said, regretting wolfing down so much food on an increasingly cramped stomach. “Give my meal time to settle.”
“You should be doing plenty more of that now. Eating and resting.” He opened one eye. “Give the baby the best chance.”
She decided to risk it. “I just wanted to say that I’m learning a lot from you about being a parent. You’re so patient with Ordo.”
“He’s my boy. I love him, even those times when he turns into a stranger. You’ll understand when you hold yours for the first time.”
“Your favorite.”
“You can’t have favorites. But he’s probably the one I overprotect most, yes.”
“What are you going to do if you succeed with this scheme and they… well, leave home?”
“I have no idea, ad’ika.” Skirata rubbed his face wearily with both hands. “I forgot how to be Kal Skirata a long time ago. It’s probably better that he never comes back.”
Redemption came from the strangest sources; perhaps it was easier to find in the dark, extreme places that forced a man to sink or swim. Etain walked around the homestead, which was even bigger than she’d first thought—more a chain of connected redoubts than a farmhouse—and when she pressed her face to the transparisteel insets in one of the walls, she could make out the faint boundaries of fields backing onto the complex.
It was the perfect spot for vanishing without a trace. It was exactly what the Cuy’val Dar, soldiers so disconnected from normal life that they could step out of it indefinitely at a moment’s notice, would think of as a safe haven. It was a remote, well-defended spot on a remote planet with a population smaller than most Core world neighborhoods, let alone cities.
It struck her then that this wasn’t Rav Bralor’s home.
It was Skirata’s. This was the retirement property Mereel had alluded to. Bralor was looking after it for him. If she’d lived there, it would have had all the trappings of a real home—yaim’la, that was the word. Lived-in, warm, familiar. This was a construction site.
Etain found she’d walked in a circle and now was back at the main entrance. Pulling her cloak up over her head and mouth to keep out the cold, she stepped outside to check if Aay’han was still there—with Nulls, she could never predict anything�
��and saw Ordo and Mereel. They were sitting on the coaming of the open port-side hatch, chatting in the faint yellow light of the cargo bay, their breath emerging as mist. They really are crazy—it’s freezing out here. She caught a word or two of the conversation before they noticed her.
Whatever they were talking about, Ordo was saying he almost wished he hadn’t started it, because it broke his heart to see Buir’ika like this. Mereel assured him Kal’buir would understand.
Buir’ika. She could work out even from her smattering of Mandalorian language that it was an affectionate word for “father.” Everyone seemed to be wallowing in guilt tonight.
“I don’t care how genetically superior you are,” she said loudly. “Go to bed like good boys.”
Mereel laughed. Ordo just looked uncomfortable. “Yes, Buir,” Mereel said. It was the same word for “mother” or “father.” Mando’a didn’t bother with gender. “We’ll brush our teeth, too.”
Etain waited for them to close the hatch before she shut the doors and made her way back to the heart of the complex. Skirata was asleep, or at least in that doze from which he seemed to wake so quickly. She found a blanket, shook off the dust, and laid it over him, as she’d once seen Niner do.
Maybe it wasn’t such a terrible thing to hand Venku over to him after all.
Medbay,
Republic assault ship Leveler,
482 days after Geonosis
“I’m not accustomed to working with an audience,” said the droid. “Please let me get on with my task.”
Atin had taken on the role of enforcer today. The med droid didn’t seem to care which clone it was arguing with. Darman and Niner stood on either side of Atin, making it clear that it would be easier to give in than have to argue with them four times a day.
“I spent serious time in bacta,” Atin said. “Twice. I don’t have happy memories of it, so when Fi wakes up I want him to see his brothers as soon as he opens his eyes. Reassurance. It’s a scary experience for us. Reminds us of the gestation tanks.”
The droid was only partially moved. “How very primal. Move behind the observation screen, then.”
“Okay.”
“And after brain damage like this, he might be very disoriented. Do you understand? He might have problems even recognizing you at first.”
Darman didn’t care if Fi swung a punch and thought they were Neimoidian accountants as long as he was conscious. They could sort out the rest later.
“We get it,” Atin said.
The three commandos stepped out into the passage, helmets held one-handed, and peered through the transparisteel like med students watching a master surgeon.
“Pity that Bard’ika isn’t here,” Niner said. “He’d have sorted this lot out.”
Darman felt a little wounded by the omission. “Or Etain. But Jedi can’t influence droids.”
“I meant a spot of creative slicing. Sometimes I think he’s better than me.”
The technician droids moved the bacta tank out of position on repulsors and onto a recessed platform in the treatment area. Fi, breather mask still in place, hung more heavily on the suspension straps as the pale blue liquid was pumped away and the cylindrical tank descended below deck level. The droids moved a repulsor gurney into place and maneuvered Fi onto it, placed a temperature sensor somewhere that would have raised a loud objection had he been conscious, then covered him in a padded blue wrapping. The mask was still breathing for him.
“He looks awful,” Darman said. He placed his forearm on the transparisteel and rested his forehead against it. Bacta didn’t leave you wrinkled and white like plain water did, but Fi looked dead; the contrast between his pallor and his black hair was stark. “Is he still chilled?”
Niner shrugged. “Well, that blue thing could be a heating pad.”
They waited. A droid kept hovering back to check the sensor readout, and eventually Fi didn’t look such a waxy yellow color.
“Here we go.” Darman wasn’t keen on seeing a needle go into flesh—his own or anyone else’s—but he made himself watch as the senior med droid moved in with a cannula and slipped it into the vein on the back of Fi’s hand. What Darman might have been able to do if he’d seen anything go wrong, he had no idea, but he had to keep watch for Fi’s sake. The droid took a syringe and began injecting a pale yellow liquid into the cannula. “So this stuff reverses the sedation?”
Atin nodded. “I was all bright and breezy pretty fast. He might not be, remember.”
Darman’s gaze darted between the chrono on his forearm plate and Fi, and the urge to protect him—from what, from a med droid?—was hard to suppress. The minutes flicked by on the display, and the droid was joined by another. The two began attaching sensors to Fi’s scalp, shaving off more small patches of hair—oh, he’d be really mad when he saw what they’d done to his hairstyle—and sticking the discs in place. They seemed to be checking brain activity.
“How long is this going to take?” Niner said. “Shouldn’t he at least be conscious by now?”
But he wasn’t. The senior med droid repositioned the sensors, checked the readout, and then stood back in processing mode for a few moments, the panel on its chest flickering through a sequence.
Then it unhooked the filaments from the breather mask and removed the tube from Fi’s throat. Darman couldn’t work out what was going on at first. But Fi’s chest wasn’t moving, no rise and fall of steady breaths, and that was the point at which Darman started to think in terms of going in there and resuscitating like he’d been taught. The droid seemed to be watching Fi intently. Then it turned away to the trolley full of instruments, slipping items into the steribag for autoclaving.
“That’s it, I’m going to—”
And then Fi took a long gasping breath and coughed. The droid spun around as if it hadn’t been expecting that at all. Fi was breathing on his own again, but he certainly wasn’t conscious.
Darman was a stride from the doors when Niner stepped in his way and pushed through ahead of him.
“Droid,” he said, “you want to tell me what’s going on? What happened there? Is he okay?”
The med droid placed more sensors on Fi, this time on his chest and throat. “He’s breathing unaided, and I wasn’t anticipating that outcome.”
“So why did you take the shabla tube out of him, then?” Darman snapped. He got the picture now, all right. They thought Fi was dead. “What’s that about?”
The droid just followed its protocols. It dealt with a steady stream of wounded and dying men every day, and Fi was no more special to it than the next trooper. It was nothing personal at all. “His brain scan showed insufficient activity.”
“You mean you pulled the plug on him?”
“I assessed him as brain-dead. That’s still my professional opinion. The medical protocol is that we don’t continue life support if a patient is still showing isoelectric scans after forty-eight hours.” The droid paused. “Flatlining, I believe you call it.”
The words hit Darman like a punch in the gut. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. Republic medical care was the best there was: prosthetic limbs, bacta, microsurgery, nanopharmaceuticals, you name it, the stuff of which miraculous recoveries were made. Fi couldn’t end up like this. Darman refused to accept it.
Niner had his fist clenched, held against his leg. For a moment Darman thought his sergeant was going to vibroblade the med droid like he’d done to so many combat tinnies. But Niner could always keep control.
“What happens in a regular medcenter?” he said, voice cracking.
“They have separate medical protocols. The Grand Army operates under different terms.”
And Darman didn’t need to be told what those were. He wanted to take it out on the med droid, but it was just a machine and had no more rights than he did. “You can’t just leave him there. What are you going to do?”
“This has never happened before during my service. I have no instruction to keep a patient on extended life support in
these circumstances. This medbay is for emergency and acute care only.”
“I’ll take that as a don’t-know, shall I?” Niner said. “Put him back on life support.”
“He’s breathing unaided.”
“Then keep him hydrated, because if you don’t, that’s basic combat first aid for us. If you don’t put a line in the IV cannula, we will. Got it?”
The droid was genuinely perplexed. It had a very specific specialty, and what it was faced with now wasn’t how to do something clever, but whether to do it at all. Darman didn’t wait and moved in between Fi and the droid. If the tinnie came anywhere near him with anything but a helpful suggestion, he’d use an EMP on the thing. Atin pushed past it and took a big carton of saline sacs, and between them they hooked Fi up to a drip.
“Now either he stays there, or you let us move him to a nice quiet bay where we can keep an eye on him until we get back to Triple Zero,” Niner said patiently, fist relaxing. “I think a bay would be best. We’ll liberate that repulsor gurney and move him, if that’s okay with you.”
If Darman hadn’t been so focused on Fi’s plight, he might have felt sorry for the droid.
“Clones can be very disruptive to the orderly running of this unit,” it said. “I tire of explaining our protocols to you, which is why I usually bar your kind from the treatment areas.” So this wasn’t the first argument the droid had had with a man’s comrades, then. “But I have no authorization to transfer a patient in this state to any facility, so what happens to RC-eight-zero-one-five when we transfer the wounded is outside my authority.”
Niner stood back to let Darman and Atin steer the gurney across to the treatment bays. They now had an audience of droids and walking wounded. “You mean you don’t know what to do with him.”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”
The droid let them take Fi. It was a busy droid that didn’t have time to argue with RCs who weren’t going to take no for an answer, and Darman felt brief guilt for tying up resources when there were wounded vode with less clout in dire need. But Fi was his brother, and if Darman didn’t look out for him then the whole fabric of his tight-knit world, the small circle of people who were his life, meant nothing.
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