True Colors

by Karen Traviss

  “There’s always a commercial lab like Arkanian Micro…”

  “They would never use my methodology. It’s too slow for them. They’re bulk producers. We all have our niche in the market.”

  Etain wondered what hatcheries that could churn out a few million clones counted as if not bulk, then. But Ko Sai was right: ten years was longer than most customers wanted to wait.

  “What would you want, ideally?” Etain asked.

  “Better imaging equipment, more computing power, and lab droids.”

  Etain took a datapad from her robes and slid it in front of the scientist. It was newly published research from an eminent embryologist on expression of some gene whose code number Etain couldn’t even memorize, but it was the kind of material that was as exciting to Ko Sai as the latest celebrity gossip holozine would be to most Coruscanti holovid fans. It distracted her. She glanced at the author’s name.

  “He’s mediocre at best,” she said sweetly. “I shall savor correcting this.”

  “Of course—you never published research, did you? Academics didn’t even know Kamino was there.”

  “There were times when that was… galling, I admit.”

  “I’ll talk to Mereel. He’s doing his best, believe me.”

  “Perhaps he should have considered his best before he and that savage who corrupted him destroyed my life’s work.” Ko Sai curled her long claw-like hand gently around Etain’s arm. “You understand, though. You understand what it is to have so much knowledge and yet have so few outlets for its application.”

  Etain had that sudden connection with another species, as she had sometimes when looking into Mird’s eyes, when she felt she truly knew who was in there. Did she understand? She could guess what motivated Ko Sai, imagine what it was to be her, and even think as she thought up to a point. Perhaps she even pitied her, utterly alone and never able to go home, or even mix with her professional peers.

  Hang on, this is someone who builds children to design specs, and kills them if they don’t meet quality control standards.

  It was an ugly thought for any expectant mother. Etain shook off the pity and reminded herself that monsters weren’t a separate species, or even wholly different from the rest of their own, and that was what made them monstrous.

  “I wouldn’t swap lives with you, Chief Scientist,” she said. “I just don’t understand why you won’t concede a small thing to a handful of men who mean nothing to you anyway.”

  “Skirata would sell that knowledge to the highest bidder. Mandalorians are amoral. Look at our clone donor, Fett.”

  Ko Sai seemed to have no idea just how much of a crusade this was becoming for Skirata. He’d moved rapidly beyond the focus of just saving his boys: he was now repelled by the whole idea of cloning.

  “I don’t think he would,” Etain said. “He’s not a paragon of virtue, but I think he’d use it solely on his troops and then destroy it. He’d never sell it.”

  She hoped that might soften Ko Sai. It happened to be the truth, and sometimes the truth was so unexpected in a dishonest world that it was a shock weapon. Etain left her to chew that over and went back to the mobile gene-tech unit parked outside. Mereel was wiping down the surfaces with sterilizing fluid like a fussy droid.

  “I don’t think my hearts-and-minds initiative is working with her, Mer’ika,” she said.

  “That’s because she’s missing one of the essential components in that pair. I’ll give you a few nanoseconds to work out which one.”

  “I think she’s finally coming to the end of her tether after being away from Kamino and all her comfort zones for a year. I don’t think she thought it through when she bolted.”

  Mereel stood back to admire his handiwork, visibly subdued. To Etain’s lay eye, the lab looked pretty impressive, but then she had no idea what Tipoca City laid on for its scientists. The whole planet relied wholly on cloning exports.

  “Like I didn’t think through what might happen if we got the research, grabbed the scientist, and then thought we had all the kit for making a solution to the problem,” Mereel said at last. “Even Nulls misjudge situations. That’s why we’re human, and not droids.”

  “I think,” Etain said, “that you grabbed an opportunity because it was senseless to ignore it, and then started to put too much faith in it. As we all do sometimes.”

  And no woman who conceived a baby as she had could pass judgment on any clone for seizing what he could. Sometimes, things worked out.

  The Force made her certain that something positive—she didn’t yet know what—would come of all this.

  It had to.

  Jaller Obrim’s residence,

  Rampart Town, Coruscant,

  499 days after Geonosis

  “How’s Fi today?” Besany asked. “I brought Dar to see him.”

  Jaller Obrim stood back to let them in. “See for yourself. And if you can get Bardan to relax for a while, you’ll be doing better than me.” He clapped Darman on the shoulder. “Good to see you again. How’s Corr settling in?”

  “Fine, sir. He blew up a gas storage facility on Liul last week, and he was very pleased with himself. Sort of his qualifier for the squad, if he needed one.”

  “I’m glad to see you boys know how to have fun.”

  Fi was propped almost upright now, but the tubes were still in place, and the med droid—one that was programmed only to nurse, thankfully—checked the saline drip before leaving them with him. Jusik seemed back to his relaxed self.

  “I waited for you,” Jusik said. “Time for the next stage.”

  Darman perched himself on the edge of Fi’s bed and took his hand. Everyone did that automatically now. Jusik opened the holdall he’d brought on the first night and began pulling out a set of Mandalorian armor.

  “I raided his locker,” he said. “You know how much this meant to him.”

  The Jedi laid out a gray leather kama like a tablecloth where Fi could stare straight at it, and placed a red-and-gray helmet and armor plates on top of it.

  “See that, Fi?” Jusik sat on the other edge of the bed and tilted Fi’s head a little so—if he was conscious of anything at all—he could see the thing he prized most: a set of armor he’d pillaged on Qiilura from a mercenary called Hokan. Besany found it odd that they didn’t seem to find killing a Mandalorian unsettling. “You keep looking at that, ner vod. Because you’re going to be wearing it as soon as you’re back on your feet. I promise you. You’re a free man now.”

  Jusik leaned over and looked into Fi’s face as if he expected him to answer, but the commando’s eye movements seemed random and uncoordinated. Jusik settled at Fi’s side again and put one hand on his scalp, pouring every effort into repairing the damaged tissue in his brain.

  Besany thought it was time to leave Darman with his brother for a while. Obrim stood at the doorway a long time and eventually surrendered to her tug on his sleeve. She could have sworn there were tears in his eyes; there were certainly tears in hers. They stood in the kitchen and the captain busied himself making caf, missing the cup and scattering grains everywhere.

  “He’s never going to be back to normal, is he?” Obrim said, voice cracking. “Even if he makes ninety percent of what he was, it’ll still be hard on him.”

  “The clones have a very high definition of normal, I’ve found. They’re also incredibly resilient.”

  “That boy in there… that boy saved my men from a grenade during a siege, by throwing himself on it. I say that’s worth more than a thank-you and a few ales at the CSF Staff Club. He can stay here as long as he needs to. Right?”

  Besany had heard that story so many times now from so many CSF officers—most of whom hadn’t even been present during the incident—that she was beginning to understand how reputations and legends were made. Obrim was one of life’s hard men, and he didn’t cry easily. But Fi had somehow become an icon, a symbol to the police, at least, of all those in uniform who did the dirty jobs and got no thanks. He’d become a
hero. And, as Ordo mentioned every time she used the phrase, Mandalorians had no word for “hero.”

  “Right,” said Besany. “And I’m glad Kal’s got a friend he can turn to.”

  “Someone his own age to play with, eh?” Obrim rattled cups and said nothing, with the same expression on his face that she’d seen on Skirata’s. It was the face of a man working out who he needed to hurt to make things right with the galaxy. “Is this what we elected?”

  “What?”

  “We both work for government enforcement. We’re Coruscant citizens. Is this what we thought we were getting as part of the deal? What’s happening to the Republic?”

  “I know. I’ve asked myself the same thing—”

  “I did twenty-eight years in the Senate Guard before I transferred to CSF. Did I take my eye off the ball? I wonder if it happened on my watch and I didn’t spot it.”

  “Police can only deal with the law. Not ethics.”

  “But these decisions are being made by politicians I’ve known and protected for years. It makes it… personal betrayal, I suppose.” Obrim seemed to focus on the caf again. “Technically, in law, we just stole government property. Like taking old office equipment from a department dumpster, not a living, breathing man with rights. How did we ever let that happen?”

  “It didn’t happen overnight. It crept up on us.”

  “But who’s going to do anything about it? The Senate’s smiling and nodding, and even the Jedi Council—okay, I talk to Jusik too much.”

  “He’s going to rebel, isn’t he?”

  “He’s not happy wearing the robes, I can tell you that. Very moral boy. Very moral. None of this seeing stuff from a certain point of view. No ambiguity. He calls it as he sees it.”

  Besany wondered if Skirata knew, and then thought that he probably spotted Jusik’s tendencies right from the start. He was good at that. “Can they leave? Can Jedi resign?”

  “No idea. Maybe they get them to turn in their belt and lightsaber or something.”

  “We’ll find out. Ordo says there’ll be a showdown with his boss before too long.”

  Besany left Darman as long as she could, keeping an eye on the chrono because she was now fitting this into her lunch breaks. Jusik was still sitting there with his hand on Fi’s head, doing whatever it was that Jedi did when they healed others, and talking very quietly to him. He glanced up at her, distracted for a moment, and she took Fi’s free hand. She found herself with a nervous grip on the tips of his fingers, sensing no reaction, and feeling she was somehow intruding by touching him when he wasn’t aware of it, or at least unable to respond to her. With his features slack, eyes half closed and blinking frequently, he looked more of a total stranger now than when he’d been completely unresponsive.

  “I’ll be back later, Fi,” she said. “One of the other Nulls is coming to see you soon. A’den.”

  Jusik patted her on the hand, not looking up. She had the air taxi drop Darman at the barracks, and then got off a few blocks from her office to take a few minutes to think. Her focus was widening again now, taking in the city around her and the beings streaming past her on foot and in speeders, and she had a moment of frightening clarity.

  I pulled a blaster on staff at the medcenter and abducted a patient. Or stole government property. Whatever. I did it. And that’s on top of slicing data. They’ll fire me, if whoever was watching me doesn’t shoot me first.

  She was too deeply mired in the situation to lose her nerve now, and damned either way. If she was going to be disgraced, which she was, then it wouldn’t make matters any worse if she pulled out all the stops.

  I used to be sensible.

  Besany sat at her desk and logged into the accounting override system, the rarefied atmosphere where auditors could observe transactions at will. She’d been honest all her life, scrupulously so. It was her job to root out dishonesty among others. But it was time the Republic paid its dues, and it could start with Fi, RC-8015, who didn’t exist now, and had never existed in law.

  She had the access codes and the ability to cover the audit trail that led to her. It was a relatively straightforward matter to slice into the Grand Army’s database and record that RC-8015 had been terminated after receiving injuries from which he was unlikely to recover. Among a few thousand commandos, hidden among a few million men, nobody above his own commander—General Zey—would even bother to check. His place in Omega Squad was already filled, and clones died every day.

  She hit the EXECUTE key, and Fi was a free man for the first time in his short and tragic life.

  Office of the Director of Special Forces,

  SO Brigade HQ, Coruscant,

  503 days after Geonosis

  Skirata never liked to be summoned to anyone’s office, but he seemed keen to respond to General Zey today. Ordo accompanied him. He hadn’t been summoned, but if Zey wanted to kick him out, he could try.

  The Jedi looked like a man under increasing pressure.

  “I’ve cut you a lot of slack, Sergeant,” Zey said. “A galaxy of slack. A budget of slack. Now where is he? And what’s Jusik playing at?”

  Kal’buir was the last man to be intimidated by anyone, and Zey couldn’t even come close to it. Ordo caught Maze’s eye, and found they were both tensed to step in to back up their master, like a pair of strills. Yes, that’s exactly what we are. Animals trained to kill, and we can never be trusted not to turn wild again. Maze and Ordo had an understanding, though. Maybe Maze understood a whole lot better since he’d been educated about his ARC brother Sull.

  “Fi’s dead, sir,” Skirata said. “It says so on the database.”

  “That is, to use your phrase, a load of osik.”

  “Really?” Skirata’s arms were at his sides, which was never a good sign. “Well, he was in a coma, and medical care was withdrawn. Seeing as the Republic is too nice and civilized to leave a creature that can’t feed itself to starve to death, the med droids were ready to… what’s the euphemism? Euthanize him. So one way or the other he’s dead, in that the Republic washed its hands of him now that he’s no longer useful, and RC-eight-oh-one-five no longer exists. Sir.”

  Zey looked mortified. He wasn’t a callous man. He didn’t even trot out all the usual Jedi platitudes. But Ordo still thought less of him for not being like Bardan Jusik.

  “Sergeant, I’ve seen the record. I don’t know how you did it, but I know you did, and I want to account for his whereabouts.”

  “Need-to-know, General. And you don’t.”

  “This is not your private army, Skirata.”

  “Except when it suits you.”

  “Sergeant, you’re still a serving member of the Grand Army of the Republic, and we have a chain of command here.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “I could remove you from your post.”

  “You could try, but even if you kick me out, I’ll still be around, and my influence and networks and… abilities to perform will remain unchanged in all but name. You need me inside the tent, not outside throwing rocks.”

  Zey probably understood that he’d created the out-of-control Skirata standing in front of him and that there was no putting the man back in his box. Ordo was, as always, proud of his father and inspired by his refusal to be cowed. Zey’s only option was to kill Skirata, just like an ARC trooper who no longer toed the line, and Ordo didn’t give much for Zey’s chances of that. So the fight was on.

  “Well, just to keep your records tidy, here’s his armor tally.” Skirata collected the ID tallies from fallen clone troopers whenever he could, an echo of the Mandalorian habit of keeping a piece of armor as a memorial. Mando’ade often didn’t have the time, place, or opportunity for graves. “Is there anywhere in particular you’d like me to shove it?”

  Zey paused, almost grinding his teeth behind that graying beard, then held out his hand for Skirata to drop the small plastoid tab into his palm. Their eyes locked for a moment, and Ordo willed Zey to look away first. He did. Honor was sa
tisfied. Kal’buir—shorter, outranked, no Force powers—was still the alpha male.

  “Look, I’m sorry about Fi,” Zey said quietly. “I’m sorry about every single clone who loses his life or gets wounded. As Jedi, we endeavor to treat all sentient life with compassion. Don’t think we don’t agonize about it. I was discussing it with General Kenobi only the—”

  “That’s the way you talk about animals, sir. Not men. If you meant that patronizing twaddle, you’d insist troopers were offered a choice of remaining as volunteers, or leaving.” Skirata paused but, judging by the way he swallowed, it wasn’t for effect. “And I don’t mean with the help of one of your covert ops death squads, either.”

  Zey stared back at Skirata as if this was news to him. It might well have been: the Jedi generals seemed to be out of the loop as far as the conduct of the war was concerned, in terms of both what the Chancellor told them and how much notice he took of their advice.

  “Is there something you want to tell me, Sergeant?”

  “Either you know, or you need to know, that ARC troopers who get out of line end up executed, and I have proof that at least one was targeted by our own covert ops troops.”

  Zey didn’t look too happy. It wasn’t the look of a guilty man caught out, though. It was an angry man whose face was illuminated by dawning realization.

  “I know nothing of this.”

  “Then it’s about time,” Skirata said, “that you Jedi took your heads out of your shebse, stopped contemplating your midi-chlorians, and did a reality check. You’re going to get a nasty shock one day, General. We told you about the vastly inflated claims of enemy droid numbers, and tactics didn’t change. We told you we should be concentrating forces on a few main theaters, cleaning up before moving on, and not scattering forces so we never quite have the strength to root out the enemy. Again, nothing changed. None of this is winning the war. It’s just keeping it going. So I wonder how much it’s worth risking our necks to find out for you, if that intel isn’t used.”