Darman squeezed the trigger.
It definitely beat shooting out the doors from point-blank range. The rod struck the metal plating, and the sheets blew apart with such neat precision that there was just a loud explosion and a flare of dust before the doors simply fell in through the opening like an entry ramp. Scorch threw a grenade hard through the opening, the squad rushed the doorway, and the firing started.
Blue-white blasterfire lit the doorway and windows like a chain of pyrocrackers. Darman switched to blaster mode again and got ready to pick off any troublemakers, but over-watch wasn’t a role he felt comfortable with when his squad were clearing a house.
I got separated from my squad at Geonosis.
Why he was thinking about that now, he had no idea. The flashing and cracking of blasters stopped suddenly. Then there was a massive whoomp and the roof of the two-story building erupted, sending tiles raining onto the street in a ball of dust and splinters. Etain ducked; debris diverted from her in midair, a neat trick if you could do it. Darman felt it rattle on his armor.
“Shab, Scorch…” It sounded like Corr. “Happy now?”
“Omega, we’re clear.” Niner’s voice filled Darman’s helmet. “Four live prisoners, three dead.”
One Nek Pup moved in close to the house to provide cover while the other stayed focused on the silent homes around them. The neighbors weren’t exactly craning their heads out the windows to watch. Three men and a woman came out with their hands on their heads, stumbling and unsteady, with Corr, Atin, and Niner at their backs, DC-17s aimed.
“Missile launcher in the rear lean-to,” Niner said, “and plenty of rifles, mortars, and anti-armor rounds. Hey, someone get the militia to take these jokers, okay?”
And then Scorch came out.
He was dragging a body—a burly male, from the looks of what was left—by one leg. That was no mean feat even for a fit commando. He dumped it in the center of the street between the Nek Pups, making no attempt to maintain cover, and went back into the shattered building.
They could have left the bodies for the militia to sort out, like the damage to the houses on either side. Darman went to help him, but Etain stopped him with a touch on his arm.
“Just cover him,” she said. “I wouldn’t step in now if I were you.”
She felt something nobody else could. But you didn’t have to be a Jedi to know that Scorch was in trouble. Darman heard Sev mutter something, and Boss responded, “Negative, Sev. Don’t.”
It took him several minutes, but Scorch hauled out all three bodies and arranged them neatly in a row. Darman thought that was the end of it, an act of closure that the locals would note, and remember that helping out the rebels—if it meant attacking GAR personnel—was a dumb idea that would end in tears. As hearts and minds went, it was definitely negative. But Darman could see why Scorch wasn’t in the mood to hand out candy to local kids.
Was it only two years ago that I wanted to save the locals from the wicked Seps on Qiilura? Wow, talk about being naïve…
Scorch, Deece held one-handed, cocked his head as if he was studying the haul of dead belligerents. Darman thought he was going to walk away, at least satisfied if not purged, but instead he took aim and sprayed the bodies with blasterfire. Darman heard the same intake of breath from at least three other helmet links. Then, as soon as he’d started, Scorch stopped, pulled off his bucket one-handed, and spat eloquently on each smoking pile of remains; Darman didn’t realize Scorch had that much spit in him. When he was finished, he put his helmet back on and walked over to the nearest Nek Pup to sit down on the running board.
“Just as well we got the right house…,” Corr muttered.
Folks around here would probably see Scorch’s display as contempt, a message—as if it needed underlining—that you didn’t mess with the Republic. But Darman saw a brother who had been tipped over the edge and couldn’t articulate his anger any other way, maybe just temporarily, maybe for good. Darman had seen it once or twice with clone troopers, and how their brothers had swept up the pieces and kept them together, but he didn’t know what happened to the ones who couldn’t snap back to rights after a break. He thought of what nearly happened to Fi, and realized he could guess.
Etain gestured to the militia waiting on the barricade to move in. “Okay, the local force can clean up and search the rest of the houses, just in case. Probably better if we stand down now.” She seemed to take Scorch’s reaction calmly. “I’ll go see Scorch.”
She sat down on the running board next to Scorch and took his gloved hand in hers, which made Darman feel a little odd. He caught some of what she was saying. She was telling Scorch that she understood, and she could make him feel better for a while, as long as he didn’t object to her influencing his mind to get him through the rest of the day. A faint click in Darman’s ear interrupted his eavesdropping, indicating someone had switched to the squad-only comm frequency.
“Everyone okay?” said Niner. Darman knew what he meant. He wanted to know if anyone else was going to lose it like Scorch. “’Cos let’s talk about it if you’re not.”
No, you never knew what was going to get to you, and sometimes it was the least expected things.
There was a sudden pee-yong-pee-yong sound and Atin snarled.
“Shab, some chakaar taking potshots.”
They all wheeled around to locate the position. There was someone on a roof on the other side of the street. The guy from the 14th opened up the Nek Pup’s repeater, and his first burst took the rain recycler off a nearby roof before he managed to concentrate his fire on the same place as everyone else. They’d already sighted up, returned fire, and withdrawn behind the barricade by the time Atin worked out that the round—a projectile—had been stopped by his armor.
“I’m okay,” he said, sounding embarrassed and trying to twist his neck far enough to get a look at the gouge in the paint on his shoulder plate. “Mark Three armor, my best buddy… shab, that would have ruined my day.”
“Nice shooting, mir’osik,” Darman called to the gunner from the 14th. Even a Weequay could have hit the target at that range. “Who the shab trained you?”
“Flash-trained,” the trooper said, deadpan.
“Well, tell Flash he’s osik at training… look, you want some marksmanship remedial class? Just ask.”
“Leave the poor white job alone, Dar.” Corr, relatively fresh from the meat-can ranks himself, sprang to the defense. “First deployment.”
We were great on our first mission. What’s his excuse?
Actually, it hadn’t been great at all. The Jedi generals, utterly untrained, hadn’t a clue. Half the commando strength at Geonosis had been killed, deployed as basic infantry, in the wrong place with no air support. Darman shut up. Corr had a point.
“Sorry, ner vod,” Darman said. “When did you leave Kamino?”
The trooper hesitated for a moment, as if he’d forgotten. He took off his helmet to wipe his forehead, and the expression on his face was one of very brief disorientation, not an attempt to be evasive.
“We arrived at HQ a few weeks ago,” he said.
“I bet it’s still slashing down with rain in Tipoca. It never stopped. Never a clear day. Ever.”
The trooper’s frown deepened. He flipped his helmet over between his palms as if he was about to put it on again. “Bone-dry when I embarked,” he said. “Don’t recall it raining at all.”
“Let me check your calibration,” Atin said helpfully, and climbed up on the Nek’s turret.
Darman was so thrown by the answer that he didn’t even snap back with a smart one-liner about the trooper needing more time on the practice range. No rain on Kamino? Maybe the man’s powers of observation were as bad as his aim.
Etain appeared from behind him. “Problem?”
“Yeah, that guy from the Fourteenth said it never rained on Kamino.”
Etain scratched her cheek, looking preoccupied. “Is he being ironic?”
“Didn’t st
rike me as the witty type.” Darman’s senses were still finely tuned to anything out of the ordinary among his brother clones, and if the 14th Infantry didn’t know even the most basic Mando’a—if they came from a Kamino where it never rained—then there was something wrong.
And he was a poor shot. Darman had never seen any clone that inaccurate, not even the young kids.
“Do you think he’s a spy?” Darman said, thinking of the two covert ops troopers he’d killed. They were just like him, and yet they’d been sent after their own brothers. “I’m just paranoid after Gaftikar, that’s all.”
“If he is,” Etain said, “then he didn’t graduate top of his class.”
“It’s still odd.” Darman put his helmet back on and switched to a secure comm channel. Skirata needed to know about this. Small detail was the fabric of the bigger picture. “Better report it.”
“Dar, there’s something I need to discuss with you.”
Skirata’s channel was busy. Darman found his patience wasn’t quite what it had been two years ago. “What, Et’ika?”
“Not here.”
“Are you really telling Zey that we should pull out of this cesspit?”
“I am, yes, but—”
“Good. This is a waste of time when we could be taking on high-value targets.”
“Okay.” She looked suddenly weary. “I agree.”
“What was it you wanted to talk about, then?”
Etain, hands on hips, stared down at her boots. “It’ll keep,” she said.
As soon as the militia confirmed they had the house searches under control, the small convoy headed back to Hadde Base. Darman waited for Etain to pick up where she’d left off, but he had the feeling he’d interrupted her train of thought yet again, and she’d forgotten what she had to tell him.
It couldn’t have been important.
Chapter Seven
Kyrimorut, Mandalore,
995 days ABG
We’ve invented a Separatist threat that’s bigger than the reality. The claim of quadrillions, quintillions, and even septillions of Separatist battle droids is so ludicrous that we’d rush to debunk it if someone didn’t have a vested interest in making us believe it. Nothing adds up—literally. Do you know how big a quadrillion is? Let’s use the Galactic Standard notation—a thousand million million. A quintillion? A million quadrillions. A septillion? A billion quadrillions. Any coalition capable of producing even quadrillions of any machine could roll over the Republic in a few days. And the amount of materials and energy needed to produce and move even a quadrillion droids is immense—it would drain star systems. Either our government is composed of innumerate idiots, or it’s inflating the threat way beyond the average citizen’s math skills so that it can justify the war and where it’s heading.
—Hirib Bassot, current affairs pundit, speaking on HNE shortly before being found dead at home from alleged abuse of contaminated glitterstim
Jusik pointed to the wall at the far end of the compound, along the length of a strip of tape stretched in a straight line across the dirt.
Fi, wearing just a pair of shorts and looking deeply uncomfortable, stood with his arms folded across his chest in his I’m-not-playing mode.
“Walk that line, Fi. Off you go.”
Fi took a breath as if he was going to object, but turned and started walking. Jusik and Gilamar stood behind him and watched his progress, recording his movements with a handheld holoscanner. Jusik couldn’t help noticing that the device had a stenciled mark on it: PROPERTY OF REPUBLIC CENTRAL MEDSUPPLY.
“Nice piece of kit,” Jusik said. “Free gift from a grateful Republic?”
Gilamar chuckled to himself but didn’t look away from the small screen. The monitor was capturing reference points on Fi’s body—spine, joints, skull—and analyzing his movement and posture. “Well, they left it loafing around,” he said, “and I had a patient in need.” He put one hand in his belt pouch, eyes still fixed on the monitor, and drew out a couple of small but expensive-looking instruments. “Stylus scanners. Encephaloscan and neurochemical assay. Best in the galaxy. State of the shabla art.”
Fi reached the end of the compound, did a pretty good about-turn, and then began walking back again.
“You stole it all,” Jusik said.
“I liberated it,” Gilamar corrected. “The taxpayers can afford it, seeing as they’re not paying for clone rehab centers. I’ve just got to locate a few more portable diagnostic tools and assorted toys, and we can have a pretty good field medical facility here. You never know what state those boys are going to show up in when the time comes. And brain trauma’s common.”
“I wasn’t criticizing,” Jusik said. “I was admiring.”
Jedi weren’t above appropriating goods and cheating their owners in the cause of justice, of course; Jusik had heard many accounts of Jedi Masters commandeering vessels and pulling other dubious tricks without the slightest thought of recompense for the owner. He couldn’t see any difference between that and Gilamar’s pillage of the Republic’s med-centers for a socially purposeful cause.
“You’d be amazed what you stroll off with if you can talk like a medic, wear the right outfit, and know how to misuse medcenter security,” said Gilamar. “I nicked a complete operating table once.”
Fi finished his test walk and stood with his chin lowered, waiting for the verdict. “How did I do? Can I get dressed now?”
Gilamar turned the small holoscreen so that he could see it. “That’s you, compared with one of your brothers at his peak fitness. See?” The screen, as far as Jusik could tell, showed percentages. “That measures how much your gait wobbles, how far you stride, how much bend there is in your spine, all that kind of biometric stuff. Look.”
Fi frowned slightly as if calculating. “Eighty-nine percent, just over.”
“Eighty-nine point two percent correlation with the benchmark,” said Gilamar.
Fi let out a long sigh. “Oh well…”
“What do you mean, Oh well?”
“I’m never going to be a hundred percent.”
“Never’s a long time, ad’ika, and eighty-nine percent of a clone commando is probably about a hundred and fifty percent of a randomly conceived human. You’re the luxury model of humankind. You can afford to lose a few points.”
Fi didn’t look convinced. “So I’m better than a mongrel. Great.”
“Get dressed and we’ll do your cognitive tests.”
Fi trudged off into the bastion, and they followed. Jusik felt he’d failed him despite the huge progress he’d made. He was prepared to spend the rest of his life healing him, if that’s what it took. But he was a Jedi, with a reasonable expectation of a longer life than a regular human, and Fi had drawn the short straw on life expectancy.
Healing took it out of Jusik. It was increasingly exhausting. The improvement in Fi’s condition had been dramatic at first. But now it was marginal, the kind of changes that had to be measured with sophisticated equipment.
When Fi’s happy—well, that’s the only benchmark I can trust.
“It can take years to see any kind of improvement, and plenty of folks never recover,” Gilamar said as they stepped into the main accommodations from the utility area, wiping their boots out of reflex because Rav Bralor had told them she’d skewer them if they messed up the new floors. “But it’s no good telling him he’s made an incredible recovery, because he won’t see it like that. I’ve seen the sequence of brain scans. He had damage to at least two separate areas. How he ever survived at all—well, clone lads are built from Jango, and he had a tremendously robust physiology. Fi’s still got damaged areas in the forebrain, though, and that’s what’s causing the memory blips and the temper.”
Jusik considered how much effort had gone into getting Fi this far—saving just one man—and despaired at the numbers he would never know or be able to help. “He wants to come back to Coruscant with me and see the squad.”
“Maybe that’s what he needs.” G
ilamar consulted his looted medical sensors again. “I’d still love to know how you did it.”
“I don’t really know.” Jusik healed by visualizing. He saw the fabric of the body at its most basic level, the ruptured cell walls and tangled proteins, and imagined them whole and straight again. It felt the same to him in the Force as the way he harnessed energy to Force-rip a door off its runners. “I have theories. I always do. I like to think of it as a mix of micro-telekinesis and stimulating the body’s natural healing mechanisms.”
“How precise is it?”
As a Jedi, Jusik had been taught to trust his feelings, and not to think. He never completely learned that lesson; he refused to, because he knew he could think very well indeed, and the Force wouldn’t have manifested itself in him if it hadn’t had some use for that intellect. And if the Force had no purpose—deliberate or accidental—then he wasn’t inclined to let it rule him.
He grabbed a slice of fruitbread from the conservator, chewed slowly, and realized he had never been a very Jedi-like Jedi.
“As precise as I can imagine, Mij’ika.”
“Well, when I acquire the right kit to do brain scans at neuron resolution, I’d better give you a crash course in brain anatomy. Then you can be very, very precise.” Gilamar held out his hand for a share of the fruitbread. His armor was almost the same shade of dull gold as Skirata’s, gold for vengeance, but he wasn’t from the same clan. It was a personal statement. “You’re even smarter than you think, Bard’ika.”
“The Masters at the academy told me that I thought too much and asked too many questions.”
“Well, that’s what any secret cabal that doesn’t like its authority to be questioned would say.”
Jusik couldn’t resist the urge to ask. “Why the gold armor?”
“There you go again with the questions.”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to pry.”
“It’s a fair question. I fell in love with a Mandalorian girl, married into the clans, and a hut’uun killed her. I know his name. I’ll find him. And then I’ll show him what it means to make a bad enemy of a Mandalorian with anatomical expertise and a scalpel.”
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