“Listen, shabuir,” she hissed. “Us Twi’lek girls… I’m not your entertainment, I’m not your sport, and I’m not for sale, understand? This Twi’lek girl can cut your gett’se off.”
In the second’s absolute frozen silence that followed, Skirata heard two things: the distance tuneless whistling of someone working in the kitchen, and the rasp and whir of a dozen blasters being drawn from holsters—CSF regulation-issue—and charged to fire. Every cop in the restaurant had drawn his weapon and aimed. Skirata had drawn, too, without even thinking.
“Is that the time?” said Skirata. “My, son, I think you need to get back to the office. Now.”
Laseema pulled the blade out of the table and stepped back. The man got up and left, which was probably his only option under the circumstances.
“No tip?” Laseema called as the doors parted to let him escape intact. “Tightwad.”
She picked up the tray as if nothing had happened and went on serving meals. Everyone resumed eating. This was no longer a restaurant for casual visitors. It was a CSF and GAR canteen by default, and it was a bad place to hit on the waitresses.
“Kal, you have some awe-inspiring daughters-in-law,” Obrim said, sliding his blaster back in its holster. He mopped up the sweet melted fat on his plate with a chunk of meal-bread. “To think that girl was too scared to speak when you first found her.”
“I have an uncanny knack for helping folks realize their full potential,” Skirata said. “I’ll catch you later. CSF Social Club?”
“Eighteen hundred hours. See you then.”
Skirata headed to the rear exit, the least observable route to the apartment. As he passed Laseema, she gave him a smile, and he paused.
“Besany’s with Kad,” she said, anticipating a question. “He keeps saying Da-da. It’s his word today. Etain sent a holomessage, and he was completely mesmerized by it.”
“I was going to ask how you were.”
“Never better, Kal’buir.”
“You sure? That chakaar…”
“I’ve never had the choice of saying no to a man before.” Laseema had the most beatific smile, as if she’d had some wonderful vision. Skirata knew all too well what happened to Twi’lek girls from poor families. They were for sale, and nobody lifted a finger to stop the trade. “It feels good.”
Skirata was going to train her how to defend herself, but it looked as if Atin had beaten him to it. It wasn’t the first time that he’d wondered why he was still fighting for the Republic, given how thoroughly corrupt it was to its core. If Zey and his Jedi pals thought that Grievous was evil, then they hadn’t looked too closely under the Republic table at which they sat.
“Not long now,” he whispered. “Before the year’s out, we’ll be gone. Chin up, ad’ika.”
Tonight they’d finalize plans. When the time came to run, they’d have minutes—not days, maybe not even hours—to get out.
In the end, it didn’t matter if the Republic won or lost the war. The people Kal Skirata cared about most would be crushed between the warring factions either way.
GAR Station Nerrif, Mid Rim,
996 days ABG
“I vote,” Corr said, “that the minute we get back to Coruscant, we get the chiefs of staff, the defense committee, and that oily mirshebs Palpatine, line ’em up against a wall, and show them the business end of a Deece.”
The transport waited to dock at Nerrif, maintaining a three-hundred-meter separation from the other transports waiting to land at the space station. Niner, arms folded across his chest and apparently asleep, creaked a little as he moved. Etain watched her squads with a concerned eye. Scorch’s recent fall from the grace of his usual relaxed detachment had worried her.
“That’s mutinous talk, Private,” said Niner. “And you haven’t got a vote.”
Atin patted Corr’s shoulder. “I’ll hold your coat, Cor’ika.”
“Well, it’s dumb. It’s just dumb.”
Corr always had an opinion. Etain had learned fast that the commandos were freethinkers and pretty vocal, but the speed with which the rank-and-file troopers adapted to a less circumscribed life took her aback. She expected them to be like cage-farmed nuna, not entirely sure what to do when someone opened the cage and tried to shoo them out. White jobs, as the commandos called them, didn’t take long to work out that they could fly when given the chance.
“Why’s it dumb?” Etain asked. “Not that I don’t agree with you.”
“About giving the government a nice bracing volley of blasterfire?” Corr asked.
“Well, it was disapproval of the conduct of the war, actually, but…”
“It’s not mutinous, anyway.” Corr directed his ire at Niner. “Contingency rules. If they’re not fit to retain command, we can boot them out. Even slot them.”
Etain was mildly interested, but she wanted to hear Corr’s views on Haurgab. “Really?”
“Cor’ika, we’ve got a hundred and fifty shabla contingency rules, everything from arresting the Chancellor if he goes gaga to reducing key allied worlds to slag if they switch sides,” Atin said. “Including shooting the whole Jedi command if they go over to the enemy. It doesn’t mean you have to go out and do it now.”
“Come on, Corr,” Etain said. Contingency orders were long, tedious lists of worst-case scenarios, and she didn’t want to hear all 150 again. “Spit it out.”
“Well, if you want to make Haurgab people love us, then you can’t just send in special forces to blow the osik out of the place, especially as the government there is as bad as the other side. They need AgriCorps Jedi and engineers. Give ’em a reliable water supply and some crops, and they’ll all calm down.”
“He’s got a point,” said Atin. “When did we ever try anything other than head-on confrontation? With anyone? All that happens is we end up fighting on more fronts and spread all over the chart. You don’t believe me? Go look at the deployment schedule. Map it on a holochart, like the one they’ve got at HQ. Look.”
Atin activated his holoprojector, and their small corner of the crew cabin filled with complex threads of light dotted with planets in three colors: red allies, blue enemies, and yellow neutrals. Then he changed the sort criteria, and the schematic of the galaxy became a totally different picture. The red dots showed deployed Jedi commanders, with purple dots indicating non-Jedi nonclone commanders—mongrels, as the squads called them—and green dots their forces. The pattern was very spread out, with a lot of dots in the Outer and Mid Rims.
“That’s what’s killing us,” Atin said. “I know we’ve been banging on about it for a year or more, and so have the Nulls, but this is just keeping the war ticking over. If we concentrated on one strategic target at a time and really brought one theater under control before we moved on to the next, the war could have been over by now.”
“Could have lost it, too.” Etain suddenly felt them all staring at her, even though she couldn’t see their eyes behind the helmet visors. “Just saying. Could have gone either way.”
Corr snorted. “Yeah, and we might even be better off under the Seps.”
“I agree that it looks flawed,” she said.
“It’s so flawed that it looks as if all they’re trying to do is to maroon as many generals in as many stupid places with inadequate support as they can.”
It didn’t look good. It never had. All Etain could care about now was making sure that her boys—there she was, falling into Skirata’s terms, Skirata’s thinking—made it out alive. She thought about Commander Levet, and Bek, and Ven; she never forgot their names, and she reminded herself to check if Ven survived, and how Levet was doing. Levet said he liked the idea of having a farm, having seen them at close quarters on Qiilura.
Clones could think outside the confines of their military world, all right. Once they did, they weren’t dumb and happy with their lot. She thought the only reason General Kenobi talked about them like a proud akk owner was that he couldn’t admit even to himself that the Jedi Order was compl
icit in a thoroughly evil thing. But at least he didn’t refuse to use their names, like General Vos seemed to. Etain found it increasingly hard to find common ground with some of her fellow Jedi. She could see the Order foundering, unchanging over the centuries, hidebound by esoteric arguments about the unseen mysteries, and yet blind to its own moral decline in the real world.
Master Altis must think that way, too.
She thought of the very un-Jedi Jedi who had shown up to help the war effort, the ones like Callista, who had families and lived a life without a Temple or the rules of the Council. Mainstream Jedi regarded Altis’s splinter group as dangerous. But for all their heresy, they didn’t look remotely tainted by the dark side.
That was why she’d asked Callista to meet her here. There was a third way.
“Prep for docking,” said the pilot’s voice over the intercom. “You’re off watch, and I’m not, you barves…”
“Shower, food, sleep,” said Darman, prioritizing.
Atin shook his head. “Food, shower, sleep.”
“Sleep,” said Niner. “Then more sleep.”
They looked at Corr. “Glorious revolution, then installing a military junta,” he said. Etain stared, not at all sure about his hidden depths, but he laughed. “Or a nice big plate of minced roba patties. I’m easy.”
The transport docked, sending a little shudder through the crew bay as it settled on its dampers on the hangar deck. Etain jumped down from the hatch and stood back to count out the squads—Omega, Delta, and Vevut. Vevut had been trained by Rav Bralor; it showed. They behaved like sons eager to please their mother.
“Come on, General, let’s get you fed and watered.” Dec, their sergeant, began steering her in the direction of the mess. “You won’t be fit for much without some decent skraan inside you.”
“I’ll join you later,” she said, checking her chrono. “Two standard hours, relief crew area, for briefing. I’ll even stand you an ale in the mess.”
Darman hung back. “When exactly are we shipping out again?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Good.”
“I told Zey that Triple Zero could do without you for another day, because I wanted you all to get a clear eight hours’ sleep for once.”
Darman just grinned. “I’ll do my best.”
“I’ll bet.” It was as good a time as any. “And anyway, I need to talk to you without the squad around.”
“I don’t mind. I don’t have any secrets.”
“It’s private. Really private.”
Darman’s grin crumpled for a moment and what returned was an anxious smile. “Okay. Am I going to need a few ales to sustain me?”
“No.” Oh, fierfek. Yes, you will. “You don’t like ale anyway.”
Etain turned and walked away before she ended up blurting it out there and then in a busy transit area. The last thing she needed was half the galaxy knowing she had a child. The urge for confession burned her up. Every moment she didn’t come clean with Darman made it worse.
It shouldn’t have been this way. It was all her fault, all her doing, but there had to be something wrong with a system that put two people in the positions that Etain and Darman were in.
She found Callista pacing around in a quiet corner of the med deck, one level below.
“Sorry if I kept you, General,” she said. “I was just seeing if I could help. Quite a few wounded troops passing through.”
It took Etain a few moments to realize she meant medical help. “Doing a bit of healing?”
“I’m not a good healer, but I try. A little bit of mind influence to lift their spirits seems to be what I do best.”
“Do you ask their permission?”
Callista looked faintly offended. “Of course.”
“Yes, you would.” Etain’s question had already been answered, but she went on anyway, because she needed to talk to another Jedi who wouldn’t make pious noises about helping her get back on the right path. “I’ve come to see you about your funny little ways, as you put it.”
“Something tells me you’re not here to lecture me on our deviance.”
The two women looked at each other in silence for a moment or two, tasting the subtle ebb and flow of the Force around them. “Not exactly,” Etain said. “I’m not the kind of Jedi the Council wants as its arbiter of adherence to the tenets.” Go on, say it. “I have a child they don’t know about, and a lover I shouldn’t have. I’m still serving in the Grand Army, but I can’t carry on like this. Before I give up being a Jedi completely, I want to know if I can salvage any of my calling.”
Callista put her hand on Etain’s shoulder. “You want to join us? You know what’ll happen if you do. We’re effectively the lunatic relative that they don’t talk about.”
“Would I be accepted? What do you expect of your adherents?”
“Well, your family’s welcome. You never need live a lie, for a start.”
“You have a lover?”
“Of course. What’s life if you shun the most powerful influence for good that any being knows?”
Etain wondered how Darman would fit in as the non-Force-using other half in a community of Jedi. Then she realized she was making yet another decision for him, assuming control, assuming that she knew best—just as she had when she decided to conceive.
“If I were to come to you, would we be obliged to live in your community?” Etain asked. Callista leaned her head as if she was struggling to hear her. The idea was already beginning to look like a bad one, and Etain’s voice dipped accordingly. It was ludicrous to think that she could think of being a part-time Jedi, occasionally popping in to do a bit of Jedi work with Master Altis and his sect. “The father of my child might have to be based elsewhere.”
Callista looked bemused. “I can’t speak for Master Altis, but I can’t imagine him turning you away if you wanted to spend any time at all with us.”
Etain found it almost shaming that Altis and his people would throw their lot in with the Jedi Order to fight alongside them when they were effectively shunned by it the rest of the time. She was also shamed that the Order was happy to have them back on board when it suited them. She was starting to think like Jusik.
“I think I shall spend some time with you one day,” she said. A few weeks was all she had in mind, just to be certain that she wanted no more to do with the Jedi path. “If you’ll have me.”
“This is very sad, you know.”
“What is?”
“That you have to be so miserable simply for being a normal human being, Force-user or not. Master Altis says the Jedi Order has become more like a corporation than a spiritual body, all rules and infrastructure and committees. To continue the analogy, he says that the Order has lost sight of its core business, which is simply doing the right thing for others.”
Etain thought of the Jedi Temple and its vast Archives, technical facilities, and apparently limitless budget. Yes, it was hard to see where it had all started.
“I wish I could say we’re stagnant,” Etain said, preparing to leave before she poured out all her frustration and resentment on this woman. “But I feel we’re decaying.”
Callista gave her a polite nod. “One day, come visit us and bring that baby of yours. We’d love to see him.”
As Etain walked back to the main mess deck, she couldn’t recall mentioning that she had a son. It might have had no significance, just a better pronoun to use than it, but perhaps Callista was sufficiently Force-sensitive to tell.
She suddenly craved Darman’s company. Nerrif was a huge station, a docking platform and resupply base for a quarter of the Mid Rim, and when she finally reached the mess, Omega weren’t around. The deck was a sea of strangers, mostly clone troopers, with a scattering of gray-uniformed nonclone officers and a couple of Jedi Padawans. When she reached out in the Force, Darman felt peaceful and distant. He almost always did; sometimes it was hard to tell if he was awake or not from his impression in the Force. She commed him. It took him a few m
oments to respond.
“Dar, where are you?”
“’Freshers, K-deck.”
“The steward droid booked me into the officers’ quarters, not that I asked for that. Private cabin, not a mess deck, so find cabin seventeen sixty-one, N-deck. I’ll meet you there.”
Darman’s voice sounded suddenly husky and self-conscious. “I’ve missed you, too.”
Etain could be slow on the uptake, she knew. Poor Dar; he was expecting a little diversion by way of romance, not the biggest shock of his short life. She’d have to play this carefully. “Talk first,” she said. “Catch up on lost time afterward. Deal?”
“Okay.”
She got to her cabin before him and waited, trying to meditate. Being a Jedi required maintenance. It was a set of skills, she realized, and once she stopped using them, they went off tune. She spent so long now in the mundane world that she rarely meditated, and even her kinetic skills needed sharpening up. Her duties were much less combat-oriented now. She had to get up to speed again, if only for basic survival purposes.
She could still sense Darman’s presence long before he rapped on the doors, though. She kept that skill very sharp indeed. He still felt remarkably innocent in the Force, not exactly the child she’d first mistaken his presence for on Qiilura, and the bright optimism had definitely tarnished, but it wasn’t shot through with dark vortices of anger and passion like Skirata’s yet.
Scorch, though… she thought of Scorch, quiet despite the raw blazing fear and anger that she’d calmed at Hadde, and hoped the Force would spare Darman that. The war was grinding down even these soldiers, despite a genome selected for its potentially abnormal resistance to stress.
“Et’ika?”
“Good navigation. Come in, quick.” She could sense nobody nearby, but the last thing she needed was to be spotted inviting one of her men into her cabin. “Did you get something to eat?”
“I lost the GAR record for bolting down ten roba sausages washed down with half a liter of caf,” he said, setting his helmet and rifle down on the upper bunk. The cabins were cramped, the kind with washing facilities that folded up into the bulkhead. “Corr trounced me. The man’s a sarlacc on legs. I hung on to the SO Brigade All-Comers’ Pie-With-Unidentified-Fruit-Mush-Filling record, though. You can still be proud of me, Et’ika.”
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