Even so, Ordo froze.
It was the order to execute his Jedi commanders.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
Chapter Eighteen
Hemli Tower Boulevard, Galactic City,
2120 hours, 1,089 days ABG
Order 66: In the event of Jedi officers acting against the interests of the Republic, and after receiving specific orders verified as coming directly from the Supreme Commander (Chancellor), GAR commanders will remove those officers by lethal force, and command of the GAR will revert to the Supreme Commander (Chancellor) until a new command structure is established.
—Contingency Orders for the Grand Army of the Republic: Order Initiation, Orders 1 Through 150, GAR document CO(CL) 50–95
“You okay?” said the CSF akk handler, patting his animal. The patrol ship cruised slowly down the skylane, keeping an eye on crowds that had ventured out to sample the nightlife for the first time since the invasion. Galactic City wanted to boast that it was open for business again. “Something wrong?”
Darman hardly knew where to start. He’d been sure he’d misremembered the contingency orders, and that Order 66 was the command code for shutting down the banking system to avert an enemy computer attack, but it was wishful thinking. It was desperate thinking.
“Change of tasking,” he said, stomach knotted. “They can’t make their minds up.”
“Yeah, we’ve just had an emergency comm.” Niner backed him up. “Can you set us down somewhere? We need to call in our own unit.”
It was sheer osik, of course, born of panic. What they needed to do, what they were required and obliged to do, was to seize and execute any Jedi they met. If they were serving alongside Jedi, that meant killing them on the spot. If they were operating alone—it was a case of assassination if a Jedi crossed their path.
“Sure, no problem.” The officer leaned through the cockpit bulkhead. “Vil, can you set down the lads, please?”
Niner switched to the private helmet link. “Dar, don’t worry. Don’t think about it. We’ll get Etain out. Jusik—well, he’s out already. Don’t worry.”
How would Etain find out there were death warrants out on every Jedi? She was in transit. She wouldn’t be able to receive a comm until her ship dropped out of hyperspace. How could he warn her?
Darman opened his secure link to Skirata. Kal’buir responded instantly as if he’d been waiting.
“Dar?”
“Sarge, have you heard—”
“Yes, I heard. Order Sixty-six. Now, don’t worry. Get yourselves down here, all of you, and we’ll take care of Etain. Okay?”
“How are we going to warn her?”
“Leave it to us. Jusik and Ordo are on the case already. We’ve got it covered.”
Skirata would have said that if the galaxy was ending. He thought he could take care of everything and everybody.
Darman was now aware of some anxious conversation taking place between the two CSF officers. The akk handler tapped Niner’s back plate.
“Sergeant, we’ve just had our compliance order rescinded,” he said. The cop ship came to rest on a landing platform. “Is this anything to do with your retasking?”
“What?”
“Jedi. Our standing order is to comply with any Jedi request. We’ve just been told to ditch that and to report in if we have any contact with Jedi.”
Niner looked glacial from the outside. Only a brother would have known what was going on under the helmet.
“Of course,” Niner said calmly. He sounded like a stranger. “I forgot that CSF would also be affected by any change in their status. I’ve got no intel about this other than my orders. What’s happened?”
Vil, the pilot, squeezed out of the cockpit into the crew cabin. “Attempted coup. The Jedi bigwigs walked into the Chancellor’s office and tried to take control of the state. Can you believe it?”
“Violence?” Darman asked, wondering why he wasn’t more shocked at the news.
“At least one Jedi Master dead. Come and have a listen to the comm traffic. It’s chaos around the Jedi Temple sector. Troopers called in, the place is on fire, everything.”
“Burning the incriminating evidence, I reckon.” The akk handler patted his animal fondly. “Who’d have thought it, eh, Jossie? Bad Jedi!”
“Bummer,” Niner said mildly. “Okay, Dar, this is where we get out.” He turned to the cops and touched his fingers to his helmet. “Thanks for the heads-up. You go careful, okay?”
The CSF patrol lifted clear, and Darman and Niner were left standing in a vastly altered world.
“Oh shab.”
“Dar, she’s going to be fine. Just treat this like a mission. We’re Republic commandos. Extracting Jedi when they get into scrapes is part of the job description.”
“But she’s not any Jedi. She’s my girl. She’s my wife, when she responds to that vow. She gave me a son.”
Niner let out a long sigh, and looked around as if he was searching for something.
“What do we do if we run into other Jedi?” Darman asked.
“Turn blind,” Niner said. “Someone else can deal with them. It’s not like we haven’t got enough troopers on the ground now.”
“You were always so proper. You haven’t changed your mind about deserting, have you?”
Darman thought about a conversation they’d had back on Gaftikar, discussing whether they’d leave their brothers behind for a new life if the opportunity arose. Niner had been as upset by the idea as Darman had ever seen him.
“No,” said Niner. “You guys—you’re all I’ve got. I can’t face being alone, not again. I won’t be parted from you. I don’t feel comfortable running away, but Kal’buir’s right when he says we never took an oath to serve, and I just can’t hack it on my own here.”
Darman took his arm and squeezed it hard. “We’re all in this together, ner vod.”
“I’ll commandeer some transport,” Niner said, and strode toward a young Osarian male who was sitting in the saddle of a large speeder bike, minding his own business. “Kal’buir and Ordo have enough on their plate at the moment. Hey, citizen! I need your bike. Emergency Republic business.”
It was hard to ignore a Republic commando, especially at night. The blue-lit T-shaped visor proved very intimidating, especially set against matte-black stealth armor. The Osarian, startled, looked at Niner, then at his DC-17 rifle, and then past his shoulder as if he’d seen something on the skyline. Darman turned.
There was a fire, a big one. The night sky, which was always a dense mass of illuminated signs and light pollution that blotted out the stars, was now showing a distinct, smoky orange ellipse. The Jedi Temple was being engulfed in flames.
“Er… okay, Officer,” said the Osarian, and handed over his keypass. “Will I get it back?”
“At the address shown on your permit,” Niner said, clearly lying. He turned to Darman. “Mount up, Private.”
They took off, leaving the bright-lit entertainment area beneath them, but neither of them knew where to go yet. Niner found a quiet vantage point high up on an office block. The two commandos sat perched there on the bike like a couple of armored raptors.
“What do we do when we know Etain’s landed?” Darman asked. “It’s not like we can collect her on this thing. Only two seats.”
“We’ll do what we always do—dynamic risk assessment.”
“Wing it.”
“Yeah.”
Darman almost didn’t want to know what was going on elsewhere in the city. He had his HUD on default, receiving only emergency data and set to night ops. His comlink to Skirata and the others was kept open. Then he risked patching into the GAR comm chatter just to listen to things he knew he didn’t want to hear.
It was surprisingly calm.
There was the ebb and flow of reports from across the galaxy, most of them about casualties, requirements for supplies, and—almost incidental, this—occasional voice traffic reporting the completion of Order 66 in a given locati
on, and that Jedi General this, or Jedi Commander that, had been terminated.
Darman heard only one comment about it on the open comm net, and that was a clone trooper reporting in from an Acclamator: “I still can’t believe they’d try to seize power like that,” he was saying to an ops room somewhere. “We never saw it coming. How could the Jedi betray us like this?”
“Ke narir haar’ke’gyce rol’eta resol,” Darman said, more to himself than Niner. Execute Order 66.
It was an unremarkable order among many others in the days when they first learned the list. Nobody thought the Jedi would actually turn bad; but if the worst happened, and they did, simply detaining a being with prodigious Force powers wasn’t an option. It had to be lethal force. It was the same for a number of other species and organizations on the contingency list, who were great allies but who would need a lot more stopping power than a simple arrest if they turned into enemies.
An order was an order. And orders had to be followed, or else society fell apart. It wasn’t blind obedience, Skirata told his commandos, but a conscious suppression of individual choice that every soldier made in a democracy. The soldier was the instrument of the state, not its master, and the state was the citizens. The citizens made their choice of civil government, and that government tasked the army. The army couldn’t pick and choose which lawful orders it obeyed. An army that took those decisions upon itself undermined democracy, and ended up overthrowing the government.
And orders—followed instantly—kept you alive; take cover, cease fire, fall back. Orders came from those who had the bigger picture when you didn’t; move that battalion, withdraw from that sector, press forward on the enemy’s flank. If you stood around arguing the toss about them, you got yourself and others killed.
Darman had no problems with orders. He just wasn’t ready to kill his wife. He hadn’t signed up to do that.
He hadn’t signed up at all, in fact. None of them had.
Etain wasn’t part of whatever the Jedi Council had tried to do. Neither was Jusik. Those who really had tried to depose Palpatine—well, they should have known better. The Grand Army’s purpose was to defend the Republic—even against Jedi.
Chapter Nineteen
Private vessel landing corridor,
Galactic City airspace,
2220 hours, 1,089 days ABG
I bet they wish they’d asked a few more questions before accepting command of a slave army now.
—Spar, formerly ARC Trooper A-02, first deserter from the Grand Army of the Republic, now a bounty hunter specializing in live retrieval
Enacca threw back her head and yawled in protest.
“It’s too late,” Etain said. “We’re committed to landing now. Just take us in as planned, and drop me at the Kragget. It’s okay.”
Enacca didn’t agree. She wanted to land, refuel, and take off again. She could always land near Skirata’s secret mooring, and then Etain could—
“No, because if anyone’s tracking us, we’ll lead them straight to Jusik, to Fi, to the Nulls, to Dar, to…” She trailed off. “And anyway, I’m not even a Jedi now. I’m not in danger. Just land. Please.”
Enacca’s roar of warning filled the small cabin, but she did as she was asked. She set the shuttle down on a rooftop above the Kragget, and insisted on delivering Etain personally to the doors. They stopped short in the shadows of the doorway of a derelict cantina nearby.
“Enacca—look, I—”
The Wookiee grabbed Etain’s hand and slapped a blaster into it. She was going to need that, Enacca said, and there was no time for long good-byes. She’d see her around one day. Then Enacca loped away, vanishing into the turbolift shaft. Etain ripped off her brown robe, the one that marked her so clearly as a Jedi, and dropped it off the walkway into the urban abyss below. Then she walked calmly into the Kragget in her light beige tunic and pants. She still needed to change into plain civilian clothes.
“Hi, sweetheart,” Soronna said softly. It was a restaurant full of cops, most of whom knew exactly who Etain was; and they all knew the Jedi were on the wanted list now. “Why have you come back here?”
“I need a change of clothing, fast.”
Soronna bundled her into the kitchens. She grabbed the first garments she could find, stuff that the cooks had left lying around, plus her own coat and boots, and Etain swapped her rough-spun ascetic uniform for a motley outfit that made her look like a girl who didn’t have the credits to be fashionable but did her best. An ordinary young woman; an average human female of her age from this poor part of town.
“Perfect,” she said, and gave Soronna a kiss on the cheek. “I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you.”
“Oh, come back and wash the dishes sometime…” Soronna opened the trash incinerator and threw in Etain’s old clothing and boots. “Is there anything in your bag that’ll give you away if you’re stopped?”
“I’ve got two lightsabers, a blaster, my comlink, my datapad, and Kad’s toy.”
“You’re crazy. Ditch the lightsabers.”
One of them was her own. But one was Master Fulier’s, her old Master, the Master who was killed because he stood up for what he thought was right, in a very un-Jedi way by current standards. Fulier would never have come to this point. Fulier would have refused to lead clone troops, would have kicked up a stink, would have called Master Yoda any number of unflattering names and demanded to know why they’d all gone down this path with barely a whimper.
She couldn’t leave his lightsaber behind. See, you’d be proud of me now, Master, and I’m not even a Jedi any longer. And if she carried his weapon, then she might as well keep her own. She’d just be careful.
“Good-bye, Soronna,” Etain said, and walked out through the kitchen doors into the restaurant again. She had never felt more calm, more certain, and more safe than she had right now. The terrible ripping sensation in her chest that had stopped her breathing even while the ship was still in hyperspace had faded, its place taken by an animal determination to live.
I have plenty to live for now, and not just an ideal.
As she reached the entrance, one of the CSF cops stood up and blocked her path, with his back to the transparisteel frontage that overlooked the skylane. Her stomach knotted. This man wasn’t going to stop her leaving. But in the split second that it took for her to choose which way she was going to make him move, he glanced over his shoulder at the skylane, and then back again as a GAR patrol gunship swept by.
“All clear, kid,” he said. “They’re just running general security patrols with our boys. Off you go. Good luck.”
The galaxy was full of good folks. She needed to remember that.
From the walkway, she could see a pall of orange-lit smoke rising from the Jedi Temple. It was visible clear across the city; flames leapt to the peak of the four corner towers every so often, then dropped again below the tumbling smoke. She caught a speeder taxi to the upper levels and got out at the Boreali Holotheater, where the mass of crowds was the best camouflage.
The line waiting outside was facing away from the theater doors as the patrons watched the fire. It was as if they thought the war was over, and this disaster was a distant entertainment. On every walkway, there were clone troops. Etain flipped open her datapad to check for new messages again in case she’d missed one.
They’d come through in a flurry as soon as Enacca had brought the shuttle out of hyperspace and the comlink had picked up the local node. The one from Skirata had come through first: GAR HAS ORDERS TO KILL JEDI ON SIGHT—ATTEMPTED COUP. WINDU DEAD. SEND LOCATION AND WE’LL EXTRACT YOU. DON’T TAKE RISK. There was another from Darman: DID YOU GET MY MESSAGE? And now Jusik had tried to reach her. TELL ME WHERE TO FIND YOU.
She tapped out a message to Darman—I GOT YOURS, DID YOU GET MINE?—but she got a relay warning back saying that the node was inoperative.
Stang. Maybe they’d changed the GAR comm protocols in the last twenty-four hours. They did it occasionally because helmet links fel
l into enemy hands, and they needed to keep one step ahead on comm security. She’d try again later. Jusik and Skirata were off the GAR network most of the time.
Etain was aware of the scrutiny of a couple of troopers with blue armor flashes, the 501st, men she would normally have sought out and befriended as she did every clone she met. Now all she could think was that they knew she was a Jedi.
I’m not. I’m no longer a Jedi. They can’t tell me from a non-Force-user.
The Chancellor’s office probably wouldn’t quibble over that fine distinction, though. She swallowed hard a few times, trying not to look as if she was panicking, and tapped in a reply to Jusik.
IN CIVILIAN CLOTHES. I’M OKAY. I’M HEADING FOR THE RV POINT. DON’T LEAVE THE OTHERS.
She slipped the comlink back in her pocket and decided the only way to get past the patrol was to behave like a regular civilian—scared, confused, or both. She’d been in battle, and all she had to do was focus on that feeling, on negotiating a battlefield.
A coup. What was the Jedi Council thinking? Had they sanctioned it, or did Windu take it on himself to act?
Other pedestrians were trying to hail air taxis, but most were zipping past already occupied. There was a definite movement of traffic away from the Temple sector. Etain approached a trooper and decided that if he saw her disorientation, he’d think that was absolutely normal on a night like this.
“Captain,” she said. He was a lieutenant, and that was clear from the subtle rank insignia on his chest plate, but her knowledge might have raised suspicion. “Captain, I need to get to Quadrant J-Twelve.” She didn’t, but it was close enough without giving her destination away. “Are the skylanes closed? What’s happening?”
The trooper looked down at her. She felt him in the Force; he gave her that same impression of child that Darman had exuded when she first sensed him. He was new to this.
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