Republic Commando: Triple Zero

10

Clone troopers are well disciplined. Even the Alpha-batch ARC troopers—surly though they are—are predictable, in the sense that Fett gave them precise orders that they continue to obey. But the commando batches are almost as unpredictable as the Nulls, and the Nulls are as good as being Skirata private army. That's the problem with having intelligent clones trained by a ragbag of undisciplined thugs—they've turned out at best idiosyncratic, at worst disobedient. But they'll probably win the war for us. Tolerate them.

–Assessment of Republic Commando cadre by Director of Special Forces general Arligan Zey, explaining discrepancies in stores and armory inventory to General Iri Camas

Qibbu's Hut, entertainment sector—strike team operationalhouse—early evening, 371 days after Geonosis

“This is plain unnatural,” Boss said. He stood in front of the mirror. “I can't help noticing what this body armor doesn't cover.”

“It covers your torso and thighs, and that's where your major blood vessels and organs are.” Atin tugged at his tunic. They had all defaulted to GAR-issue fatigues, the standard red tunic and pants. Outside the barracks, the casual rig made Fi feel ludicrously naked. “That's all you need. See? Doesn't show under fabric.”

“You can live without an arm,” Fi said. “They can always bolt on a new one.”

“What about my head?”

“Like I said, they can always replace nonessential parts.”

Boss didn't even look up from the inspection of his tunic. “I love this guy. He'll make such great target practice.”

He had a point: they were fighting without helmets. That was going to be tough. Everyone from clone trooper to ARC captain lived by his bucket. The buy'ce was a command and control center in itself.

Fi picked up a coil of razor-sharp wire and stretched it out between his hands. Skirata had taught him to use this: a garrote, flicked around the neck—if your target had a neck—and pulled tight to slice or choke. There were all kinds of interesting devices and techniques that Skirata recommended. Other instructors had their own favorites, according to their commando training batches, but Kars were clearly close-range, personal ones. What was it he used to say? You need to be able to fight if you're cornered in just your underpants, son. Nature gave you teeth and fists.

Sergeant Kal sounded as if he knew exactly how that felt. He certainly knew his techniques.

The main room at the top of the seedy hotel—hastily soundproofed with a micro-anechoic coating over the walls and windows—was filling with jostling bodies. Jusik bounced in, clearly pleased with himself, and laid out a row of small beads and devices on the scratched black duraplast table. Atin wandered over and peered at the haul.

“Where'd you get all that, Bardan?”

Jusik trapped one of the beads on his fingertip and held it out to Atin. Fi moved in. Whatever it was, he wanted one, too. “ARC trooper aural stand-alone comlink. One each. No need for your buy'cese or anything too obvious—just stick it in your ear. Plus …” The Jedi took out a small transparent sac of what looked like powdered permaglass. “Tracking marker.”

“Never seen it before.”

“Brand new from the labs. It's called Dust. Microscopic transmitters. Scattered on a battlefield for pretty much invisible monitoring. You never know when you might need it.”

“You liberated all that from stores?” asked Fi.

“And Procurement Development. It all ended up in my pockets somehow.”

“Captain Maze is going to go spare.”

“That's okay. Ordo can explain the necessity to him later. He listens to Ordo.”

“Where's Skirata?” Sev asked. “Maybe they're having trouble cracking the prisoners.”

“Not Vau.” Fixer pocketed a comlink bead.

“Why did he need Etain, then?”

“Maybe to show her how it's done.”

Fi watched Darman bristle. He waited for his brother to say something, but Dar swallowed whatever retort was forming and went on fussing with the fit of the armor plates under his tunic. It wasn't exactly a secret that he had a soft spot for Etain, but nobody teased him about it, either. It was one of those aspects of life that Skirata had taught them about, but that none of them entertained much hope of pursuing.

It was easy back on Kamino, where the real world had never intruded—not beyond the risk of getting killed in training, of course. But the last nine months' exposure to people outside the tight fraternity had made ordinary life feel much more dangerous than combat itself.

Because other people's lives were not ordinary at all.

Fi went to the window, now obscured by a fine film of anti-surveillance gauze, and watched the promenade of tourists and locals along the walkways facing Qibbu's Hut. He didn't envy them their day-to-day existence: Skirata had told his commando batch just how grim and dreary it could be to earn a living, and how much cleaner it was to have a clear purpose in life.

But he hadn't told them how it might feel to watch couples and families of all species. Skirata stuck to the basics. I've been kicked out by so many females that I can't tell you anything useful about relationships, so just avoid them if you can. Again, it struck the class as something he said and didn't mean—like the way he called them Wet Droids and said they were here to fight, not socialize. It just meant it was a painful topic for him to face.

He also called them Dead Men. But they were not Dead Men any longer. They had learned to be Mandalorian, and that, Kal said, meant they had a soul and a place in the Mando eternity. Fi thought that was probably worth having.

The doors opened and all eight commandos spun around to train a motley collection of modified civilian blasters on the opening. Security code or not, you could never be too careful. Skirata entered with Ordo and Etain at his heels. The squads lowered their weapons.

“Been shopping,” Skirata said cheerfully. And he meant it. Fi expected it to be his usual euphemism for acquiring illicit weapons—or worse—but it seemed he really had been buying things. He tipped a bag of assorted fruit, candies, ices, nuts, and other delicacies that Fi couldn't identify onto the table next to Jusik's haul. “Go on. Fill yer boots.”

Delta hung back. Omega didn't. Then Delta appeared to remember that fill yer boots meant “eat your fill.” Fi peeled bright green wrapping from something that smelled of sour fruits and found it to be frozen and covered in something appetizingly crunchy.

But Etain looked tired. Jusik was watching her warily as if something unspoken was going on between them. Jedi could do that kind of thing, just like soldiers on helmet comlinks, silent to the outside world. Then Etain muttered something about having a hot soak in the 'freshers and disappeared into the next room.

“We have a drop location,” Skirata said. “And a few thousand or so clone troopers on leave for a few weeks thanks to our totally unexpected friend Mar Rugeyan.”

“Mmm, crushed nuts,” Fi said, identifying the topping on the ice. “That was very helpful of him.”

They all stopped in midcrunch. Fi noted Jusik wasn't eating, just watching the sergeant with a rapt expression. The young general had a very bad dose of the Skiratas. As diseases went, it was one of the best to catch.

“So do we get to drop them, or do we have to do the boring thing and let them stroll off?” Boss asked. Niner gave him one of his funny looks, the kind that said he thought a bit of quiet contemplation was called for. Niner and Boss didn't see their newly reduced roles in quite the same way: Niner liked to lead by being certain, and Boss seemed to like being first. “This is a tracking job, right?”

“Vau made you into very impatient boys,” Skirata said. “Yes, this is where it gets boring. And you know what? You won't be any less dead if you get it wrong.” He picked up some shuura fruits and lobbed one each to the Delta team. “And I really hope Vau schooled you well in this, because I'll be pretty hacked off if you get trigger-happy and blow this op.”

Boss looked hurt. Fi didn't think Delta ran to such delicate emotions. “We're pros, Sarge. We know how to do this.”

“What did I tell you?”

“Sorry. Kal. It's just that we haven't even seen the enemy yet.”

“Welcome to anti-terror ops, hotshot. They aren't droids. They don't line up and march at you. Didn't you listen to any of my lectures?”

“Well—”

“They can kill you and not even be on the planet when it happens. But you can track and kill them the same way. This is about patience and attention to detail.”

“Delta's really good at that, so I hear,” Fi said. Sev gave him that blank cold stare. It simply provoked Fi all the more. “That's why they do their op planning with finger paints.”

Skirata lobbed a rolled-up ball of flimsi at Fi and it hit him in the ear—hard. “Okay, Ordo is going to score some credible explosives over the next few days, because that's going to be handy if we need to infiltrate the cells. And we'll start surveillance of the drop point now because we don't have a time window when the explosives were due to be picked up. Four shifts—Fi and Sev as Red Watch, relieved by Dar and Boss as Blue Watch, relieved by Niner and Scorch as Green Watch.”

Fi noted Atin's process of elimination. He looked as if he'd been doused in cold water. Fi suspected he'd wanted to be paired with Sev, and for all the wrong reasons.

“That leaves you and Fixer as White Watch, so you stay focused,” Skirata said, giving Atin a friendly prod in the chest. He'd spotted it, too. But then, Skirata spotted everything. “One watch on observation, one on intel collation, and two stood down.”

“What about everyone else?”

“Ordo's going undercover to find our mole, and Bardan and Etain will join the normal shift rotations until we need to break into a new phase. If needed, Vau and Enacca will turn to as well, and give us a hand.”

Jusik—looking convincingly unsavory in ordinary clothing and with his hair unbound—checked his snazzy S-5 blaster. Yes, Zey would go nuts when he saw the bill for this op. “Can we use the Force, Kal?”

“ 'Course you can, Bard'ika. As long as nobody notices. Or as long as you don't leave witnesses, anyway. Same goes for lightsabers. No witnesses. Might look a bit obvious.”

“When do we start?” Boss asked.

Skirata looked at his chrono. “Three hours. Time to eat, I think.”

Sev elbowed Fi, a little too hard to be friendly but not hard enough to start a fight. “So, you and me. The brains and the mouth. Don't get me killed.”

“I'm slumming it. I usually work with ARC captains.” Watching normal people leading normal lives? I'd rather charge a droid line. What happened to my certainty? Do the others feel like this? “But there's a war on, so sacrifices have to be made.”

“Can you do the dumb-trooper act?”

“You mean you're not doing it now?”

“I hope you're as good as you talk, ner vod.”

“Count on it,” Fi said, and noted that Darman had wandered off in the direction of Etain's exit. “Sometimes I'm not very funny at all.”

* * *

Etain felt she had held out pretty well, all things considered.

It was only when she closed the refresher door that she let herself vomit uncontrollably until tears spilled down her face and into her mouth. She ran water into the basin to cover the sound, and choked on her sobs.

She'd been so convinced she could handle it. And she couldn't.

Ripping into Orjul's soul had been even harder than outright physical violence. She had stolen his conviction from him, which was no great evil until set in the context of the fact that he would, she knew, die very soon without even the comfort of his beliefs, broken and abandoned and alone.

Why am I doing this? Because men are dying.

When do the ends cease to justify the means?

She vomited until she was convulsed by dry heaves. Then she filled the basin with cold water and plunged her head into it. When she straightened up and her vision cleared, she looked into a face she recognized. But it wasn't hers: it was the hard, long face of Walon Vau.

Everything I've been taught is wrong.

Vau was all brutality and expedience, as clear an example of the dark side for a Jedi as any she could imagine. And yet there was a total absence of conscious malice in him. She should have sensed anger and murderous intent, but Vau was just filled with … nothing. No, not nothing: he was actually calm and benign. He thought he was doing good work. And she saw her supposed Jedi ideal in him—motivated not by anger or fear, but by what she thought was right. She now questioned everything she'd been taught.

Dark and light are simply the perpetrator's perception. How can that be right?

How can Vau's passionless expedience be morally superior to Ski rata's anger and love?

Etain had struggled for years with her own anger and resentment. The choices were to be a good Jedi or a failed Jedi, with the assumption—sometimes unspoken, sometimes not—that failure meant the dark side awaited.

But there was a third path: to leave the Order.

She wiped her face on the towel and faced a hard realization. She remained a Jedi because she knew no other life. She pitied Orjul not because she had tortured him, but because he had been robbed of the one thing that held him together, his convictions, without which he had no direction. The truth was that she pitied herself—devoid of direction—and projected it onto her victim by way of denial.

The only selfless thing I have ever done that was not centered on my own need to be a good, passionless, detached Jedi was to care about these cloned men and ask what we're doing to them.

And that was her direction.

It was so very clear; but she was still raw and aching within. Revelation didn't heal. She sat on the edge of the tub with her head resting on her knees.

“Ma'am, what's wrong?” It was Darman's voice. It should have been the same as every other clone's, but it wasn't. They all had their distinct nuances in accent, pitch, and tone. And he was Dar.

She could sense Darman across star systems now. She'd wanted to reach out to him in the Force many times, but feared it might distract him from his duty and endanger him, or—if he knew it was her and didn't welcome it—annoy him.

After all, he'd had the choice of staying on Qiilura with her. And he had opted to stay with his squad. What she felt for him now, the longing that had developed only after they parted, might not be mutual.

He called out again. “Are you okay?”

She opened the doors, and Darman peered in.

“I don't want to be ma'am right now, Dar.”

“Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt—”

“Don't go.”

He moved a couple of steps into the room as if it were booby-trapped. She had been here before; she had been utterly dependent on his military skills when her life was at stake. He had been so focused, so reassuring, so competent. Where she had doubts, he had certainties.

“So you still don't find it any easier, then,” said Darman.

“What?”

“Giving in to anger. You know. Violence.”

“Oh, any Jedi Master would have been proud of me. I did it all without anger. Anger makes it the dark side. Being serene makes it okay.”

“I know it must have been hard. I know how Sergeant Kal reacted when he had to—”

“No. I was harming a stranger. No personal dilemma at all.”

“It doesn't make you a bad person. It has to be done. Is that what's upsetting you?”

“That, maybe. And having doubts.”

She didn't want to be alone with all that in her head. She could have meditated. She had the strength of will and the ancient skills to pass through this turmoil and do what Jedi had done for millennia—detach from the moment. But she didn't want to.

She wanted to risk living with those terrible feelings. The danger suddenly seemed to lie in denying them, just as she tried unsuccessfully to deny what she felt for Darman.

“Dar, do you ever have doubts? You always said you were certain of your role. I always felt you were.”

“You really want to know?”

“Yes.”

“I have doubts all the time.”

“What kind?”

“Before we left Kamino, I was so sure what I had to do. Now … well, the more I see of the galaxy … the more I see of other people, the more I wonder, why me? How did I end up here, and not like the people I see around me in Coruscant? When we win the war, what will happen to me and my brothers?”

They weren't stupid. They were highly intelligent: bred for it, in fact, and if you bred people to be intelligent and resourceful and resilient and aggressive, then sooner or later they would notice that their world wasn't fair, and begin to resent it.

“I ask that, too,” Etain said.

“It makes me feel disloyal.”

“It's not disloyal to question things.”

“It's dangerous, though,” Darman said.

“For the status quo?”

“Sometimes you can't argue with everything. Like orders. You don't have the full picture of the battle, and the order you ignore might just be the one that should have saved your life.”

“Well, I'm glad you have doubts. And I'm glad I do, too.”

Darman leaned against the wall, all concern. “Do you want something to eat? We're going to risk Qibbu's nerf in glockaw sauce. Scorch reckons it's probably armored rat.”

“I'm not sure I can face crowds right now.”

“You might be overestimating the popularity of Qibbu's cuisine.” He shrugged. “I could probably get the cook to stun the thing with my Deece and send it up by room service.”

That was Darman all over: he had a relentlessly positive nature. It was her job to inspire him, but he'd been the one on Qiilura who had made her get up and fight time after time. He'd changed her forever. She wondered if he had any idea how much he was still changing her life now.

“Okay,” she said. “But only if you keep me company.”

“Yeah, eating armored rat alone is probably asking for trouble.” He grinned suddenly, and she felt illuminated by it. “You might need first aid.”

Niner's voice interrupted from down the passage. “Dar, you coming with us or what? Fi and Sev are supposed to be on watch.”

“No, I'll get something sent up. They can head on down with you. We'll do the duty.” Darman cocked his head as if to listen for some rebuke. “That okay?”

This time it was Skirata's voice. “Two steaks?”

“Please.”

“Not something safe, like eggs?”

“Steaks. We fear nothing.”

Suddenly Etain felt an urge to laugh. Fi might have been the comedian, but Dar was genuinely uplifting. He wasn't trying to suppress pain.

She also found him distractingly handsome, even though he looked identical to his brothers. She adored them as friends, but they were not Darman, and somehow they didn't even look like him. Nobody else ever would be that precious to her, she knew that.

“Well, what shall we do now?” he asked.

“Not lightsaber training, for a start.”

“You really whacked me with that branch.”

“You told me I had to.”

“So you take orders from clones, do you, General?”

“You kept me alive.”

“Ah, you'd have done fine without me.”

“Actually, no,” said Etain. “Actually, I wouldn't have done fine at all.”

She looked him in the eye for a few moments, hoping that Darman the man would react to her, but he simply stared back, a bewildered boy again. “I'd never been that close to a human female before. Did you know that?”

“I guessed as much?”

“I wasn't even sure if Jedi were … real flesh and blood.”

“I wonder sometimes, too.”

“I wasn't scared of dying.” He put his hands to his head for a moment and then raked his fingers through his hair, that gesture she'd seen in Skirata. “I was afraid because I didn't know what I was feeling and—”

The service droid buzzed to be let in.

“Fierfek.” Darman's shoulders sagged a little. He got up and took the tray from the droid, looking pink-faced and annoyed. He peeled back the lids and inspected the contents as if they were unstable explosives, and she felt the moment was now lost.

“Is it dead?” Etain asked.

“If it isn't, it's not getting up again anytime soon.”

She chewed a test-mouthful thoughtfully. “Could be worse.”

“Ration cubes …”

“Oh, that brings back memories.”

“Now you know why we'll eat anything.”

“I remember the bread, too. Ugh.”

He prodded something in the container with his fork, looking concerned. “You did reach out to me in the Force, didn't you? I wasn't imagining that.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Why?”

“Isn't it obvious?”

“How would I know? I'm not sure if I know that much about you.”

“I think you do, Dar.”

Darman suddenly took exceptional interest in the remains of the steak, which might have been nerf after all. “I don't think anyone believed females would matter to us, given our life expectancy. And it wasn't relevant to combat.”

That was freshly agonizing. Of all the injustices piled on these clones who had never been given choices, that was the worst: the denial of any individual future, of hope itself. If they beat the odds of battle, they were still doomed to lose the war against time. Darman would probably be dead in thirty years, and she wouldn't even be halfway through her life by then.

“I bet Kal thought it was important.”

Darman chewed his lip and averted his gaze. She wasn't sure if he was embarrassed or if he simply didn't know what she was really asking.

“He never mentioned what to do about generals,” he said quietly.

“My Master never specifically mentioned soldiers, either.”

“I hear you ignore orders anyway.”

“I was afraid I'd never see you again, Dar. But you're here now, and that's all that matters.”

She held her hand out to him. He hesitated for a moment and then reached across the table and took it.

“We could be dead tomorrow, both of us,” she said. “Or the next day, or next week. That's war.” She thought of the other Fi, whose life had ebbed away in her arms. “And I don't want to die without telling you that I missed you every day since you left, and that I love you, and that I don't believe what I was taught about attachment any more than you should believe that you were bred only to die for the Republic.”

This was breaking all the rules.

But the war had broken all the rules of peacekeeping Jedi and a civilized Republic anyway. The Force wouldn't be thrown into turmoil if a mediocre Jedi and a cloned soldier who had no rights broke just one more.

“I never stopped thinking about you, either,” said Darman. “Not for a moment.”

“So … how long does it take two squads to finish their meals in the bar?”

“Long enough, I think,” said Darman.