Republic Commando: Triple Zero

24

A major terrorist network lies in tatters this morning following the end of a massive overnight operation by Coruscant Security Forces. A total of ninety-seven suspects were detained or killed, and what's described as “a significant amount” of explosives seized. Senator Ihu Niopua described it as a magnificent piece of police work and praised officers.

–HNE evening news, 387 days after Geonosis

Coruscant Security Force Staff and Social Club, 2000 hours, 388 days after Geonosis: ATU and OCU reception for men and guests of Arca Company, Special Operations Brigade

CSF didn't know how brave they'd been until they heard it on the HNE bulletin.

Fi decided to treat the coverage as funny rather than as another case of his brothers' efforts going unrecognized. Skirata had warned him that all special forces personnel had to deal with that, clone or not, so it was nothing personal.

Anyway, it didn't matter. He was leaning on a bar—a clean bar, one that didn't leave your elbows soaking wet—surrounded by people who weren't criminals; unless you counted Sergeant Kal, of course, and he was a special case, because extreme bounty hunting wasn't really a crime. And police officers were buying him drinks and shaking his hand, telling him that their buddies would all have been ground nerf if he hadn't thrown himself on that grenade during the spaceport siege. It was amazing how they still remembered that.

Fi didn't have the heart to tell them that he simply did what years of training had made his body do involuntarily, and that he didn't know how to do anything else. He simply grinned and enjoyed the adulation. He liked the comradeship.

Some of them were female officers, too. They were fascinated by his armor. He enjoyed explaining the parts and functions to them, and wondered why they giggled when he told them how easy it was to take off.

Ordo wandered in with Obrim and joined Fi at the bar. Obrim handed them both a glass of a light-colored ale, instantly another brother in uniform with a tacit understanding of how things were.

“I see they've upgraded your armor again,” he said, tapping Fi's breastplate with the knuckle of his forefinger. “Different finish. Classy.”

“Well, they have to try the new kit out on someone, and we're just so stylish.”

“I suppose they can afford to, now that there's fewer of you left to kit out,” Obrim said, falling into the grim cynicism of men used to being at the mercy of accountants. “Because body bags are a lot cheaper.”

“What body bags?” Fi said.

“Really?”

“Not the Mando way. Or the Republic's.”

“Kriffing tightwads.” Obrim sighed irritably. Then he indicated Mereel, who was surrounded by a small knot of officers plus Delta Squad, laughing noisily. “I see your brother is teaching our boys some bad Mando'a words. Is it true you don't have a word for 'hero'?”

“Yes, but we've got a dozen for 'stab.'”

Obrim almost laughed. “And how many for frying someone with a blaster?”

“Loads,” said Fi. “We don't know much about art, but we know what we like.”

Ordo was scanning the crowded bar with a faint frown. Fi followed his gaze. He wondered if he was checking where Etain and Jusik were, because Jedi didn't fit easily into the raucous atmosphere of a police social club, but there was Jusik, all smiles, engaged in an intense conversation with two Sullustan forensics officers. Darman was deep in discussion with Corr and a couple of men Fi recognized as CSF bomb disposal experts from the spaceport siege. Niner and Boss seemed to have been drawn into a strange game with some other officers that involved throwing a knife at the fine wooden carvings above the bar, much to the annoyance of the service droid.

And Atin had Laseema on his arm, gazing at him adoringly, even if he did still have a striking black eye from his fight with Vau.

But no Etain, and no Vau. Vau had gone off on another job—unspecified, of course. Darman was still here, though, and that meant Etain was, too, for the time being.

Ordo seemed to be concentrating on the doorway.

“What's your problem, ner vod?”

“Agent Wennen said she would come,” Ordo said. He looked uncharacteristically awkward, seeming for once as if he didn't know what to do next. “I'll have a look around. It's a big bar.”

Obrim watched him go. “Fi,” he said, “do you mind me asking you something personal?”

“I always try to help police with their inquiries, Captain.”

“Seriously, son. Kal talks to me about you all. I never knew how you were … bred for all this. Sorry. I can't find another word for it. You don't seem to resent it at all. I'd be furious. Aren't you angry? Not just a little?”

Fi wished Obrim didn't make him think. In a way it was much, much simpler on Kamino. It was also easier being alone with only your squad for company on some osik'la planet blowing up droids. There was a clean focus in that. Coruscant had indeed been the hardest battlefield of all, as Sergeant Kal had warned him. But that wasn't because it was rife with the dangers of not knowing if the enemy was standing right next to you. It was because it showed him what he could never have.

“I've done a lot of thinking in the past year,” Fi said. “Yes, there's plenty wrong. I know I deserve more than this. I want a nice girl and a life and I don't want to die. And I know I'm being used, thanks. But I'm a soldier, and I'm also Mandalorian, and my strength is always going to be what I carry around inside me, my sense of who and what I am. Even if the rest of the galaxy sinks in its own filth, I'll die without compromising my honor.” He drained his glass and started on the next one that was lined up on the bar. He wasn't that fond of the taste, but he believed in being polite. “That's what keeps me going. That, and my brothers. And that ale you promised me.”

“I had to ask.” Obrim frowned quickly and looked away for a moment. “Did that drink really keep you going?”

He thought of the insertion into Fest months before. “Yeah, Captain. Sometimes it did.”

Fi dreaded where the conversation might take him but he was interrupted by a loud cheer from farther down the bar. Skirata had arrived and was demonstrating his skill in the knife-throwing game. He let fly with his vicious three-sided knife, knocking the other knives out of the woodwork time after time. The bar droid protested.

“He's way too good at that,” Obrim said, and turned to Fi again to resume the conversation. “Now, about this—”

Fi didn't want to discuss it anymore. He straightened up and called across the bar to Skirata. “Sarge? Sarge! Want to show 'em the Dha Werda?”

There was a whoop of “Kandosii!” from the squads. “Yeah, come on, Sarge! Let's show them how it's done!”

“I'm too old,” Skirata said, retrieving his knife.

“Nah,” Fi said, and seized the chance to drag Skirata away from the game. “You taught us this, remember?”

Skirata took the invitation and limped over to join the two squads, who quickly cleared a space in the bar. Ordo, Mereel, and Jusik joined them; Corr stood back, uncertain. Troopers rarely got the chance to see the ritual chant, let alone learn it.

“I haven't had enough to drink yet,” Skirata said, “but I'll give it a go.”

Without his armor, he looked even smaller among his commandos than usual. The chant started up.

Taung—sa—rang—bro-ka!

Je—tii—se-ka—'rta!

Dha—Wer-da—Ver-da—a'den—tratu!

He fell into the rhythm instantly, keeping perfect time, taking rhythmic blows on his leather jacket that normally fell on hard armor. He was a battle-hardened warrior like his lads, just older.

Fi winked at him, careful to allow for their difference in height.

Cor—u—scan—ta—kan—dosii—adu!

Duum—mo—tir—ca—'tra—nau—tracinya!

Skirata kept up the relentless pace for verse after verse. Fi caught sight of white armor in his peripheral vision and ARC Trooper Captain Maze appeared from the crowd of CSF officers who were watching openmouthed with glasses of ale in their hands.

“Mind if I join in?” Maze said.

Fi had no intention of trying to stop an ARC trooper. Maze slipped into the line next to Ordo and smiled at his brother captain in a way Fi didn't quite like.

As Skirata always told outsiders, the Dha Werda took stamina, timing, and total trust in your comrades. Complex rhythms sharpened your brain and taught you to think as one. Turn too fast or too late, and you'd get a nasty smack in the face. It was performed without buy'cese.

Ordo wasn't quite as focused as he should have been. Maybe his mind was still on where lovely Besany Wennen might be. Whatever the reason, as Fi turned right, fists clenched, arms at shoulder height, ready to beat the rhythm on Niner's back plate, he saw and heard Maze's fist connect with Ordo's chin.

Ordo carried on, blood weeping from his lip, refusing to break the rhythm. You didn't stop if you got hit. You carried on.

Gra—'tua—cuun—hett—su—dralshya!

Kom—'rk—tsad—drot-en—t-roch—nyn—ures—adenn!

The line of commandos turned ninety degrees left, hammering the rhythm, and then right again, and Maze hit Ordo neatly and—Fi had to admit it—elegantly in the mouth again without losing the beat. Blood splashed on Ordo's pristine white chest plate. Fi waited for the encounter to erupt in a fight, but the chant finished without incident and Ordo simply wiped his mouth on the palm of his glove.

“Sorry, ner vod,” Maze said, smiling with genuine amusement. “You know how clumsy we ordinary ARC troopers are. We make lousy dancers.”

Fi held his breath. He was ready to back Ordo up against Maze; Ordo was his friend. And Fi also knew that he was utterly unpredictable and totally unafraid of violence.

Ordo merely shrugged, held out his arm, and the two ARC captains shook hands and went to the bar. Skirata watched them carefully and smiled.

All ARCs were crazy. Sometimes Fi was grateful that he'd had the most volatile bits of Jango removed from his genes.

Skirata sat down on a bar stool and wiped sweat from his lined forehead with the palm of his hand.

“I'm not getting any younger,” he said, catching his breath, and laughed. “I'll be black and blue in the morning. Shouldn't try that without body armor.”

“You could have dipped out after a few minutes,” Fi said. He handed him a cloth. “We wouldn't have minded.”

“But I would have. I can't ask a man to do what I can't or won't do myself.”

“You never have.” Fi noted that a small silence had formed around the doorway—and its cause was Besany Wennen. She walked in, looking around, then spotted Ordo and went over to him.

“I'm going out on the balcony to get some air,” Skirata said.

The last thing Fi saw before Obrim led him away to meet some officers who were very keen to buy him more drinks was Besany Wennen dabbing at Ordo's split lip with a handkerchief and berating a visibly surprised Captain Maze.

“Hello,” Skirata said. “I didn't realize you were out here, ad'ika.”

Etain looked up. She had been peering over the balcony at the lane upon lane of airspeeder traffic below. Nightscapes on Coruscant were as entertaining as a holovid. “It's too noisy for me in there. You look like you've been having fun.”

Skirata joined her and rested folded arms on the safety rail. “Been showing CSF the Dha Werda.”

“I bet that was painful.” He seemed a fundamentally good man. She adored him, even if he scared her sometimes. “It's good to see everyone relaxing. It's been tough, hasn't it?”

“We did it, though. All of us. You too, ad'ika. Well done.”

She was blissfully certain of life now. She felt good. She was also certain that Skirata was a man who understood love and the risks people would take to make those they loved happy. He defied generals and anyone who stood in his way to make sure his soldiers—his sons, for that was what they were—got what was rightfully theirs.

There was no reason not to tell him her wonderful news. She should have told Darman first, but she wasn't quite sure how. And—anyway—Skirata was Kal'buir. He was everyone's father.

“Thank you for being so understanding about me and Dar,” she said.

Skirata rubbed his forehead. “I'm sorry for lecturing you. I'm very protective of them all. But you're both happy, and I'm glad to see that.”

“I hope you'll be glad that I'm having a baby, then.”

There was a moment's silence.

“What?” said Skirata.

“I'm pregnant.”

She watched his face harden. “Pregnant?”

She hadn't expected that. An unpleasant coldness spread up from her stomach into her chest.

“Whose is it?” Skirata asked. His voice was level, controlled, distant. It was a mercenary's voice.

That hurt. “Darman's, of course.”

“He doesn't know, then. He'd have told me if he did.”

“No, I haven't told him.”

“Why?”

“How could he cope with that? It's hard enough for a normal—”

“He's not abnormal. He's what you people made him.”

“I meant …” Etain struggled. “I meant that he has no experience to enable him to cope with being a father at a time like this.”

“Nobody ever has.”

“I wanted him to have some kind of future.”

Skirata's face didn't change. “You planned this? How can he have a future if he doesn't know he has a son? Genes don't count for everything.”

“If anyone finds out that I'm expecting a child, I'll be thrown out of the Jedi Order and I won't be able to serve. I have to carry on. I can't let the men down.”

Skirata was furious. She felt it. She could see it, too. And if she thought that was bad, it would be nothing compared with how the Jedi Council would react. She'd be kicked out of the Order. She'd no longer be a general, no longer able to play her part in the war.

But you knew that.

You should have thought that through.

The reality felt very different. And yet she didn't regret it one bit, and that was why she hadn't thought about the Jedi Council's reaction. It was right. The Force had guided her to this point.

“And how are you planning to disguise this fact?” Skirata asked, still cold calm. “It's going to be pretty visible.”

“I can go into a healing trance and accelerate the pregnancy. I can bear this child in five months.” She put her hand on her belly. “It's a boy.”

That was probably the worst thing she could have told Skirata. Etain should have known Mandalorians better by now. The father–son bond was paramount. Every scrap of warmth that he had ever shown her had evaporated: and it devastated her. She had grown to love him as a father, too.

And a good Mando father put his son first.

“In this great plan of yours, then, this plan to give my lad a future, what did you think his son might become? A Jedi?”

“No. Just a man. A man with a normal life.”

“No, ad'ika.” Skirata's hands were thrust in his pockets now. She could see the rise and fall of his chest as his breathing labored with suppressed rage. A little black vortex in the Force opened up around him. “No, Darman's son will be Mandalorian, or he has no son at all. Don't you understand? Unless the kid has his culture and what makes him Mandalorian, he … he has no soul. That's why I had to teach them all, all my boys, what it was to be Mando. Without it they're dead men.”

“I know how important it is.”

“No, I don't think you do. We're nomadic. We have no country. All we have to hold us together is what we are, what we do, and without that we're … dar'manda. I don't know how to explain it … we have no soul, no afterlife, no identity. We're eternally dead.”

Etain repeated dar'manda to herself. “That's how he got his name, isn't it?”

“Yes.”

It began to dawn on her why Skirata and Vau were both so obsessed with teaching their trainees about their heritage. They weren't just giving them a cultural identity: they were literally saving their lives, their very souls. “He'll be a Force-user. That will make him—”

“Are you insane? Do you know what that makes him worth to creatures like the Kaminoans? Do you know how very interested people will be in his genetic material? He's in danger, you di'kut!”

The value of her son's unique genetic heritage had never crossed Etain's mind. She was appalled. She struggled to cope with the hazards that sprang up around her as if from nowhere. “But how can Dar raise him?”

“You didn't ask that question when you started all this? Do you really love him?”

“Yes! Yes, you know I do. Kal, if I don't have his child and he dies—”

“When he dies. He's designed to die young. I'll outlive him. And you're built to live a long time.”

“You said it yourself—just one broad generation of men. Then there's nothing of the clones left eventually, nothing to show they ever lived and served and died. They all deserve better than that.”

“But again, Darman isn't given any choice,” Kal said. “No choice about fighting. No choice about being a father.”

He lapsed into silence, walking to the far side of the balcony and leaning on it, just as he had when she'd seen him agonize over whether he had been a monster, a man who turned small boys into soldiers and sent them to fight the aritedise's war.

Etain waited. There was no point arguing with him. He was right: she took choice out of Darman's hands just as every Jedi general did.

“Kal,” she said.

He didn't turn.

She put a cautious hand on his back. She felt him tense. “Kal, what do you want me to do to make this right? Don't you want at least one of your men to leave something behind him, someone who'll remember him?”

“You can only remember what you know.”

“I'll keep the child safe—”

“You've got a name for him, haven't you? I know it. You know you're expecting a boy so you'll have thought of a name. Mothers do that.”

“Yes. I—”

“Then I don't want to hear it. If you want my help, I have conditions.”

She knew that. She should have known. Skirata took his paternal role obsessively, and he was a hard man, a mercenary, a man whose whole instinct had been honed to fight and survive since he was a small boy.

“I need your help, Kal'buir”

“Don't call me that.”

“I'm sorry.”

“You want my help? Then here are my terms. Darman is told he has a son when it's safe for him to know, not when it suits you. And if that isn't when the kid's born, then I name the boy as a Mando'ad. Fathers name their sons, so if Dar can do that, then I'll make sure that he does.”

“So I don't have any choice.”

“You could skip town to any one of a thousand planets if you wanted to.”

“And you'd find me.”

“Oh yes. I find people. It's my job.”

“And you'd tell the Jedi Order. You hate me.”

“No, I actually like you, ad'ika. I just despise Jedi. You Force-users never question your right to shape the galaxy. And ordinary people never realize they have the chance to.”

“I think … I think it would be very fitting for Darman's son to know his heritage.”

“He'll do more than that. If Darman can't raise him as a Mando, then I will. I've had plenty of practice. Plenty.”

Etain was helpless. Her only choice was to run—and she knew that wasn't fair to anyone, least of all to the baby. It would have confirmed to her that all she wanted was a child, something to cling to and love and be loved by in return, regardless of how she got it.

This had to be for Darman. His son could not grow up an ordinary man. And Etain had no idea how to raise a Mando son. Skirata did. If she refused, she knew exactly how far he would go to get his way.

“How will you cope with a Force-using child?” she asked.

“The same way I raised six lads who were so disturbed and damaged by being placed in live-fire battle simulations as toddlers that they never stood a chance of being normal. With a lot of love and patience.”

“You actually want to do this, don't you?”

“Yes, I do. More than anything. It's my absolute duty as a Mando'ad”

So that was his price. “I can disguise the pregnancy—”

“No, you're going to have a nice quiet few months under deep cover on Qiilura, with one of Jinart's people to keep an eye on you. And just watch me make that happen. Then you return with the child, and I raise it here. A grandson. Given my family history, nobody will turn a hair.”

“What will you call him?”

“If Darman is in a position to know when the child's born, it'll be his choice. Until then, I'll keep my ideas to myself.”

“So you agree Darman shouldn't know yet.”

“If I tell him, or you do, then how is he going to go off to war again and keep his mind on his own safety? He ships out again in a few days. So will you. This isn't like telling a regular lad that he's made a girl pregnant, and that can be bad enough. He's a clone with no rights and no real idea of the real world, and he's made his Jedi general pregnant. Do I have to draw you a picture?”

Etain had never truly enraged anyone. The Jedi who had raised her and trained her all her life had been far beyond that emotion. They allowed themselves a little impatience or irritation, but never anger. And on Qiilura, when she had the responsibility for four commandos thrust upon her for the first time in a desperate, dangerous mission, Jinart's anger at her inexperience had been well short of rage.

But Skirata was now drowning in it. She could feel his blind anger and how he was holding it in check. She could see the ashen tone of his face, drained of blood. She could hear the strain in his voice.

“Kal, you of all people should know how much it matters. Your own sons disowned you for putting your clone soldiers before them. You must know what it feels like to risk hatred and contempt to do the right thing for those you love. And why you'd do the same again.”

“If you had been Laseema telling me she was carrying Atin's child, things would have been very different,” he hissed.

There was a movement behind them.

“Kal'buir?”

Etain turned. Ordo stood in the doorway. She hadn't felt him approaching; compared with the disturbance Kal was generating in the Force, he was invisible.

“It's okay, son.” Skirata looked embarrassed and beckoned him across. He managed to feign a smile. “So Captain Maze got his own back, then?”

Ordo, attuned to Skirata's reactions, looked at Etain suspiciously. He felt like the strut in the Force right then, except there was no joyful sense of a wild infant at play, just ferocity. “Honor has been satisfied, as they say. I wondered if you wanted to join us for a drink. Besany is anxious to see you again.”

“Ah, us sounds as if you two are getting on very well.” Skirata smiled, and it was real: Besany Wennen was not, of course, a jetii, a Jedi. She was acceptable. “I'd love to, Ord'ika. Etain and I were just finishing our chat anyway.”

Skirata left as if nothing had happened. Etain leaned on the rail, forehead on her crossed arms, and felt almost completely crushed. But Skirata was right in everything he had said: and he would honor his promise to help her. The price was inevitable. She would pay it.

She focused on the joy that surrounded her son in the Force. However hard things became, that was one thing nobody could take from her—not even Kal'buir.