501st: An Imperial Commando Novel

  Ordo cut in. “Plans and layouts. Keep it simple. We’re not going to sabotage the Empire. We’re extracting our brothers. Nothing else. Understand?”

  “Oops,” Mereel said. “Old habits …”

  As long as the Empire left them alone, they’d give it a wide berth. That was Kal’buir’s plan, and Ordo was going to make sure everyone stuck to it.

  This was a time to pick their battles carefully. Now they had a choice about who and where they fought—and why.

  The aruetiise could fight their own wars for a change. It’d do them the power of good.

  7

  We conquered whole star systems. We had an empire. When cities heard our armies were coming, populations fled before a shot was fired. Now we cling to a pathetic sector of dirtball planets, we scramble for the crumbs that the cowardly aruetiise throw when they want us to fight for them, and they use us as breeding stock for their clone armies. The aruetiise will always treat us like an animal species to be used for their convenience until we stand up for ourselves again.

  —Lorka Gedyc, commander of the Mandalorian Death Watch—not disbanded, merely in ba’slan shev’la awaiting a convenient time to return

  Freighter Cornucopia, off Ralltiir; rendezvous point.

  Ny Vollen’s freighter dropped out of hyperspace just as she realized there was something in her coveralls that she hadn’t put there.

  Her pant-leg pocket bulged open. She didn’t notice it until she reached for the controls and the fabric caught on the armrest of her seat. When she looked at what had snagged it, she found all the cash creds she’d shoved back into Skirata’s hand before she left Mandalore, a stack of five-hundred and thousand denomination chips.

  I do not need your creds, Shortie. I don’t care how much you’re worth. Nobody’s going to accuse me of sponging off a rich man. Any man, in fact.

  “You stubborn old barve,” she muttered, staring at the plastoid chips. She hadn’t even felt him put them there. The man would have made a superb pickpocket, and probably had been one in his past. “Guess where I’m going to ram these.”

  Mereel laughed. “Perfect. When can I start calling you Mama?”

  “When the Kaminoans tweaked your genes, they definitely removed the one for subtlety, didn’t they?”

  Ordo didn’t laugh, but Prudii, Jaing, and Mereel did. Four Nulls was about the most Ny could handle at one time. All six of them together—that was a pack. Not unruly, not undisciplined, just … primed. She felt that raw power and complete focus in them, like hunting animals waiting to be let loose. Even Mird didn’t make her feel like that.

  “We mean well,” Jaing said. “But Buir doesn’t meet many folks he likes and trusts, especially female ones his own age.”

  “The diplomacy gene’s gone missing, too, I see.”

  “It’s all about time, Ny. We’ve all got less left than we ought to have.”

  Jaing had a rare talent for getting to the point, not as bluntly gauche as Ordo but equally capable of saying the things other folks kept to themselves. Yes, they were all on borrowed time, and there was every chance she’d still outlive them. And so might their father.

  “Things aren’t always that simple,” she said.

  Mereel put on his I’m-just-an-innocent-kid face, which pressed all Ny’s buttons even though she knew perfectly well that he was nothing of the kind.

  “We like having you around,” he said. “And Buir’s been alone for years—long before Kamino. We know he likes you because he says things to you that he’d never normally tell anyone.”

  “What, like he’s got a trillion kriffing creds?”

  “He told you he came from Kuat,” Jaing said. “And he did admit he was a trillionaire. The night you first met him. Remember?”

  Ny recalled that just fine. Yes, he had. And the Nulls never forgot anything, not with those eidetic memories the Kaminoans gave them. “I thought he was joking.”

  Ordo, hunched in the copilot’s seat, looked up from the navigation display. “Mereel, shut up, will you?”

  “Well, Buir doesn’t have my natural charm with the ladies, so he’s never going to raise the—”

  “I said shut up.” Ordo turned and reached behind him to put a worryingly firm grip on Mereel’s shoulder. “Ny’s lost her husband. She might not be ready for all this. She might not like Buir in that way. Just get off her back.”

  Ny had never seen clones lose their tempers with one another. For some reason, she thought they’d be perfectly attuned in some kind of mystic twin-like harmony, but she was wrong. They were like any other family with their spats and fallings-out. She felt awful for being the cause of this one.

  “Hey, Ordo, it’s all right.” His intervention sounded like something Besany had said to him, a lesson he’d absorbed, but maybe he really did think that. “I’m not offended. Mereel’s just … oh, c’mon, you two, truce. Okay?”

  “Don’t make her come back here,” Prudii said.

  Ny understood why Skirata indulged his sons so shamelessly. She’d give in to just about anything they asked of her.

  “There’s matchmaking,” she said carefully, “and then there’s forced marriage.”

  Jaing grinned. “Yes, but where’s a pensioner like you going to meet another eccentric trillionaire at your time of life?”

  “I haven’t got a kriffing pension.” She clenched her back teeth. If she laughed, it only encouraged them. “Just give me some thinking time. And don’t bug your dad about it, either.”

  “See? She’s got the mother thing down pat.” Mereel wasn’t deterred by Ordo’s temper. “Next stage is just wait until I tell your father.”

  Ny knew the only way Mereel could have learned that was from holovids. These clones had a devoted father, but they’d never known a mother or anything resembling one. The constant joking about it made her wonder if it troubled them at some subconscious level, or if it was just that they loved their dad, saw their brothers settling down happily, and wanted the same for Skirata because they thought there was some universal remedy for a broken heart.

  Ny wasn’t immune to that. The prospect of filling the void in her life was all too easy to grab without thinking. Why else had she flung herself into this, when she could have lived out her widowed years quietly and never needed to worry about the Empire kicking down her door?

  Jaing inserted a probe into the navigation console and consulted the readout on his datapad. “There you go—bogus tachometer readings all sorted. We’ve just come from Phindar. Did we all have a good time there?”

  “Can’t wait to do it again.” Prudii yawned. “Wherever it is.”

  Ordo didn’t join in. He was the serious brother, constantly on duty and checking every detail. Besany was very much like him. Ny suspected that their children were going to be beautiful but unsmiling perfectionists who had to have jokes explained to them.

  Cornucopia headed for the RV point with Mereel’s contacts, just one more commercial vessel inbound for a freighter way station, nothing special, nothing dangerous. Ny wondered where to dock to take on supplies on the way back. Ordo followed the transponder traces on the monitor, audio headset held to one ear.

  “Mereel, can you confirm this is Teekay? Hyperdrive service vessel showing as registered to the HealthiDrive franchise division, showing eight-zero-five.”

  “That’s it. Send him the code.”

  “Receiving confirmation.” Ordo nodded a few times, eyes fixed on the screen. Whatever was happening, Ny couldn’t hear the conversation. “Okay, Ny, dock at pier nine-delta and they’ll come alongside there.”

  It was just routine, she told herself. She’d stopped here a dozen times before over the years, a handy station for emergency repairs or to break a journey if she was flying the two main routes between the Core to the Tingel Arm—usually the Hydian, sometimes the Perlemian. All she had to do was behave as she had on every trip for the last forty years. If she was boarded, she was just another pilot with four Mandalorians as paying passengers, noth
ing out of the ordinary at all. She let the computer take over the final approach and marveled that even after four decades of hauling freight and surrendering her ship to automated systems, she still hated taking her hands off the steering yoke.

  Cornucopia settled onto the platform. Locking clamps moved to secure the freighter’s landing gear with an alarming thunk, an almost-forgettable routine that now felt unpleasantly like being handcuffed.

  Mereel put on his helmet to seal his suit, then checked his blaster. “Okay, just let Teekay dock for a repair, and I’ll handle the air lock transfer,” he said. “And I just want to remind you shabuire that I’ve played meat-cans before.”

  “Were you good at it?” Ny asked.

  “Fooled the aiwha-bait, and they know clones better than anybody. Ordo’s done it, too.” Mereel disappeared down the aft bridge hatch, boots clanging on the ladder. “We’ve done it a lot.”

  “He’s not expecting trouble, is he?” Ny asked, making a blaster shape with an extended thumb and forefinger.

  “Habit,” Ordo said. “We’re opening the door in a rough neighborhood.”

  “It’s just a freighter stop.”

  “Any neighborhood is rough when we show up.”

  Prudii chuckled to himself. “You’ll be ori’mando one day, Ny …”

  The transfer only took minutes, but it felt a lot longer. Ny wandered down to the side doors of the cargo bay and watched as a droid and a young human male in HealthiDrive franchise coveralls steered a heavily laden repulsor through the inner air lock. It looked as if they’d cleared out an Imperial quartermaster’s store.

  “Anyone call for a fuel injector gasket?” Gaib asked.

  “Good. Nice to see you in character.” Mereel nodded at the dull gray plastoid crates as the repulsor came to a halt in front of him. He opened a lid. “Four suits, Gaib. Did you get matching sets in all the latest spring colors or something?”

  “Ten suits.” TK-0 glided in between his human associate and Mereel. “We know how you like to go in mob-handed. So we thought—why not score a few more than required? Easier than going back for extras.”

  “You think of everything,” Mereel said.

  “You can do that with a positronic brain.” The droid plunged his manipulators into the boxes and began extracting white plastoid armor plates. “Did you know an organic’s brain is sixty percent fat? Disgusting. How can you bear to keep all that mush in your head?”

  Mereel held an armor plate against his chest for size. “This is the new design? Not bad. Not as stylish as a kama and pauldron, but needs must.”

  Jaing and Prudii clattered down the ladder and pounced on the helmets. They had to strip out the Imperial comms and interface components and replace them with their own secure systems. And they looked completely delighted to be doing it. Ny found it hard not to think of them as kids—heavily armed, battle-hardened, and lethal, but still kids. They had an endearingly child-like capacity for enjoying things.

  “Anything else you might be needing?” TK-0 asked, extending an arm to Mereel, metal palm upturned.

  “Oh, I think this’ll keep us going for a while.” Mereel placed a stack of cash credits in the droid’s manipulators. Ny tried to estimate how much this had cost from the stack of chips—five hundred thousand, a million?—and then remembered that the interest on Skirata’s fund for one week wouldn’t even be dented by that. The numbers were just too much to take in.

  I wish he hadn’t told me about the fortune. It’s not like I even asked.

  Ny was learning never to ask too many questions in the company she kept now. It wasn’t just the reaction it might provoke. It was the risk of hearing the answers and wishing she hadn’t, because once she knew something it could always be beaten out of her if someone else knew she had information.

  But she was curious about the suits, and asked anyway, more to calculate the chances of getting caught than to learn anything. “They won’t miss ten new suits, then.”

  “We won the contract to service some of the suit systems,” Gaib said. “So we can mark defective suits as returns. Only we don’t. We mark them as keep and sell for a reasonable profit. And this new army is a lot bigger than the Republic’s—millions upon millions. They wouldn’t notice a thousand missing suits.”

  “Or the fact that it’s costing them two hundred creds for every servodriver I bill for.” TK-0 probed inside a helmet and drew out tiny chips and hair-fine gold wire. “You know we could have retrieved your consignment for you, don’t you? You could have stayed home. Door-to-door delivery, our five-star service.”

  Jaing looked up from the dissected lining of the helmet he was working on. “It’s not that simple. It’s people-smuggling.”

  Ny wondered why Jaing had told him that much—or that little. The droid certainly knew who Niner was now, and that he had an illegal comm kit in his helmet. But in this game, nobody had anything more on their business associates than their associates had on them. Ny had learned the ecology of crime very fast since meeting A’den.

  We all need to keep our mouths shut. One gets caught, we all get caught. We all have to … trust one another.

  She enjoyed irony. There was, as the sages said, honor among thieves.

  Ny Vollen, taxpayer and honest citizen, was now a criminal, and she accepted that was what she was. She saw how easily it happened, and why, and knew now that she could never sit in judgment on any being again, because she was as fallible as anyone.

  “Come on, Mer’ika.” She assembled the plates from one suit on the deck. “Let’s make sure we’ve got the full set.”

  “Anyone would think you didn’t trust us,” Gaib said cheerfully.

  “Oh, I do,” Ny said. “I think it’s the law-abiding folk I need to keep an eye on.”

  She used to be one of them. She wondered what Terin would have thought if he’d been around to see her now.

  He’d have understood. She was sure of it.

  Special Unit briefing room, 501st Legion HQ, Imperial City

  Commander Roly Melusar was a mongrel, but Darman didn’t hold that against him.

  In fact, he took an instant liking to the man. He walked into the briefing room with Ennen, deep in very quiet conversation. Whatever had gone on when Ennen demanded a Corellian cremation for Bry, Melusar appeared to have done something that Ennen approved of.

  Ennen sat down next to Darman and Niner.

  “Well?” Niner asked.

  “Good man,” Ennen said. “Decent man. Bry’s at rest now.”

  So he’d managed to get whatever rites mattered to him. It boded well. Melusar had sprung from nowhere in the last twenty-four hours to take over day-to-day command of the unit from Sa Cuis, who had simply vanished without explanation in the way that spooks did.

  Melusar seemed relaxed about his new role as he stood on the dais at the front of the room. Darman tried not to make snap decisions about beings, but it was hard to resist. Melusar was all right. He just knew it.

  “Where’s Creepy?” Fixer’s voice was a gravelly whisper on Darman’s helmet comlink. That was his nickname for Sa Cuis, although there were others, all much less flattering. “I hope he’s on a fifty-klick run to sweat some of that padding off his backside.”

  Boss cut in. “Probably in some dimly lit room, showing some forgetful citizen the value of electrodes for jogging the memory.”

  Darman didn’t dare turn his head to look for them in the small audience. When he checked his wide-angle visual feed, they were just anonymous helmeted figures in black armor like his own. But he was reassured to know the Delta boys were still around. Nothing was said about Sev now—absolutely nothing—and Darman had no idea what the guy’s brothers were up to.

  They were alive. That was all that mattered.

  “Agent Cuis has been retasked on recruitment issues,” Melusar said. What the shab was that? The more bland the explanation, Darman thought, the scarier the reality would be. “Forgive me if I repeat anything he’s said already, gentlemen. But
let’s take a moment to remember our comrade Bry. I didn’t know him, but you all did, and I know you’re going to miss him. I’m truly sorry.”

  Melusar leaned on the lectern—tall, light brown hair, bony—and something about his earnest face and direct eye contact reminded Darman of Bardan Jusik. The gray Imperial uniform was just a detail, not the sum of the man himself. After a brief silence, he carried on. He walked slowly up and down the platform as he spoke to the commandos, gesturing to emphasize his words—more like he was trying not to use his hands, nothing like the performance a politician would put on—and seemed the kind of man who believed what he was saying.

  “The galaxy will be a safer place for every citizen if we eradicate Force-users,” he said. “I don’t just mean Jedi. I mean all of them. I can’t blame you for dismissing this as some half-wit mongrel officer mouthing the Emperor’s party line, but make no mistake—stamping out these Force cults buys us all stability and security. Take a look in your history books. See just how many wars Force-users got us into.”

  Melusar definitely had their attention now.

  And he knew what clones called randomly conceived beings: mongrels. Roly Melusar wasn’t like Cuis at all. He knew what his men thought, and he treated them as the cynical, weary, suspicious veterans they actually were.

  “Wow,” Fixer muttered. “He knows we’re not like the rest of the Five-oh-first.”

  “That’s because we wear black, and they wear white,” Ennen said. “We must be the bad guys.”

  Niner didn’t tell them to shut it. He seemed mesmerized by Melusar’s no-nonsense attitude, too. Usually, he’d fidget in his seat if he had to sit still for any time, clicking his teeth impatiently, but he was frozen now—and totally silent. Darman couldn’t even hear his breathing. He’d switched off his helmet-to-helmet comms. In the other rows of seats, commandos shifted position. Some leaned forward a little as if they were watching a riveting movie, and some relaxed as if they realized they didn’t have to put on a show of gung-ho Imperial enthusiasm for the commander anymore. Melusar was—as far as any mongrel officer could be—one of them.