Order 66

  “If he ever comes back here,” said the officer, “tell him to drop by the social club, won’t you?”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Soronna, the Twi’lek waitress who managed the Kragget day shift, sidled over to Etain and put a cup of mild-brew caf in front of her.

  “Laseema’s running a little late,” she said.

  “Anything wrong?”

  “No, she’s been out buying baby clothes.” Soronna gave her a knowing wink. She was getting on a bit, as Darman put it, but still magnetically glamorous, with the flowing walk of the dancer she’d once been. “Kad’ika’s outgrowing everything. That’s a baby in a real hurry to grow up. Takes after his grandfather for sheer impatience.”

  My baby.

  That’s my baby. I’m not the one choosing his clothes. I’m not the one who feeds him and puts him to bed each night.

  Did Soronna know he was really Etain’s? She hadn’t shown the slightest hint that she did. But Skirata tended to surround himself with people who knew the rules and kept their mouths shut. The stakes were high.

  So what? So what if the Jedi Council kicks me out for fraternizing with Darman?

  She was on the point of comming General Zey to confess, as she was at least once a day. But she’d lose her rank and command. She couldn’t turn her back on the Grand Army now, not when they needed every Jedi officer they could get.

  Bardan’s not a Jedi anymore, though, and he’s still making himself useful…

  Her whole reason for keeping her child a secret had evaporated when Bardan Jusik turned his back on the Jedi Order. It hadn’t changed a thing. He was as deeply involved in the war and helping clone troops survive as he’d ever been. Etain stared into her mug of caf and wondered if she’d just become too comfortable with her rank, or even if she was more worried about what the Masters of the Jedi Council thought of her.

  They say that however old you are, you still want your parents’ approval, deep down.

  The doors opened. Laseema walked in carrying Kad’ika on one hip and a shopping bag in her free hand, looking the part of the busy young mother. Etain couldn’t pretend it didn’t hurt. She tried to look casually interested, as any woman might when admiring a friend’s child, but it was hard; when he started crying it tore at every nerve in her body. She wanted to grab him. It was an urgent, primal instinct.

  Several cops stopped Laseema to coo over Kad’ika. His crying was a halfhearted grizzle, more a long complaint than anything, and he squirmed in Laseema’s grip.

  “They all want to be uncles,” she said, dragging herself away from the chorus of oohs and aahs. She held the baby out to Etain as if she had to persuade her to take him. “Here. Want to hold him?”

  Etain scooped Kad’ika up in her arms. He became instantly quiet, and everything around her suddenly ceased to exist. He smelled clean and wonderful and hers. The cop at the next table put down his caf and leaned across to make faces in the way people did when in the presence of infants. Etain wiped dribble from the baby’s chin as he stared mesmerized at the officer with huge dark eyes—Darman’s eyes.

  “Who’s gorgeous? Who dat gorgeous baby?” The cop was a big, square man who looked as if he spent his days kicking down doors, but now he was reduced to sentimental mush. He glanced at Etain. “You look like that comes naturally,” he said, with no idea how deep the comment cut. “You’ve definitely got the secret of calming babies.”

  “Jedi mind influence,” Etain said, forcing a smile. It was time to move somewhere more private before the pretense crumbled. Jedi or not, her hormones seemed still to be in disarray, her emotions made more erratic by the strain of being separated from those she loved most. “I think he needs changing. Come on, Laseema. Let’s do the necessary, or Kal will complain that we’re neglecting his grandson.”

  Laseema’s apartment—the one Skirata had bought to get her out of Qibbu the Hutt’s clutches, and provide them all with a base away from the barracks—was part of the same grim permacrete complex that housed the Kragget. By slipping through the rear doors and into the kitchen, Etain could reach the apartment via the turbolift and a flight of stairs. The place had the feel of a fortress, and that was probably why Skirata chose it. It occupied a whole floor.

  Laseema followed her. The apartment doors opened into a big living room that had probably once been a warehousing area, and that bore all the signs of three very different people trying to coexist there with a small baby. It smelled of cooking, laundry, and air freshener. On a subtler level, the Force told her that Jusik was scared but more content than he’d been in years, that Laseema spent sleepless nights fretting about Atin’s safety, and that Skirata… Skirata wasn’t the swirling darkness Etain had first sensed. The pit of violence and anger was still there alongside the selfless passions, but there was also a small deep pool of profound contentment, a softness she hadn’t sensed before. On the table was a chaotic pile of electronic circuits and mechanical servos that had to be Jusik’s latest project. Skirata tended to leave no physical traces, as befitted a man who lived up fully to the nomadic side of Mandalorian culture.

  “How long can you stay?” Laseema asked.

  Etain settled down on the nearest chair and let Kad’ika totter around the room by holding on to furniture. He landed on his backside with a bump, giggling. “Two days.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m doing Bard’ika’s old job now. Two days is a long period of leave when you’re looking after a commando group.” Etain checked Kad’ika over and saw how much he’d grown. “I ought to sleep, but I don’t want to waste a moment.”

  Controlling nearly five hundred commandos was an impossible task. They were almost entirely self-directing, and the most she could do was pass them their objectives, deal with their requests and problems, and visit them in the field. There were too few Jedi to go around.

  So there’s one more reason why you stay…

  And the commandos were all so different. Apart from the men trained by Skirata, their cultures seemed to vary from squad to squad, even those trained by Walon Vau and Rav Bralor, whose style she knew, and who were now among her band of unlikely friends.

  “I talk to Kad’ika about you,” Laseema said suddenly. “Even if he can’t understand. I always say Mama’s coming home soon, and things like that. You never know how much they take in.”

  Etain looked up. Laseema was a typically pretty Twi’lek, a young woman with a wretched past who had been used just as callously as the clones she’d found kinship with. Now she looked anxious, as if she felt guilty for looking after

  Kad’ika.

  “It’s okay,” Etain said. “I’m grateful to you. It’s my fault we’re all in this mess. Without you… well, I know he’s loved and well cared for.”

  “I’m not trying to take your place.”

  “I never thought you were, but I could hardly complain if you did.”

  Laseema looked at her with a slightly baffled expression for a moment. She looked very different these days. She’d taken to wearing very sober, high-necked clothing, not the usual low-cut, tight-fitting cropped tops that most Twi’lek females wore. It was as if she was making it clear that she wasn’t the unwilling entertainment at some sleazy Hutt cantina any longer. Etain decided she would remind herself of the average Twi’lek girl’s lot whenever she felt tempted to complain about her own restricted life.

  “Kal absolutely adores him,” Laseema said, as if trying to make harmless small talk well away from the minefield of absentee parents. “He’s very good with babies. You wouldn’t believe it, would you? Mandalorians look so hard-bitten.”

  Skirata typified the Mando ideal of responsible fatherhood and devotion to his clan. He was a sucker for helpless kids. “And Bard’ika?”

  “Loves being an uncle. He plays little Force games with Kad’ika so that he gets used to his abilities.”

  “Really?” Etain was instantly worried, but it made sense; the baby’s Force powers were as much a part of his development as l
earning to walk, and he would have to learn not only to use them but also to conceal them. “I’d better talk to him about that…”

  Laseema looked as if she wished she hadn’t mentioned it, and changed tack. “He’s such a gorgeous baby. Rarely cries, smiles at everyone. Kal says he’s exactly like Darman was at the same age.”

  And I’m missing it all. I’m not seeing him grow up.

  Etain was hardly the first mother to have duties that took her away from her child. It was just something that no Jedi was supposed to experience, and she understood the ban on attachment better now than she ever had. It was a harsh rule, and she worried that Jedi raised other Jedi in a constant soulless cycle of detached, cold indifference, but at times like these she understood how disruptive it was to have someone whose welfare mattered so much to you that it clouded your judgment.

  But if we don’t experience this… how can we possibly sit in judgment on non-Force-users? How can we understand why they do the things they do?

  Etain wondered what suppressing natural emotions did to Jedi in the end. She rearranged Kad’ika on her lap, but he could sit pretty well on his own. She realized she just wasn’t used to doing this, and that she should have been. Kad’ika turned his head to look into her face with intense curiosity, then grinned again and said what sounded like, “Ka! La!” They weren’t quite words, but Etain squealed with delight and surprise. The baby stared back into her face with wide-eyed shock at the reaction.

  “He’s talking!” she said. “Clever Kad’ika! Who’s Mama’s clever boy? Say Mama. Can you say Mama?”

  Kad gurgled as if he was going to break into laughter. It dawned slowly on Etain that her son was probably trying to say Kal and Laseema. It was logical, because those were the names he heard every day. But she couldn’t deny that it hurt.

  “Mama!” he said suddenly. “Mama-mama-maaaa!”

  He laughed, obviously delighted with himself, eyes locked on hers. That was all Etain needed. It was a moment of perfect connection between them, and she would treasure it for the rest of her life. She nuzzled him and rocked him to make him laugh more.

  “Clever Kad! Yes, it’s Mama!”

  Kad pointed at Laseema. “Lala! Lala!”

  Laseema beamed at him and got a heartbreaking smile back. “He’s growing so fast.”

  For any other parent it would have been a source of pride, but for Etain it simply rekindled the fear that her son might have inherited his father’s accelerated aging. Mereel had reassured her that the Kaminoans had made sure the trait wasn’t passed on. She wondered why they didn’t just make clones sterile, but it could have been anything from complications with gene expression to simply seeing what happened if clones reproduced. Kaminoans didn’t think like humans, and they didn’t see clones as anything more than product, just organic droids. She hoped Mereel was right about inheritance. She’d read far too much about epigenetics during her pregnancy, and now worried that Kad’s genes were somehow undetectably tainted by whatever had happened to Darman.

  Kad babbled incoherently and made a lunge for the hank of hair draped over her shoulder. Etain caught him as he rolled to one side like an amiable drunk and threw up.

  Laseema rushed to mop up, but Etain was determined to do the messy work herself. Babies were always getting sick, the experts said. “I hope this is normal development.”

  “Every mother worries about everything,” Laseema said. “Not that I know, but they said my sister did.”

  There was a whole world of misery wrapped up in those two sentences. Etain realized how very little she knew about the Twi’lek. Maybe Laseema’s family stayed in touch, but the way she said it made Etain think that she was alone, sold into the awful servitude that awaited most Twi’lek girls with more looks than family connections, and as long as she intended to stay with Atin she could never bear children of her own. And here she was having to look after someone else’s baby. That must have rankled. Mandalorians might have been hardwired to take in any needy kids as their own at the drop of a hat, but Etain didn’t feel that way at all.

  He’s mine. Kad’ika’s mine. I want to be with him.

  She was a second away from grabbing an air taxi, storming into Zey’s office at Arca Barracks, and telling him she was giving up her Jedi status. The thought was becoming ever more frequent and feeling like a rehearsal. Kad looked up as if searching her eyes for something. Then his face crumpled; he let out a small wail that tailed off into a whimper, and flooded her with his unhappiness. He was reacting to her anxiety.

  When I was a baby… did the Jedi who raised me sense how I felt? What did I feel of their emotions?

  She had no recollection. She didn’t recall the family she’d left, either. All she knew was that it wasn’t going to be that way for her son. His Force powers would have to find some other outlet. She made an effort to concentrate on happy thoughts, visualizing Darman and herself in a peaceful garden with Kad on her lap, the best way she could communicate reassurance on a Force level. Force-sensitive babies needed more than cuddles and a lullaby.

  “Look at us,” Etain said. “Jedi, Twi’lek, clone trooper. We’re all locked into a path in life because of our genes. But we don’t have to take it, do we? None of us. We can all be what we want to be.”

  Laseema, looking more like a bank clerk in her sober dark tunic, took a feeding bottle of juice from the kitchen and handed it to Etain. Kad intercepted it, two-handed.

  “I don’t dance any longer,” Laseema said. “And you don’t dance to the Jedi Council’s tune. I think we’ve all stopped dancing, thanks to Kal.”

  The future seemed a little brighter now and alive with possibility. The war was survivable; Etain didn’t think in terms of winning any longer, or even what the Republic might turn into if it did win. It wasn’t the democracy the Jedi seemed to think it was. She felt that she was struggling to the peak of an unforgiving mountain, that a little more effort and courage would get her to the summit alive, and then she could make her way to safety.

  But climbers said the most deadly and dangerous part of mountaineering was the descent.

  “Come on, sweetheart.” Kad sucked at the bottle with ferocious determination. Normality; he was like any other baby of his age, pretty well running to the timetable of normal human development that she’d memorized. The last thing she wanted was a prodigy. He’d had enough of an unusual start in life already.

  Etain imagined Zey’s reaction if he could see this scene. Laseema unwrapped the baby clothes and held them up for Etain’s approval.

  “When are you going to tell him?” she asked.

  She didn’t mean General Zey. She meant Darman.

  It was the question Etain now put to one side every time it came up. It was easier to deal with Zey first. Darman had as good as said he wasn’t in any hurry to have children, but sooner or later she had to tell him that not only was Kad her son, he was also his. Hindsight was a poisonous thing. Etain wished now that she’d told Darman from the start, but Skirata had probably been right. It was one complication too many for Dar, who looked and behaved like a grown man but still had many of the emotional vulnerabilities of a kid.

  “I think I’ll do it sooner rather than later,” she said at last. “And if he takes it badly, at least he knows.”

  Forty-eight hours’ leave was trickling through her fingers like water. It was unfairly short. But it was a consequence of the path she’d chosen. She watched Kad gulping down the contents of the bottle and reached out in the Force to Darman to check that he was okay.

  She knew exactly where he was now. She could comm him anytime, even redeploy him; she was a group commander in Special Operations, and he was one of her resources. And he wouldn’t thank her for cosseting him. Kad sucked on a now empty bottle and looked up at her with a distinct it’s-time-you-refilled-this expression.

  “I’ll tell Dar when he returns from Haurgab,” she said. “But I doubt I shall ever tell Zey.”

  Kad was going to have a life as unlike hers
as she could make it.

  He would have choices.

  Laseema’s apartment,

  Coruscant

  Jusik had never worried about what clothes to put on each morning until now. He stared at himself in the mirror, minus his beard for the first time in years, and wondered if he’d pass for a government health inspector.

  As a Jedi, he’d owned next to nothing, just the brown robe he stood up in, a couple of changes of tunic, pants, and underclothes, his lightsaber, and a lot of gadgets—none of which actually belonged to him. It all fit in one scruffy bag. Now he had armor, although portability was still paramount, and he had disguises.

  Today he was disguised as a regular human being; a suited bureaucrat, folio case in hand, clean-shaven. He had a prison to visit. Dr. Ovolot Qail Uthan had been moved from one facility to another, and then apparently vanished in the system, but it was impossible to hide much from the Nulls. They had been trained to infiltrate any system, and the Republic’s was more vulnerable to them than any. The security codes for the Treasury had opened a particularly rich seam for Jaing—ARC N-10—and he was working his way via crawler programs through separate systems in government departments, using the interfaces between them to jump across departmental barriers.

  Joined-up government—more efficient cooperation among the Republic’s bureaucratic fiefdoms—was an idea whose time had come. It also made slicing their data a lot easier.

  “Say bye-bye, Kad’ika. Say bye-bye to Uncle Bardan.” Etain, cradling her son in one arm, took his hand and made a little waving gesture with it. “Ba-da!” he said. He seemed happy with words that ended in a. Jusik waved back. Kad looked bemused by Jusik’s sudden change in appearance and frowned slightly at Etain as if looking for confirmation of his identity. “Yes, it’s Bard’ika. He’ll be back soon.”

  “Just pinning down locations,” said Jusik. “Won’t be long.”

  “You’re wondering how I can do this, aren’t you?”

  Etain radiated regret. There wasn’t much that one Jedi could hide from another.