Niner stood up, making quietly exasperated noises. “It’s chaos back there. They don’t want us at H-6 now. They want us to report to tactical control at GAR HQ. That’s ten klicks.”
“A stroll,” Corr said. “Nice evening for it, too.”
Darman could see a strobing light reflecting off the transparisteel. He peered out from the doorway, ready to blow the next thing he saw to haran, but it was a CSF assault ship hovering close to the wreckage. He signaled to it and ran out to beckon the pilot to land.
The side hatch opened. “You can’t park there, soldier,” the cop said. “Not on even-numbered days.”
“What are you doing out here?” Darman pointed at the aerial light show. Debris—metal, fuel, flame—was raining down just half a klick away. “Haven’t you looked up yet?”
The cop shrugged, smoke-stained and looking weary. “Been herding civvies. Why do they not understand stay indoors and don’t block the skylanes? There were so many trying to enter the grid that the skylane nav system fell over. Anyway, I saw the smoke here and decided to take a look.”
“We bounced.” Darman thought of Kad. “How many civvy casualties?”
“Thousands. I couldn’t give you a definite figure. It’s the debris. When you get a Sep cruiser to fall on you, you know all about it. Area medcenters can’t cope.”
“Can you give us a ride to GAR HQ?”
“Sure. Might have to divert if we get a call, but hop in. You commandos?”
Darman beckoned the squad. “Yeah. RCs.”
“You’d know Fi, then. Top man, that.”
Darman had to smile. Even in this direst of circumstances Fi was a legend, at least among the cops of Coruscant. He’d find that funny. Omega Squad piled into the crew compartment of the cop ship, and it lifted clear.
“Didn’t know we had that big a fleet,” the officer said. “The news said there were more coming in. Where have they been?”
“Waiting,” Niner said. “It’ll all be over soon. The whole war.”
It would. Darman could almost feel it. He checked his comlink for a sitrep from Etain, but there was nothing yet.
He could wait, too.
Manufacturing district, Coruscant
Zey would probably have forgiven him and welcomed his help about now, but Skirata decided there was no point pushing his luck.
Right then, he didn’t give a mott’s backside about Palpatine, or Zey, or the whole Jedi Council; he just didn’t want them getting in his way when he had his clan scattered across a city under siege. He paused the airspeeder at an intersection well in the cover of tall buildings and looked down, and then looked up.
Coruscant had never seemed bigger. Without the vessels packed into the skylanes at the heart of Galactic City, he could see a lot farther, and the full scale of the artificial canyons hit home. There were thousands of meters of empty skylane above him, and thousands below.
The view left unimpeded by citizens who’d fled the center was a spectacular pyrotechnic show. The dusk was alight with explosions high in the atmosphere. One instant ball of white light faded to yellow right above his head, then red, and then seemed to be getting bigger very fast—and then he realized it was a massive chunk of burning debris plummeting to the ground. He hit the speeder’s accelerator just in time to hear the whuuush and crackle in the air behind him. Smaller fragments fizzed past the hatches and bounced like hail off the viewscreen.
It was a reminder to move under cover. He opened his comlink, and if the Chancellor had time to chase him now, it was too bad. “Ord’ika, Walon, are you receiving?”
“Bad signal, Kal’buir, but I hear you.”
“Where are you, son?”
“I’ve linked up with Fi, Jusik, and the ARC double act. And Omega’s just had a hard landing.”
Thank all the forgotten gods of Mandalore: at least they were back, although it was a spectacularly bad time and place for a rendezvous. “How hard?”
“They ended up with a Sep fighter up their shebs. But it’s okay—they’re heading for GAR HQ.”
Skirata formed a mental map of the city and placed his priority people on it again. Get them all down to Aay’han, get Uthan, and go. “Is Bard’ika with you now? Is Ruu giving him a hard time?”
“He didn’t say. She’s safe. That’s all. What now?”
“I’m going for Uthan.” Skirata paused; he could see med runners and a firespeeder streaking along an empty skylane far beneath him. Somewhere close—above him, it seemed—an anti-air battery was pumping ion rounds into the sky at something he couldn’t see, and the rhythmic whump-whump-whump shook his chest like a second heartbeat. “We walk in and we take her. And we do it now, in case they evacuate the patients. I need Bard’ika in a suit, and two lads to act as clones.”
“We are clones.”
“I mean white jobs. You and Sull, preferably.”
“Fi. We take Fi.”
Ordo was very fond of Fi, and when a Null had formed a close bond, nothing short of detonite would break it.
“Okay, son. But is he up to it?”
“He got your daughter out of prison.”
“Okay. We RV at the lower-levels landing platform directly beneath the Valorum Center. From there—well, we grab the breaks we can get.”
It took Skirata ten minutes to get to the RV point. On a normal day, it would have taken four times as long. He landed the speeder, realized that he’d have to abandon it on Coruscant sooner rather than later, and stood watching the ongoing aerial battle with a sense of disbelief that he could wander around a battened-down city under fire and not feel part of it, as if it were some holodrama. Eventually, he got back into the speeder and watched the HNE coverage. The media had dispatched cam droids, and the images from right among the ships were astonishing.
It’s real. Boys like Ordo are dying up there—fighter pilots, ship’s crew. Not just Seps. Stop watching it like a show.
It was too voyeuristic for Skirata. He switched off the images and just kept the audio running for information, with one ear on his helmet comlink listening to chatter from the GAR command center. When he heard the throb of drives approaching—it was eerily quiet, even with the distant noise of the battle—he ducked down until he confirmed it was a GAR-liveried LAAT/i gunship, showing no navigation lights.
“Ord’ika,” he said on his comlink, “is that you approaching the RV point?”
“It’s Fi.” The landing lights blipped briefly. “How you doing, Kal’buir?”
When the gunship set down, Fi was first out, and Skirata rushed to slap his back and hug him. He found himself looking over Fi’s shoulder—a stretch, given how much taller clones were—to stare at a short, scruffy-looking, thirty-something woman in brown prison overalls.
She stared back. “Dad?”
Skirata didn’t need to ask. Thirty years’ separation just compressed into nothing. She was his little girl, his Ruus’ika. There was nothing he could say, so he just hugged her, unable to even marshal his thoughts.
“Sorry about the timing, Ruu,” he said at last. “And the location.”
“Dad… I’ve waited such a long time…”
“When we’re done here, we can take you back to Drall, or you can come with us.”
Ruu just prodded him in the chest with her forefinger, eyes brimming. She didn’t seem able to speak now.
“You’ll like Mandalore,” Skirata said.
“Kal, get a move on.” Vau stuck his head out of the LAAT/i. “I’ve got your aruetyc clothes here. You might want to change before we do our house calls.”
“Okay, we do a front-door job, then.” It was an effort to switch back to being the bad old Mando merc, because he wanted to be an indulgent dad right then. It struck him that Ruu had probably never known precisely what he did for a living. This was a shocking way to find out. “Jusik and me—we go in as suits. Fi and Ordo—meat-can armor, our armed escorts.”
“Whose authorization are we claiming?” Vau asked. “I need to fix the ID
chips.”
“Oh, Chancellor’s Office. Might as well tick him off completely. I hate doing half a job.”
“It’s good to be back in the field, Kal’buir,” Fi said, grinning.
“Good to have you back, son.”
It was good to have everybody back. There was only Omega Squad and Etain to gather in now. The plan was nearly complete.
Valorum Center, Coruscant
The explosions and screaming of fighters overhead had stopped bothering Jusik now, although he still ducked instinctively. His Force sense told him the danger wasn’t close enough to warrant running for his life. It still helped to react like a regular being when he pressed the security intercom at the main gates, though.
“Security,” said a voice.
“Here’s my identichip and authorization,” Jusik said, playing Denel Herris again and slapping the chips into the slot with the air of a man in a big, annoyed hurry. “Herris, Coruscant Health. Have you evacuated the inmates yet?”
There was a crackling pause. “We haven’t been instructed to, sir.”
“Do you not have an evacuation plan for civil emergencies?” Jusik glanced at Skirata, who looked remarkably urbane in his bantha jacket. He could be dapper, and he could be so low-key that he was invisible, but he would never pass for a psychiatrist. His hard life was etched in his face. “Apart from the welfare of the patients, is your director aware that you have an inmate the Separatists would like to release, and who could do immense damage to the Republic’s defense effort? I do believe he is.”
Jusik could hear mumbling and shuffling at the other end of the comlink. Eventually, the security gates parted with a metallic grinding sound. Jusik strode in, flanked by Skirata, Ordo, and Fi. When he got to the inner doors, they were met by an anxious-looking woman in a medical tunic.
“We’ve not been told to evacuate yet, Master Herris.” She was in a hurry to get them inside, and kept looking up at the sky even though the height of the buildings around the center obscured the view of the fighting. “There’s an emergency shelter below, but the patients here need escorts and supervision, and we don’t have the staff or the droids.”
“Where’s your director?”
“He went home to check on his family when the fighting broke out. He hasn’t come back or commed us. I’m just the duty nursing officer… and I’m in charge, I suppose.”
It was perfect. The top man had run away, and this poor woman had an unfair responsibility dumped in her lap. Jusik didn’t have to feign sympathy.
“Then at least I can solve one problem for you,” he said. He indicated Fi and Ordo with a tilt of his head: It’s okay. I’ve got the army with me, and you can trust us. “We have authorization to remove one of your inmates, Dr. Qail Uthan, to a secure place in case the city falls and she’s taken by the Separatists. Can you take us to her, please?”
Jusik proffered the bogus clearance from the Chancellor’s office. The woman took it. She didn’t seem to have any idea how to verify it anyway.
“This way,” she said, picking up a datapad. She looked at Skirata. “Have you got restraints, then?”
She seemed to think he was the hired muscle. Jusik didn’t meet Skirata’s eyes.
“We might not need to use them, ma’am,” Skirata said in his best sergeant’s voice. “But we’ll need details of any medication she’s on, obviously.”
The doors parted, and Jusik made a conscious effort not to feel what was happening around him. He’d never managed to fully shake off the memory of the first visit. Recalling the unquiet souls he’d brushed against in the Force here had felt like opening an old wound each time, fresh with pain. And they were still here. He struggled to close his mind to them.
As he walked through the carpeted corridors, he felt that mind again, the one that wasn’t detached from reality and shouldn’t have been there, locked up for reasons he would never know. And knew he could not stop to intervene.
I should. How can I walk on by?
But he did. He had a duty to his brothers, and at that moment the needs of clone troopers came first. Jusik didn’t rationalize it on a scale of necessary evils and forgive himself. He simply accepted that he had done a shameful thing, and that he would have to live with it.
“Nice place,” Skirata said, almost to himself. “Must cost a packet to run.”
Jusik could hear voices. There was crying coming from one direction, and occasional shouts to be let out, probably because the inmates could hear the bombardment going on. He could have sworn he heard that language again, the one that had made him think someone was speaking Mando’a. Skirata didn’t react to it. But Skirata’s hearing had been damaged by years on the battlefield, so maybe he didn’t pick it up.
“This is Dr. Uthan’s room,” the nurse said, unlocking the doors and taking a few steps back. “She’s all yours.”
Skirata flexed his shoulders, making the bantha-hide jacket creak. Uthan wouldn’t know either of them from a Hutt; she knew what clones looked like, though, and Fi had helped abduct her. There would be some explaining to do when the helmets came off. But by then it would be too late to argue.
Uthan was sitting at her desk, making notes on a ’pad as if she had no cares beyond a pressing schedule. She glanced up at Jusik.
“Oh, you again,” she said. She indicated the world above her ceiling with a jerk of her head. “I do hope they reduce your corrupt little planet to rubble.”
Jusik smiled and clasped his hands in front of him, then dropped his voice to a whisper.
“I said I’d get right on it when you asked to be released, Dr. Uthan,” he said. “And I did. But I don’t work for the Republic. Would you like to leave?”
The look of permanent disdain on her face vanished gradually like melting frost. “And who are you?”
“Just Mandalorians doing a job, ma’am.”
She’d had a Mandalorian minder on Qiilura, Ghez Hokan. She might not have thought much of him, but the M word said friendly forces to her.
“I hope you’re more effective than the last one,” she said quietly. “Have I got time to collect my research material? Because if I haven’t—”
“Of course,” said Jusik. “That’s why we’re here.”
It was all completely true.
There was a bit of Jusik—a bit he didn’t like to look at—that relished the game, enjoying the bluff and feint like a sabacc player. I’m capable of terrible things. I must never forget that. He watched her gather up datapads and piles of flimsi, and pack them in a bag.
“Nurse,” she called. “Nurse, can you let the soka flies free in the morning? They kept me sane. It’s the least I owe them.”
Jusik revised his view of Uthan just a little. She picked up her bag and walked out through the doors of her cell as if she’d been expecting this rescue all the time.
Skirata didn’t look at Jusik, maintaining his act of bored sidekick, but he radiated satisfaction and relief in the Force. Jusik found himself wondering what other scams Kal’buir had pulled over the years. He accepted that Skirata was a criminal and a killer, and still loved him dearly. There were no buts in that thought. Skirata was, from most perspectives, a complete shabuir; but his one saving grace was so vast, so all-encompassing, that it dwarfed any wrongdoing into insignificance. He could love unconditionally. He could love those who couldn’t possibly be of any use to him, the marginalized and dispossessed, and even those who hurt him; and when he loved, he would give his life doing it, and ask no questions.
Jusik could forgive Skirata anything for that painfully rare quality.
“Nicely done, son,” Skirata murmured.
They were now on the final leg of the mission. It was going fine, all things considered, right up to the point when Jusik heard that voice again; that one tantalizing, half-familiar sound that made him listen.
“Nurse,” he said. “I need to check something.” He held up a forefinger for silence. “Hear that voice?” It was the female one that sounded almost as if sh
e was speaking Mandalorian. Something insisted, begged, demanded that he at least go and look. Leaving the Jedi hadn’t severed his connection to the Force. “May I see that inmate? She may be on our list.”
When the nurse’s back was turned, Skirata shot Jusik a glance. What are you playing at?
Jusik just raised his finger a fraction farther. Bear with me.
“I’m afraid she’s very uneasy around males,” said the nurse. “And she has a history of violence against them.”
Jusik peered into the room. The woman was maybe forty, forty-five, a little older, and didn’t look as if she could mete out even a harsh word. She huddled in the corner, rocking for comfort, and when her eyes met his, he knew she was very troubled indeed.
“Can I talk to her?” Jusik asked.
“Just be careful.” The nurse slid the ’pad in front of him. “She’s on a five-hundred dose of zaloxipine, just to manage her, but she’s been detained indefinitely for three homicides. I can’t take responsibility for her.”
Jusik squatted down and resorted to a little mind influence, the most benign, to make her realize he meant her no harm. It was worth trying even if he was stretching their luck. Something told him he had to, and maybe it was simply that he’d walked by one inmate too many.
“Ner gai Bard’ika,” he said. “Tion gar gai? Gar aliit?” He’d told her his name was Bardan, and asked her name and her clan name.
She stared at him. It was as if she didn’t believe what she was seeing, or hearing.
“Arla,” she said. She glanced at the nurse as if the woman was eavesdropping. “Neyar gain Arla Vhett.”
It wasn’t Mando’a, but it was close enough for any Mandalorian to understand. Jusik turned slowly, still squatting, to look at Skirata. The old sergeant’s face was a study in suppressed shock.
“I think this patient should be on our special care list,” Jusik said. He beckoned to her. He knew he didn’t look remotely threatening. “Arla, mhi’alor at’morut’yc taap.”
He told her they would take her somewhere safe. He knew it was what she needed to hear. Somehow, he persuaded her to stand up and walk out the front doors with them, and into the ship waiting a few meters away.