True Colors

“He’s not dead,” said Niner quietly.

  Darman could feel it hanging over them, the conversation that had seemed fine when they didn’t realize how much damage he’d suffered, but now couldn’t be spoken aloud because it was too awful. What was not-dead? How did the medics know Fi couldn’t sense what was going on around him? Brain-dead people sometimes regained consciousness and then reported what they’d heard during the coma, and Darman could think of nothing more awful at that moment than Fi being trapped in some terrible paralysis but feeling everything. Dead was better. He wanted a cleaner end than Fi.

  “Call Etain,” Niner suggested. “She always cheers you up.”

  But Darman didn’t want to call her just to rage about how unfair things were. He settled down with a holozine so nobody would talk to him for a while, and the others played blades, throwing knives into a target board divided into rings and quadrants. When he’d come to terms with this, he’d have something more positive to say to her. They could talk about where they’d go when they got some leave together.

  I can’t imagine a mission without Fi now.

  The doors opened. Skirata wandered in dressed in his civvies—brown bantha leather jacket—with Ordo, Vau, and Mird behind, and simply walked up to each of the squad in turn and hugged them in silence. Then Jusik came in, and everyone turned to stare.

  “I thought you were still with Delta when I spoke to you,” Skirata said, and it was obvious he hadn’t planned to meet him here. “What happened?”

  “Delta can handle Dorumaa without me.” Jusik didn’t look his old self, either: he was usually the essence of calm good humor however bad things got, but he didn’t seem remotely serene or accepting now. His face looked hard rather than thin; he was all rigid determination. “I was only there to slow them down last time. Fi needs me more.”

  “What d’you mean, Fi needs you more?”

  “I’m going to try healing him.”

  Nobody said a word. Jedi could heal, but they didn’t do miracles. Skirata lowered his voice in that way he had when things were going badly wrong and he needed to break the news gently.

  “Okay, son,” he said. “But Zey’s going to skin you alive. He sent you back to do the Dorumaa job again. He won’t take kindly to you going off like this.”

  “With respect, Zey can shove it.”

  “You sure about that, Bard’ika? When the war’s over, you’ll still be a Jedi, and he’ll still be your boss.”

  “Ah, no, that’s where we differ, Kal. We’ve forgotten what it is to be Jedi. So I’m going to do some real Jedi work now, and help someone in trouble rather than talk big concepts and run errands for politicians. Where’s Fi?”

  “Jaller’s found a safe place for him.” Skirata turned to the squad. “You never heard this conversation. Things got a bit hairy at the medcenter, and Besany had to… well, blasters were involved. And Jaller. And half the ATU lads.”

  It was the point at which Fi would have made some witty observation had he been there. The silence was painful.

  “Sooner I start, the better chance I have,” Jusik said. “Take me there, Kal. Please.”

  “They’ll kick you out of the Order, son. As long as you can face that, fine.”

  “Look, if you won’t take me, I’ll find him on my own, because I’m really good at that, aren’t I? One of my uses. Scanning by Jedi.”

  “Okay, okay.” Skirata got a look from Vau that Darman could only describe as disappointment. He probably thought that Skirata was being soft on Jusik. “Let’s go, then. Ordo, you too.”

  “I’ll wait here,” said Vau. “Anything you want me to do to stall Zey if he shows?”

  “I don’t know. Delta’s not going to tell him Jusik’s gone AWOL, are they? And they could be gone weeks.”

  “It’ll be a brief conversation, then.”

  Skirata, Ordo, and Jusik left as quickly as they’d come in. Darman fought not to get his hopes up; he couldn’t help thinking that nobody really understood what Jedi could do—least of all Jedi, it seemed—and Skirata might simply have been placating Jusik. The general badly wanted to emulate Skirata, except with the Jedi bits added like some kind of first-aid kit and early-warning system. Avoidance of attachment and anger didn’t get a look-in these days.

  But that was the challenge, wasn’t it? If you had powers like that, standing apart from the messy business of life was just avoiding the hard decisions. Jusik confronted his.

  “Fierfek,” said Corr, sharpening the throwing knives on the durasteel sections of his fingers, “is it always like that in this squad? And how much transit time do you guys clock up?”

  Vau laughed. “Ah, the clarity of the newcomer.”

  “What did he mean, he was only there to slow Delta down?” Darman asked.

  “You know how self-deprecating he is.” Vau fed Mird a cookie. “A modest man.”

  It hadn’t sounded like that, but then Darman accepted he wasn’t at his most detached today. It was a pity Etain wasn’t here: he missed her, as always, but she could also have given Jusik a hand with the healing, as she had when Jinart was shot.

  It was no good worrying. Etain would be back when her mission was complete, Jusik would do all that a Jedi could do to help Fi, and his own task was to stay alive long enough to see both things happen. In the end, it was Fi who stayed on his mind today, not Etain, but she’d understand why.

  She had such a long time ahead of her. Fi’s time had been short to start with, and had ended up far shorter than he could ever have imagined.

  Jaller Obrim’s residence,

  Rampart Town, Coruscant,

  483 days after Geonosis

  “There’s something I have to tell you, Kal’buir.”

  Ordo needed to get this off his chest. Dealing with Fi’s plight was hard enough, but knowing Skirata was dragged down further by the apparent loss of Ko Sai’s research was something he had to deal with sooner rather than later, so he could concentrate on the task at hand.

  “What, son?” They waited with Jusik in the impressive security lobby of Obrim’s apartment, undergoing automated scans, which showed just how many criminals had scores to settle with the officer.

  “I’ll understand if you can’t forgive me for it.”

  “Can’t be that bad.”

  “Mereel sent a message—Ko Sai gave Etain some of the gene sequences.”

  That got his attention. “Etain? Seriously?”

  “She’s got a knack.”

  “That’s the best news I’ve heard in a while. Thanks, son.” Skirata shut his eyes for a moment. “Is that all the aiwha-bait remembered?”

  “It’s turned into a negotiating game, but there’s more to come.”

  “That’s good. Very good.”

  “And I did something terrible to you, Buir. We have her data, all of it. I just did it to shake her down. She’s completely devastated by the thought that it’s gone, and it’s become a lever to get more out of her. You convinced her it was really destroyed.”

  There. He’d come clean now. Skirata managed a smile of sorts, but he took it quietly. His voice was hoarse. “Yeah, I’m much more convincing when I’m on the verge of a heart attack.”

  “I’m so sorry. I never thought I’d do anything to hurt you, and yet when it’s expedient, that’s just what I do.”

  The security scan seemed satisfied that they weren’t Black Sun hit men, and the doors opened. Jusik had a large holdall that clanked when he walked and set off a metal detector inside the hall. Ordo had an idea what it was but wondered what Jusik was going to do with it.

  “Big stakes, son,” Skirata said at last. “Yes, it was a nasty shock. But it worked.”

  “Can you ever trust me again?”

  “With my life,” Skirata said. “And I should be happier about this, but it’s hard at the moment, what with Fi and everything.”

  “I said I’d make it up to you, Buir. I will.”

  Jaller Obrim had a pleasant wife called Telti and two teenage sons who were??
?in real terms—older than Ordo. The boys greeted them politely and then went to their rooms as if they were drilled to vanish when awkward business was being discussed. Obrim was on duty today, but his wife seemed completely calm about being left with a comatose stranger and a med droid.

  “He’s through here,” Telti said. She led them into a guest suite, where Fi lay looking no more than a man asleep, except for the nasogastric tube and a saline drip feeding into his hand. Besany was sitting beside the bed, her head resting on one hand; the med droid was offline, settled in the corner. “Jaller talks about you a lot. Fi can stay here as long as he needs to.”

  There were good people everywhere, Ordo thought, just not enough of them. He walked up to Besany and put his hand on her shoulder, and she jerked back as if he’d woken her.

  “I nodded off,” she said.

  “Have you been here all night?”

  “Yes. I called in to the office to say I was sick. Then I realized it was the weekend.”

  “You did a good job. Probably with less damage to property than if we’d extracted him, too.”

  Jusik placed his holdall in the corner of the room with a loud clunk. “You can stay and watch if you want, but it’s boring.”

  “I saw you heal Jinart,” she said.

  “I might not achieve the same results,” Jusik said, “but it won’t be for want of trying.”

  Ordo wanted to know how he set about doing it: what went through his mind, how he focused, what the energies felt like while it was happening. Right now, though, it was just Jusik sitting on the bed, with one hand on Fi’s forehead and his eyes closed, like an act of blessing frozen in time. Ordo watched for an hour, then accepted that he wasn’t contributing anything.

  “Why don’t you take Besany home?” Skirata said. “Come back later. If there’s any change I’ll call you.”

  “I feel like I’m abandoning him.”

  “Okay, but get some rest. When did you last sleep, Ord’ika?”

  Ordo didn’t want to leave Skirata on his own, either, even if the Obrims were there to keep him fed and watered. It had been a grueling couple of weeks; Kal’buir wasn’t a young man.

  “Okay,” Ordo said. “I’ll shut my eyes for a few minutes.”

  He thought he had. He took off his kama and pauldron and laid them over the back of a chair, then settled back on the sofa by the window. It was the most deeply upholstered thing he’d ever sat on, and he felt he was drowning in it. The next thing he was aware of was waking up to find Besany’s head on his shoulder, wondering how she could sleep with a hard plastoid plate pressing against her face, and Kal’buir gently tapping the back of his hand. Four hours had gone.

  “You need to see this,” Skirata whispered. “You really do.”

  Jusik stood and stretched, joints cracking with alarming pops. “Brain tissue is capable of a great deal of regeneration, even the human type.”

  Besany stirred. “What is it?”

  “Show them, Bard’ika,” Skirata said.

  Jusik ruffled Fi’s hair, and he moved. He did it a few more times; the reaction was consistent.

  “Don’t get too excited,” Jusik said. “He’s not in such a deep coma now. That’s a long way from being conscious, but he’s not brain-dead, either.”

  “You healed that much tissue?”

  Jusik shrugged. “Oh, medics misdiagnose brain death all the time. I’m just reluctant to give up. Always was a sore loser.”

  But Ordo knew when Jusik was pleased with himself. It was the same quiet amusement as when he made some clever gadget. Jusik was good at fixing things, and it seemed he could fix people, too. He basked in the contentment of successful problem solving.

  “This is all guesswork, but for once I’ll take the mystic Jedi method over the medcenter,” Skirata said. “How long do you think you’ll have to keep this up?”

  “Days. Maybe weeks.”

  “Zey’s going to notice sooner or later. Delta can’t stay on Dorumaa indefinitely.”

  “It’s going to take them a week even to start working their way into Ko Sai’s facility, unless we want to risk drilling in there with big conspicuous industrial-sized machinery,” Jusik said. “I can take a few days away from Fi then and catch up with them. But I wouldn’t rely on Zey turning a blind eye to my bending the rules on Fi, and I’d rather be in trouble for not obeying orders on the Ko Sai search than indicate to Zey that I know where Fi is.”

  “Sooner or later,” Skirata said, “he’s going to notice he’s getting a lot less out of the Nulls, too. Maybe that’ll be the time to tell him that Jaing knows where Grievous is.”

  “Ah, I thought you might…,” Jusik said quietly.

  “Well, we’ve all got our little secrets to trade now, haven’t we? Yes, Jaing knows, and he thinks it was too easy to be true. Hence my silence on the matter.”

  “What a dirty galaxy we live in.”

  Ordo did a few rough calculations. “I think we can count on Delta being stuck on Dorumaa for weeks, and not just because of the cocktails. They’re doing the equivalent of excavating with a spoon.”

  “They’re not a cocktail kind of squad,” Jusik said, sounding almost regretful. “They won’t take advantage of it at all. For some reason, that depresses me.”

  It was a waiting game now in both the areas that mattered most to them—Fi’s recovery and Ko Sai’s gradual revelation of what she could do to regulate the aging genes. While Jusik worked on Fi, Skirata used the time to catch up by comlink with every commando in his former training company and each of the deployed Nulls. He had a sense of urgency about him, as if there were things he didn’t want to leave unsaid as he had with Fi.

  Ordo took Besany back to her apartment and debated whether this was the right time to do as Sergeant Vau had told him.

  But she’d already had quite a week when it came to skating on thin legal ice. Spying on classified defense projects and abducting patients at blasterpoint was plenty to be going on with.

  He’d wait a few days before he involved her in the murky world of bank raids and stolen shoroni sapphires.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sir, we’ve managed to get a strip-cam filament into the collapsed chamber using the mechanism from a self-embedding charge. It’s going to take weeks to remove enough material to search for organic remains, but one thing the cam has picked up is what looks like a chest plate of Mandalorian armor. I’ll leave it up to you to decide if you want to pass that information on to General Zey.

  —Sitrep from RC-1138, Boss, to General Jusik

  Kyrimorut,

  Mandalore,

  499 days after Geonosis

  “You said you wanted a laboratory.” Mereel was running out of patience, and he’d managed to show a remarkable amount to Ko Sai given that he wanted to kill her. “This is a laboratory.”

  The Kaminoan scientist couldn’t quite bring herself to step into the structure. Etain tried to encourage her.

  “This is as good as you’re going to get for the time being,” she said. “And it means you don’t have to wait for a conventional lab to be built. This is Mandalore, after all.”

  “It’s an agricultural trailer.” Ko Sai sounded crushed. Etain was used to all the subtle nuances in her tone now, and the Kaminoan voice wasn’t wholly sweetness and serenity any more than their character was. It was just harder for a human being to hear. “This is used for animals.”

  “Don’t tempt me to state the obvious,” said Mereel. “It’s a mobile genetics unit, and I don’t see what difference it makes whether it’s racing odupiendos or humans that you’re assessing. Except the dupies are worth a lot more.”

  Etain thought Mereel had done well to get hold of it. But Ko Sai had Tipoca standards. Reminding her that she could extract DNA with the pots, pans, and household chemicals in the kitchen wasn’t going to help. She lowered her head and walked back into the house.

  Mereel shook his head. “Etain, this is what they use at the racetracks. Those guys are as tig
ht on genome identification as any Kaminoan, right along with drug testing. This is just a mini version of what a half-decent university would have.”

  “I know,” she said. He sounded like a husband who’d bought his wife a totally unsuitable gift and was hurt to find she didn’t like it. “That’s the downside of finding the one thing that motivates her and taking away everything else.”

  “Okay, we could build a lab like she had on Dorumaa, but that’s months away.”

  “And we don’t really intend for her to do any worthwhile Jedi genome research, do we?”

  “No, but we certainly want her to design a delivery system for regulating my genes.”

  “I think she’s cracking up.”

  Mereel held up his hands as if he didn’t want to hear. “Excuse me while I gag.”

  “She’s no use to us insane.”

  “If you’ve got any ideas for soothing her troubled soul, other than calling Kamino or the Arkanians and negotiating a deal, or even doing the same with the Chancellor, then you’re doing better than me.”

  Etain was learning more than she ever wanted to about genetics. Many genes, Ko Sai liked to tell her, controlled aging. Etain didn’t just see the enormity of the task facing Mereel; she also saw how many things might go wrong for her unborn child. In both, all she could do was take it a day at a time. She went after Ko Sai and tried to inject a little enthusiasm into her.

  “You managed with your lab on Dorumaa,” Etain said. “And that was pretty small, too. You’ve got all the imaging and analysis stuff. Isn’t that a start?”

  The Kaminoan sat in the room she had made her sanctuary, a windowless storeroom where she could avoid direct sunlight, and shuffled her datapads into a neat pile. She didn’t need locking up any longer. She’d shown no inclination to escape and never left the building unless Mereel made her; it was too bright and dry here for her liking.

  “That’s the problem, Jedi,” she said. “It’s a start. Not a progression or a continuation. Beginning again is very hard sometimes.”

  Etain wondered how much difference it would make if she knew her own research still existed, and then imagined Mereel’s reaction if she blew one of his main negotiating points. She almost dropped a hint. Almost.