And keeping an eye on Atin, Vau, and Sev.
And introducing Etain to an element of war that wasn’t remotely noble.
And making sure that everyone came out of it alive.
Skirata reached over the back of the seat and gave Sev and Scorch a playful swat, then nudged Ordo beside him.
“I promised you all a night out,” he said. “When we get this cleaned up, Zey’s going to get a really big mess bill from the officers’ club.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t wait until then,” Scorch said. “You never know what’s around the corner.”
No. You didn’t. You never did.
Chapter Nine
When the enemy is a droid or a wet with a weapon, then killing them is easy. But in this game you’re operating among civvies, on your home ground. You could be working right next door to the enemy. They might even be people you know and like. But they’re still the enemy and you’ll have to slot them just the same. There’s no Mandalorian word for “hero,” and that’s just as well, because however many lives you save in black ops, you will never, ever be a hero. Deal with it.
—Sergeant Kal Skirata, teaching counterterrorist tactics to Republic Commando companies Alpha through Epsilon, Kamino, three years before Geonosis
Arca Company Barracks parade ground,
0730 hours, 371 days after Geonosis
The missile skimmed the top of Etain’s head and bounced off the Force-shield she had instinctively thrown up to protect her face.
Jusik skidded to a halt in front of her, sweat dripping off the end of his nose, a flattened alloy rod clutched in one hand. There was a smear of blood across his cheek, and she wasn’t sure if it was his.
“Sorry!” He looked elated. “Look, why don’t you sit over there? It’s safer.”
Etain indicated the blood. “And why don’t you use your Force powers?” she said. “This is a dangerous sport.”
“That’s cheating,” Jusik said, lobbing the small plastoid sphere back into the knot of commandos. They pounced on the object like a hunting pack and jostled each other ferociously to whack the thing with rods, trying to drive it hard against the barrack wall.
Etain had no idea what the game was called, if it had a name at all. Nor did it seem to have any rules: the ball, such as it was, was being hit, kicked, and thrown as the whim took the players.
And the teams were Niner, Scorch, Fixer, and Darman against Fi, Atin, Sev, and Boss. Skirata insisted that they played in mixed teams.
Several other commandos had paused while crossing the parade ground to watch. The battle was conducted in grim silence except for the clash of rods, gasping breath, and occasional approving shouts of “Nar dralshy’a!”—Put your back into it!—and “Kandosii!”—which, Jusik had explained, had been appropriated colloquially to mean “classy” rather than “noble.”
They had all become much more ferociously Mando since she had first met them. It was a phenomenon that made sense given the specific nature of their duties, but it still left her feeling that they were becoming strangers again. Working so closely with Skirata appeared to have focused their minds on a people who seemed to have the ultimate freedom.
Even Darman had fallen happily into it. He was utterly engrossed in the game, shoulder-charging Boss out of the way and knocking Jusik flat. There was a shout of “Kandosii!” as the ball thudded against the wall, two meters above the ground.
Then Skirata emerged from the doorway. Etain didn’t have to take any hints from the Force as to his state of mind.
“Armor!” he yelled. His voice could fill a parade ground. The commandos froze as one. He did not look amused. “I said wear some armor! No injuries! You hear me?”
He strode across to Jusik with surprising speed for a man with a damaged leg and came to a halt with his face centimeters from the Jedi’s. He dropped his voice, but not by much.
“Sir, I regret to have to tell you that you’re a dik’ut.”
“Sorry, Sergeant.” Jusik was a contrite scrap of bloody robes and sweaty hair. “My fault. Won’t happen again.”
“No injuries. Not now. Okay, sir?”
“Understood, Sergeant.”
Skirata nodded and then grinned, ruffling Jusik’s hair just as he did his troops’. “You’re definitely ori’atin, Bard’ika. Just don’t get yourself killed.”
Jusik beamed, clearly delighted. Skirata had not only told him that he was exceptionally tough, but he had used the most affectionate form of his name: now he was “Little Bardan,” and thus one of Skirata’s clan. He jogged off after the commandos and disappeared inside the building.
Skirata ambled across to Etain and sat down next to her on the bench. “He’s a gutsy little di’kut, isn’t he?”
So it wasn’t only a term of abuse, then. “If there wasn’t a war on, I suspect that Master Zey would have had a serious word with him by now. Bardan’s become very attached.”
“Being a loner might make a warrior, but it won’t make a soldier.”
“Where were you educated?”
Skirata was looking straight ahead rather than at her, and his eyes creased at the corners for a brief moment. “On the street, on the battlefield, and by a bunch of very smart little boys.”
Etain smiled. “I wasn’t being rude. Just curious.”
“Fair enough. I had to analyze and explain everything I taught my Nulls for eight years. It wasn’t enough for me to show them the right way to fight. They wanted me to rationalize it. They shredded me with questions. Then they’d feed it all back to me in a way I’d never seen it before. Amazing.”
“Do we get to meet them all? Are they all like Ordo?”
“Maybe,” Skirata said. “They’re deployed in various locations.” It was his noncommittal answer: Don’t ask. “And they’re all of the same caliber, yes.”
“So out of a strike team of twelve, you have eleven tough men—atin, yes?—and me. I can’t help feeling I’m not going to be much use.”
Skirata took out a chunk of something brown and woody and popped it into his mouth. He chewed like a gdan, as if he were gnawing off someone’s arm. “Atin’ade,” he corrected. “Oh, you’ll be plenty of use. I suspect you’ll have the hardest job of all.”
“Whatever it takes.”
“I know.”
“Sergeant, is this going to become clear at the briefing?”
“It’s not a secret. I just want everyone to have the full picture at the same time. Then we ship out and disappear.”
“I hear you’ve done that before.”
“Cuy’val Dar. Yes, I’ve been ‘those who no longer exist’ before. You get used to it. It has its plus points.”
He got up and walked toward the barracks, Etain following. His limp was far less obvious today.
“How did you hurt your leg?” she asked.
“I didn’t follow orders. I ended up with a Verpine shatter gun round through my ankle. Sometimes you need to learn the hard way.”
“Never got it fixed?”
“I’ll get around to it one day. Come on, breakfast before briefing. Some things sound better on a full stomach.”
When the briefing started at 0800, Jusik looked freshly scrubbed, but he was developing a fine black eye. He also seemed delighted. Etain envied him his capacity for finding joy in the most unlikely places, just like Darman did. Omega and Delta appeared to have broken up as squads completely. They took their seats, lounging around in their black bodysuits, but they no longer sat in their own tight groups. Atin and Sev still exuded a sense of distance, but Skirata’s crash course in being buddies appeared to be working.
There was also the small matter of the Wookiee who had walked in. Skirata directed the creature to a bigger chair and locked the doors. It was the one who’d piloted the taxi.
“Ordo, have you swept the room for bugs?”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Okay, ladies and gentlemen, this is strictly for those in this room. If anyone wants out, now’s the time to say.”
br />
“Observe the complete lack of movement, Sarge,” Scorch said. “Nobody’s passing on this one.”
“I didn’t think so. From now on, there’s no General or sir or Sergeant or designation codes, and no Jedi robes. There is no rank. There is no chain of command beyond me. If I’m otherwise engaged or dead then you answer to Ordo. Got it?” The Wookiee threw him two bundles of clothing and he lobbed one each to Etain and Jusik. She caught hers and stared at it. “Plainclothes, kids. You clone lads are just soldiers on leave, and us mongrels are… well, Etain can pass for my daughter and Bard’ika is a useful deadbeat I picked up on my travels. A go-fer.”
The Wookiee emitted a long and contented trill. “This is Enacca, by the way.” Skirata indicated the Wookiee with a polite flourish. “She’s our quartermaster and mobility troop—she’ll secure supplies and transport for us. You ever worked with Wookiees?”
The commandos shook their heads, wide-eyed.
“Well, everything you’ve heard is true.” He gestured to Ordo, and a holoprojection streamed from the ARC’s glove onto the wall. It was a chart with arrows and labels on it. “So here’s what we have so far. One, we have a point of origin for the explosives. Two, we think we have someone in GAR logistics or support, or in the CSF, who is either passing information or being careless with it. Now, what we don’t have is a link in the chain between the following terror cells: materials to bomb manufacture; bomb manufacture to placement cell; and placement cell to recce and surveillance cell—in other words, the ones who tell them where to place the device and when to detonate it.”
Ordo had his projection arm resting on his chair. “And Vau is trying to extract at least one link from the cell Omega lifted.”
“But they might not even know what that link is,” Skirata said. “It’s common to use the equivalent of a dead letter drop to deliver stuff. The prisoners tested positive for explosives, so they might be the manufacturers, but I’d assume the devices are made on Coruscant because it’s simpler to ship bulk explosives than complete bombs, given that you can’t pretend bombs are for mining use, although neither is easy. So our best guess is that they’re the procurement cell that buys the raw material.”
Jusik had his head cocked on one side. “I take it that if we don’t know this after a day, then Vau is not having much success with his interrogation. May I volunteer to help him? Jedi have some persuasive powers as well as ways of uncovering facts.”
“I know,” Skirata said. “That’s why Etain’s going to do it. I need you out and about at the moment.”
Etain’s stomach somersaulted. Is this a test? Jusik was watching her cautiously: he could definitely sense her discomfort. Perhaps he had tried to do the decent thing and save her from the duty. Or perhaps he was so caught up in being one of the boys that he really wanted to have a crack at a prisoner. Jusik had his own wary relationship with the dark side, it seemed.
“Okay,” Etain said. You’ve killed. You’ve killed hand-to-hand, and you’ve killed by unleashing missiles. On Qiilura, under deep cover, you stabbed and crushed and cut, and taught the local guerrillas to do the same. And now you worry about manipulating minds? “I’ll do whatever I can.”
“Good,” Skirata said, and moved on as if she had simply volunteered to cook dinner. “Now, the data Atin sliced is just a list of thirty-five thousand companies using the freight service that Vau’s guests were apparently hitching a ride with. That means a lot of physical checking we can’t do ourselves. So Obrim’s running it through his database—his personal, special one—to see if any of them have form in customs irregularities, shady dealings, or even a speeding ticket. While he does that, we ship out. Jusik, Enacca is going to turn you into the galaxy’s scruffiest taxi pilot, and the rest of you can draw your extra kit—by which I mean discreet body armor, plainclothes rig, and civilian weapons.”
“Aww, Sarge…”
“Fi, you’ll love it. You might even get to wear Hokan’s helmet.”
“Just for you, then, Sarge.”
“Good boy. Okay, we all RV back here at twenty-one-hundred hours when it’s nice and dark.” Skirata gestured to Ordo to kill the holoprojection and then beckoned to Etain. “General, Ordo—with me.”
He led them into the passage and, instead of taking her into a quiet alcove to discuss matters, simply hurried her down the length of the corridor and out onto the parade ground, where yet another battered speeder with darkened transparisteel windscreens was waiting.
“Are you starting up a used-speeder dealership with Enacca?” Jokes always seemed to work for Fi, but Etain found they offered her no comfort at all. “They don’t draw attention, though, I’ll admit that.”
“Get in. Time to go to work.”
Like the clone army, she had become very good at following orders. Ordo took the speeder at a sedate pace into the main skylanes and dropped it into a gap in a route heading south.
“This is where it gets difficult, Etain,” Skirata said.
In a way, she knew what was coming. “Yes.”
“This is harder than taking on a column of battle droids and playing the hero.” Skirata was still chewing the ruik. She could smell it on his breath, sweet and floral. “I won’t insult your intelligence. I want you to torture a man. It’s the first intelligence break we’ve had in months and we need to make the most of it. Men died making sure we got those prisoners.”
She wasn’t sure if it was a test of her loyalty or not. It was certainly something that Skirata knew would be the ultimate line for a Jedi to cross. But Jedi crossed the lines of decency all the time, and it was supposed to be fine as long as you didn’t commit violence out of anger, or dare to love.
She was finding it harder to follow her path than ever before, and yet she was now clearer about her own convictions than she had ever been in her life.
She was aware of Ordo, too.
He appeared perfectly calm in the pilot’s seat, but the eddies and deep dark pools in the Force around him spoke of a man who was not at ease with himself or the world. Great peaks of fear and pain and helpless trust and desolation and… and… sheer overwhelming speed and complexity hit Etain like a spray of cold water. He felt as foreign as a Hutt or a Weequay or a Twi’lek.
He was a man in frequent agony. His mind was racing at full throttle, and it felt as if it never stopped.
She must have been staring at him. “Are you all right, ma’am?” he asked, still veneered in calm.
“I’m fine,” she said, swallowing hard. “What… what can I possibly do that Walon Vau can’t?”
“Are you ready to hear some unpleasant things?” Skirata said.
“I have to be.”
He rubbed his forehead slowly. “You can train people to resist interrogation. That’s a fancy phrase for torture, and I don’t like using it. I know, because I’ve done it, and hard-line terrorists get trained much like soldiers do. But they don’t get trained to resist Jedi. And that gives you a psychological advantage as well as a real one.”
“Nikto are supposed to be tough.”
“Humans can be tough, too.”
He seemed distressed. It was severe enough for her to feel the Force around him become that dark vortex again. “Kal, who’s finding this more unpleasant, you or me?”
“Me.”
“I thought so.”
“It comes back to you at times like this.”
“So who… trained Omega?” She felt the faintest shimmer of distress in Ordo now.
“Me,” said Skirata.
“Oh.”
“Would you have let anyone else do it if you were me?”
“No.” She knew immediately; she didn’t even have to think about it. It would have been an act of abandonment, letting someone else do the dirty work to salve your own conscience, with the same outcome. “No, I wouldn’t.”
“Well…” He shut his eyes for a moment. “If I can train my boys, then you should have no trouble doing what Vau can’t.”
“Tell me wh
at’s at stake.”
“For who? The Republic?” Kal asked. “I think it’s marginal, to be honest. In real terms, terrorism doesn’t even dent it. Casualties in the thousands, that’s all. It’s fear of it that does the damage.”
“So why are you in so deep?”
“Who’s getting hit hardest? Clone troopers.”
“But thousands of troops are dying in the front line every day. Numerically—”
“Yeah, I can’t do much about the war. I trained quite a few men to stay alive. But all that’s left for me is to do what I can, where I can.”
“Personal war, isn’t it?” Etain said.
“You think so? I don’t care if the Republic falls or not. I’m a mercenary. Everyone’s my potential employer.”
“So where does the anger come from? I know anger, you see. As Jedi we guard against it all the time.”
“You won’t like the answer.”
“I don’t like a lot of things lately, but I still have to deal with them.”
“Okay. Day by day, I get more bitter when I see Mandalorian men—and that’s what they are, whether you like it or not—used and discarded in a war in which they have no stake.” Skirata, sitting right behind Ordo, put his hand gently on the captain’s armored shoulder. “But not on my watch.”
Etain had no answer to that. She hadn’t articulated it in racial terms, and she knew that Mandalorians weren’t a race as such. But there hadn’t been one day since she had parted from Omega Squad on Qiilura nine months ago that she hadn’t agonized over the use of soldiers who had no choice, no rights, and no future in the Republic that they gave their lives to defend.
It was wrong.
There was a point somewhere at which the means did not justify the ends, no matter what the numbers argued. Like this violent, passionate little man beside her, Etain didn’t refuse her role in the war out of principle, because that would have been no more than shutting her eyes to it.
Men would still die.
And if the Jedi Council could accept the need to let that happen to save the Republic, then she could sink to a level she had never believed possible to save soldiers she knew as people.