Republic Commando: Triple Zero

17

So you want a knife, a nice sharp knife. You hone that blade to its limits. It even cuts through stone when you want it to. It saves your life. And then you're outraged when it cuts you accidentally. You see, knives don't switch off. And neither do people, not when you hone them to a fine edge.

–Sergeant Kal Skirata to General Arligan Zey, on the nature of training

Operational house, Qibbu's Hut, 0115 hours, 385 days after Geonosis

The Gurlanin opened its eyes, panting.

Etain couldn't tell one Gurlanin from another unless they allowed her to. They could shut out her Force-senses just as easily as they could reach out to her. She could detect nothing from the creature: no sense of identity, no emotion, and no purpose.

And then the air around her came to life with a shuddering sense of past, of long memory, and of betrayal.

“Girl,” it said in a familiar liquid voice. “Can you do nothing right?”

“I … I know you,” Etain said.

“Several of you know me.” The creature lifted its head and tried to rise, but sank back down again. “Darman, is Atin well?”

“Fierfek.” Darman edged forward and knelt down by the head of someone who had carried out vital intelligence work for the squad on Qiilura. Etain could see the pain on his face. Niner caught her eye and simply looked resigned, as if he expected everyone to betray them in the end. “Jinart?”

“Yes. I expect we all look the same to clones.”

Darman almost grinned but appeared to stop himself. “Atin's fine.”

Ordo cut in. “Just explain why you think killing my brothers is going to help Qiilura.”

Jinart focused wild orange eyes on Etain and struggled into a sitting position, flanks heaving. Etain could sense her fully now, bitter and determined, calling out to the void with her mind: she was probably reaching telepathically to her consort Valaqil, once General Zey's agent both on Coruscant and Qiilura. Skirata had his right arm across his body, almost but not completely casual, clearly ready to reach for his Verpine and take a shot if Jinart moved.

“You think I am giving the Separatists information.”

Ordo stepped in and Darman got out of his way. “I'm inclined to think that anyone who bothers to shapeshift into Vinna Jiss might do that, yes.”

“She disappeared, like she often did. I simply adopted her form to move around unnoticed.”

“I noticed. We'd already executed her.”

“Then I made an error in taking her form.”

“Too right you did. Now, what's your problem with the Grand Army? Why not target politicians? You could walk in anywhere—even the Senate chamber itself.”

“You assume too much. Are you one of the renegade clones that Zey so dreads?”

“That's me,” Ordo said.

“I am not the one leaking information to the Separatists. And I am not targeting anyone.”

“Are you still working for General Zey?” Etain asked.

“No. My people no longer serve the Republic—if we ever served you at all. We had an agreement. You broke it.”

“But—”

“We had an agreement, Jedi. You said you would give us back our world and stop the farmers from destroying us.”

“In the middle of a war?”

“We served you in the middle of a war! When my people were dying of starvation, when our prey was being driven away by the colonists, we kept our bargain. And all you did—you, Jedi, you and Zey—was make them better able to fight and hold their land.”

Etain didn't look at Darman. She didn't want to provoke him into defending her or—more probably—catch a hint that he might agree with Jinart.

She thought that all she had done was to ensure the farmers were a guerrrilla force able to resist the Separatists, but the native Gurlanins didn't see it that way.

“We'll root out the informants sooner or later,” Ordo said. “You can cooperate or not, but I might as well execute you now if you're not going to be useful. We can't handle any more prisoners.”

It was always hard to tell if Ordo was playing the interrogation game or simply stating his intentions. Judging by Skirata's quick glance at him, it was the latter. He motioned Etain to stand clear and charged up the Verpine.

“I can identify the informants for you,” Jinart said calmly.

Ordo simply held the muzzle to Jinart's head. Etain looked to Jusik, and then to Darman and Niner and Vau, but they were all simply watching impassively. Corr was engrossed in the holochart, still logging movements. Wennen sat in the chair, her hand to her brow as if shielding her eyes, but nobody was making any attempt to intervene. Etain's gut said it was wrong.

But she did nothing.

“You're bargaining,” Ordo said. “I'll kill you anyway.”

“You're the one who needs to bargain. This isn't about my life.”

“Game's over.” Ordo held the Verpine steady. Etain waited, torn by indecision. She could stop Ordo for a fraction of a second—

“Remove your forces and the colonists from my world and I will identify the Separatists for you.”

Ordo—unblinking, passionless—lined the muzzle up about level where a normal animal's ear might be. “You haven’t told me why you were mimicking Jiss. That actually interests me more.”

“Ordo, I'll deal,” Skirata said. “Stand down.”

Ordo simply raised the Verp and held it back against his shoulder without hesitation. Etain imagined he would need to be coaxed into withdrawing: she'd seen the potential violence swirling within him constantly. But he obeyed Skirata without murmur.

The sergeant prodded Jinart with his boot. “You tell me, then, shapeshifer.”

“I observe,” Jinart said. “I watch to see when you move troops to and from Qiilura and how much you send to the farmers by way of aid to keep them loyal. All the things you never tell us, but that show your true intentions. I spy on you.”

“Let me explain something,” Skirata said. “I'm not the Republic. The work I do for them is actually for my own people—these lads here. So if you're not helping me keep my people alive, I'll make certain that Qiilura gets reduced to molten slag. And that's a promise. I'm not a Jedi and I'm not a politician, so I can do pretty well what I like. Your whole species is expendable. Understand?”

Jinart managed to get to her feet, or at least raise herself on her front legs.

“I will identify the people you want. But the Republic must agree to withdraw from Qiilura and remove the colonists within a year.”

“Okay, let's get hold of Zey now,” Skirata said. “If he doesn't agree, we move on and I'm not letting you melt back into the city.”

“Do you know how many of us there are, or where we are?”

“I don't care. Zey might.”

“My people are here, on Coruscant itself. You'll never track us down and we can be far more damaging than bombs.”

“Look, the logistics leaks are a sideshow right now. Save it for Zey.” Skirata opened his comlink. If the general was sleeping, then someone could go and wake him. War didn't keep office hours. “Supervisor Wennen, why don't you make us all some caf?”

He expected some complaint, but none came. She stood up, still clutching her ribs, and made her way unsteadily to the kitchen area.

“It's Besany, Sergeant,” she said.

Yes, she's on our side. Result. “Okay, I'm Kal.”

“Who likes it sweetened?”

“All of us,” Skirata said. “Two big spoonfuls. It's going to be a long night.”

Operational house, Qibbu's Hut, 0200 hours. 385 days after Geonosis

Darman sat cross-legged on the floor next to Jinart, hands clasped in his lap, as if he was watching her. Jinart watched him in return, orange eyes closing occasionally, her legs tucked under her.

Etain sometimes had to look closely to see if Darman was just thinking or actually asleep, because the impression he was making in the Force was so ambiguous. When she knelt beside him to check, though, his eyes were closed. For a brief moment she wondered if Jinart could make telepathic contact with him.

His eyes opened. He glanced behind Etain and then brushed his lips against her cheek.

“No word from Zey yet?”

Etain shook her head. There was nothing to hide any longer and she rested her forehead against his, not caring what anyone else thought: it was impossible to hide their relationship in a tight-knit group of soldiers living in one another's pockets. “He's got to consult people. Even Zey can't make those decisions on his own.”

“You should have been a healer, you know. You're good at it.”

“Well, let's see if I'm any good at healing rifts. I need to clear something up with Kal.”

“Problem?”

“Nothing to worry about.”

Etain knelt back on her heels and stood up in one movement. Skirata was talking to Niner and Ordo by the flimsi sheets on the wall, cleaning his beloved Verpine gun with slow care while they discussed the concentration of Separatists in various locations on the brightly colored 3-D grid of the holochart.

She caught Skirata's eye and beckoned him to follow her. He inclined his head in mute agreement and laid the dismantled Verpine parts on the table beside him, where they sat wrapped in distorted lines of colored light from the holo-chart projection.

They walked onto the landing platform. The strill was asleep on its stomach, all six legs spread out like an ill-shaped furry insect.

“I did something very foolish,” Etain said.

“Again?”

“Ordo.”

Skirata looked stunned then balanced on the brink of anger. “Ordo?”

“No, nothing like that … I used a command that I heard you use. It upset him. I called check to stop him from killing Jinart outright. He told me why I should never use it.”

Skirata blew out a long breath. “And you understand now?”

“Yes. I'm sorry. He … he said he'd shoot me if I ever did it again.”

“He would. Don't ever doubt it.”

“I believe you!”

“I never taught the Nulls that Jedi were their betters, you see, and I never taught them to obey the Republic, and no Kaminoan engineered them to be more cooperative than Jango. But they obey me for some reason, and even then I encourage them to question everything.”

“Is he programmed?”

Skirata looked at her with sudden disgust. Then he simply swung his fist at her without warning, a savage punch, a street brawler's punch. She leapt back and drew her lightsaber in one movement, but his fist went past her head. Deliberately. She could see the calculation on his face. She held her breath, waiting for him to lash out again.

“So are you programmed?” he said.

The blue blade of energy thrummed as she brought the Lightsaber down from a raised position and then thumbed it off, feeling stupid and ashamed.

She was also shocked at Skirata's reflexes: he could have landed that punch, and he clearly wasn't afraid of her lightsaber skills. She would never take him for granted again.

“No. I'm sorry.”

“You should know better than anyone. You've been drilled in weapons handling from the same age that those boys were. Do you think? Or are you so well trained that your body just reacts”—he snapped his fingers—“like that?”

She had reacted all right. Her muscles remembered years of light-saber practice. Her Masters taught her to rely on instinct, on the Force, and not to think.

“I said I'm sorry.”

“And so you should be. I taught all my boys that command from the very start. I drilled them over and over and over until they'd stop whatever they were doing instantly. And I did it for them, for times when it was needed to save them from something.”

“I swear I'll never do it again.”

“Ordo will never trust you now.”

“But it only stopped him for a—”

“—a fraction of a second that could get him killed. You just used him. Like all the aruetiise do.”

Skirata was furious: even in the dim light on the platform she could see that the skin of his neck was flushed, that telltale sign of strong reaction. In the last few weeks Etain sometimes felt that he saw her as the personification of the Republic, using his men for their own agenda, and that she was a handy target on which to vent his spleen. He didn't seem to view Jusik the same way, though.

Exploitation was a raw nerve in Skirata. Etain desperately wanted him to like her and make her feel like family, the way he did everyone else.

“I'll apologize to Ordo.”

“Yeah, it really is him you need to make your peace with.”

She wondered why she hadn't realized that to start with. Do I really see them as men? Do I regret angering Ordo, or do I just want to be Skirata's little girl? She turned on her heel and decided to confront it.

Ordo was having a tense conversation via his bead comlink, forefinger pressed to his ear. Jusik fiddled with some piece of circuitry, glancing up at him from time to time. The side of the conversation that Etain could hear suggested that someone on Zey's staff wasn't moving as fast as Ordo wished.

Jusik mouthed Captain Maze at her.

She waited. Ordo grunted. “I'll stand by.” He shook his head and turned to her. “What's wrong?”

“Ordo, I owe you an apology. I was wrong to use the check command and you're right to be angry with me.”

He just nodded. It still surprised her that a man who was physically identical to Darman could somehow look so different.

“I realize you had a bad deal, Ordo.”

“On Kamino?”

“Even now, I think.”

Ordo blinked a couple of times as if she wasn't making sense. She had no idea where his mind ranged in those split seconds other than that he felt like a flurry of activity in the Force.

“I didn't have a mother or a father, but a stranger willingly chose me to be his son. You had a mother and father, and they let strangers take you. No, General, don't pity me. You're the one who's had the worse deal.”

It was shocking and it was true. The extraordinary clarity of his assessment hit her so hard that she almost gasped. It told her things she didn't want to know about herself. None of them changed her intentions. But she knew her motives better now, uncomfortable as they were.

She wondered if her real parents ever thought of her.

She would never know.