Republic Commando_ True Colors Part 22

Levet knew, and there was only one way of permanently scrubbing a human memory that Ordo trusted. But his con-science, the rules of decency that Kal'buir had instilled in him, said to leave the man-this brother-alone.

"I'm going to have to remove her for a while. I a.s.sume you're happy to continue the removal of the colonists here on your own."

"Oh, I think we can blunder along ..."

"How long until the planet's cleared?"

"Another week, maybe, depending on how they react. We're losing too many men to mines. The locals are very good at concealing them from sensors with metal chaff, so we're adjusting our tactics."

"Either they come out quietly and board the transports..."

"Or we'll call in air support." Levet traced his fingertip through the three-dimensional representation of the Tingel Arm and the northeast quadrants. "The Thirty-fifth is due to take part in the a.s.sault on Gaftikar, so we need to clean up here, even if that means getting a little heavy-handed."

There wasn't a better time to move Etain. Once she knew how tough things were getting for Darman, she'd be tempted to seek him out. Gaftikar was relatively close to Qiilura.

Ordo paused in the hallway to check the messages on his datapad. Jusik had reported Delta's latest position on their way to Da Soocha; Kal'buir was on his way to Dorumaa.

Ordo thought of calling Besany, but it seemed a selfish indulgence while Etain and Darman were denied routine con-tact. And Kal'buir had left one more message: Suggest that the name Venku is quite nice, son.

Naming the child seemed to be a harmless concession to Etain's anxiety. If Darman or the child himself didn't like the name in due course, then it could always be changed. Ordo tried to imagine how Darman would react when he found out that n.o.body had told him about the baby, and that he was the last to know. Ordo was sure he would have been upset if he'd been in the same situation, however necessary it might have been.

"General?" Ordo thudded up the stairs. "Are you ready to leave?"

Etain emerged with a rough bag over her shoulder that looked like it had one change of clothes in it. Jedi didn't have much by way of possessions, just like clones.

"I need to say good-bye to Levet," she said.

"He knows you're pregnant, by the way. He's not blind or stupid."

Etain paused on the stairs for a moment. "Oh."

"And..." Come on, the name's important to her, and it's important to Kal'buir, or he wouldn't have pa.s.sed it to you. "Kal says Venku is a good name."

Etain looked totally distracted for a second and her lips moved. "Venku," she said at last. "Venku. Does it have a meaning?"

"It's derived from the word for 'future,' vencuyot."

"In the sense of..."

"A positive future."

"Ah." She nodded and managed a smile. The future was obviously as tantalizingly fragile for her as it was for any clone. "Tell Kal it's an excellent name."

Ordo waited by Mereel's shuttle and took in the clean silence of the snow while he waited for Etain to say her good-byes. Every time he tried to be civil to her, he couldn't seem to make it work. It wasn't as if he even disliked her. He just couldn't find any common ground, despite the parallels in their lives.

She emerged from the building and trudged through the snow, seeking out the path already worn down by boots.

"Where are we going, then?"

Ordo opened the hatch. "A resort beach."

"You're winding me up, aren't you?"

"No. It's what I believe they call a tropical paradise. I'll acquire a change of clothes for you."

Etain settled into the copilot's seat and looked like she was having trouble taking it all in. Ordo suddenly had an insight into the mind of a Jedi who wasn't comfortable with authority like Zey, or happy being one of the ordinary people as Jusik was.

She s never done this. She s never been somewhere purely for relaxation. She x as inst.i.tutionalized as any clone trooper. And there s no Kal'buir to look out for her.

Yes, he pitied her, as he'd told her once before. It surprised him that he could, if being grateful that he wasn't her was pity.

"I don't feel right about going to a resort when men are still fighting, Ordo."

"And indulging in self-flagellation when you're pregnant and in danger of losing the child serves no purpose at all."

"I suppose that's your unique way of telling me to be kinder to myself..."

It was so much easier to have a conversation with Besany. She was a precise woman, and endlessly patient when he didn't understand some finer point of civilian etiquette.

"Dorumaa," Ordo said, trying hard for Darman's sake. "Mereel says it's an excellent place to relax."

Kal'buir had only told him to make sure Etain was safe and well. He hadn't told him not to return to the hunt for Ko Sai.

Like Etain, Ordo didn't like sitting on his shebs while the people he cared about were facing danger.

Chapter 9.

Millions of us were wiped out when the seas rose and engulfed Kamino. We survived as a species because we were willing to think the unthinkable. Some genetic characteristics helped us survive the starvation and overcrowding, and some did not, and there was no room for sentiment or for weaklings. We culled; we refined; we selected. The prospect of extinction forged us into the species we designed ourselves to be, the purest expression of the Kaminoan spirit, and at a level of social maturity that weaker mongrel species will never attain, because they lack the courage to cull. We are the masters of genetics and sole arbiters of our fate, never to be at the mercy of chance again.

-Draft memoirs of former Chief Scientist Ko Sai, on Kaminoan eugenics and the desirability of the caste system; never published * * *

Eyat City, Caftikar, Outer Rim, 477 days after Geonosis The bodies of the two covert ops troopers were much heavier than Darman expected.

The wait for Niner and Fi to show up-two hours-was the longest of his life, and every creak and click made him think the Eyat police were surrounding the apartment. When his brothers finally arrived, he felt inexplicably guilty, as if he had to explain himself.

Niner stood staring down at the two troopers.

"Have you tidied them up, Dar?"

Darman had done his best. Apart from the damage to the one he'd shot in the face, they both looked quite peaceful now. They looked like him, but dead-and he was having a. hard time dealing with that. Their arms were neatly at their sides, legs straight.

"I felt bad leaving them lying around like meat. What are we going to do with them?"

Fi shrugged. "Can't leave them here as air fresheners ..."

"Fi, they're our own." Darman couldn't bear looking at the faces any longer, and grabbed a blanket from the bedroom. "We have to dispose of them properly."

"We've got their armor," Fi said. "Sergeant Kal will want the tallies. He's funny about that."

"Okay, let me put it another way-what if that was your carca.s.s lying there? What would you want done with it?"

"I'd want someone to shake their head and say, What a waste of such a fine-looking and stylish young man! and then give me a big state funeral," Fi said, taking the blanket out of Darman's hands and rolling one of the covert ops troopers in it. "With loads of women weeping that they never had the chance to sample my charms. But apart from that, I wouldn't give a mott's backside by then, would I? It's just a temporary sh.e.l.l. Only the armor lasts."

Niner sneaked a glance out of the window. "It'll be dark in an hour or so. We'll take them back to camp and bury them. Dispose of the armor somewhere remote."

"And tell the lizards not to dig them up and eat them."

"Dar, Marks don't eat other sentients. Just their own dead."

"Oh, that's all right, then."

"Dar, these guys tried to kill you..."

"No, they came for Sull, Sarge, and that's just what you were ready to do not so long ago-remember?" Darman had no problem killing. It was his job, he'd grown used to it, and he didn't even get the bad feelings and nightmares afterward that they said humans usually had. But he'd killed his own comrades, not an enemy. The circ.u.mstances didn't make him feel any better. "I don't think I could ever go after my own like that, no matter what. Not unless it was personal and they'd done something terrible to me."

He realized he was blathering. Even Fi gave him an odd look. Niner bundled the second trooper into a blanket, and Darman helped him. The dead troopers' muscles hadn't stiffened yet, and when Darman bent one of them over, the movement forced the air from the man's lungs; he emitted a distressing sighing noise that made him sound as if he'd come back to life. Darman had seen some unpleasant things in battle, but that moment was seared into his memory as one he knew he'd never forget.

By the time the bodies were trussed with fibercord, they could have pa.s.sed for lumpy carpets in bad lighting.

"A'den's been told that the a.s.sault on Eyat is probably going to be in a week's time," Niner said, seeming unconcerned. "So it wouldn't matter if we left them here."

"No, we bury them."

"Okay, okay."

"I mean it."

"Dar, am I arguing?"

It would have made more sense to run; the longer they waited here, the more at risk they were. It wasn't hot outside, and with the environment controls in the apartment turned right down and the windows sealed, it might have been a couple of weeks before the neighbors smelled that anything was amiss.

But that wasn't good enough, even if they had been sent to shoot Sull.

Fi wandered into the kitchen. The conservator door sighed open and then shut again; he came out with a plate of food in one hand and a single fritter cake in the other, which he held up to Darman.

"Eat," he said. "Go on, or I'll sulk."

Darman accepted the cake and chewed, but it stuck in his throat like sawdust. He had an urge to call Etain. It was the first time he'd ever felt the need to seek comfort from some-one outside rather than from his immediate circle of brothers, and it made him feel disloyal, as if their rea.s.surance and support were no longer enough for him.

"You should talk to Kal'buir," Niner said quietly. "He killed a commando by accident. Remember? He probably knows better than anyone what you're going through."

"I'm not going through anything." Darman suddenly felt transparent and exposed. "I'm just getting jumpy waiting for the cops to show up. How n.o.body heard the blaster noise I'll never know."

"The place is well insulated," Fi said gently. "Pretty well soundproof, except for the floors creaking."

Darman knew he wasn't fooling anyone, and retreated to the kitchen to wait for darkness on the pretext of clearing out the cupboards. Yes, he'd talk to Skirata. Whatever Kal had been through was worse: he'd shot a commando in training during a live-fire exercise, one of his own boys, and even though everyone knew accidents like that happened, Skirata was never the same afterward. It had to be much, much harder to live with causing the death of someone you cared about. The covert ops troopers were relative strangers.

But Darman had heard that ARC troopers were ready to kill clone kids rather than let Sep forces take them during the attack on Kamino, not for their own good or to save them from anything, but to deny them as a.s.sets to the enemy. Would Sull have hesitated to kill a brother clone who got in his way? Darman doubted it.

It was all getting too blurred and messy lately. He longed for the good old days, when the enemy was just tinnies and very easy to spot.

"Okay, let's make a move," said Niner.

Niner brought a speeder right up to the front of the apartments-so that was what had taken two hours, then, ac-quiring more transport-and they moved the bodies like rolls of carpet. A few people were about on the street but they took no notice, probably thinking someone was moving house. Then Fi went to collect Darman's speeder while Niner and Darman waited in the vehicle with the bodies in the back.

It was just a simple drive back to the camp. Darman felt he could manage that, and began fretting about digging graves in the dark. He certainly didn't plan to leave the corpses overnight. He had an image of the Marits making a stew out of them, and it wasn't funny at all. It disturbed him in a way he hadn't thought possible, making his mouth fill with unwelcome saliva as if he was going to vomit, but he had to hold it together long enough to work with the lizards until the a.s.sault on Eyat began.

"Nice strong cup of caf when we get back," Miner said. His voice had every single intonation then that Skirata's did, all rea.s.surance and concern. "You'll be okay, Dar."

What if they weren't actually going to kill me? I never waited to find out.

"Sarge, do you suppose they'd just come to arrest Sull?"

"No," Niner said firmly. "They came to execute him. And even if they'd arrested you, they'd only have been taking you back so someone else could kill you. So stop replaying the holovid in your head and accept it was them or you, ner vod'ika"

Sometimes Darman thought that he alone knew what was going on in his mind, and then one of his brothers would tell him exactly what he was thinking. On balance, exposed or not, he was more comforted to know he wasn't alone or going crazy.

They drove out of town with Darman occasionally directing Niner, who was working from the holochart in his data-pad. Fi followed behind in the other speeder. It was all going fine-fine under the circ.u.mstances, anyway-until the red and green strobing lights of the local law enforcement patrol vehicle shot past them.

"He's in a hurry," said Niner.

"Late for his caf break ..." That was what Captain Obrim always said when he saw one of his CSF speeders misbehaving. Darman glanced in the rearview to check that Fi hadn't dropped too far behind. "Doesn't look like they get too much trouble in this place. Not exactly the lower levels of Triple Zero."

"Everywhere's got its lower levels, Dar."

He felt that if he kept chatting like a normal person, every-thing would be all right. He thought that right up to the moment when the police speeder braked and came to a halt, the illuminated matrix between its rear jets flas.h.i.+ng a single word: STOP.

"Osik," Niner muttered. "I think he means us."

"Tell me this isn't stolen, ner vod."

"It's not. And we're not over the speed limit, either."

Niner slowed down. Darman could see Fi dropping farther behind to stop outside a tapcaf.

"Now, nice and calm," Niner said.

"Let's hope he thinks we're twins."

"How many folks know what clones look like, anyway? Especially here." Niner activated the comlink deep in his ear by clicking his back teeth; Darman felt his own embedded earpiece vibrate for a moment as it started receiving the signal. Then Niner lowered the side viewport and put on his sensible-but-blank expression as the red-uniformed officer walked up to the speeder with one hand on the blaster at his belt. "Good evening, Officer. What's the problem?"

"Keep your hands where I can see them, sir, and show me what you've got in the back." The officer leaned slightly to stare at Darman. "You-step out of the vehicle and put your hands on the roof."