“You should have gone,” Darman said. “Why the shab did you come back? What did you actually do? I told you to go.”
“It all went belly-up. Stupid bad luck, and I had to finish off a chakaar who saw a bit too much.”
“That’s not why you came back, though, is it?”
“No, it’s not.”
“I don’t want this guilt. You can’t dump it on me.”
“Hey, I’m not being a martyr, okay? My choice. I wouldn’t have had a second’s peace on Mandalore worrying what was happening to you here, and now that I know what Melusar’s got in mind, I’m glad I stayed.”
“Well, dropping the det about his homeworld got his attention, so he’s got to live with some uncertainty, too.” Darman slowed down. It had been raining. Small puddles had formed on the parade ground, and the night air smelled of damp permacrete. “But I like the guy. Him and Kal’buir—shame they’re on opposite sides. They’re both at war with the Force for the same reasons.”
“I think they both just want the Force to leave them alone, actually.”
“You know the killer question I forgot to ask?”
“What?”
“Whether Holy Roly thinks Mandalore should be part of the Empire. He does believe in the Empire, you know. Just not its management team.”
“Does the garrison at Keldabe scare you? For Kad, I mean.”
Dar shook his head. They had ten slow strides to wrap this up. “Not with the whole clan there. No.”
“Good.”
“I’m going to try to send holovid messages to Kad, so he doesn’t forget who I am.”
“That’s the spirit. Oya.”
Darman reached out to tap the security key code to the barracks block door. “And thanks, ner vod. It would have been hard here without you.”
The doors parted, and the evening’s dramas were over. Darman was on an even keel again.
Sooner or later, though, the question of when to make a run for it would come up again. All Niner knew now was not yet.
Freighter Cornucopia, next morning: inbound for Fradian, Mid Rim
“It’ll be good to see Maze again,” Jusik said. “He’s not a bad sort when you get to know him.”
Ruu gazed around the cockpit of the freighter. A quick change of transponder codes had given Ny’s ship a new identity for the time being, at Atin’s insistence, and Monarch-class vessels were some of the most common sights around Fradian. Nobody would be looking for a specific one here, not yet, if they were looking for it at all.
“I’m impressed that Ny trusts you with her transport,” Ruu said.
“I’m a safe pilot. Goes with the extra midi-chlorians.”
Everything living had them in its cells. The more you had, the more able you were to exploit the Force. Nothing special. Just the way I am. Jusik had always treated it as a knack he happened to have, in much the same way that Jaing had a flair for data technology. The knack used to be labeled Jedi, both explanation and identity. Now Jusik found he had expunged his sense of Jedi-ness simply by changing a word in his head to midi-chlorians. He was a Mandalorian who simply happened to have more midi-chlorians than other Mando’ade, and had been trained to use them.
I’m still finding out who Bardan Jusik is. Now I’ve peeled off the label, I can see what’s actually in the bottle.
“Have I got midi-chlorians?” Ruu asked.
“Every living cell has them. The more you have, the more potential you have to use the Force.”
“Even animals and trees.”
“Yes.” A thought struck him. “So what happens if you’re a nerf with a high midi-chlorian count?”
“Is this a quiz?” she asked.
Jusik was appalled that he’d never asked that question before. He didn’t have an answer, and from that moment he knew he’d always be plagued by the idea. “No, it’s me thinking out loud.”
“Well, latent Force-user or not, I bet someone ate it. Nobody assessed its potential except for stew and cutlets.”
Ruu was an oddball. Jusik couldn’t think of her as an older female in the way that he did Ny or Uthan, although being at least ten years older than him should have moved her into the category of folks he expected to know more than he did about life. Instead, she came across as a restless teenager who’d seen too much, too fast. It was the way she switched between utterly open questions and weary cynicism.
“I’m not sure I’m ever going to eat nerf again,” he said.
“Or sorris greens. Veggies have midi-chlorians, too.”
“Now you’re just winding me up.”
“No. Illustrating a point about our inability to fence ourselves off completely from causing pain. Being alive has a price.”
Ruu scared him sometimes. This was his brand-new sister. He recalled how excited Fi had been to acquire an instant family by adoption rather than blood, and now he understood how important those formalities were to folks.
“So you don’t trust Maze,” she said. “You didn’t give him the coordinates to Kyrimorut.”
“Just in case he’s compromised. It’s nothing to do with trust. Even ARC troopers can be tracked down. We found Sull when he was in hiding, remember?”
“One day, the Empire’s going to send a loyal clone to infiltrate.”
“Don’t you think Kal’buir’s thought of that?”
“That still doesn’t deal with the problem of what happens when it does.”
Jusik felt a brief pang of vague, formless fear, an animal reflex that cramped the muscles in his throat. But that was exactly what Palpatine traded on. Fear kept beings in line. Fear—shadowy things, unspecified things, things that you couldn’t actually see and grab hold of—made you mistrust and suspect everyone. It separated folks. Everyone retreated to the sanctuary of their own head, unable to trust even those closest to them. And divided people didn’t form up into groups to rebel.
Fear was a cheap and easy pathogen to unleash on a population, every bit as destructive in its own way as Uthan’s viruses.
“We’re ready for it,” Jusik said. “And until then, it won’t stop us helping brothers in need.”
Ruu just shrugged and sat back in the copilot’s seat, arms folded across her chest. “Dad’s a bit jumpy at the moment. Did he have a fight with Ny or something?”
Jusik had noticed. Something had shifted slightly at the gathering yesterday, and Kal’buir gave off a distinct anxiety in the Force. It could have been the fallout from the aborted rescue, because everyone was struggling to put a brave face on that. But Jusik knew him too well. Something else had upset him, and he was still on edge when they left.
“Maybe.” Jusik checked the nav computer; half an hour to reentry to realspace. “He might be feeling the pressure from A’den trying to marry them off.” Jusik realized that might have been a little insensitive. “Sorry. I forget that you lost your mother.”
“It was years ago,” Ruu said. “And Dad’s more than earned the right to move on.”
“Do you miss Corellia?”
“I never miss anywhere. I never fit in.”
“Not even in Kyrimorut?”
“That’s different. It’s Misfit Central.”
Jusik didn’t ask if she missed her two brothers. If she wanted to discuss that, he had the feeling she’d tell him in no uncertain terms. He activated the holochart and studied the street plans of Fradian’s ore terminal.
Maze had carried out Order 66, more or less. Jusik hadn’t yet met a clone who had, and for a moment it made him feel odd.
Ordo said Maze had actually arrested General Zey, but that Zey had asked him to finish the job, to spare him whatever Palpatine had lined up. Zey got a blaster bolt to the head, but on his own terms. And Jusik still felt guilty for the unkind thought that never left him: that the Jedi Order had sowed what it had reaped, and that its acceptance of a slave army had set up its own punishment. The Force had balanced the books.
He avoided the discussion with Scout. She was a Jedi. He wasn’t. He wo
ndered if he would ever swing back to the middle ground and see his former allegiance more neutrally.
Cornucopia dropped out of hyperspace on schedule, and Jusik landed with all the other ore carriers and supply ships. There were no Imperial troops patrolling the port, just local security, but he decided to change out of his armor. Mandalorians were highly visible. If a security holocam caught them, it might prove to be one more piece in a puzzle that some Imperial agent was putting together. Ruu watched him transfer his comm kit from his helmet to his aruetyc clothes.
“We could do with some discreet body armor,” she said.
Concealed armor was one of the few things that was hard to come by on Mandalore. Everyone wore beskar’gam, up front and in your face. Hiding it just wasn’t in the Mando mind-set.
“I’ll acquire some,” Jusik said. “But we’ll be okay today. Just in and out, and home for dinner.”
Ruu checked the power level on her blaster. “That’s what I said just before I ended up in a Republic prison camp.”
“What did you call us?”
“Carbon-flush, barves, kriffing—”
“I mean how you referred to the Republic. We called you Seps, Separatists, but you called yourselves the Confederation of Independent Systems. What was your nickname for us?”
Ruu looked as if she was running through a long list in her mind’s eye. “Jackboots,” she said.
“Logical.”
“Control. Surveillance. Checks. Every movement and comm message logged. All for your own good, all to protect you. And you all fell for it.” Ruu pulled the power clip out of her blaster with a loud snap and swapped it for another. “The only thing Republic citizens ever really needed protecting from was their own government. And now they’ve got what they deserve.”
She was Kal Skirata’s daughter, all right. Jusik marveled at the similarities in outlook, even though Kal’buir hadn’t been around to influence her view of the world. But Corellia and Mandalore had one big cultural thing in common: they didn’t take kindly to being herded.
Jusik secured the freighter and they walked through the loading yard toward the gates, dodging loader droids ferrying pallets to the ships. “You including me in that?”
“No,” she said. “You were institutionalized, and you still managed to tell them to shove it.”
Institutionalized. Brutal, but true. “All families are institutions. As far as I was concerned, the Order was my family.”
“Liar. You must have known there was something missing, or you wouldn’t have latched on to Dad, and you certainly wouldn’t have hung up your lightsaber.” Ruu, ambling casually as if she did the Fradian ore run every day, glanced at his belt. “Where is it, by the way?”
“Somewhere I can’t draw it without thinking.”
“Smart.”
“I’m getting used to thinking blaster first. Verpine pistol, actually.”
“Yeah, I noticed Dad loves his Verps.”
The security guard at the gates was reading a holozine, arms folded on the countertop in his booth. He looked up as Jusik and Ruu inserted their identichips in the scanner, squinted at the readout, and waved them past with a grunt. For a moment, Jusik completely forgot which bogus identity he was traveling with today.
Something odd was distracting him, and he wasn’t sure yet what it was. It was like his Force sense of danger in some ways, an urge to look over his shoulder, or a compulsion to pay attention to a specific place; but he didn’t feel under threat. He just felt that there was something he’d missed.
This was all down to Ruu going on about surveillance and Jackboots, nothing more. She’d made him jumpy.
“Better check your buddy’s there,” she said.
Jusik opened his comlink. “Maze? How you doing?”
Maze took a couple of moments to answer. He sounded tense. “Welcome to Tin Town. Picturesque, isn’t it?”
The terminal looked like it had been designed by an architect who hated his job and wanted to get fired. Some industrial landscapes held their own stark, utilitarian beauty for Jusik, but Fradian was just plain ugly.
“I must buy a holocard to send to the folks,” Jusik said. “Okay, shall we meet up at the tapcaf with the least food hygiene violations?”
“I’ve borrowed a speeder. Let’s not.”
“The lawful owner’s unaware, of course.” Jusik felt reassured that he could still tell when someone was under stress. Poor old Maze. He’d been tied to HQ as Zey’s aide and rarely got out to do all the stabbing, stealing, and sabotaging that the other ARC troopers did. He wasn’t used to taking vehicles. “Okay—”
“What transport have you got?”
“Freighter.”
“Can it take a small speeder? Two-seater?”
Cornucopia’s cargo doors were full-width. “Sure. But you don’t need to hang on to it. We’ll kit you out with everything you need.”
“I’m in the speeder now, and getting out will be … awkward.” Maze didn’t elaborate. “Can you get to the waste processing area and park up ready to open the hatch for a quick exfil?”
Jusik consulted his datapad. “Give me ten minutes to walk back to the ship. I’ll land on the junction with the service road.”
“Good plan, sir.”
Maze still thought of him as General Jusik, then. “I’m just Bardan now, ner vod.”
“So you are,” said Maze.
Jusik closed the comlink and caught Ruu’s arm to turn her around back to the ship. “That explains my weird feeling,” he said. “Maze got himself in a spot. He’s a bit out of practice.”
“Now you tell me about the feeling. Force stuff, I assume.”
“Yeah.”
Ruu strode at an impressive pace. “And he wants to bring his speeder on board.”
“Yeah.”
“I think that’s weird.”
Jusik recalled all the abandoned vehicles that Skirata’s illicit activity on Coruscant had left in its wake. It had been a full-time job for Enacca the Wookiee to make sure they were all recovered, disposed of, or put back in the transport pool with new ID and livery. Abandoned vehicles made cops suspicious and left trails of evidence.
“It’s only in holovids where nobody worries about basic logistics,” Jusik said. “And Maze is pretty weird.”
“Bard’ika, I don’t like this.”
“Look, you got caught.” He hated himself for saying that the moment he said it. “Nobody’s ever caught me. Relax.”
As they walked back through the gates, the security guard looked up from his holozine and frowned.
“ID,” he said, looking Jusik over. “Left something behind?”
“Change of itinerary. I need to move the ship.”
“You’re booked in for three hours.”
So he wasn’t that unobservant after all. Jusik drew his ID chip. “I’m an annoying pilot who’s going to mess up your day with extra admin work. You decide to turn a blind eye because it’s not worth the trouble I’m going to turn into. You’ll forget us the minute we take off.”
Jusik handed the guard both chips, his and Ruu’s. The guard sighed and handed them back.
“You’re just going to mess up my day with extra admin work,” he said. “Beat it. And no refunds for unspent time.”
Jusik just smiled and walked on. He hated using Jedi mind influence, but he’d made a deal with himself to do it only when his family or another clone was in trouble. This was justified mind messing. He wouldn’t make a habit of it. Honest. But sometimes it really was the kindest thing to do.
Ruu didn’t say a word until Cornucopia’s cockpit hatch sealed behind them.
“So what the stang was that, spoon-bender?”
“A persuasive technique they taught us at the academy.” Jusik started up the drives, one eye on the bulkhead chrono. “We weren’t the miscreants he was looking for. Something like that.”
“Something like when you knocked me out cold without laying a hand on me?”
“I never left
a bruise, did I?”
“Sometimes you creep me out, ner vod.”
“I promise I’ll never use Force tricks on you without your consent.”
“Make that just never.”
The freighter lifted clear and skimmed low over kilometers of elevated conduits strung between air shafts and processing plants. The waste facility glittered below it like a lake in the barren, dusty landscape, but as Jusik brought the ship in to land, the surface of the water resolved into a sewage treatment reservoir. Nothing could remain a lovely illusion for long here. He could see a speeder parking area with rows of vehicles, and a few plant workers standing around a mobile generator, chatting and drinking from flimsi cups. He commed Maze again.
“Maze, have you got a visual on me?” Jusik said, keeping the repulsor drives running. “Monarch-class crate. Flashing my nav lights now.”
“Got you. You’re hard to miss. Cargo doors open?”
“Come on in.” Jusik could now feel something very odd in the Force, almost as if something had swept in with the grit and hot air when the cargo hatch opened. He tried to concentrate on the task in hand. He still didn’t know where Maze was. “Have you nicked one of the waste company’s speeders?”
“They’ll notice when I start the thing. I’ve been holed up here since daybreak.”
“I still don’t see why he can’t get off his shebs and walk out to us,” Ruu muttered. “They won’t stop him. They probably won’t even know what he is, let alone who he is.”
“I’m moving now,” Maze said, voice tight and strained. “Just hold position until I’m in.”
Maze was clearly under a lot of stress; Jusik didn’t need to be told that. He couldn’t pick out the speeder in the rows of vehicles and waited for movement to catch his eye. Then one speeder, bright red with white markings, lifted and began moving slowly out of its bay, crawling at regulation safety speed along the row toward Cornucopia’s position.
It had to pass a knot of workers.
“Ah, stang … ,” Ruu said.
“Get a move on, Maze …”
Maze sighed audibly. Jusik still had his eye on the plant workers, and as the speeder slipped past them, one looked around casually as if to check which of his buddies was moving out. Jusik couldn’t hear his shout, but he saw the pointed finger, the way the rest of the workers all whipped around, and then the billow of dust as Maze hit the accelerator and sped toward the freighter. The workers started running after the speeder.