Atin’s voice crackled over the comlink. “I think I’ve broken my shabla ankle. I can see Niner. He’s giving first aid.”
They were all accounted for, then. Darman could spare a thought for the 35th Infantry now that he knew his brothers were alive. The larty had come back to extract them; it touched down in the middle of the road, the port-side hatch of the troop bay closed and blocking the line of sight between the ruined holostation and the buildings opposite. Troopers struggled forward carrying comrades between them, but one trooper was still flat on his back while Niner struggled to place a hemostatic dressing on his chest wound.
“I should be doing that,” Fi mumbled. “I’ll do that. I’m the squad medic…”
Atin appeared, limping badly. “Well, we stopped enemy broadcasts just fine. I think that was incoming.”
“Ours or theirs?” Darman asked. Atin took hold of Fi’s arm, but he stumbled and Darman had to catch him. “Hey, you okay?”
Fi swayed a little. “Just dizzy.”
“You should get that checked out. Sounds like concussion. You’re the squad medic, Fi, you should know that.”
“That’s what I said, didn’t I?”
“Fi?”
“Okay.”
“What’s wrong, Fi?”
“I’m going to throw up.”
Darman started to get scared at that point. This wasn’t Fi. He’d seen Fi under stress, in pain, and at every other extreme, but nothing like this. Fi managed to get to within five meters of the larty and then stopped to tear off his helmet, throw it aside, and brace his hands on his knees to vomit. That was as far as he got on his own. Darman and Atin managed to haul him into the crew bay, and Niner was briefly forgotten as they propped Fi on the narrow bench seat along the aft bulkhead and tried to keep him talking.
Sergeant Tel was yelling at Niner to get the chest injury case inboard. Whatever else was happening in Eyat and the surrounding area, Omega Squad’s stay on Gaftikar was over. Darman tried to comm A’den to update him, but didn’t get a response.
He’s probably busy, not dead. Worry about Fi. Fi’s the one in trouble.
Both blast hatches dropped down to seal the crew bay and it was a full casevac to Leveler now, only minutes from liftoff to docking, always minutes too long. Darman relived the extraction from Qiilura, Omega’s first mission as a re-formed squad, which had nearly ended in Atin getting killed. Atin made it. Fi will, too. That’s what happens, isn’t it? We all lost our squads the first time around, and it can’t happen again.
“Come on, Fi.” Atin tapped his cheek to keep him conscious. “Keep talking. I’ve never had to ask you to do that before.” Fi was barely coherent now, mumbling about something he’d left behind in the camp and complaining that everything was blurred. Against the opposite bulkhead, the onboard IM-6 droid was busy with the chest injury. Niner couldn’t move across the deck because of the number of wounded, and stood hanging on to a safety strap.
They’d all done the basic training; they knew what was wrong. Almost nothing penetrated Katarn armor, but it was a sealed box, nothing more, and being shaken around in a box hard enough was still going to cause brain injury. That fitted the uneven pupils and the puking. Darman looked on the positive side. At least he now knew that he had to make the triage team treat Fi as a priority.
The helmet comlink clicked. “Dar, I don’t care who I have to kick out of the way,” Niner said, “but he gets seen first, soon as we dock.”
“You got it.”
But it wasn’t like that at all. When the larty disgorged its wounded, the hangar deck was almost empty, because they weren’t taking heavy casualties on Gaftikar. Leveler had already crippled a Sep assault ship and taken minimal damage. The battle on the ground seemed completely artificial, divorced from the size of the engagement or the importance of the planet below. It was a pathetic, pointless skirmish for Fi to get injured in. It felt more like senseless bad luck.
Niner and Dar pounced on the med droid at once. “Head trauma,” they chorused. “Loss of balance, headache, vomiting, gradual loss of speech and coherence.” Fi, unmarked and looking like he was simply settling down again after thrashing around in a nightmare, lay on the repulsor as the droid mapped his skull with a small scanner. Atin tried to limp across to join them, then gave up and hopped the rest of distance.
“Correct,” the droid said. “Intracranial pressure is increasing. We’ll chill him down and insert a shunt to drain the fluid before we put him in the bacta tank. That’ll reduce swelling in the brain.”
Darman felt instantly deflated, faced with cooperation when he was pumped with adrenaline and fear, primed to fight. The repulsor moved off to medbay and Darman kept up with it, telling Fi it was going to be fine, even if he couldn’t hear him now, until the twin doors closed in his face and left him helpless. Niner put a hand on his shoulder plate and steered him back to the hangar.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Accurate diagnosis and quick treatment. He’ll make it. Now let’s look after At’ika. And get yourself checked out, too.”
“Yes, Sarge.”
“Nothing more we can do right now.”
There was one more thing, but Darman didn’t want to call Skirata and get him worried when he only had half a story to tell him. Ordo, though, would kill him if he wasn’t kept informed; he’d taken a shine to Fi in that blindly devoted Null sort of way, and he’d want to know. He was also the right man to judge when Sergeant Kal should be told.
Darman went reluctantly to the med droid when the last man from the 35th had been assessed, and wondered who would take Fi’s place in the squad until he recovered. It would have be Trooper Corr, an accidental recruit to the commando ranks who’d settled into the special forces way of life with remarkable ease.
And it would be temporary.
It had to be.
Tropix island, Dorumaa,
478 days after Geonosis
Etain felt something scared and abandoned rippling through the Force, like someone running after her and calling her name, but who was never there when she turned around.
It’s not Dar. It can’t be, not now. I have to see him again.
She tried to identify its meaning as she walked along the bleached planks of the marina toward the berth where Skirata’s ship was moored. Whatever it was, it was unhappy and it would be coming her way, so she slowed down, concentrating to make absolutely sure nothing had happened to Darman.
“Ordo,” she said, “something’s really wrong.”
He seemed to have learned a lot of restraint very fast. The vague warning didn’t spark a diatribe on why she needed to narrow the range and work on making the Force a little more specific. “Here, or elsewhere?”
“I’m not sensing immediate danger.”
“I’ll put in a status check to everyone, just to be certain.” He checked his comlink. “I’ve had one troubling message today, and I doubt it’ll be the last.”
Moored at the farthest end of the pontoon was a streamlined dark green vessel with a curving transparisteel dome, about forty-five meters long, rising and falling on the swell. From the position—closest to the mouth of the harbor—Etain got the idea that Skirata was always ready for a fast getaway. Ordo approached it as if he was walking into a fight, leaving a wake of anger, unhappiness, and more fear than she’d ever detected in him before.
“I’m not looking forward to seeing her, either, Ordo.”
“I didn’t mean Ko Sai. But I can think of better ways to occupy my time than begging her for help. She had the power of life and death over us once, and I’m not handing it back to her now.”
“This is the first time I’ve met a Kaminoan,” Etain said. Darman mentioned them very rarely, and usually in terms of keeping out of their way, like a grumpy Master at the Jedi academy. “But I can probably tell you if she’s lying. Her only use to you is if she knows how to stop the accelerated aging, isn’t it? Because you already have all her research. You could hire someone else to crunch the gen
e sequences.”
“Oh, she knows that, too.”
It really was a beautiful late afternoon. The sun was low on the horizon, with just enough gilded clouds to add a little punctuation to the sky. There was something about seeing beauty while struggling with dark thoughts that was uniquely upsetting, like being shut out from the world. Etain couldn’t stop worrying about the disturbance in the Force that was close to Darman. She’d have to contact him or go crazy worrying, but in the meantime she made do with reaching out to him, hoping he wasn’t too preoccupied to feel it.
As she followed Ordo down onto the pontoon that stretched out into the harbor, she could see faint cockpit lights on the ship.
“What does Aay’han mean, Ordo?”
“It’s a state of mind. An emotion.” He walked a little way ahead of her now, not a clone captain at all, just a young man in plain blue pants, sport shirt, and sun visor who could have been one of the professional slingball coaches at the resort. With most of his features obscured, even Zey might not have recognized him except by that very upright walk. “Enjoying time with loved ones but suddenly recalling those who’ve passed to the manda, and still feeling the pain, but embracing it.”
The concept hit Etain hard enough to elicit a kick from the baby. She wasn’t sure whether aay’han upset her or if she craved that emotional intensity, but it seemed the polar opposite of the Jedi avoidance of attachment, and gave her an insight into why the ancient mistrust between Jedi and Mandalorian never healed. The two communities seemed only to have areas where they were identical, and areas where they were diametrically opposed, with no regions of neutrality or apathy. It made for uncomfortable relations.
Ordo jumped onto the flat section of Aay’han’s casing and reached into an open hatch. Someone she couldn’t see passed him a long strip of durasteel sheet, and he hooked the curved end over the hatch coaming to form a brow onto the pontoon.
“Up you come,” he said, gesturing to take her hand. “Can’t have you leaping onto decks at the moment.”
Etain could easily have Force-jumped across the whole pontoon and landed safely, pregnant or not, but it was such a touching gesture that she accepted it graciously and walked onto the hull. Ordo had his moments. On the other side of the cockpit dome, Mereel and Skirata sat with legs outstretched, leaning back against the transparisteel and passing a carton of some drink back and forth between them. Both men were staring out to sea, lost in thought.
It wasn’t quite how Etain expected to find them, given what Ordo had told her was waiting below.
And this was the first time she’d seen Skirata since their blazing row when she told him she’d let herself conceive without Darman knowing, and he’d exiled her to Qiilura. She felt stupid and selfish now, looking back on how she expected him to be the instantly doting grandfather, but one thing remained certain: the Force showed her she was right to have this child.
She braced for either a frosty reception or a renewed rant on her shortcomings, one of which was being a Jedi. Skirata looked up.
“Ad’ika!” he said, not a hint that they’d ever argued. “How are you, girl?”
Oh. “I’m… okay, Kal, all things considered.”
“Look, I’m sorry Qiilura went to osik. I’d never have suggested it if I’d thought the vhette were going to put up a fight.” He stood up and faced her with the awkward air of someone trying not to notice or comment on her bump, but it seemed to trigger some anxiety in him. Mereel still looked as if he was meditating. “Jusik’s intercepted Delta. He can’t steer them away from Tropix, not since our chatty Twi’lek buddy mentioned it to them, but he’s giving them a very rambling and unspecific briefing on the geology of the islands.”
Ordo’s comlink chirped, and he walked a few meters aft to sit on the cowling of the port drive to answer it. Mereel got to his feet and went to join him.
Etain had expected Skirata to get as far away from Dorumaa as he could. “Aren’t Delta going to be a little conspicuous in their full Katarn rig on a tropical island—in Sep space?”
“If you’ve seen some of the fashions we’ve seen parading by in the last hour, ad’ika, I’d say they might get away with it.”
“I don’t understand why you’re still here.”
“You think we’ll be any more secure on Coruscant?”
“Maybe—”
“Guess who Ko Sai was running from.”
It took Etain a few moments before the light went on. “Oh. Our respected leader?”
“Head of the queue. Plus the Kaminoan government, the Seps, and us. Coruscant’s the last place I can stash her.”
Etain didn’t think that would be a problem for Skirata given his business contacts. “Can’t your Wookiee associate find her a soundproofed apartment where Vau can beat the living daylights out of her without upsetting the neighbors? Like last time?”
“She’s scoping out other locations, ad’ika. Besides, Vau won’t get a look in. My boys don’t have happy memories of Ko Sai.”
“I’m missing a few details in this, aren’t I?”
“That’s why I think we should go down below and have a quiet discussion, all of us.”
The hatch set abaft the cockpit turned out to have a ramp rather than the ladder Etain was dreading. A pungent scent of strill wafted up from below. She thought Skirata was right behind her, but when she looked, he was still up top, and Walon Vau was waiting for her with Mird, who seemed to remember her if the excited grumbling and snuffling were any guide. The crew cabin was oddly un-ship-like, with a square of scruffy sofas facing one another around a low table bolted to the deck. She sat down and Mird laid its head in her lap, slobbering happily.
But there was something else on board. Etain’s Force-senses detected what she could only articulate as a cold void: the three-dimensional shape it conjured up somewhere behind her eyes was a smooth concave, not the rippling, multi-layered, and colorful impressions she got from most beings. She didn’t need to be told who or what was in one of the crew cabins that opened onto the main crew lounge. Ko Sai was in one of the compartments, disdainful and unrepentant as she awaited her captors.
“My father would have called this the mess deck,” Vau said. When it suited him, he had an effortless patrician charm that was hard to square with how he disciplined his men. “I admit I still flinch when I hear Kal using terms like backward and on a ship. I also admit that it’s confusing to have a vessel that’s both a maritime and air asset, though.”
“So what do you plan to do with her?”
“Ko Sai or Aay’han?”
“Ko Sai.”
“It’s rather like watching a kragget rat chase a delivery speeder in the lower levels. If they catch one, they realize they have no idea what to do with it, and just sink their fangs into the fender.”
“Oh, I think Kal knows what to do.”
“Etain, I’m quite used to judging who’ll want to divulge their innermost thoughts to me after a little persuasion, and I don’t think her cooperation is likely.”
“What’s she holding out for?” Etain was now distracted slightly by the delay up top, and the foreboding she’d felt earlier was now solid and spreading like an oil slick. “What does the life span of a clone matter to her anyway?”
“Professional ego, my dear. She can create life, or shape it to her design, or snuff it out. That god-like power warps anyone. She’s not bargaining with us.”
“You’ve got everything she ever worked for.”
“Yes, it must be sobering for her to realize that we only need a fraction of it and we don’t care about the rest.”
Etain noted the we. “Kal’s not going to sell it… is he?”
“Absolutely not. He’s pretty cavalier about the property of others, but this has become his life’s cause. It’s literally do or die for him.” Vau frowned slightly and went to the foot of the ramp to peer up into the fading light. “What are they doing up there? Delta’s going to pass this way and see them, and that’ll blow everything.?
?? He took a few steps up the ramp and called to them. “Special sea duty men to stations, secure all hatches…”
Vau was almost smiling, clearly in a good mood and playing the sailor, but that smile faded as Ordo came down the ramp with his comlink clutched tight in his fist. Mereel and Skirata followed him, all of them with that same dazed look.
Etain could see her bad news coming. I’d know if it was Dar. I really would. It’s not Dar. It can’t be. She waited, one hand resting on her belly, refusing to even consider it in case thinking it made it happen.
“Who is it?” she asked quietly,
“Fi,” said Ordo. “He’s been wounded. He’s in a coma.”
Etain found she had suddenly veered from accepting the reality of warfare to believing it would never happen to the men she knew, and that it wasn’t fair when it eventually did.
“That was Darman calling. He said they were caught in an explosion during the assault on Gaftikar, and Fi took a pounding. He’s in Leveler’s medbay, in low-temperature bacta. Ruptured spleen, too, but it’s mainly the head trauma. He’s stable. That’s a good sign. Really, it is. It’s just a matter of waiting until he regains consciousness.”
Ordo was reassuring himself. It didn’t seem to have occurred to him to let Darman speak to Etain, but the fact that he’d swept past that told her everything was okay. She felt angry with herself for thinking of Dar first and not concentrating on Fi. Now she was painfully aware of Ordo’s distress. He and Fi were close.
“Better let Bard’ika know,” Skirata said. “Leveler will be on station out on the Rim for a few more days yet, so if you give me an order, General Tur-Mukan, I’ll recall Corr and he can make up the numbers for Omega until Fi’s fit again.”
“Of course, whatever you need to do.” Skirata usually did as he pleased, but he was in a conciliatory mood today. “Where is he, anyway?”
“Doing some asset denial with Jaing.”
“I had to look up the data on Gaftikar when I knew where Dar was deployed,” Etain said. “What a marginal thing for us to get involved in. Somehow I always thought the casualties would be in the big battles.”