501st: An Imperial Commando Novel (15 page)

But he wondered if some spark would be struck if he ran into his own flesh and blood by chance. Biologists said closely related humans really could recognize one another by scent even if they didn’t realize it, just like
Siolans and Kemlans. Maybe Arla knew deep down that the clones and Kad were her kin.

Arla looked right through him. “Well,
my
folks are dead.”

“Tell you what,” Jusik said. “Put a coat on, and come out for a stroll with us. If you want to tell me about yourself, and your family, that would be good.”

She still stared. All things considered, this was an improvement. “When are you going to make me drink that stuff?”

“What stuff?”

“The medicine. Not the capsules. The liquid that makes me have nightmares.”

Gilamar kept his voice very calm, very quiet. “They gave you something else at the Valorum Center, then? Not just zaloxipine. Do you know what it was called?”

“No.”

“Are you still having nightmares?” he asked.

“Not the same ones. More like bad dreams I can’t understand. Most of the time I don’t remember them, but I know I dreamed them.”

Gilamar moved forward two slow steps. Jusik couldn’t believe Arla was talking this lucidly. When she first arrived she’d either been totally silent, or made no sense at all.

“If you were prepared to give me blood and hair samples,” Gilamar said, “I could test it to see if any other drugs were still left in your system.”

“You can’t make me drink that stuff.”

“
Ner vod
, we don’t even have any to give you, whatever it is. All we’ve got is the zaloxipine the center gave us.”

Ner vod
. Arla might have been familiar with the words. In Concordian, the Concord Dawn dialect of
Mando’a
, the phrase—brother, sister—sounded very similar. She frowned at Gilamar as if she was trying to focus on him rather than disapproving of what he’d asked.

She’s medicated out of her skull. We’re going to have to be careful how we reduce that dose
.

“Okay,” she murmured. She rolled up her sleeve and held out her arm with the fold of her elbow uppermost, as if she’d had blood samples taken a hundred times. “Get it over with.”

Jusik began to hope. Arla was already improving simply for being out of that asylum. When he first met her, she cowered from all men; now she was letting Gilamar draw blood from her arm.

“Now, you want to take that walk?” Gilamar asked.

Arla shrugged. “Maybe tomorrow.”

They didn’t even have to send the samples away for analysis. With the small lab that Mereel had set up for Ko Sai, and the assortment of medical equipment that Gilamar had stolen from Republic medcenters, Kyrimorut could do most of its own lab work.

The lab was situated opposite the roba pen, where a huge sow stood guard at the entrance to her shelter. It was a very Mando juxtaposition of high tech and manure-scented agrarian life that hadn’t changed since Canderous Ordo’s day.

Gilamar shook the vial of black-red blood as he walked down the passage, pausing to hold it up to the sunlight slanting through one of the windows.

“Funny stuff, blood,” he said.

“Chemically, or spiritually?”

“Both. And it’s not thicker than water, whatever they say.”

“She seems better this week. The other medication must be wearing off.”

Gilamar opened the lab door. Uthan’s perfume wafted out, a subtle herbal scent that might have been shampoo. “I’m wondering why they had her on two antipsychotics like that. Just saying that there might be a good reason.”

“We’ll find out, won’t we?” Jusik said, and left with Kad to ponder how little blood meant to him.

“You’re a suspicious man, so you are, Kal.”

Fenn Shysa brushed a layer of dust from the rough table and set a bottle of
tihaar
and two glasses in front of Skirata. The layer of dead insects on the windowsill suggested the hunting lodge hadn’t been used for some time. Olankur was an awfully long way to come for a drink.

It was a long way from the Imperial garrison, too, and that was the whole point.

“Keeps me alive,” Skirata said.

“We could have had done this in Keldabe. Don’t you trust your
Mand’alor
?”

“We could have done this by comm, too, but you’re the one who wanted to talk face-to-face.”

Skirata trusted Shysa as much as he trusted anyone outside his family, but he didn’t want to be seen with him too often. The
Mand’alor
was known to the garrison commander. Skirata had to assume that one of the stormies—or the mongrel officers, or even that inbred chinless
di’kut
of a commander—would get lucky and find out something sooner or later.

Mandalorians were tight-lipped around outsiders. But nothing stayed a secret forever.

Shysa pulled the stopper from the bottle and poured two small glasses of
tihaar
. Skirata could smell the colorless liquor from the other side of the table, a wonderful velvety aroma of the ripe varos fruits it had been distilled from. Every tihaar was different, made from whatever local fruit was available. Varos grew in the tropics, so this bottle was a rare treat.

“Your boy doesn’t have to wait outside, Kal.”

“Ordo just likes to keep an eye on things.”

“Sensible lad.” Shysa sipped, frowning in concentration. “But you could always change your
shabla
armor. Imperials can’t tell one Mando from another as long as you keep your
buy’ce
on.”

Skirata raised his glass and gulped the liquor down in one.
“K’oyacyi.
”

“K’oyacyi.”
Shysa went to pour top-ups but Skirata placed his palm over the top of his glass. “Ah, you think I’m buttering you up for something, Kal. Don’t we know each other better than that?”

“I don’t think fast with a few drinks inside me.”

“You don’t need to think fast. You need to listen.”

“You still want me and the
Cuy’val Dar
to train your resistance, is that it?”

“Resistance
sounds a bit too romantic and hasty for my tastes. I’m thinking of it more as … an
intention to respond in kind
if the Empire doesn’t turn out to be the reliable and reasonable tenant any self-respecting
Mand’alor
would want. But that’s not why we’re talking.”

Shysa was a reluctant Mandalore, which was a healthy attitude as far as Skirata was concerned. He’d stepped up because he had to. After three years without Jango Fett, without a chieftain of chieftains, the clans were getting too used to the idea of having no compass, and there was a fine line between freethinking independence and chaos. But Shysa wasn’t there to run the place like some
aruetyc
bureaucrat. He was there to provide focus, and he had plenty of that. He was a determined man when he found something worth pursuing. Skirata was still waiting to find out what it was.

“Okay, I’ll have that second
tihaar
if you’re still offering,” Skirata said.

Shysa smiled to himself and poured two more glasses before taking a datapad out of his belt pouch and shoving it across the dusty table. Skirata picked it up.

“Business is good, Kal. The Empire wants to spend. It’s just the nature of their shopping list that’s giving me a few concerns, so it is.”

Skirata sipped the
tihaar
, scrolling through the messages and purchase orders on the ’pad, noting the usual bounty-hunting business and contracts for mercenary units. Nothing surprising there; that was how Mandalorians
had put food on their tables for generations. What caught Skirata’s eye was the document addressed to MandalMotors, closely followed by the offer of eight hundred million credits for
beskar
mining rights in the Tokursh region.

Initially, we require three hundred operational prison ships with
beskar
enhancements. The contract will be for refurbishment of those vessels mothballed since the last action against the Jedi, as well as construction of new vessels. We also wish to place orders for specialist equipment made from beskar, including manacles, holding cages, security doors … 

“So Palps wants
beskar,”
Skirata said, sliding the ’pad back to Shysa. “But unless he’s up against Force-users, why does he need it? Mundane creatures like us can be kept in check pretty well with heavy-gauge durasteel at a fraction of the price.”

Shysa raised his glass and winked. “It’s a serious case of overkill. And a lot of creds for the privilege.”

A few hundred million. A few weeks’ interest on the Skirata Clone Resettlement Fund. But you don’t need to know that, Fenn, much as I like you. Even if you
are
my
Mand’alor.

“You’re worried. Please tell me you’re worried.”

“Cautious, let’s say.”

“Who’s he afraid of?”

“Maybe just us, on account of us having the
beskar
and knowing how to use it.”

“We haven’t fought the Sith for millennia. You know the
chakaar
’s a Sith, don’t you?”

“I’d guessed as much from the word I’m hearing about some big fella with a red lightsaber. Vader.”

“But he’s wiped out … pretty well all the Jedi.” Skirata hoped that Shysa put his pause down to the alcohol. Shysa could have had no idea that Etain had been a Jedi, or that Kyrimorut was now crawling with Force-users. “Some Sith feud?”

“If Palps was having a misunderstanding with other dark side folk, we’d have known about that by now.
Maybe he’s buying up
beskar
to stop anyone else from re-arming against
him.
”

Apart from mercenaries, Mandalore’s only exports worth a cred were its unique iron, and the secret metal-working skills to make the most of its resistance to lightsabers and Force tactics. Even Skirata wasn’t privy to what went on in the forges, and he prided himself on being able to get hold of any information he liked. He only knew that without Mando artisans, Palps wouldn’t get his creds’ worth for the
beskar
. That was starting to look more like a liability than a trump card.

“Remember the royal tomb-builders on Belukat? The ones the kings enslaved and shot so they wouldn’t tell anyone how to rob the tombs?”

“I hadn’t missed the similarities,
ner vod … 
”

“If the whole Jedi Order couldn’t stop Palpatine, there can’t be many Force-using threats left to worry him.”

Shysa held his glass up to the light slanting through the grimy window, squinting with one eye to examine the clarity of the
tihaar
before inhaling the aroma like a connoisseur.

“Ah, there’s a little list, so there is, Kal.” He sipped appreciatively and shut his eyes for a moment as if the bliss of the flavor had overwhelmed him. Maybe he just realized how big a job he’d taken on. “A few escaped Jedi … his own dark side minions, if they get out of line … all the little sects that went underground to avoid the Jedi … and the unlucky individuals who just happen to get born Force-sensitive. Oh, and folks in places like Haruun Kal, where
everyone
’s got the talent. I wouldn’t be buying any real estate there if I were you, not unless you like your front yard all charred and glassy.”

“Suddenly you’re the expert on midi-chlorians.”

Shysa paused. “There’s an interesting word.”

“There’s no point trying to wipe out Force sensitivity.” Skirata tried to brazen it out, worried that he’d now revealed he knew a little too much about Force-users. “Where do you think Jedi come from? They don’t
have families—for the most part. Force stuff just shows up. He knows that.”

“The point isn’t whether it’s true, but whether he believes it is.”

“Maybe he wants to stamp out the training. If a sensitive isn’t trained, then they can’t do all the clever stuff like telekinesis and mind-bending.”

“You know quite a bit about this midi-chlorian business, yourself, then, Kal.”

Skirata felt his scalp tighten. He’d played this game of verbal sabacc with too many beings over the years, and it made him assume the worst rather than anything at face value. He was usually right. When he was wrong—well, it was safer than the alternative, and he was prepared to lose a few friends rather than risk something far worse.

“I’ve worked with enough Jedi over the last few years,” Skirata said carefully. For a second or two, he felt regret for General Zey, who’d had the makings of a decent human being if only he could have been cured of that Jedi
osik
. “You pick it up as you go along.”

“Ah, that’d be right. So you would.”

Shysa went quiet and poured a third
tihaar
for himself. He tilted the bottle at Skirata in a mute offer of a top-up, but Skirata shook his head. If he wanted to get completely
haryc b’aalyc
—tired and emotional, as
Mando’ade
called it—then he’d wait until he got home. He really needed his wits about him now.

The silence was seductive. It was all too easy to fall into it and fill the gap by volunteering information. But Skirata had played that game before, too. He could sit it out in silence.

What kind of Mando am I? A Mando with a Force-sensitive grandson, and an ex-Jedi who’s as dear to me as my own sons, that’s what. And a Mando who isn’t going to drop his boys into another war they didn’t volunteer for
.

Shysa let the silence go on for a while, then tipped his chair back on two legs to put his boots up on a nearby
stool. It was always a matter who could sit and wait the longest.

“See, Kal, I recall meeting an unusual young fella in the
Oyu’baat
not so long ago,” he said at last. “One of the Jedi generals who loved our stylish
beskar’gam
so much that he left the Jedi Order for a
beroya
’s way of life. Ah, there’s dedication to fashion.” He tapped his datapad and held it for Skirata to see. The screen showed an Imperial bounty list with a grainy security-cam image of a very young, bearded, long-haired Jusik in his Jedi robes. “This dashing wee warrior.”

So that was what Shysa
really
wanted to talk about. Skirata couldn’t deny it. The wanted list had been widely circulated among the bounty-hunting community so Jusik was hardly a secret. But Jusik had an altercation with Sull right under Shysa’s nose. It was hard to dismiss.