501st: An Imperial Commando Novel (18 page)

She knew better now. Beings—humans, Togorians, Weequays, Twi’leks, all kinds of species, but mainly humans—came in at one end and emerged as Mandos at the other. Ny still couldn’t work it out. There was no enforcement, no rule book beyond some very basic stuff about language, armor, and making kids—
everyone
’s kids—the center of your life, but somehow they all ended up essentially Mandalorian, just with fascinating variety in accent and food. Everything else was jettisoned. One day, she’d understand it. In the meantime, she worked on the principle that Skirata recalled enough of his very early childhood in Kuat City to appreciate a homemade delicacy he probably hadn’t tasted for more than fifty years.

Scout kept looking out the window. “What are they doing?”

“Meshgeroya,”
Besany said. “The beautiful game. That’s what they call it here. Bolo-ball. Limmie. The ground’s thawed enough to play.”

“They haven’t got enough players for two teams.”

“Oh, that won’t stop them.”

“Good grief, is Laseema going to play?” Scout seemed horrified. “And Jilka?”

“I think they’re going to be line judges. Parja’s refereeing.”

“What line? It’s just grass and mud out there.”

Besany and Ruu laughed.
Meshgeroya
was a Mandalorian obsession and certainly seemed to get a lot of boisterous energy out of their systems. When Ny looked out of the window, she was surprised to see Kina Ha and Uthan sitting in the shelter of the courtyard wall, shrouded in scarves, chatting. Skirata had a told Ny that Kaminoans didn’t like sunlight and preferred endless rain and permanently overcast skies like their homeworld, but Kina Ha didn’t seem bothered by the weak late-winter sun. She did, however, have a peaked cap to shield her eyes.

She’s doing well. Kal hasn’t pulled a knife on her yet. Even Mereel’s being icily polite
.

“Shame,” Besany murmured.

“What is?”

“Wouldn’t it be perfect if Etain was here?”

All Ny could do was nod. In the last few weeks, Etain’s absence hung over every meal and conversation. Mandalorians tended to talk openly about dead loved ones as if they were still part of the clan, but it was clearly still too raw for anyone here to keep mentioning her name as often as they thought it. Ny was pretty sure that it overshadowed every happy moment. She could see it on their faces every time they looked at Kad.

I never knew her. I can’t join in
.

“Okay, let’s get this stuff in the oven, and it should be ready by halftime. Or full time.” Ny checked the chrono. “Whenever that is.”

Kad kicked the ball around under the watchful eye of Kom’rk. It was more like running at the ball, colliding with it, and then chasing it, but he was giggling happily. Ny was relieved to see him behaving like a normal toddler. Sometimes he seemed so serious and grim that she wondered if a carefree infancy had passed him by somehow, and that all Force-users were doomed to be plugged directly into the awful reality of existence from birth whether they wanted to be or not. She could see it in Jusik and Scout sometimes. Their eyes could make them look older than time. She couldn’t define it. No doubt Kina Ha’s gaze gave away her Force-user status too, but Ny had no idea what a normal Kaminoan’s eyes looked like, and anyway—Kina Ha
was
ancient.

“Bolo-ball hadn’t even been invented when I was young,” Kina Ha said. “Not that anyone played it on Kamino when it
was
invented, of course.”

Ny couldn’t tell if she was being deliberately funny or not. Mereel’s expression suggested he’d never met a Kaminoan with a sense of humor he could recognize, and the jury was still out.

“Come on,
Kad’ika.”
Ny lifted Kad onto her hip. “Let the big kids play with the ball now.”

Fi tossed the ball in the air and headed it as if he was
checking that he could still do it. “Love us, love our game.”

“I’ll get used to it …”

Even Vau joined in. Ny watched, waiting for the crunch of old bones whenever Skirata and Gilamar were tackled by one of the clones. The lads were big, fast, and exceptionally fit, far too fit for the veteran sergeants. Ny could see a little midlife crisis raising its graying head there. But maybe the crazy old barves just loved playing
meshgeroya
, and the risk of a painful trouncing from the youngsters wasn’t enough to stop them.

The shouts and indignant appeals for penalties sent Mird into an excited frenzy. The strill slapped its whip-like tail on the ground and squealed to itself, occasionally racing around what seemed to be the edge of the pitch in its imagination. Kad watched the game intently, fist held to his mouth. Vau went for a high ball and headed it down between two bushes that seemed to be the only goal. He roared truimphantly.

“Offside!” Corr protested. Ny had no idea how he worked out where the goal was, let alone whether Vau had broken some rule. She didn’t really get the game at all. “Ref, that was offside.”

Parja allowed the goal, pointing imperiously toward a nonexistent center spot. “Wasn’t. Play on.”

“Devious old men
one
, fit young upstarts
nil,”
Vau said smugly. But he looked seriously out of breath.

Kina Ha seemed more engrossed in the strill than the game. But Jilka was paying more attention to Corr than keeping up with the play, and Uthan was watching Gilamar. It was interesting to see how fast relationships of all kinds were beginning to form.

It’s a closed world here. No strangers. We stick to the folks we trust
.

She realized that meant herself, too. Did Skirata even need anyone? He was completely obsessed with his kids. It was hard to see a gap where she might fit in. She’d always feel like an intruder.

“I’m going to check on those cookies,” she said to Besany. “It’s all too complicated for me.”

As she turned and walked back toward the kitchen doors, she caught sight of a face at one of the slit windows. Arla was watching. She didn’t look quite as blank and lost as she had when she first arrived. If anything, she looked increasingly baffled and agitated, and Ny wondered how anyone was going to be able to explain to her what had happened to her brother, and who the clones really were. Would she see them as nephews? From what Ny knew of Mandalorians, there was no reason to suppose she would, but then Arla wasn’t a Mando. She was Concordian. They weren’t the same thing at all.

Ny smiled and waved, but Arla just looked startled and fluttered her fingers, as if she was mimicking a foreign language. It must have been a long time since anyone had shown any personal concern for her.

The igatli cookies were evenly browned and looked pretty good, Ny had to admit. She slid them off the tray onto a plate and tried one. Was this how the things were supposed to turn out? She had no idea, but the vital touch was a spice, the seeds and dried stamens of a Kuati plant, and she’d bought the ingredients on her last cargo run to the Kuat shipyards. That had been before the night of the Jedi Purge, long before she was even conscious of the fact that she had a very soft spot for Skirata.

Insane. Completely insane. But we’re all a longtime dead, right? Life has to be lived. Especially when all we’ve known for too long is bereavement
.

Ny arranged the cookies on a tray with a few other treats—uj cake and cubes of herb-flavored local cheese—and composed herself before walking out into the yard again. She’d never felt this foolish in her life.

Try telling them you’re just passing through now. Folks who pass through don’t do this sort of thing
.

“Hey, halftime!” Jaing called.

Ny checked her chrono. “You’ve got another ten minutes,” she said.

“Food,” Fi said.
“Ori’skraan!
”

The clones had impressive appetites, and everything stopped for food—even the beautiful game. Ny placed the tray on an old ammo crate in the yard and batted Fi’s fingers away from the cookies.

“Your dad has first call on those.” She ruffled Fi’s hair and shoved a slice of uj cake in his mouth to appease him. “This is a special surprise. Come on, Kal. Tell me what you think of these.”

Skirata stared at the cookies for a few moments. Maybe she’d made them the wrong shape. But Jusik, Scout, and Kina Ha all looked toward him at the same moment, even though he hadn’t moved a muscle. They could sense something.

Oh boy … I’ve got something seriously wrong … 

Kuat was a strange world. On one hand, it was heavy engineering and the height of modern technology. On the other—it was feudal and caste-ridden, with its merchant noblewomen relying on servant consorts to father their heirs. The society repelled her. Skirata must have been a small child when he left Kuat, too young to know about that kind of thing, but she wouldn’t have been surprised to find that his loathing of nobility, privilege, and exploitation had its roots there. It was everything that Mandalore wasn’t.

Skirata leaned over the tray a little and inhaled. Then he picked up a cookie, bit into it, and closed his eyes. Kad reached out to him with both hands, squirming in Jusik’s arms to touch his grandfather. It was then that Ny saw the tears beading along Skirata’s eyelashes.

He swallowed with difficulty.
“Shab
, that takes me back.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Don’t be. They’re perfect.”

Smell brought memories back faster than anything. Ny knew Skirata had been adopted by a mercenary who found him living like a little wild animal in the rubble of
a war zone. It was a big mistake to assume that everyone’s childhood was one long sun-warmed idyll. For most of the clan here, their early years had been full of fear and the threat of death, so making anyone recall that kind of past was asking for trouble. Skirata turned and walked around the courtyard, head down, while everyone else ate. He wasn’t usually self-conscious about tears. He wept openly, and often. This had to be something different.

Eventually, he came back to the tray and took another cookie.

“I can remember my mama,” he said. “You know, I haven’t thought about her in years.”

Skirata had never mentioned his mother, or even his adoptive father’s wife. Everything in his life revolved around fathers. Ny wasn’t sure if she’d ripped open an old wound or enabled some long-overdue catharsis, but either way, she’d never intended to make him weep. She felt terrible.

Skirata didn’t return to the game with the others. He gave Scout a gentle shove to take his place, and Ny was sure that the kid would be reduced to splinters in seconds. But she had a remarkable ability to dodge and weave, as if she could predict what was coming next. It looked like another Jedi talent at work. Ny saw Jusik give her a knowing wink.

Skirata watched from the sidelines, subdued again. Mird settled down beside him, red-rimmed golden eyes fixed on the cookies in his hand.

“Sometimes I wish I could wipe my memory,” he said. “Just the bad parts.”

“Jusik can do that for you, can’t he?”

“I’m not sure I’d be a better man for it.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think it through, Kal. I didn’t realize it’d hurt.”

“I think
bittersweet
covers it.
Aayhan
. It’s a Mando thing. The painful memory of loved ones at otherwise perfect moments. Can’t have one without the other, really.” Skirata crunched another cookie, then gave one
to Mird. “Then there’s
shereshoy
, and
aayhan
inevitably leads to
shereshoy
, and so the wheel turns to joy again.”

“What’s
shereshoy
?”

“A lust for life. Grabbing it and living it for the day, because you don’t know if you’ll be around tomorrow.”

“
Shereshoy
. I like that word.”

“If you ever see a Mando in orange armor, that’s what the color means.” Skirata held the last chunk of cookie to his nose and inhaled again. The aroma was obviously evocative. “You’re a good woman, Ny.”

“You’re not so bad yourself, Shortie.”

So this was
shereshoy
in action. The snow had melted, the sun was struggling to get noticed, and that faint promise of winter’s end had sparked an impromptu game of
meshgeroya
and modest feasting. Ny liked that. Her life had always been spent deferring gratification, waiting for that mythical
one day
to come when she and her husband could spend good times together, but now that day had passed a few thousand times and would never come again.

Ordo, sweat-streaked and visibly pleased with himself, halted the game to hand out mugs of
ne’tra gal
. Ny decided now was a good time to learn to enjoy the Mandos’ sweet black beer, their crazy obsession with bolo-ball, and their eccentric hospitality that could, in the same heartbeat, take in both friends and traditional enemies. There would also come a time when she would have to come to terms with their ruthless, more brutal side. But that time could wait.

Now
was the very best time to do most things. It was better to discover that late in life than not at all.

“K’oyacyi,”
she said. There was no better toast than that. It was a command—“stay alive, come back safely”—but it could mean anything from “hang in there” to “live life to the fullest.” If anything summed up Mandalorians for her, it was that word with two poignant meanings.
“K’oyacyi.
”

Staying alive was the one thing none of them could count on.

“No wonder Arla’s perked up,” Gilamar said. He sat at the workbench, half a mug of ale in one hand, and seemed to be reading test results. “The quacks at the Valorum Center were giving her sebenodone. Over a long period, too.”

Uthan wasn’t a physician, but she’d kept up to date with general medicine by reading every scientific journal the center would allow her. There hadn’t been much else to do for three years in solitary confinement except read and theorize. At least breeding soka flies for genetic variations had given her some respite. She wondered if Gilamar would have thought she was crazy for giving the flies names.

“That’s another antipsychotic drug, yes?”