501st: An Imperial Commando Novel (24 page)

“Anything else you might be needing?” TK-0 asked, extending an arm to Mereel, metal palm upturned.

“Oh, I think this’ll keep us going for a while.” Mereel placed a stack of cash credits in the droid’s manipulators. Ny tried to estimate how much this had cost from the stack of chips—five hundred thousand, a million?—and then remembered that the interest on Skirata’s fund
for one week wouldn’t even be dented by that. The numbers were just too much to take in.

I wish he hadn’t told me about the fortune. It’s not like I even asked
.

Ny was learning never to ask too many questions in the company she kept now. It wasn’t just the reaction it might provoke. It was the risk of hearing the answers and wishing she hadn’t, because once she knew something it could always be beaten out of her if someone else knew she had information.

But she was curious about the suits, and asked anyway, more to calculate the chances of getting caught than to learn anything. “They won’t miss ten new suits, then.”

“We won the contract to service some of the suit systems,” Gaib said. “So we can mark defective suits as
returns
. Only we don’t. We mark them as
keep
and
sell for a reasonable profit
. And this new army is a
lot
bigger than the Republic’s—millions upon millions. They wouldn’t notice a
thousand
missing suits.”

“Or the fact that it’s costing them two hundred creds for every servodriver I bill for.” TK-0 probed inside a helmet and drew out tiny chips and hair-fine gold wire. “You know we could have retrieved your
consignment
for you, don’t you? You could have stayed home. Door-to-door delivery, our five-star service.”

Jaing looked up from the dissected lining of the helmet he was working on. “It’s not that simple. It’s
people-
smuggling.”

Ny wondered why Jaing had told him that much—or that little. The droid certainly knew who Niner was now, and that he had an illegal comm kit in his helmet. But in this game, nobody had anything more on their business associates than their associates had on them. Ny had learned the ecology of crime very fast since meeting A’den.

We all need to keep our mouths shut. One gets caught, we all get caught. We all have to … 
trust
one another
.

She enjoyed irony. There was, as the sages said, honor among thieves.

Ny Vollen, taxpayer and honest citizen, was now a criminal, and she accepted that was what she was. She saw how easily it happened, and why, and knew now that she could never sit in judgment on any being again, because she was as fallible as anyone.

“Come on,
Mer’ika.”
She assembled the plates from one suit on the deck. “Let’s make sure we’ve got the full set.”

“Anyone would think you didn’t trust us,” Gaib said cheerfully.

“Oh, I do,” Ny said. “I think it’s the law-abiding folk I need to keep an eye on.”

She used to be one of them. She wondered what Terin would have thought if he’d been around to see her now.

He’d have understood. She was sure of it.

Commander Roly Melusar was a mongrel, but Darman didn’t hold that against him.

In fact, he took an instant liking to the man. He walked into the briefing room with Ennen, deep in very quiet conversation. Whatever had gone on when Ennen demanded a Corellian cremation for Bry, Melusar appeared to have done something that Ennen approved of.

Ennen sat down next to Darman and Niner.

“Well?” Niner asked.

“Good man,” Ennen said.
“Decent
man. Bry’s at rest now.”

So he’d managed to get whatever rites mattered to him. It boded well. Melusar had sprung from nowhere in the last twenty-four hours to take over day-to-day command of the unit from Sa Cuis, who had simply vanished without explanation in the way that spooks did.

Melusar seemed relaxed about his new role as he stood on the dais at the front of the room. Darman tried
not to make snap decisions about beings, but it was hard to resist. Melusar was all right. He just knew it.

“Where’s Creepy?” Fixer’s voice was a gravelly whisper on Darman’s helmet comlink. That was his nickname for Sa Cuis, although there were others, all much less flattering. “I hope he’s on a fifty-klick run to sweat some of that
padding
off his backside.”

Boss cut in. “Probably in some dimly lit room, showing some forgetful citizen the value of electrodes for jogging the memory.”

Darman didn’t dare turn his head to look for them in the small audience. When he checked his wide-angle visual feed, they were just anonymous helmeted figures in black armor like his own. But he was reassured to know the Delta boys were still around. Nothing was said about Sev now—absolutely
nothing
—and Darman had no idea what the guy’s brothers were up to.

They were alive. That was all that mattered.

“Agent Cuis has been retasked on recruitment issues,” Melusar said. What the
shab
was that? The more bland the explanation, Darman thought, the scarier the reality would be. “Forgive me if I repeat anything he’s said already, gentlemen. But let’s take a moment to remember our comrade Bry. I didn’t know him, but you all did, and I know you’re going to miss him. I’m truly sorry.”

Melusar leaned on the lectern—tall, light brown hair, bony—and something about his earnest face and direct eye contact reminded Darman of Bardan Jusik. The gray Imperial uniform was just a detail, not the sum of the man himself. After a brief silence, he carried on. He walked slowly up and down the platform as he spoke to the commandos, gesturing to emphasize his words—more like he was trying
not
to use his hands, nothing like the performance a politician would put on—and seemed the kind of man who believed what he was saying.

“The galaxy will be a safer place for every citizen if we eradicate Force-users,” he said. “I don’t just mean Jedi. I mean
all
of them. I can’t blame you for dismissing this
as some half-wit mongrel officer mouthing the Emperor’s party line, but make no mistake—stamping out these Force cults buys us
all
stability and security. Take a look in your history books. See just how many wars Force-users got us into.”

Melusar definitely had their attention now.

And he knew what clones called randomly conceived beings: mongrels. Roly Melusar wasn’t like Cuis at all. He knew what his men thought, and he treated them as the cynical, weary, suspicious veterans they actually were.

“Wow,” Fixer muttered. “He knows we’re not like the rest of the Five-oh-first.”

“That’s because we wear black, and they wear white,” Ennen said. “We must be the bad guys.”

Niner didn’t tell them to shut it. He seemed mesmerized by Melusar’s no-nonsense attitude, too. Usually, he’d fidget in his seat if he had to sit still for any time, clicking his teeth impatiently, but he was frozen now—and totally silent. Darman couldn’t even hear his breathing. He’d switched off his helmet-to-helmet comms. In the other rows of seats, commandos shifted position. Some leaned forward a little as if they were watching a riveting movie, and some relaxed as if they realized they didn’t have to put on a show of gung-ho Imperial enthusiasm for the commander anymore. Melusar was—as far as any mongrel officer could be—one of them.

That was it.
That
was what reminded Darman of Jusik. Melusar felt he was in this fight with them, not just leading them, and it wasn’t an act. Nobody could fake sincerity that well.

Melusar went on pacing, slapping the back of his right hand into his left palm to punctuate his words. He spoke like a regular Coruscanti, no airs and graces or expensively educated vowels. When he talked, he seemed to speak for everyone Darman knew and loved.

“What have I got against Force-users?” Melusar paused for a moment and seemed to be gathering his thoughts, as if he were in the middle of a debate over an
ale with buddies in a cantina.
“Everything
. The Jedi held positions of power and influence for millennia, all unelected, all unaccountable to the likes of us—the ordinary beings of the galaxy. We bankrolled them for generations. We armed them. We stayed out of their internal business, and we turned a blind eye because we thought they got the job done. Those guys
really
knew how to organize themselves to get the best meal ticket from us regular dolts—but there are still other sects out there, all capable of doing the same thing if we let them. The Force will manifest itself as the Force pleases, and we can’t take a blaster to that, but the
training
, the secret organizations, the cabals that whisper in government ears—
that’
s our business.
That
we can stamp out.”

The commandos just watched. Darman fully expected someone to stand up and clap, or at least cheer. Melusar paused for breath, looked around, and then seemed to remember a point he’d missed.

“You know what disturbs me most? They can influence your thoughts.” He looked like he meant it. “They can make you hallucinate and do things you don’t want to, and you wouldn’t even know it’d happened. That’s the most dangerous thing of all. But it stops here, and it stops for good.”

Darman had seen mind influence at work, and it hadn’t seemed quite like that to him. But then the Jedi he knew were … 

Etain always asked permission first. She used it to help Scorch calm down. And Jusik, he—

Darman managed to hold on, but only just. Etain was vivid in his mind again, not filtered by that distance he struggled to put between him and the pain, and all he could think of at that moment was how he’d reacted when she told him she’d had a baby and that it was his.

He would have given anything to change that moment. He would have rewritten history so that he’d flung his arms around her and told her how happy he was. But he hadn’t done that. He’d walked away in silence.

Can’t change the past. Only the future. Stop it. She’s gone
. Stop it.
Right now. Get back on track, find something to focus on, do something that matters
.

Commander Melusar went on talking. For a while Darman could hear every word, but the meaning wasn’t sinking in. He switched off his helmet mike and let the tears roll down his cheeks. Not even biting into his lip managed to distract him this time.

When he got a grip again, Melusar was standing at the front row with one boot on the seat of a vacant chair, arms folded, discussing
—discussing
—the issue with a commando. It was Jez from one of the Aiwha Squads, one of Skirata’s original hundred-strong training company. He’d taken off his helmet. Their old boss, General Zey, had been a nice enough guy, the poor
shabuir
, but there always seemed to be a moat around him that you couldn’t cross even when you could see what lay beyond it. Melusar wasn’t distant at all. He was right in the mud with them.

“Caf and cookies at briefings next,” Scorch said, but the I’ve-seen-it-all tone of his voice had softened a bit. “Maybe a commando-of-the-month scheme, a crate of ale for the most mission-focused man.”

“Or you could have General Vos back, if you prefer
that
management style … ,” Ennen muttered.

Niner was still unusually silent. Darman swallowed, unable to wipe his nose and eyes without taking off his helmet. Melusar was still holding forth. Jez was listening intently. Everyone was riveted.

“Here’s one scenario,” Melusar said. “What happened to all the other Force-using sects? If your kid’s showing Force powers, then the Jedi show up and want to take it. The other sects don’t want their Force-sensitives poached by a rival. They go underground to avoid the Jedi Council. Now that the Jedi have had their butts kicked, are those other sects going to feel it’s safe to come out?”

“Not if they read my task list … ,” a voice said, and everyone laughed.

They’ll take Kad. But if he isn’t trained to use his powers, he’ll have a quiet life, and Palpatine won’t go after him. If the Jedi come back—they’ll take him
.

That’s my reason right there. Even without what happened to Etain. Even without the war
.

Darman’s carefully constructed barrier between his two personas had finally crumbled. The pain was almost unbearable. If it had been any worse, he would have walked out, put his sidearm to his head, and stopped the agony for good. He hovered on the brink between lashing out at anyone in his path and destroying himself, because the misery was so blinding. But when that barrier fell, he felt something else let loose—a son, he had a son,
this
Darman,
him
, a son he loved and now had to keep safe. He had a clear view of how he had to protect Kad’s future.

Stop it happening again. Make sure the Jedi never come back as a political power
.

The pain left him struggling to swallow, but now he could face it head-on and survive it because he had a reason to.

“The Jedi Council did a good job of looking like the sole voice of the Force-users,” Melusar went on, probably completely unaware that he’d given Darman a fresh purpose in a single casual comment. “But now we’ll see who else is out there. The Korunnai on Haruun Kal—they’re
all
Force-sensitives there, maybe descended from a lost Jedi mission, but at least we know where they are. Not a cult, but a potential source of one. Imagine a planet full of folks who could be trained to do what Jedi could. It’s a weapon waiting to be assembled.”

Darman thought of Jusik, busting his gut to Force-heal Fi’s brain damage. Then he thought of some Jedi shaking hands with a Kaminoan and taking delivery of a clone army. He never knew which kind of Jedi he was going to get.

“They call us
Balawai
, don’t they?” Jez said. “Anyone who isn’t Korunnai is a
downlander
, and they don’t think much of them.”

Just like
aruetiise
, Darman decided. Mandalorians divided the world into Mando and non-Mando, although the word could mean anything from foreigner to traitor, depending on how it was said. But it never meant
welcome visitor
. Darman was always unsettled when he found that he had things in common with folks who would otherwise be his enemy, and it was usually the bad stuff, rarely the good.