"Hoping to avoid that, ma'am."
"They've got DC-fifteens, remember. We armed them."
"Not full spec, though."
A cordon of clone troopers stood between Etain and the crowd, as white and glossy as the snow around them. In the distance, she could hear the grinding of gears as an AT-TE armored vehicle thudded around the perimeter of the temporary camp set up to oversee the human evacuation. The clone troopers, each man with Darman's sweetly familiar face, had their orders: the farmers had to leave.
They handled humanitarian missions surprisingly well for men who'd been bred solely to fight and had no idea of what normal family life was like. Well, not much different from me, then. As she came up behind them, they parted without even turning their heads. It was one of those things you could do with 360-degree helmet sensors.
In the front of the crowd, she recognized a face. She knew nearly all of them, inevitably, but Hefrar Birhan's eyes were the most difficult to meet.
"You proud of yerself, girl?"
Birhan stared at her, hostile and betrayed. He'd given her shelter when she'd been on the run from the local militia. She owed him more than kicking him out by force, tearing him away from the only home he'd ever known.
"I'd rather do my own dirty work than get someone else to do it," said Etain. "But you can start over, and the Gurlanins can't."
"Oh-ah. That's the government line all of a sudden, since we served our purpose and cleared the planet for you."
The farmers had weapons, as farmers always did, most of which were old rifles for dealing with the gdans that attacked grazing merlie herds, but some also had their Republic-issue Deeces. They held them casually, some just gripped in their hands, others resting in the crooks of their arms or slung across their backs, but Etain could feel the tension rising among both them and the line of troopers. She wondered if her unborn child could sense these things in the Force yet. She hoped not. He had enough of a war waiting for him.
"I preferred you to hear it from me than from a stranger." Not true: she was here to hide her pregnancy. She couldn't help thinking that the awful duty served her right for deceiving Darman. "You have to leave, you know that. You're being given financial aid to start over. There are established farms waiting for you on Kebolar. It's a better prospect than Qiilura."
"It's not home" said a man standing a little behind Birhan. "And we're not going."
"Everyone else left weeks ago."
" 'Cept two thousand of us that haven't, girl." Birhan folded his arms: the sound of the AT-TE had stopped, and every wild noise carried on the still, cold air. Qiilura was so very, very quiet compared with the places she'd been. "And you can't move us if we don't want to be going."
It took Etain a moment to realize he meant violence rather than Force persuasion, and she felt a little ripple of anxiety in some of the troops. She and Levet had been authorized- ordered-to use force if necessary. Jinart slipped forward between the troops and sat on her haunches, and some of the farmers stared at her as if she were some exotic pet or hunting animal. Of course: they'd probably never seen a Gurlanin, or at least hadn't realized they had. There were so few of them left. And they could take any form they pleased.
"The Republic will remove you, farmer, because they fear us," Jinart said. "In this war, you now count for nothing. We use the power we have. So go while you can."
Birhan blinked at the Gurlanin for a few moments. The only four-legged species the farmers saw were their animals, and none of them talked back. "This is a big planet. There's plenty of room for all of us."
"Not enough for you. You wiped out our prey. We've starved. You're destroying us by wiping out our food chain, and now it's our turn..."
"No more killing," Etain snapped. Level eased through the line of troops and stood a little in front of her to her left: she could sense his readiness to intervene. Gurlanins didn't have weapons, but nature had made them efficient killers. They'd all seen plenty of evidence. "These are difficult times, Birhan, and nobody gets a happy ending. You'll be far safer where you're going. Do you understand me?"
His gaze fixed on hers. He was frail and worn out, his eyes watery and red-rimmed from age and the biting, cold air. He might have been only the same age as Kal Skirata, but agriculture here was a brutal existence that took its toll. "You'd never shoot us. You're a Jedi. You're all full of peace and pity and stuff."
"Try thinking of me as an army officer," she said softly. "and you might get a different picture. Last chance."
There were only so many ultimata she could give them, and that was the last. The compound gates opened with a metallic scrape, and Level moved the troops forward lo edge the crowd away. It was cold; they'd get fed up and wander home sooner or later. For a moment the sense of hatred and resentment in the Force was so strong that Etain thought the Qiilurans might start a riot, but it seemed to be just a staring contest, which was unwinnable against troops whose eyes they couldn't see. There was also the small matter of penetrating a wall of plasloid-alloy armor.
Levet's voice boomed from the voice projector in his helmet. Etain could have sworn that nearby branches shivered "Go back to your farms and get ready to leave, all of you.
Report to the landing strip in seventy-two hours. Don't make this any harder than it is."
"For you, or for us?" someone yelled from the crowd. "Would you abandon everything you had and start again?"
"I'd willingly trade places with you," Levet said. "But I don't have the option."
Etain couldn't help but be more interested in the clone commander for a moment. It was an odd comment, but she felt that he meant it, and that unsettled her. She was used to seeing Darman and the other commandos as comrades with needs and aspirations that nobody else expected them lo have, but she'd never heard a regular trooper openly express a wish for something beyond the GAR. It was uniquely poignant.
They'd all rather be somewhere else even if they're not sure what it is. All of them, like Dar, like me, like anyone.
She felt Levet's brief embarrassment at his own frankness. But there was no gesture or head movement to indicate to anyone else that he was being literal.
I can't think of the whole galaxy any longer. My thoughts are with these slave soldiers, and that's as much caring as I can manage right now. I want them to live. Sorry, Birhan, I'm a bad Jedi, aren't I?
Etain had made that mental deal a long while ago. It wasn't the Jedi way, but then no Jedi had ever been faced with leading a conventional army and making brutally pragmatic combat decisions on a daily basis. No Jedi should have, as far as she was concerned, but she was in it now, and she'd make what difference she could lo the men around her.
"I'll give you three more days lo report lo the landing area with your families, Birhan." Etain wanted to look a little more commanding, but she was small, skinny, and uncomfortably pregnant: the hands-on-hips stance wasn't going lo work. She put one hand casually on her lightsaber hilt instead, and summoned up a little Force help lo press insistently on a few minds around Birhan. I mean this. I won't back down. "If you don't comply, I will order my troops to remove you by any means necessary."
Etain stood waiting for the crowd to break up. They'd argue, complain, wait until the last moment, and then cave in. Two thousand of them: they knew they couldn't resist several dozen well-trained, well-armed troopers, let alone a whole company of them. That was the remnant of the garrison. They were keen to finish the job and rejoin their battalion, the 35th Infantry, ft was one of those things Etain found most touching about these soldiers: they didn't want to be doing what they called a "cushy" job while their brothers were fighting on the front line.
She knew the feeling all too well.
Birhan and the rest of the farmers paused for a few moments, meters from the line of troopers, and then turned and trudged away in the direction of Imbraani, silent and sullen. Jinart sat watching them like one of those black marble statues on the Shir Bank building in Coruscant.
Level cocked his head. "I don't think they're going to go quietly, ma'am. It might get unpleasant."
"It's easier to charge battle droids than civilians. If it does, we disarm them and remove them bodily."
"Disarming can be the rough bit."
Yes, it was quicker and simpler to kill. Etain didn't enjoy the amoral pragmatism that always overtook her lately. As she lost her focus in the unbroken carpet of snow ahead of her, she thought the black specks that began to appear in her field of vision were her eyes playing the usual tricks, just cells floating in the fluid. Then they grew larger. The white blanket bulged and suddenly shapes began forming, moving, resolving into a dozen or so glossy black creatures exactly like Jinart.
They were Gurlanins, proving that they could be any-where, undetected. Etain shuddered. They trotted after the farmers, who seemed oblivious to them until someone turned around and let out a shout of surprise. Then the whole crowd turned, panicking as if they were being stalked. The Gurlanins seemed to melt into the snow again, flattening instantly into gleaming black pools that looked like voids and then merging perfectly with the white landscape. They'd vanished from sight. Several farmers were clutching their rifles, aiming randomly, but they didn't open fire. They didn't have a target.
It was a clear threat. You can't see us, and we 'II come for you in the end. Jinart had once shown what that meant when she'd taken revenge on a family of informers. Gurlanins were predators, intelligent and powerful.
"You can't feel them in the Force, can you, ma'am?" Levet whispered. One of the clone troopers seemed to be checking his rifle's optics, clearly annoyed that he hadn't spotted the Gurlanins with the wide range of sensors in both the weapon and his helmet "At least we're working with the same limitations for a change."
"No, I can't detect them unless they let me." Etain had once mistaken the telepathic creatures for Force-users, feeling their presence tingling in her veins, but they could vanish completely to every sense when they chose-silent, invisible, without thermal profile, beyond the reach of sonar . . . and the Force. It still alarmed her. "Perfect spies."
Levet gestured to one of the troopers, and the platoon fanned out beyond the perimeter fence. "Perfect saboteurs."
General Zey thought so, too. So did the Senate Security Council. Gurlanins were on Coruscant, in the heart of the Republic's intelligence machine, maybe in a hundred or even a thousand places where they couldn't be seen, and where they could do immense damage. If the Republic didn't honor its deal with them sooner rather than later, they could-and would-throw a huge hydrospanner in the works, and no-body would see it corning.
"I'm new to this," Etain said. "Why do we seem to create enemies for ourselves? Recruiting spies and then alienating them? Isn't that like handing someone your rifle and turning your back on them?"
"I suppose I'm new to this, too," said Levet. They headed back lo the headquarters building. Poor man: he'd only seen a dozen years of life, and all he'd ever known was combat. "I stay away from policy. All I can do is handle what comes down the pike at us."
Etain had to ask. "Would you really swap places with a farmer?"
Levet shrugged. But his casual gesture didn't fool her Jedi senses. "Farming looks quite challenging. I like the open spaces."
They often said that, these men gestated in glass vats. Dar's brother Fi loved negotiating the dizzying canyons of buildings on Coruscant; the Null ARC troopers like Ordo didn't care for confined spaces. Etain let Levet go on ahead and slowed down to concentrate on the child within her, wondering if he might turn out a little claustrophobic, too.
It's not genetic. Is it?
But will he die before his time? Will he inherit Dar's accelerated aging?
She'd been worried first for Darman, and then for herself, but her anxieties were now largely taken up by the baby and all the things she didn't know. Kal Skirata was right. She hadn't thought. She'd been so set on giving Darman a son that-Force-guided or not-there were too many things she hadn't considered carefully enough.
Accelerating the pregnancy is convenient for me-but what about him?
She no longer had a choice. She'd agreed to hand over the baby to Kal'buir, Papa Kal. He must have been a good father; his clones clearly adored him, and he treated them all as if they were his own flesh and blood. Her son-and it look all her strength not to name him-would be fine with him. He had to be. Her Force-awareness told her that her son would touch and shape many lives.
Kal won't even let me give him a name.
She could make a run for it, but she knew Kal Skirata would find her wherever she hid.
I want this baby so badly. It's only temporary. When the war's over, I'll get him back, and... will he even know me?
Jinart brushed past her legs, reminding her suddenly of Walon Vau's hunting animal, a half-wild strill called Lord Mirdalan.
The Gurlanin glanced back at her with vivid orange eyes "The last of the farmers will leave in a few days, girl, and after that-you concentrate on producing a healthy baby. Nothing else."
There was plenty more to worry about, but Jinart was right-that was enough lo be going on with. Etain went back into the house, settled into meditation, and couldn't resist reaching out in the Force lo touch Darman.
He'd feel it. She knew he would.
Mygeeto, Outer Rim, vaults of the Dressian Kiolsh Merchant Bank, 470 days after Geonosis Walon Vau enjoyed irony, and there was none more pro-found than seizing-as a soldier-the inheritance his father had denied him for wanting lo join the army.
On the metal door of the deposit box, a cupboard with a set of sliding shelves, was an engraved plate that read VAU, COUNT OF GESL.
"When the old chakaar dies, that'll be me," Vau said. "In theory, anyway. It'll pass to my cousin." He looked over his shoulder, even though the sensors in his Mandalorian helmet gave him wraparound vision. "Didn't I say thin out, Delia? Move it."
Vau wasn't used to anything other than instant obedience from his squads. He'd drummed it into them on Kamino, the hard way when necessary. Skirata thought you built special forces soldiers by treats and pats on the head, but it just produced weaklings; Vau's squads had the lowest casualty rates because he reinforced the animal will lo survive in every man. He was proud of it.
"You did," Boss said, "but you look like you need a hand. Anyway-you're not our sergeant any longer. Technically speaking. No disrespect... Citizen Vau."
I was hard on them because I cared. Because they had to be hard to survive. Kal never understood that, the fool.
Vau still had trouble breathing some days thanks lo the broken nose Skirata had given him. The crazy little chakaar didn't understand training at all.
The next droid patrol wouldn't come this way for a few hours. Security droids trundled constantly through the labyrinth of corridors deep under the Mygeetan ice, a banking stronghold the Muuns claimed could never be breached. It still made sense to get out sooner rather than later. And Delta should have banged out by now; they'd called in air strikes and sabotaged ground defenses, and Bacara's Marines were moving in again. They'd achieved their mission, and it was extraction time.
"I should have thrashed more sense into you, then," Vau said. He unfolded a plastoid bivouac sheet and knotted the corners. It was always a bad idea not to plan for the most extreme situation: he'd been certain he would only take what was rightfully his, but this was too good to pass up. "Okay, you and Scorch hold this between you while I fill it."
"We can empty the-"
"I steal. You don't."
It was a fine point but it mattered to Vau. Skirata might have raised a pack of hooligans, but Vau's squads were disciplined. Even Sev... Sev was psychotic and lacked even the most basic social graces, but he wasn't a criminal.
As Vau tipped the first likely-looking box into the makeshift container-cash credits and bonds, which would do very nicely indeed-the whiff of oily musk announced the arrival of his strill, Lord Mirdalan. Fixer stepped back to let the animal pass.
"Mird, I told you to wait by the exit," said Vau. All strills were intelligent, but Mird was especially smart. The animal padded down the narrow passage in velvet silence and looked up expectantly, somehow managing not to drool of the floor for once. It fixed Vau with an intense, knowing gold stare, making any anger impossible: who couldn't love a face like that? That strill had stood by him since boyhood-and anyone who didn't see its miraculous spirit had no common decency or heart. They said strills stank, but Vau didn't care. A little natural musk never hurt anyone. "You want to help, Mird'ika? Here." He slipped his flamethrower off his webbing. "Carry this. Good Mird!"
The strill took the barrel of the weapon in its massive jaws and sat back on its haunches. Drool ran down to the trigger guard and pooled on the floor.
"Cute," Sev muttered.
"And clever." Vau signaled to Mird to watch the door, and slid the drawers of the Vau deposit box from their runners. "Anyone who doesn't like my friend Mird can slana'pi."
"Sarge, it's the ugliest thing in the galaxy," Scorch said. "And we've seen plenty of ugly."
"Yeah, you've got a mirror," said Sev.
"Ugliness is an illusion, gentlemen." Vau began sorting through his disputed inheritance. "Like beauty. Like color. All depends on the light." The first thing that caught his eye in the family box was his mother's flawless square-cut shoroni sapphire, the size of a human thumbprint, set on a pin and flanked by two smaller matching stones. In some kinds of light, they were a vibrant cobalt blue, while in others they turned forest green. Beautiful: but real forests had been destroyed to find them, and slaves died mining them. "The only reality is action."
Sev grunted deep in his throat. He didn't like wasting time and wasn't good at hiding it. His HUD icon showed he was watching Mird carefully. "Whatever you say, Sergeant."
The strongroom held a treasure trove of portable, easily hidden, and untraceable things that could be converted to credits anywhere in the galaxy. Vau stumbled on only one deposit box whose contents were inexplicably worthless: a bundle of love letters tied with green ribbon. He read the opening line of the first three and threw them back. Apart from that one box, the rest were a rich man's emergency belt, the equivalent of the soldier's survival kit of a fishing line, blade, and a dozen compact essentials for staying alive be-hind enemy lines.
Vau's hundred-liter backpack had room enough for a few extras. Everything-gems, wads of flimsi bonds, cash cred-its, metal coins, small lacquered jewel boxes he didn't pause to open-was tipped in unceremoniously. Delta stood around fidgeting, unused to idleness while the chrono was counting down.
"I told you to leave me here." Vau could still manage the voice of menace. "Don't disobey me. You know what hap-pens."
Boss hung manfully to his end of the plastoid sheet, but his voice was shaky. "You can't give us an order, Citizen Vau."
They were the best special forces troops in the galaxy, and here Vau was, still unable to manage the thank you or well done that they deserved. But much as he wanted to, the cold black heart of his father, his true legacy, choked off all at-tempts to express it. Nothing was ever good enough for his father, especially him. Maybe the old man just couldn't bring himself to say it, and he meant to all along.
No, he didn't. Don't make excuses for him. But my boys know me. I don't have to spell it out for them.
"I ought to shoot you," Vau said. "You're getting sloppy."
Vau checked the chrono on his forearm plate. Anytime now, Bacara's Galactic Marines would start pounding the city of Jygat with glacier-busters. He was sure he'd feel it like a seismic shock.
"Looking for anything in particular?" Sev asked. "No. Random opportunism." Vau didn't need to cover his tracks: his father didn't know or care if he was alive or dead. Your disappointment of a son came back, Papa. You didn't even know I disappeared to Kamino for ten years, did you? There was nothing the senile hut'uun could do about it any-way. Vau was the one better able to swing a crippling punch these days. "Just a smokescreen. And make it worth the trip." He knew what their next question would have been, if they'd asked it. They never asked what they knew they didn't need to be told. What was he going to do with it all?
He couldn't tell them. It was too much, too soon. He was going to hand it all over to a man who'd kill him for a bet- all except what was rightfully his.
"I'm not planning to live in luxurious exile," Vau said.
Scorch stepped over Mird and stood at the door, Deece ready. "Donating it to the Treasury, then?"
"It'll be used responsibly."
Vau's backpack was now stuffed solid, and heavy enough to make him wince when he heaved it up on his shoulders. He tied the plastoid sheet into a bundle-a bundle worth mil-lions, maybe-and slung it across his chest. He hoped he didn't fall or he'd never get up again.
"Oya," he said, nodding toward the doors. "Let's go."