501st: An Imperial Commando Novel (19 page)

He took a pull of his ale. “Right. A tad heavy-handed, I’d say. It’s amazing she was even conscious when
Bard’ika
found her.”

“They might as well have hit her over the head with a mallet.”

“Well, it takes some time to metabolize and excrete completely, so she’s still sedated, but that explains why she’s getting more responsive.”

“Isn’t that dangerous, stopping a drug like that?”

“Could be. You should always taper it off. Given how persistent sebenodone is, though, she’s probably still dosed up.”

A doctor working with an ale in one hand wasn’t exactly the kind of professional discipline that Uthan was used to, but Gilamar seemed to get the job done. This lab had suddenly become her refuge, a faint echo of her life as it had once been before the war started, and she liked to come here to savor both the familiarity of equipment and the novelty of relative freedom. Perhaps Gilamar liked recalling a time when he didn’t have to fight for a living.

It was good to talk shop again, too.

“So how did you get all the equipment?” she asked.
“Not just this lab. All the medical facilities. The portable diagnostic kit. The monitors. The operating table. I couldn’t help but notice the Republic Central Medsupply security labels on it all.”

“Ah,” Gilamar said. “That’d be because I thieved the lot, although we did buy this lab fair and square—but I think the creds we used were stolen, too. Oh, you know what Mandos are like. Light-fingered and dishonest, every last one of us.”

Uthan found herself laughing. She thought he was joking for a moment, but even when she realized he wasn’t, she still thought it was funny. Most criminals stole easily fenced, high-value objects, or trinkets that amused them. But this man stole entire
hospitals
. That took a certain panache.

“I make the population of Kyrimorut thirty at the moment, if you include the strill.”

“And I do, Qail, I
do
. I don’t care how many legs my patients have.”

“So … I know we’re a long way from decent medical facilities, a whole
sector
away in fact, but isn’t your medical facility
excessive
?”

“Not if you need to handle any injury a clone trooper might arrive with.”

“Skirata’s serious about resettling deserters, then.”

“Some of those lads are going to be pretty damaged. You know what happened to Fi. Well, look at him now.”

“Temporary coma?”

“Brain-dead. I mean
really
brain-dead. They switched him off and he went on breathing, but his brain scan flatlined.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Oh yes. Fi’s our little miracle.”

“Don’t tell me you’re a neurosurgeon. Either that, or you stole a neuromed droid.”

“No, Doc Jedi to the rescue.
Bard’ika
put Fi back together again. Astonishing.”

“So they’re good for more than just being Republic stooges.”

“Some are. Anyway, he’s not a Jedi now. Never use the J word to him.”

“They can switch it off, Jedi-ness, can they?”

“Are you mocking me, Dr. Uthan?”

“Why, the very thought, Dr. Gilamar …”

Uthan enjoyed the cut and thrust of conversation with a smart man. Gilamar spoke her jargon, understood her profession, and—despite that prizefighter’s nose, or maybe because of it—she found him attractive company. The last thing she’d expected was
not
to want to kill every Mandalorian she met, given what had happened to her. Solitary confinement had changed her at a level she still didn’t quite understand.

So I’m happy to mix with the scum of the galaxy. Is that it? But nobody’s who I think they are these days
.

Gilamar shrugged. “I don’t know about other Jedi, except Kad’s mother, may she rest in the
manda
, but Bardan left the Order before the war ended. He’s got remarkable healing skills, very logical ones. He was influencing Fi’s progesterone levels to repair brain tissue, for example. Quite extraordinary. And completely untrained.”

Uthan dealt in the detectable and demonstrable, and she suspected Gilamar did, too. But everyone clutched at straws when science failed them. Perhaps some straws had more substance than she imagined.

“So, did you begin life as a Mandalorian, or did you join the club later?” she asked. “You all sound so different.”

“Adult recruit. My late wife was Mandalorian. And I look great in armor.” Gilamar’s guard dropped just a fraction. “If you’re asking why I ended up in the
Cuy’val Dar … 
some of my patients were the kind who got into big trouble and tended to spread it around. The good news is that Mandos need a lot of emergency medicine and first aid with no questions asked. The bad news is that I can’t overcharge patients in some fancy Coruscant diet clinic.”

“Imperial City.”

“What?”

“Palpatine renamed Coruscant
Imperial City
. It was on the holonews.”

“Nothing says
I am an insecure maggot
quite like renaming cities to reflect your own imagined importance.”

“He never struck me as that—insecure, I mean. Maggot, yes.” Uthan got up and switched on the holoreceiver. Skirata had made sure there were plenty of things to entertain her, at least. He wasn’t a total brute. “When did you last watch the holonews?”

“I get headlines from the datapad. It’s all garbage. It was garbage under the Republic, too. Nothing changes.”

Uthan needed the news, garbage or not, because it was her only glimpse of her homeworld, even if it was filtered through the spin of a regime that treated it as a dangerous enemy. She hadn’t been back home for years. She caught sight of her own reflection in the holoscreen, superimposed for a moment on the scenes of devastation on remote worlds like Nadhe, Cel Amiin, and Lanjer. All she saw was her failure to stop Palpatine’s power grab when she’d had the chance. She’d been so close to perfecting the FG36 virus when Omega Squad had captured her that it hurt.

And they’re here, aren’t they? Fi and Atin, at least. Funny, now I have names for them. I can tell them apart. They have lives, wives, histories, plans for the future. Is all this their fault
?

She didn’t know. She was torn between seeing them as a threat she’d once tried to neutralize and young men who she knew, ate with, talked to. She watched the screen, feeling Gilamar’s stare burning a hole in her, and waited for her world to appear on the list of planets that just didn’t seem to understand that the Empire was their friend and only wanted the best for them.

“Meanwhile, on Gibad, assembly leaders have refused to allow an Imperial diplomatic mission to land in Koliverin. After a four-week standoff, Gibadan forces are …
”

It didn’t look like a diplomatic mission. It looked like an assault ship. And the troops in that ship would be exactly like the nice young men she’d just watched playing bolo-ball and pulling faces to amuse the baby son of one of their brothers.

Uthan lived by clarity, definitive answers, and—even in the still-uncertain world of genetics—predictable outcomes. Confusion and conflicted feelings weren’t something she was used to. She didn’t like it at all.

“You know what the final score’s going to be,” Gilamar said. “And there’s nothing you can do to stop it. So you might find it easier to switch off the holoscreen for a week.”

“You think it’s that inevitable, do you?”

“Palps has to make it clear that nobody breaks away on his watch. Big show of force, start as you mean to go on, and all that
osik.
”

“I just don’t understand how the CIS caved in to the Republic when it had the upper hand, when it had Coruscant under attack—”

“Qail, there were never two sides in this war. Don’t you get it? Palpatine was running both campaigns. He’s a Sith, and he engineered the whole war to get rid of what stood in his way—the Jedi Order. Then he moved in his second army to consolidate the Empire.”

“I didn’t even know what a Sith was until I came here. If Mandalorians fought for them, why can’t they defeat this one?”

“We fought against them, too, but that’s the nature of the
beroya
’s job. You think
we’d
be any better off under the Jedi? Mandalore, I mean? It makes no difference to us. When it does
—then
we’ll get involved. One thing we won’t be doing is fighting an ideological war for
aruetiise
who’ll spit on us the moment we win it for them, and blame us if we don’t.”

“That’s how tyranny succeeds,” Uthan said. “When folks think it won’t affect them. Until it eventually
does.
”

“Thank you for the tips on glorious rebellion and liberty.
Me, I like clearer definitions of glory and freedom before I start a fight over them.”

“The galaxy is entering the dark ages.”

“Actually, most of the galaxy won’t notice the difference. Some of it will even be better off. The average citizen just wants an excess of food on the table, something to watch on the holonet, and the freedom to indulge a few health-destroying habits. The individuals who’ll feel aggrieved about all this are the aristocrats and politicians who lost power and want it back, the hobby revolutionaries, and the relatively few unlucky
shabuire
who have something the Empire wants and plans to take.”

“I think you’re in that group somewhere, you Mandos.”

Gilamar just gave her a look that said he’d heard it all before. But for a moment, she wondered if she
could
do something to stop what would happen to Gibad. The question wasn’t whether the Empire would subdue it by force, but how much damage it would do in the process.

The only thing she could do was perfect the FG36 virus, get it to her government, and then hope there was enough time to produce millions of vials of it. She’d also have to hope there was a way to distribute it not only across the surface of Gibad but throughout the galaxy to kill every clone soldier without a shot being fired.

She would also have to find a way to get from Mandalore to Gibad. Right now, she didn’t even have a way of getting to Enceri.

She was too late. She’d been too late more than three years ago, and only just realized it.

“We’ll be in the
karyai
this evening if you want to join us.” Gilamar stood up to go. “Relax a bit. I know this project is urgent, but you’re no use to us dead.”

“Ah, Mando concern.” Uthan didn’t want to take it out on Gilamar. None of this was his doing. They were all in this mess together, and she was looking for reasons to like him. “The
karyai
is the big central living room, yes?”

“It is. We might get a little emotional when someone
talks about Etain, but generally we plan to laugh. The dead don’t like us moping around.”

He leaned over and switched off the holoreceiver, smiled sadly at her, then shut the lab doors behind him. Uthan was left staring at her reflection in the dead screen, suddenly feeling worn out and useless. Her black hair was still in the meticulously groomed style she’d worn for years, pulled tight behind her ears in a pleat and highlighted with brilliant scarlet streaks. She didn’t want to be that Uthan any longer. She wouldn’t be able to maintain the complex color anyway, not here. Mandos didn’t seem to go in for hair fashions.

Perhaps it was frustration, or anger that had no safe outlet. It might just have been pragmatism. Whatever sparked it, she’d made up her mind. She unpinned her hair, reached for the lab shears, and began cutting.

Change was coming. She preferred to go and meet it.

O
nly a Mando would create a musical instrument that doubled as a weapon.

Wad’e Tay’haai had shown up with his
bes’bev
, an ancient flute made out of
beskar
, playing tunes that Jusik didn’t recognize. He thought he didn’t, anyway. It was only when he tried to hum them to himself that he realized what they were. The marching song “Vode An”—learned by all clone troopers bred on Kamino, the only
Mando’a
language that most of them ever heard—sounded totally different played as a lament.

Tay’haai held out the flute to Jusik. It was painted a deep violet, like the man’s
beskar’gam
. “Want a go?”

“I’m not musical.” Jusik took it anyway, held it as Tay’haai demonstrated, and blew across the lip plate. The
bes’bev
remained stubbornly silent. When he balanced it in his hand, it had a pleasant heft to it. “So you can use this as a club. Which is probably the only use I’d get out of it.”

“It’s made for stabbing.” Tay’haai ran his fingertip along the end to indicate the diagonal cut, like a quill stylus. “Bleeds out someone very efficiently.”

“Why have a flute that’s a weapon?”

“Maybe we just don’t like music critics.”

Tay’haai began playing again, and Mird didn’t so much as howl along with the music as whine to it. Astonishingly, the strill managed to hit at least half the notes, sounding like a drunk who couldn’t remember the words but was doing his best to join in. A’den only made matters worse by howling along, too, which drove Mird into an operatic frenzy. It was the first time Jusik had ever seen Vau laugh uncontrollably.

If only … 

The
karyai
was almost full to capacity this evening; Cov and his three brothers from Yayax Squad were demonstrating—with Levet—how they’d learned to plow a field. The joy of simple achievement radiated from them. Rav Bralor—Parja’s aunt, another member of Jango Fett’s
Cuy’val Dar
—showed up with a crate of her special throat-searing
tihaar
. She’d trained the Yayax Squad back on Kamino, and they seemed to spend as much time at her clan’s farm a few kilometers away as they did at Kyrimorut.