[Republic Commando] - 02(23)

She took a breath and reminded herself that she was a Jedi, and there was more to being a Jedi than wielding a lightsaber. She knelt down beside him and grabbed his hand. The grip he returned was surprisingly strong for a dying man.

“It’s okay,” she said.

She reached out in the Force to get some sense of the injury, to shape it in her mind, hoping to slow the hemorrhage and hold shattered tissue together until the larty docked. But she knew as soon as she formed the scale of the damage in her mind that it wouldn’t save him.

She had vowed never again to use mind influence on clones without their consent: she had eased Atin’s grief, and given Niner confidence when he most needed it, both unasked for, but since then she had avoided it. Clones weren’t weak-minded anyway, whatever people thought. But this man was dying, and he needed help.

“I’m Etain,” she said. She concentrated on his eyes, seeing behind them somehow into a swirl of no color at all, and visualized calm. She held out her hand to the trooper supporting his shoulders and mouthed medpacs at him. She knew they carried single-use syringes of powerful painkiller: Darman had used them in front of her more than once. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. What’s your nickname?”

“Fi,” he said, and it shocked her briefly, but there were many men called Fi in an army with numbers for names. His brother said no silently and held up spent syringes: they’d already pumped him full of what little they had. “Thank you, ma’am.”

If she could influence thought, she could influence endorphin systems. She put every scrap of her will into it. “The pain’s going. The drug’s working. Can you feel it?” If the Force had any validity, it had to come to her aid now. She studied his face, and his jaw muscles were relaxing a little. “How’s that?”

“Better, thanks, ma’am.”

“You hang on. You might feel a bit sleepy.”

His grip was still tight. She squeezed back. She wondered if he knew she was lying and just chose to believe the lie for his own comfort. He didn’t say anything else, but he didn’t scream again, and his face looked peaceful.

She rested his head on her shoulder, one hand between his head and the bulkhead, the other still clutching his, and held that position for ten minutes, concentrating on an image of a cool pale void. Then he started a choking cough. His brother took his other hand, and Fi-a painful reminder of a friend she hadn’t seen for months and might never see again-said, “I’m fine.” His grip went slack.

“Oh, ma’am,” said his brother.

Etain was aware in a detached way of spending the next twenty minutes talking to every single trooper in that bay, asking their names, asking who had been lost, and wondering why they stared first at her chest and then at her face, apparently bewildered.

She put her hand to her cheek. It stung. She brushed it and a fragment of alloy came away on her hand with fresh, bright blood. She hadn’t felt the shrapnel until then. She aimed herself towards a familiar patch of green in the forest of grimy white armor.

“Clanky,” she said, numb. “Clanky, I never asked. Where do we bury our men? Or do we cremate them, like Jedi?”

“Neither, usually, General,” said Clanky. “Don’t you worry about that now.”

She looked down at her beige robe and noticed that it was way beyond filthy: it was peppered with burns, as if she’d been welding carelessly, and there was a ragged oval patch of deep red blood from her right shoulder down to her belt, already drying into stiff blackness.

“Master Camas is going to fry me,” she said.

“He can fry us, too, then,” Clanky said.

Etain knew she’d think about the deftly evaded answer to her question sometime, but right then her mind was elsewhere. She thought of Darman, suddenly conscious that something was wrong: but something was always wrong for commandos on missions, and the Force was clear that Darman was still alive.

But the other Fi-the trooper-wasn’t. Etain felt ashamed of her personal fears and went in search of men she could still help.

Bravo Eight Depot crime scene, Manarai, Coruscant, 367 days after Geonosis

Skirata took every clone casualty as a personal affront. His frustration wasn’t aimed at Obrim: the two men respected each other in the way of time-served professionals, and Ordo knew that. He just hoped Obrim knew that Kal’buir didn’t always mean the sharp things he said.

“So when are your people going to get off their shebse and tell us how the device got in here?” Skirata said.

“Soon,” Obrim said. “The security holocam was taken out in the blast. We’re waiting on a backup image from the satellite. Won’t be as clear, but at least we have it.”