[Republic Commando] - 02(40)

“Any news on our pilot?” Niner asked.

“Yes. I’m so sorry.”

It was never easy. She tapped her datapad to bring up the copy of the signal that Majestic had sent to Fleet and handed the ‘pad to him. Niner glanced at it, blinked, and passed it to Fi. Fi parted his lips briefly as if to say something, and then his slight frown almost crumpled into grief. He composed himself and just looked down at the deck.

“He’s not the first,” Fi said, suddenly grim, and Etain had never seen that aspect of him surface visibly before. “And he won’t be the last.”

Etain watched them disappear through a hatch on the aft bulkhead, trailing after a trooper. Fearless shivered slightly under the soles of her boots, making top speed back to Coruscant, and she waited while Darman spent what seemed like an interminable time fussing about with the prisoner hand-over. She wondered if he was reluctant to talk after choosing not to remain on Qiilura with her. Perhaps he was just concerned that nothing else went wrong.

She gave up waiting and walked carefully between the troopers still trying to catch some sleep on the hangar deck, curled up wherever they could find a relatively comfortable space.

“Well done,” she said, hoping that some were awake to hear her.

Darman had changed.

He bent his head to ease off his helmet, popping the seal, and then shook his hair and smoothed it flat with one glove. And although he smiled, he wasn’t the Darman she had been through hell with.

He looked older.

Clones aged faster than normal men. He was eleven going on twenty-two going on-fifty. When she had first sensed him as a child in the Force, his square, high-cheekboned face had been both man and boy, at the stage of life when-had she been able to manipulate time-the slightest push backward would have revealed the child he had so recently been. But now he was a man, quite solidly, and with no hint of the boy about him.

It wasn’t simply that he had aged two years in one. The look in his eyes said he was much, much older, as old as the battlefield, maybe as old as war itself. She had seen it in the face of every clone trooper and commando and ARC she had commanded. She knew that she had that same look, too.

But Darman smiled anyway, and the smile broadened into a grin that made the rest of the ship-even the galaxy-utterly irrelevant to her.

“You always cut it fine, don’t you, ma’am?”

“It’s good to see you, Dar. Whatever happened to Etain?”

“She turned into a general and we’re on the hangar deck.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“Is it definitely confirmed that we’re going back to base?”

“Unless you want to argue with the officer of the watch, I believe so.”

“Good. We need a break. Just a day or two, maybe.”

He never did ask for much. None of them did: she wondered if they didn’t know what the world had to offer them or if they were just honed down to basic needs, too overwhelmed to think beyond recovering enough to do the job over again the next day.

She patted his armored shoulder and held her hand there for a few seconds. He looked as if he suddenly remembered something and was embarrassed by it in a way he quite enjoyed.

“It must be nice to be able to reach out to someone through the Force,” he said.

So he’d felt it. She was glad.

“Get yourself off to the ‘freshers,” she said. “Come and find me afterward if you’re not too tired, and I’ll show you over the ship.”

“Have you met Sergeant Kal yet?”

“No.” Kal was always there for Darman, somewhere, even at times like this when she wanted to say so much to him. “When we dock, perhaps you could introduce me.”

Darman beamed, clearly delighted. “Oh, you’ll like him, General. You’ll really like him.”

Etain certainly hoped so. And if she didn’t, then she’d try, for Darman’s sake.

SO Brigade HQ, Coruscant, 369 days after Geonosis

The smell hit Ordo long before he reached the meeting room. It was a familiar blend of wet wool, mold, and a pungent oily musk.

Skirata reacted visibly. He straightened his right arm by his side out of old, old habit and let the blade slide into his hand, fall a fraction until the handle touched his palm, and then snatched it.

“Kal ‘buir, it would be better if I shot it,” Ordo said. He put a restraining hand on Skirata’s arm. “I won’t let it near you.”

“I’ve often wondered if you’re telepathic, son.”

“I can smell the strill, you have your knife ready, and we’re meeting Sergeant Vau. Telepathy isn’t required to work that one out.”

Ordo would have been quite content to shoot the strill without a second thought because it upset Kal’buir. But it wasn’t the strill’s fault that it stank, or that it had a master who cherished cruelty, or that it had become savage itself. It had been selected by nature and then trained by people to hunt for pleasure rather than for food, and nothing else had ever been allowed to cross its mind.