[Republic Commando] - 02(64)

He was a man in frequent agony. His mind was racing at full throttle, and it felt as if it never stopped.

She must have been staring at him. “Are you all right, ma’am?” he asked, still veneered in calm.

“I’m fine,” she said, swallowing hard. “What … what can I possibly do that Walon Vau can’t?”

“Are you ready to hear some unpleasant things?” Skirata said.

“I have to be.”

He rubbed his forehead slowly. “You can train people to resist interrogation. That’s a fancy phrase for torture, and I don’t like using it. I know, because I’ve done it, and hard-line terrorists get trained much like soldiers do. But they don’t get trained to resist Jedi. And that gives you a psychological advantage as well as a real one.”

“Nikto are supposed to be tough.”

“Humans can be tough, too.”

He seemed distressed. It was severe enough for her to feel the Force around him become that dark vortex again. “Kal, who’s finding this more unpleasant, you or me?”

“Me.”

“I thought so.”

“It comes back to you at times like this.”

“So who … trained Omega?” She felt the faintest shimmer of distress in Ordo now.

“Me,” said Skirata.

“Oh.”

“Would you have let anyone else do it if you were me?”

“No.” She knew immediately; she didn’t even have to think about it. It would have been an act of abandonment, letting someone else do the dirty work to salve your own conscience, with the same outcome. “No, I wouldn’t.”

“Well …” He shut his eyes for a moment. “If I can train my boys, then you should have no trouble doing what Vau can’t.”

“Tell me what’s at stake.”

“For who? The Republic?” Kal asked. “I think it’s marginal, to be honest. In real terms, terrorism doesn’t even dent it. Casualties in the thousands, that’s all. It’s fear of it that does the damage.”

“So why are you in so deep?”

“Who’s getting hit hardest? Clone troopers.”

“But thousands of troops are dying in the front line every day. Numerically-“

“Yeah, I can’t do much about the war. I trained quite a few men to stay alive. But all that’s left for me is to do what I can, where I can.”

“Personal war, isn’t it?” Etain said.

“You think so? I don’t care if the Republic falls or not. I’m a mercenary. Everyone’s my potential employer.”

“So where does the anger come from? I know anger, you see. As Jedi we guard against it all the time.”

“You won’t like the answer.”

“I don’t like a lot of things lately, but I still have to deal with them.”

“Okay. Day by day, I get more bitter when I see Mandalorian men-and that’s what they are, whether you like it or not-used and discarded in a war in which they have no stake.” Skirata, sitting right behind Ordo, put his hand gently on the captain’s armored shoulder. “But not on my watch.”

Etain had no answer to that. She hadn’t articulated it in racial terms, and she knew that Mandalorians weren’t a race as such. But there hadn’t been one day since she had parted from Omega Squad on Qiilura nine months ago that she hadn’t agonized over the use of soldiers who had no choice, no rights, and no future in the Republic that they gave their lives to defend.

It was wrong.

There was a point somewhere at which the means did not justify the ends, no matter what the numbers argued. Like this violent, passionate little man beside her, Etain didn’t refuse her role in the war out of principle, because that would have been no more than shutting her eyes to it.

Men would still die.

And if the Jedi Council could accept the need to let that happen to save the Republic, then she could sink to a level she had never believed possible to save soldiers she knew as people.

“I’ll try not to let you down,” she said.

“You mean me?” said Skirata.

And you, she thought.

Safe house, Brewery zone, Coruscant Quadrant J-47, 1000 hours, 371 days after Geonosis

Skirata had been expecting the safe house to be in another seedy part of the city where unusual activity was part of the landscape.

But Enacca had surpassed herself this time. The property was a small apartment in a refurbished quarter known as the Brewery; the construction droids were still working on some of the buildings, facing them with tasteful durasteel wrought-work. Zey was going to have a fit when he saw the bill for this one land on his desk.

“I think that’s what our brothers might call kandosii,” Ordo said, bringing the speeder up to the landing platform. It had a discreet awning to shield it from view, although Coruscant was so traffic-packed that enemy surveillance from tall buildings-Skirata’s dread-was less of a threat than usual here. Lines of sight were frequently obscured. “I’ll be back later. Errands to run, Kal’buir.”