[Republic Commando] - 03(107)
She’s just a kid. She’s just like Bard’ika, only not as confident and as good at the job. You have to back off.
It was a physical effort to shut up. Ordo could taste salt and metal, blood wet on his lip. “I’m sorry.” He focused on what Skirata would want and fought down the impulse to take out his resentment and frustration on Etain, not because it was unfair but because it might lead to events that would upset Kal’buir and Darman. He wanted to ask her why only a handful of Jedi objected to a slave army, and why they could claim to believe in the sanctity of all life and yet treat some life as being exempt from that respect. It was a question he should have put to Zey, too. Instead he parted his lips and heard himself say, “Let’s change the subject. If Besany’s offered to cook dinner for me, does she mean dinner, or …”
He trailed off. Etain was staring at him with the look of someone who’d seen a terrible accident, and he had no idea how to phrase the question anyway, but he did want to know the answer. The width of the cockpit was just over two meters. Etain reached across and grabbed his arm so hard that he flinched.
“Can we roll this back a bit, Ordo? Please? Who’s putting down clones? Does Zey know about this?”
He didn’t have to be Force-sensitive to know she was disturbed by what he’d said. “Seeing as it’s ARC troopers being hunted down by covert ops troopers, maybe Zey authorizes it, even if they’re not all in his chain of command. He wasn’t slow to give the nod to Kal’buir to carry out illegal assassinations that can’t be traced back to him, was he?” Ordo wiped his lip on the back of his hand. “I just don’t know. And I shouldn’t have told you.”
“But you did, and now I’m mad about it.”
“Nobody leaves the Grand Army except in a body bag, Etain.” He decided to soften the impact by dropping her rank, which would have sounded like an accusation right then. “Once that story gets around, what do you think that’ll do to loyalty, let alone morale?”
Etain seemed to be framing difficult words. “Ordo, I can’t help being a Jedi. I never had any more choice than you did, and I can’t turn off my Force abilities any more than you can switch off your brain. So you scare me, because I can sense the dark side in you, all the violence and anger, but it’s all pushed down, and I just wonder when you’re finally going to erupt and lose control.”
It was nothing he didn’t know already. Kal ‘buir said you couldn’t breed men the way the Kaminoans did and expect anything else-and the aiwha-bait had no interest in producing happy, well-adjusted clones, just lethal and disciplined ones. It wasn’t as if they were going to be around long enough to ponder the meaning of their existence and work out that they’d had a raw deal.
Is that what Besany sees? A psycho? She never seems afraid of me. Would she say if she was?
“Etain, you’re not responsible for the whole Jedi Order,” he said. “But I don’t feel much when I kill, because it’s just something that needs doing, and I don’t kill for fun. I don’t even think all life deserves respect. All I care about is me and mine. If that means killing some more, I won’t lose any sleep.”
“If it helps,” Etain said, “I reached the point where I didn’t care how many farmers got killed on Qiilura as long as no more of my troops did. I don’t think the Jedi Council would approve of that, but I’ll learn to live with it. I think they justify turning a blind eye to the reality of the army by the in-verse process.”
As small talk went, it was one of the worst experiences Ordo had ever had. He had nothing more to say, and swiveled a few degrees in his seat to check the course and revise the deceleration point to drop out of hyperspace. No wonder Mandalorians had generally taken the Separatist side in this war: the Republic was rotting from the core outward, soft and corrupt, detached from everything outside the orbit of Coruscant unless it could milk it dry. But taking out his disgust on a frightened, pregnant girl who was as disenfranchised as he was-disenfranchised, that was it-wasn’t the Mando way. Ordo felt deeply ashamed, as if his anger had been an entirely separate person for those few moments, not even part of him. He always did when it got the better of him. Etain had a point.
“What are you going to do if Venku turns out to be Force-sensitive?” he asked, striving for a truce.
“He will be.” Etain patted her belly. “I can tell. And I won’t let him be taken like I was. I’ll teach him how to handle the powers he develops, if Kal will let me, but he won’t be a Jedi. I don’t need Kal to forbid me.”