Barlex stood silent as if he was working up to telling them something, then shrugged and took Niner’s indication that what was to follow wasn’t for his ears. Darman did what he always did before an insertion: he settled in a corner to recheck his suit calibration. Atin inspected Fi’s jet pack clips with a critical frown.
“I could knit better attachments than these,” he muttered.
“Do you think you could try cheery and upbeat sometime. At’ika?” Fi asked.
Niner joined in the inspection ritual. It was all displacement activity, but nobody could ever accuse Omega Squad of leaving things to chance. “All it has to do is stay attached to Fi until he lands,” he said.
Fi nodded. “That would be nice.”
Atin set the encrypted holoreceiver he had been holding on a bulkhead ledge and locked the compartment hatches. Darman couldn’t imagine any clone trooper being a security risk, “and wondered if they were offended by being shut out of Spec Ops briefings as if they were civilians. But they seemed to take it as routine, apparently uncurious and uncomplaining, because that was the way they’d been trained since birth: they had their role, and the Republic commandos had theirs. That was what the Kaminoans had told them, any-way.
But it wasn’t entirely true. Trooper Corr, last surviving man of his whole company, was now on SO Brigade strength and seemed to be enjoying himself charging around the galaxy with the Null ARCs. He was becoming quite a double act with Lieutenant Mereel; they shared a taste for the finer points of booby traps. They also enjoyed exploring the social scene, as Skirata put it, of every city they happened to pass through.
Corr fits in just fine. I bet they all can, given the chance and the training.
Darman slipped on his helmet and retreated into his own world, comlinks closed except for the priority override that would let the squad break into the circuit and alert him. If he let his mind drift, the scrolling light display of his HUD blurred and became the nightscape of Coruscant, and he could immerse himself in the precious memory of those brief and illicit days in the city with Etain. Sometimes he felt as if she were standing behind him, a feeling so powerful that he’d look over his shoulder to check. Now he recognized the sensation for what it was: not his imagination or longing, but a Jedi-his Jedi-reaching out in the Force to him.
She s General Tur-Mukan. You ‘re well out of line, soldier.
He felt her touch now, just the fleeting awareness of someone right next to him. He couldn’t reach back: he just hoped that however the Force worked, it let her know that he knew she was thinking of him. But why did the Force speak to so few beings, if it was universal? Darman felt a pang of mild resentment. The Force was another aspect of life that was closed to him, but at least that was true for pretty well everyone. It didn’t bother him anywhere near as much as the dawning realization that he didn’t have what most others did: a little choice.
He’d once asked Etain what would happen to the clone troops when the war was over - when they won. He couldn’t think about losing. Where would they go? How would they be rewarded? She didn’t know. The fact that he didn’t know. either, fed a growing uneasiness.
Maybe the Senate hasn’t thought that far ahead.
Fi turned to pick up his helmet and started calibrating the display, the expression on his face distracted and not at all happy. This was Fi unguarded: not funny, not wisecracking. and alone with his thoughts. Darman’s helmet let him observe his brother without provoking a response. Fi had changed, and it had happened during the operation on Coruscant. Darman felt Fi was preoccupied by something the rest of them couldn’t see, like a hallucination you’d never tell anyone about because you thought you were going crazy. Or maybe you were afraid nobody else would admit to it. Dar-man had a feeling he knew what it was, so he never talked about Etain, and Atin never went on about Laseema. It wasn’t fair to Fi.
The Core Conveyor’s, drives had a very soothing frequency. Darman settled into that light doze where he was still conscious but his thoughts rambled free of his control.
Yes, Coruscant was the problem. It had given them all a glimpse into a parallel universe where people lived normal lives. Darman was smart enough to realize that his own lift wasn’t normal - that he’d been bred to fight, nothing else… but his gut said something else entirely: that it wasn’t right of fair.
He’d have volunteered, he was sure of that. They wouldn’t have had to force him. All he wanted at the end of it was some time with Etain. He didn’t know what else life had to offer, but he knew there was a lot of it he would never live to see. He’d been alive for eleven standard years, coming up on twelve. He was twenty-three or twenty-four, the manual said. It wasn’t time enough to live.