[Republic Commando] - 03(25)

“Cultural diversity’s a wonderful thing,” Fi observed, but he looked quite pale. “What do they do for desserts?”

Niner fished out a chunk of lean meat and gazed at it, then

popped it into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. Darman didn’t know he could be so daring. “I never thought I’d resort to cannibalism.”

“It’s not cannibalism for us, Niner,” A’den said. “Just for them.”

“That’s the Grand Army for you.” Fi’s face seemed back to its normal color again. “See the galaxy, meet fascinating new species, and snack on them.”

“Well, we wouldn’t be alone.” A’den looked up, all concern, as Atin walked back unsteadily from the bushes, wiping his mouth. “You okay?”

“You did that deliberately. You could have told me before I started eating.”

“I said don’t ask, and I said I hadn’t.” Atin-quiet, methodical Atin-had been one of Vau’s training company, not Skirata’s. It showed. A’den stared at Atin, and Atin stared back. Niner rolled his eyes as if he was shaping up to separate them, and it wouldn’t have been the first time that Atin needed hauling out of a confrontation. There was something about the way Vau trained his men that gave them a core of wildness, a complete inability to see sense and back down when pushed too far.

A’den almost broke into a grin. “You tried to vibroblade Vau, didn’t you? We all heard about that.”

Atin gave him the silent routine. Darman waited for A’den to run out of patience and give Atin a good slap, as Fi liked to call it, but he just shrugged and rummaged in his pockets. “Okay,” said A’den. He found what he was looking for and tossed a ration bar across to Atin, who caught it. “First, you can grow a shabla beard. Because you’re going to have to infiltrate Eyat, and they’re not used to seeing quads. Mix yourselves up a bit and choose who gets to stay looking normal.”

Fi perked up immediately. “I’ll dress up as a lizard if I can have a trip into town.”

“Done,” A’den said. “But scrub the scaly look, because Mar-its don’t go into the cities now, except to shoot the locals. That’s why a human’s best suited to do assassinations. Once you’ve got your bearings, I want two of you to recce Eyat again and get a few spycams planted. The Marits can’t go in unnoticed, and whatever intel Sull put together went with him.”

“Sull?” said Fi.

“Alpha-Thirty,” A’den said. “That was his name. Sull.”

Darman finished his stew and watched A’den. He wasn’t pleased, that much was obvious. Maybe it was having to fol-low up on an Alpha ARC when he thought he had more important business. Maybe it was just normal irritation at being tasked to carry out a mission that looked pointless and wasn’t resourced. He worked alone, and that had to take its toll on any man’s will.

Niner scraped out his mess tin and rinsed it clean with water from his bottle. “I think we should be concentrating our forces on kicking the osik out of the main Sep homeworlds,” he said suddenly. “Because if we keep this up, we’ll be down to one clone per planet, showing the locals a field manual on how to throw stones.”

A’den turned his head slowly and parted his lips as if to speak. He paused. He seemed to be measuring his words.

“You’re in good company,” he said. “Lots of us do, including General Zey. But the Chancellor wants to avoid too much collateral damage. No pounding, no surging, no offending the civvies.”

“No resources.”

“Enough resources not to lose, but not enough to win,” A’den said. “He’s just feeding a stalemate, the moron.”

Darman thought it was time they got on with making friends with the Marits. He stood up and ambled over to the lizards, wondering if there might be anything in Eyat that he could acquire for Etain. It was hard to think of anything that a Jedi might want. They avoided possessions.

“You know what’s been bothering me?” Fi’s voice drifted across the center of the camp. The Marits had finished calibrating the artillery piece and were admiring it. “What if the war had broken out when we were five years into our training instead of eight, nine … ten?”

“What?” A’den asked.

“Nobody knows when a war’s going to start, not years ahead, anyway. It’s not like you can book one in advance. So there we are, fully trained, and then it all kicks off. Very lucky. What if it had all gone to poodoo years before? What if we’d been half trained, still just kids?”