[Republic Commando] - 03(46)

Level interrupted at just the right moment. Like Commander Gett, he had a knack for defusing situations. “Permission to put the men in position, General?”

“The farmers have already scattered. They won’t all be in Imbraani.”

“I know, but we have to make a start somewhere. We’ll move on and clear stragglers area by area.”

Jinart loped ahead. “We’ll locate them for you.”

Gurlanins were predators. Etain had no doubt that tracking humans was easy for them. She watched Jinart disappear into the distance, and then she really disappeared-vanished, merged into the landscape, melted. It was disturbing to watch. Metamorphosis was a shocking enough spectacle, but the way the creatures could simply step out of existence troubled her more than anything.

She had no idea if one was right behind her, or in her room in her most private moments.

“I know all the places the colonists used to hide out during the Sep occupation,” she said to Level. “Zey and I used them, too. I still have the charts.”

The commander dipped his head and put his hand to the side of his helmet for a moment as if he was listening to his internal comlink. “So, ma’am, how are you interpreting lethal force? Can we shoot as soon as they try to kill us, or do we have lo wait until they actually do?”

Up lo a year ago, Etain would have had a clear-cut answer based on a Jedi’s view of the world, where dangers were sensed in advance and intentions clearly fell: she knew who meant her harm and who didn’t Now she saw the war through the senses of ordinary human men, who were trained lo react instantly and whose long-drilled movement eventually bypassed conscious thought. If someone targeted them, their defensive reflex kicked in. Sometimes they got it wrong by firing; sometimes they got it wrong by hesitating. But she had no intention of handicapping them by expecting them to be able to make the judgment calls that she could. Zey could promulgate all the rules of engagement he wanted. He wasn’t here, in the line of fire.

“Once they open fire on you,” Etain said, “return it. They can’t be civilians and engage in armed conflict. Their choice.”

She’d square it with Zey. If she couldn’t-too bad. It was her command, and she’d lake the consequences. Levet summoned a speeder bike, and she climbed onto the pillion behind him. They set off for Imbraani at the head of a column of armored speeder buses and speeder bikes while an AT-TE carrier passed overhead lo deploy troops lo the east of the town.

“Are you wearing any armor, ma’am?” Levet asked.

The chest plate didn’t fit properly now, but she couldn’t tell him that her bump got in the way. She’d leaned back a little so that he wouldn’t feel it press into him. To her, it felt enormous, but nobody appeared to have noticed it yet. “Assorted plates, yes. And a comlink.”

“Good. Two things I don’t like-a general who can’t communicate with me, and a general who’s dead.”

“Well, I’ll be a live general who listens and takes notice of her commanders in the field.”

“We like that kind of general.”

And Etain liked clones. The only thing they all had in common was their appearance-although they were starting to age differently, she could see that now-and what the Republic had done to them. Apart from that, they were individuals with the full range of virtues and habits of random humankind, and she now fell completely at home with them.

If she had a side in this war, this was the one she chose: the disenfranchised, unreasonably loyal, heartbreakingly stoic ranks of manufactured men who deserved better.

“We’re going to run out of Jedi if this war spreads to more planets, Levet,” she said, not sure if the lump rising in her throat was her hormonal upheaval or pity for the clones getting the better of her. “Would you mind taking a detour down the course of the river?”

“Very good, ma’am.”

Levet signaled the lead speeders in the convoy to carry on and banked left. Soon they were snaking through two lines of trees between which the Braan River formed a frozen road. She’d first met Darman here: she’d sensed a child in the dark but come face-to-face with what she thought was either a droid or the Seps’ Mandalorian enforcer, Ghez Hokan. She didn’t imagine she was meeting the future father of her son.

I miss you, Dar.

She found herself thinking about Hokan more often these days, and finding it ironic that her first kill was a Mandalorian, and that he’d been fighting against commandos who found so-lace in a tenuous Mandalorian heritage. She wondered why Mandalorians bothered to fight other worlds’ wars when they could have banded together for their own sole advantage.