A’den, Null ARC N-12, grabbed him by the arm and beckoned him to follow. He was wearing rough working clothes no helmet, no plates, and no distinctive kilt-like kama. Dar-man hadn’t been expecting to find him in civvies.
And as he picked his way through the undergrowth, cursing the stupid wings that now wouldn’t retract because he’d bent the mechanism in the fall, he also didn’t expect to see small fast-moving figures with bright reflective eyes emerging with DC-15 rifles.
They were lizard lizards, all right.
GAR base. Teklet, Qiilura, 470 days after Geonosis, deadline for the withdrawal of human colonists
General Etain Tur-Mukan had never felt less like doing a day’s duty in her life. But she would do it. She had to.
Outside the army headquarters building-a modest house that had once belonged to a Trandoshan slaver, now long gone with the rest of the occupying Separatist forces-a crowd of farmers stood in grim silence. She paused in front of the doors and prepared to step outside to reason with them.
You have to leave. It’s the deal we did, remember?
“I don’t think you should handle this, ma’am,” said the garrison’s commander, Levet. His yellow-trimmed helmet was tucked under one arm; a fit, clean-shaven, black-haired man in his twenties, so much like Darman that it hurt. “Let me talk to them.”
He was a clone, like Dar-exactly like Dar, exactly like every other clone in the Grand Army of the Republic, although without Dar’s permanent expression of patient good humor. He had those same dark eyes that gave Etain a pang of loneliness and yearning at the constant reminder that Dar was… where? At that moment, she had no idea. She could feel him in the Force, as she always could, and he was unharmed. That was all she knew. She made a mental note to contact Ordo later to check his location.
“Ma’am,” said Levet, a little more loudly. “Are you all right? I said I’ll do this.”
Etain made a conscious effort to stop seeing Darman in Levet’s face. “Responsibility of rank, Commander.” Behind her, she heard a faint silken rustle like an animal moving. “But thank you.”
“You need to be careful,” said a low, liquid voice. “Or we’ll have your nasty little sergeant to answer to.”
Jinart brushed past Etain’s legs. The Gurlanin shapeshifter was in her true form of a sleek black carnivore, but she could just as easily have transformed herself into the exact replica of Levet-or Etain.
Nasty little sergeant. Sergeant Kal Skirata-short, ferocious, angry-had exiled her here for a few months. She’d fallen from grace with him. Now that she was several months’ pregnant, she’d started to understand why. “I m being careful,” Etain said.
“He holds me responsible for your safety.”
“You’re scared of him, aren’t you?”
“And so are you, girl.”
Etain draped her brown robes carefully to disguise the growing bulge of pregnancy and pulled another loose coat on top. Teklet was in the grip of winter, which was just as well: the excuse for voluminous clothes was welcome. But even without the top layer, she didn’t look conspicuously pregnant. She just felt it, tired and lonely.
Nobody here would know or care who the father was an way.
“There’s no need for you to supervise the evacuation personally,” said Jinart. “The fewer who see you, the better. Don’t tempt fate.”
Etain ignored her and the doors parted, letting a snow-speckled gust of cold air into the lobby. Jinart shot out in front of her like a sand panther and bounded through the drifts.
“Insanity,” the Gurlanin hissed. She progressed in flowing leaps. “You have a child to worry about.”
“My son,” Etain said, “is fine. And I’m not ill, I’m pregnant.”
And she owed her troops. She owed them like she owed Darman, RC-1136, whose last letter-a real letter, written on flimsi in a precise, disciplined hand, a mix of gossip about’ his squad and little longings for time with her-was sueded with constant reading and refolding, and kept safe inside her tunic, not in her belt. The snow crunched under her boots as she waded to the road cut through the drifts by constant traffic. It was a brilliantly sunny day, blindingly bright, a lovely day for a walk if this had been a normal life and she had been an ordinary woman.
It’s hard not to tell him. It’s hard not to mention the baby when he asks how I am. His baby.
But Skirata forbade her to tell him. She almost understood why.
Jinart continued her progression of controlled leaps. She probably hunted that way, Etain thought, pouncing on small animals burrowed deep in the snow. “Skirata will be furious if you miscarry.”