[Republic Commando] - 03(73)

“Come on, there’s a good boy,” the woman said, and beckoned to Sull to follow her. Astonishingly, he did. “Long way to go.”

A’den called after her. “I’ll do what I can, Ny, okay?”

So her name was Ny, and that could have been the entirety of it, or short for any number of names. She paused to glance at the squad as if she’d never seen clones together before-chances were she hadn’t, he thought-and went on her way.

Darman could only imagine that she was Sull’s transport out of the system, and that guaranteed his obedience at least for a while. But if an ARC wanted to leave Gaftikar under his own steam, he could have found any number of ways to do it-Whatever A’den had said to him during that ARC-to-ARC chat must have been very persuasive.

Fi watched the incongruous pair vanish among the trees at the edge of the camp. The woman looked like a kid alongside Sull.

“Maybe it’s his mother,” Fi said, trying on the kama with a critical frown. “And he’s grounded for a month for not doing his chores.”

“Stop going on about mothers.” Atin seemed to have lost interest. “You don’t know what any of that means. It’s all off the holovids. Like some new alien species learning about humans.”

“Yeah, well, maybe that’s what we are.” Fi undipped his helmet from the back of his belt and rammed it onto his head, shutting out the world again. His voice emerged from the audio projector. “Aliens in a society of human beings. Excuse me, will you, gentlemen? I have to go play with some lizards.”

Cebz, the dominant Marit, scuttled around the camp but seemed to be keeping an eye on the squad. She could, after all, count, and maybe she was curious about the fluctuating number of clones in the area. If A’den hadn’t leveled with her, then Darman wouldn’t, either.

“I better go and clear any evidence out of Sull’s place,” Darman said to Atin. He prodded his brother in the chin, right at the end of the thin white scar that crossed his face from the opposite brow. It was still visible through his beard. ” ‘Cos I can look like him and you can’t.”

“You say that like it’s a good thing…”

That was another advantage of being a clone. It was easy to take a brother’s place; few folks would be any the wiser, except those who really knew you. Darman put on Sull’s original clothes, noted that they were loose on him-had he lost that much weight?-and set off in the speeder for Eyat.

On the journey, he pondered the nature of mothers and what it might have felt like to have one, deciding it must have been a lot like having Sergeant Kal around all the time. Kal’buir said they’d all missed the necessary nurturing of a parent when they most needed it as babies. Darman often wondered if he would have been a different man had he been nurtured-whatever that meant in real terms-but he couldn’t feel what was missing in his life, only that something was.

Lots of things were, in fact. He’d only known what some of them were when he touched Etain for the first time. And Fi seemed to see many more things that were missing than even he did.

Can ‘t change the past. That was what Sergeant Kal said. Only the future, which is whatever you choose to make it.

Darman couldn’t feel angry about Sull’s decision to make a run for it, only a vague envy, and an uncertainty about whether he would have done the same.

Can’t leave my brothers in the lurch. They put their lives on the line for me, and I do the same for them.

He put it out of his mind and concentrated on the road, knowing that if he ventured any further into those thoughts, then things would start to become confusing and painful. He distracted himself with finding the route to Sull’s apartment again, reversing the route he’d taken out of Eyat.

Almost without thinking, Darman set the speeder down a little way from the apartment, walked around the block to check if he was being followed, and then ran up the external stairway to let himself in. A human male coming along the access walkway toward him nodded in acknowledgment to Darman, as if he knew him.

“Your boss was here, hammering on your door,” he said, not stopping. He kept talking and walking as he looked back at Darman. “You been away?”

Darman was a lot more confident about his acting skills since the Coruscant deployment. “Yeah … I suppose I better explain myself to him …”

The man shrugged and went on his way. So far, so good. Inside the apartment, the place was as they’d left it after the scuffle with Sull: Darman hadn’t cleared it out while he’d been waiting for Atin to return with transport, partly because he didn’t know if they’d need to use the place for cover in the near future. The back of his hand still showed the neat purple depressions of Sull’s no-holds-barred bite.