Triple Zero (Star Wars: Republic Commando, #2)

by Karen Traviss

The pieces fell into place for Skirata and he let himself be shocked anyway. War was one thing. Weird science was another issue entirely.

“These units are defective, and I admit that we perhaps made an error in attempting to enhance the genetic template,” Orun Wa said, utterly unmoved by their vulnerability. Skirata had worked out fast that Kaminoans despised everything that didn’t fit their intolerant, arrogant society’s ideal of perfection. So…they thought Jango’s genome wasn’t the perfect model for a soldier without a little adjustment, then. Maybe it was his solitary nature; he’d make a rotten infantry soldier. Jango wasn’t a team player.

And maybe they didn’t know that it was often imperfection that gave humans an edge.

“We could do with a few wild cards,” Jango said carefully, moving between Skirata and the Kaminoan. “It’s good to have some surprises up your sleeve for the enemy. What are these kids really like? And how old are they?” “Nearly two standard years’ growth. Highly intelligent, deviant, disturbed—and uncommandable.” “Could be ideal for intel work.” It was pure bluff: Skirata could see the little twitch of muscle in Jango’s jaw. He was shocked, too. The bounty hunter couldn’t hide that from his old associate. “I say we keep ’em.”

If these kids didn’t know their culture and what made someone a Mando, then they had no purpose, no pride, and nothing to hold them and their clan together when home wasn’t a piece of land. If you were a nomad, your nation traveled in your heart. And without the Mando heart, you had nothing—not even your soul—in whatever new conquest followed death. Skirata knew at that moment what he had to do. He had to stop these boys from being dar’manda, eternal Dead Men, men without a Mando soul.

And he explained that there was no Mandalorian word for “hero.” It was only not being one that had its own word: Hut’uun.

“Are you scared?” asked Skirata. “Yes, Kal,” said Ordo. “Is that wrong?” “No, son. Not at all.” It was as good a time to teach them as any. No lesson would ever be wasted on them. “Being afraid is okay. It’s your body’s way of getting you ready to defend yourself, and all you have to do is use it and not let it use you. Do you understand that?”

He and Jusik were opposites in so many ways and yet so very similar in others. “You have such a passionate sense of belonging,” Jusik said at last. “And you never complain about the way you’re used.” “Save your sympathy for the troopers,” Ordo said. “Nobody uses us. And a clear sense of purpose is a strength.”

“Ordo’s always on time,” Fi said, trying to take his mind off his churning stomach. “Don’t fret, Sarge.” “Your buddy…” Darman teased. “Rather have him for a friend than an enemy.” “Ooh, he likes you. Hobnobbing with ARC officers from the Bonkers Squad, eh?” “We have an understanding,” Fi said. “I don’t laugh at his skirt, and he doesn’t rip my head off.” Yes, Ordo had taken a shine to him. Fi hadn’t fully understood it until Skirata had taken him to one side and explained just what had happened to Ordo and his batch on Kamino as kids. So when Fi had thrown himself on a grenade during an anti-terrorist op to smother the detonation, Ordo had marked him out as someone who’d take an awfully big risk to save comrades. Null ARCs were psychotic—bonkers, as Skirata put it—but they were unshakably loyal when the mood struck them. And when the mood failed to strike them, they were instant death on legs.

“Intel said—” “Intel has occasionally been known to be less than one hundred percent accurate, apparently…” Atin sighed a ffft of contempt. “You reckon?” Fi could see that he was checking ships’ configuration data via his HUD. “I’m glad I’m shockproofed.” “But we like intel,” said Fi. No, not again. Let it be right this time. “Sergeant Kal never read us bedtime stories, so intel satisfies our innate boyish need for heroic fantasy.”

It hardly made her flinch now. She had reached the saturation level of adrenaline where she was vividly aware of every hazard but running on some primeval automatic level of painless cold reason—too scared to panic, as one of the clone troopers had described it. Three minutes became three hours became three seconds.

It was another reason why Ordo adored his sergeant: he was the archetypal Mando’ad. A Mandalorian man’s ideal was to be the firm but loving father, the respectful son learning from every hard experience, the warrior loyal to constant personal principles rather than ever-changing governments and flags. He also knew when to apologize.

“Back to Triple Zero, then.” She’d called it Zero Zero Zero originally—the street slang—but the troopers had told her that was confusing, and that over a comlink it wouldn’t be clear if she meant Coruscant or was simply using the standard military triple repeat of important data. She decided she liked Triple Zero better anyway. It made her feel part of their culture. “And not before time.”

When she got back, she would seek out Kal Skirata and beg him to help her make sense of it all. She would find Omega Squad and tell them face-to-face how much she cared about them before it was too late. She would tell Darman that most of all. She never stopped thinking of him.

“Scorch, sooner rather than later, okay?” Boss’s voice said. “One minute, tops.” “We haven’t got a minute—” “What d’you want me to do, chew through it?” The transparisteel plate was distorting as the hot frame burned through from the outside. Niner gathered up the hololink and snapped it back on his forearm plate. Atin shoved datapads and tools in his belt. “Tell you what, shall we just float here and panic incoherently while we’re waiting?” Fi said. “Good idea,” Scorch said, unmoved. “Very good idea, panicking,” Boss said. “Guess what I just eyeballed from the port-side screen…”

Ordo would have been quite content to shoot the strill without a second thought because it upset Kal’buir. But it wasn’t the strill’s fault that it stank, or that it had a master who cherished cruelty, or that it had become savage itself. It had been selected by nature and then trained by people to hunt for pleasure rather than for food, and nothing else had ever been allowed to cross its mind. He felt some pity for it. But he would still kill it without a moment’s hesitation.

In five millennia, the Mandalorians fought with and against a thousand armies on a thousand worlds. They learned to speak as many languages and absorbed weapons technology and tactics from every war. And yet, despite the overwhelming influence of alien cultures, and the absence of a true homeworld and even species, their own language not only survived but changed little, their way of life and their philosophy remained untouched, and their ideals and sense of family, of identity, of nation, were only strengthened. Armor does not make a Mandalorian. The armor is simply a manifestation of an impenetrable, unassailable heart. —Mandalorians: Identity and Language, published by the Galactic Institute of Anthropology

But Etain wasn’t giving up. Fi rather liked that about her, but she could be a pain in the shebs when she persisted. She stepped a little closer to Skirata. “I don’t like being left in the dark, Sergeant.” “Then this galaxy is going to be a constant source of disappointment to you, General.”

“Are you squeamish, General? I mean ethically squeamish.” “I’m a Jedi, Sergeant.” “Well, that answers a lot of questions I didn’t ask.”

And before that you survived when Master Fulier didn’t. So I reckon you’re pretty handy in a scrap.” “I know my weaknesses.” Skirata paused and looked up from his packing. “Best knowledge of all.”

“Wars are legal violence. Everything else is just crime. Fortunately we’re Mandalorian, so we’re a lot less prissy about that fine distinction.”

Skirata winced. Faith was devastating if you weren’t up to being a god. But I don’t regret it. No, not a second of it.

Skirata gestured for the two commandos to stand back in the open lobby. “Look casual and read the menu. And don’t throw up.” The sprawling maze of rooms passed for a restaurant, bar, and hotel, but only if the Coruscant food hygiene inspectors were looking the other way. It was perfect in every way if you wanted not to be bothered. There was a certain anonymity in the rough end of the entertainment district.

There was a point somewhere at which the means did not justify the ends, no matter what the numbers argued.

He thought she might suddenly reveal a powerful charisma or sweetness that would explain why this scrap of skin, bone, and unkempt hair had so riveted Darman. But she was just a kid, a Jedi kid with a lot of responsibility that showed in her young face and old eyes.

The man whined exactly like a strill, a thin animal noise. “I can’t…” “Fear of being wrong is worse than pain, isn’t it? It just eats you and you can’t shut it off. Are you right? Or are you as bad as the Republic you hate? Are we really the enemy, or are you? Look at the helpless pawns you kill.” So that was what she was doing. Skirata had wondered if she was using her Force powers to cause real physical pain. But she had cut to the chase and re-created the stuff that pain did to you anyway: it made you fear for your sanity long before your life. He had to hand it to her. It was nonlethal and not that far beyond the usual mind influence. Maybe she was struggling to find an ethical limit in her own mind. Maybe it was her own nightmare, the worst thing she could conceive.

“Sowing doubt is a very corrosive thing when you’re dealing with people who believe in causes,” said Etain.

It was easy back on Kamino, where the real world had never intruded—not beyond the risk of getting killed in training, of course. But the last nine months’ exposure to people outside the tight fraternity had made ordinary life feel much more dangerous than combat itself. Because other people’s lives were not ordinary at all.

Dark and light are simply the perpetrator’s perception. How can that be right? How can Vau’s passionless expedience be morally superior to Skirata’s anger and love?

Etain had struggled for years with her own anger and resentment. The choices were to be a good Jedi or a failed Jedi, with the assumption—sometimes unspoken, sometimes not—that failure meant the dark side awaited. But there was a third path: to leave the Order.

The only selfless thing I have ever done that was not centered on my own need to be a good, passionless, detached Jedi was to care about these cloned men and ask what we’re doing to them. And that was her direction. It was so very clear; but she was still raw and aching within. Revelation didn’t heal.

“We could be dead tomorrow, both of us,” she said. “Or the next day, or next week. That’s war.” She thought of the other Fi, whose life had ebbed away in her arms. “And I don’t want to die without telling you that I missed you every day since you left, and that I love you, and that I don’t believe what I was taught about attachment any more than you should believe that you were bred only to die for the Republic.”

This was breaking all the rules. But the war had broken all the rules of peacekeeping Jedi and a civilized Republic anyway. The Force wouldn’t be thrown into turmoil if a mediocre Jedi and a cloned soldier who had no rights broke just one more.

It was bad for discipline to let an officer and an enlisted man have a relationship. But Etain wasn’t an officer, and Darman had never chosen to enlist. The risk lay more in how Darman would handle it, and how left behind his brothers might feel now that they were out in a world where everyone who wasn’t wearing armor was free to love.

“I’m just a soldier. A commando, you’d call it. I’m groping my way through all this.” “But Qibbu’s scared of you.” “I don’t have any problems with killing people. That’s all.” The reality of his situation had become starkly clear now: edging farther and farther out on that limb, either to safety or to plummet into the torrent rushing beneath, with a breath between one extreme and the other. And no way of stepping back onto the riverbank.

The instinct to be a protective parent is especially dominant. They have accidentally bred a family-oriented warrior population, and continue to reinforce it by absorbing like-minded individuals and groups. —Mandalorians: Identity and Its Influence on Genome, published by the Galactic Institute of Anthropology

Motive mattered. Motive gave you the capacity to think like the enemy, want what they wanted, and then snatch it from them.

Mhi solus tome Mhi solus dar’tome Mhi me’dinui an Mhi ba’juri verde We are one when together. We are one when parted. We will share all. We will raise warriors. —Traditional Mandalorian marriage contract and ceremony, in its entirety

Ordo was looking her over as if she was a new species. And she was. There was a comfortable zone of attractiveness in females, and then there was a point beyond which it became too much. The very beautiful were intimidating and unwelcome. Wennen had passed that threshold, and Skirata was ambushed by his own unexpected hostility toward her.

So you want a knife, a nice sharp knife. You hone that blade to its limits. It even cuts through stone when you want it to. It saves your life. And then you’re outraged when it cuts you accidentally. You see, knives don’t switch off. And neither do people, not when you hone them to a fine edge. —Sergeant Kal Skirata to General Arligan Zey, on the nature of training

“Ordo, I owe you an apology. I was wrong to use the check command and you’re right to be angry with me.” He just nodded. It still surprised her that a man who was physically identical to Darman could somehow look so different. “I realize you had a bad deal, Ordo.” “On Kamino?” “Even now, I think.” Ordo blinked a couple of times as if she wasn’t making sense. She had no idea where his mind ranged in those split seconds other than that he felt like a flurry of activity in the Force. “I didn’t have a mother or a father, but a stranger willingly chose me to be his son. You had a mother and father, and they let strangers take you. No, General, don’t pity me. You’re the one who’s had the worse deal.”

Jusik made an irritated grunt that he seemed to have picked up from Sev and accelerated. At times like this Fi had passed beyond the first flush of adrenaline and into a cold and rational world where everything made sense to his body if not to his brain. He found an instinctive sense of effortless balance as Jusik wove through the ducts, clearing some of the transverse durasteel joists by a breath. Speed no longer felt like conscious fun, as it had in training, but he was beyond fear for himself at that moment.

“Don’t do this to him,” she said to Vau. “Please. Don’t.” Vau simply shrugged and picked up the huge strill in his arms as if it were a pup. It licked his face adoringly. “You can fight ice-cold or you can fight red-hot. Kal fights hot. It’s his weakness.”

“So ask me the question, then. Why didn’t I ever say, Whoa, enough? I’ve had some unkind thoughts about you, ad’ika, why your kind never refused to lead an army of slaves. And then I thought, Kal, you hut’uun, you’re just the same as her. You never stood up against it.” “Your soldiers worship you.” Skirata closed his eyes then screwed them tight shut for a moment. “You think that makes me feel better? That stinking strill loves Vau. Monsters get loved irrationally all the time.”

That was part of his unique and appealing courage. Her first impression was that he would be a man whose bluff exterior was simply embarrassed machismo. But Skirata wasn’t embarrassed about his emotions at all. He had the guts to wear his heart on his sleeve. It was probably what made him even more effective at killing: he could love as hard as he could punch.

“Does it matter, as long as they’re loved?” “Yes, it does. I have to know that I care about them for who they are, or I’ve consigned them to being things again. We’re Mandalorian. A Mandalorian isn’t just a warrior, you see. He’s a father, and he’s a son, and your family matters. Those boys deserve a father. They deserve sons and daughters, too, but that isn’t going to happen. But they can be sons, and the two things you have a duty to teach your sons are self-reliance, and that you’d give your life for them.” Skirata leaned on folded arms and gazed down into the hazy abyss again. “And I would, Etain. I would. And I should have had that degree of conviction when I started this sorry mess back on Kamino.”

“You’re a good man and a good father,” she said. “You should never doubt that for a moment. Your men don’t, and neither do I.” “Well, I wasn’t a good father until they made one out of me.”

“The brief unity of triumph, and then back to the fray. Crushing, isn’t it? The victories seem so insignificant compared with the size of the war.” “Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try,” Skirata said. “It’s only what individuals do that adds up to history.” “We’ve written ours, then.”

When you can no longer know what your nation or your government stands for, or even where it is, you need a set of beliefs you can carry with you and cling to. You need a core in your heart that will never change. I think that’s why I feel more at home in the barracks than I do in the Jedi Temple. —General Bardan Jusik, Jedi Knight

For all the violence of the day she had put behind her, she found a serene core within her that had never been there before, the inner calm she had sought so many years through study and struggle. All I had to do was have a life beside my own to care for. That is the true detachment we ought to seek, putting another person above ourselves—not denying our emotions. The attachment to self is the path to the dark side.