Order 66: Star Wars Legends (Republic Commando) (Star Wars: Republic Commando Book 4)

by Karen Traviss

We should all see ourselves from a stranger’s perspective at least once in our lives.

When I walked around the city in my robes, I thought that others saw me as someone there to help them. Now I know different; they probably saw someone they didn’t trust, with powers they didn’t understand, someone they didn’t elect but who shaped their lives behind the scenes anyway. If they’d known how much I could shape their thoughts, too, they’d have fled from me.

“You walked out on us in the middle of a war—a war we have to fight.” He’s puzzled, resentful—scared. “How could you betray us like that?” I wonder who he means by we: Jedi, or clones? “I left because it’s wrong.” I shouldn’t have to tell him that. “Because you’re using a slave army to do it. Because there’s no point fighting one kind of evil if you replace it with your own brand.” Get specific. Get personal. Don’t give him a chance to look away from his conscience. “You, personally. You make that choice each morning. A belief you suspend when it suits you isn’t a belief. It’s a lie.”

“I don’t like it any more than you do.” He seems oblivious of the stares of passersby. “But if I walk out, it won’t change the Council’s policy, or the course of the war.” “It’ll change your war,” I say. “But I suppose you’re only following orders. Right?”

“We need every general we can muster,” he says. Maybe the Jedi thinks he can appeal to my sense of guilt. “There’s a terrible darkness coming. I can feel it.” So can I. It’s vague and unfathomable, but it’s there, looming, like someone stalking me. “Then do something about your own darkness.”

Sometimes Munin called him Kal’ika. The mercenaries told him it meant “little blade,” and showed that Munin was fond of him.

Munin ate with him. When he wasn’t shouting, he was actually a kind man, but he could never take Papa’s place. “Starting over can be a good thing, Kal’ika. You can’t change the past or other folks, but you can always change yourself, and that changes your future.” The thought grabbed Falin and wouldn’t let go. When you felt powerless, the idea of being able to make the bad stuff stop was the best thing in the world, and he didn’t want to feel this bad ever again. He wanted things to change.

“But why do you make me run and carry things?” he asked. “It hurts.” “So that you can handle anything life throws at you, son. So that you never have to be afraid of anyone again. I’m going to make a soldier of you.” Falin liked the idea of being a soldier. He had a vague but long list of beings he wanted to kill for hurting his parents, and you could do things like that if you were a soldier. “Why?” “It’s a noble profession. You’re tough and smart, and you’ll be a great soldier. It’s what Mandalorians do.” “Why didn’t you kill me? You kill everyone else.” Munin chewed thoughtfully for a while. “Because you don’t have parents, and me and my missus don’t have a son, so it sort of makes sense that we do what Mandalorians always do—that we take you in, train you, set you up to be a soldier and a father yourself. Don’t you want that?”

“You think I’m lazy and stupid,” Falin said. “No, I just say that and shout at you to get you mad enough to push yourself to the limit.” Munin watched him empty the bowl and then refilled it. “Because strength is up here.” He tapped his head. “You can make your body do anything if you want to badly enough. It’s called endurance. When you find out just how much you can do, how much you can face, you’ll feel fantastic—like nobody can ever hurt you again. You’ll be strong in every sense of the word.”

Ba’jur bal beskar’gam, Ara’nov, aliit, Mando’a bal Mand’alor— An vencuyan mhi. Education and armor, Self-defense, our tribe, Our language and our leader— All help us survive. —Rhyme taught to Mandalorian children to help them learn the Resol’nare—the six tenets of Mando culture

For as long as Scorch could remember, Skirata and Vau had been at loggerheads about everything from tactics and how to motivate troops to the color of the mess walls, sometimes to the point of fistfights. But the war seemed to have softened their outlook. There was no affection between them—not as far as Scorch could see—but something kept them together as brother warriors, tight and secret.

A couple of hundred commandos had assembled, some with helmets and some without, each man in individual painted armor that looked incongruously cheery for such a solemn event. But that was very Mando, too. Life went on and was there to be lived to the full, and constant remembrance of lost friends and family was an integral part of that. Aay’han. That was the word for it: a peculiarly Mandalorian emotion, a strange blend of contentment and sorrow when safely surrounded by loved ones and yet recalling the dead with bittersweet intensity. The dead were never shut out.

Ordo seemed disturbingly relaxed. It was as if he’d never been taught that kidnapping people was wrong. But Skirata’s special forces squads abducted, assassinated, and spied for the Republic, and there was an inevitability if you bred hyper-smart, ultra-hard fighting men: sooner or later, they understood their power, and used it for their own ends if those ends weren’t met by the Republic.

He looked really agitated now, staring into Ordo’s face as if he was more shocked than scared. “What are you doing, anyway? You’re programmed to be obedient.” “You should have paid more attention in genetics class,” Ordo said. “Genes only predispose. Environment’s what counts. Programming…no, human beings don’t work that way. Trainable. Not programmable.”

Ordo placed a cup of caf in front of her with the handle at precisely ninety degrees, as if it was a private ritual. “The nearest I’ve ever come to arguing with Kal’buir was over whether we were putting you at risk for our own ends.” “I went into this knowing the score, Ordo.” “But you think you have to face danger yourself to be able to look me in the eye, don’t you?”

A clone’s life was cheap and disposable to both his Kaminoan creators and his political masters, and if men were indoctrinated to believe their sole purpose was to fight and die for the Republic, it was inevitable they would see others’ lives as equally expendable.

“If I got paid, I’d buy you something wonderful.” Ordo sometimes had an anxious, apologetic tone when he felt he’d fallen short of perfection, a rare lapse in his apparently unassailable confidence. That was what happened, Besany thought, when a child was told it had to die for failing to meet standards. It ripped her apart every time; not even Skirata’s influence—constantly telling them they were perfect, wonderful, brilliant—could totally erase that trauma. “This is the best I can do right now. Do you want to marry me?” Ordo was a slave by any other name, an object manufactured for a task, minus rights and a vote. Besany understood now why Etain had also had a moment of apparent insanity and had Darman’s baby. The clones had a right to be men. Their future was all the more precious because it would be so brief.

It was dawning slowly on Fi that Fett, Mand’alor and bounty hunter, had been a good advert for Mandalorian grit, but his heroic status wasn’t respected by some of his own people. The Alpha ARC clone troopers, hard men literally made in Fett’s mold, were scared of him, utterly loyal to his orders even after his death. But Fi realized that some Mando’ade here thought he was a selfish chakaar.

Mandalore didn’t have any leader at all now, and life still went on regardless. Fi could imagine the chaos on Coruscant if the Chancellor was killed and nobody was around to succeed him. Mandos just got on with life. It had happened before, they said, and it would happen again, but no nation worth its salt fell apart just because there was nobody on the throne.

Sheer guts like that had the same effect on a Mandalorian male that a pair of long legs did on aruetiise; female courage was irresistible.

He was fed up finding things in common with insects. He was a man, and he missed his girl. He wanted to go home—and he had no idea where home was. Fi said it was Kyrimorut. Darman decided it would be wherever Etain wanted it to be.

It was amazing how much human beings could accept as normal if they had nothing else to compare it with.

The longer you spent fighting, the more cautious you became. Battle hardening meant that you knew how dead you could really get.

Darman would leave the derring-do to the new boys now.

Mandalorians were lying savages, loyal to nobody and congenitally violent. They’d steal anything that wasn’t nailed down; they’d kill for a bet. That was what a lot of folks thought of Mando’ade, and Kal Skirata was now relying on that thuggish stereotype to cover his tracks.

“Yeah, but you can steer events…,” Skirata said. “You want to see Priest or Reau back in?” “You wouldn’t. Not them.” Gilamar boiled. He loathed both of them to the point of violence. “They had the makings of the Death Watch in them, those two. Him and that perverted secret fight club, her and that let’s-conquer-the-galaxy-again osik…that’s not what either of us want Mandalore to be, is it?”

Etain was hardly the first mother to have duties that took her away from her child. It was just something that no Jedi was supposed to experience, and she understood the ban on attachment better now than she ever had. It was a harsh rule, and she worried that Jedi raised other Jedi in a constant soulless cycle of detached, cold indifference, but at times like these she understood how disruptive it was to have someone whose welfare mattered so much to you that it clouded your judgment.

All the way back to the apartment—four changes of speeder bus, a couple of long walks, and doubling back once or twice, just in case—Jusik felt his triumph being tarnished slowly by a small nagging, worrying voice. It wasn’t the welter of disturbed minds that left him most unsettled, or even coming face-to-face with a woman whose job was, effectively, genocide. It was finding that she was not the only wholly sane person being imprisoned in Valorum. And there was nothing he could do about the other one. He couldn’t pursue the man’s case, because Herris now had to disappear. He’d made too much of a splash as it was. There were always casualties in war. Not all of them occurred in combat.

Darman had reached this point in combat several times over the last couple of years. There was a very good chance that he was going to die. The more times that happened, the more confident he was that he could get out of it, but there was also the realization that this time might well be the last.

“Where are we going, then?” “The tapcaf.” “Why a tapcaf?” “Convenient.” Parja paused to stare at a shopfront. It was full of tools and machine parts, and she gazed at it the way Fi had seen Coruscanti females stare at fashion shops. “Everyone knows the Oyu’baat. It’s been here since Canderous Ordo was a glint in his mama’s eye, and it never closes, ever. They say the pot of stew over the fire’s been simmering for a thousand years, and that all the cooks do is throw in more meat and veg every day.” “Yuck,” said Fi. “I hope they wash their hands.”

“It’s just keeping up appearances for the aruetiise. We live in nervous times, and the job’s been vacant for too long.” “I don’t get why the clans don’t just fill it the usual way,” Spar muttered. “Either Mandalore needs a real leader or it doesn’t. If you’re going to put up a sham one, you might as well go the whole way and select a proper one.” “The Fett name puts the very fear of haran up the aruetiise.” Shysa had an earnest manner that Fi found hard to dislike. The glib charm fell away fast, leaving a man who seemed genuinely worried for his world. “Whatever happened to Jango in the end, he killed Jedi with his bare hands. Folks don’t forget that. And if you leave the clans without a focus for too many years…well, we don’t want another Death Watch starting up. Right now, we don’t have an obvious candidate for the job.”

How long would it take to get killed? How many blaster rounds would finally destroy their Katarn plates’ energy-diffusing properties? The better protected you were, the more complex and frightening the death that awaited you, Darman decided. Without it, a clean shot would end it all. With it—well, you couldn’t design for immortality. Just delaying the inevitable, that was all it was.

“We won’t wait until the end of the war, will we?” she whispered, lips barely moving. “But when will we know when the time is right?” She was referring to desertion—getting out, leaving the war behind. It was an odd question for a Jedi to ask. Ordo had always thought that their senses would tell them when momentous events would happen. He realized he had a far better chance now of predicting that from intelligence than Etain had from listening to the Force.

but Dar said they’ve come across troopers who don’t seem to know Vode An.” In the context of a galactic war, it was less than nothing. In the context of what the Nulls had discovered on Kamino—the looming end of its clone production, facilities set up on Coruscant itself—and the evidence Besany had turned up about a clone program on Centax 2, it was significant; it meant that there was a new basic training schedule. The aiwha-bait were nothing if not mind-numbingly consistent. The song was part of the flash-learning module that taught young clones the purpose and nobility of the Republic’s cause.

“K’oyacyi,” said Skirata. “Cheers.” It was a telling phrase, k’oyacyi; it was a command that meant “stay alive.” And so it was a toast, or an exhortation to hang in there, or even to come home safely. Staying alive and making the most of each day’s living underpinned much of the Mandalorian language. “K’oyacyi,” A’den said. “Oya manda.”

Ordo, never fond of alcohol, stared into his glass and wondered what the Republic’s armed forces would be like if they had to recruit wholly from nonclones. Whoever had ordered the clone army had excellent foresight. But, as Fi had once said, they might have set up the whole war anyway, not that a carefully planned war looking for an excuse to start was anything remotely new in the galaxy. It was still important to find out exactly who could plan so far ahead, and so well.

If the tidy nature of fate is the point, I accept the argument, but that doesn’t change what happened to you.” “Well…if you want something to shine bright, it has to be polished hard.”

Either our government is composed of innumerate idiots, or it’s inflating the threat way beyond the average citizen’s math skills so that it can justify the war and where it’s heading. —Hirib Bassot, current affairs pundit, speaking on HNE shortly before being found dead at home from alleged abuse of contaminated glitterstim

As a Jedi, Jusik had been taught to trust his feelings, and not to think. He never completely learned that lesson; he refused to, because he knew he could think very well indeed, and the Force wouldn’t have manifested itself in him if it hadn’t had some use for that intellect. And if the Force had no purpose—deliberate or accidental—then he wasn’t inclined to let it rule him.

“Do your old buddies think you’re lost to the dark side now?” “Probably. I just wish they’d stop worrying about light and dark, and learn the difference between right and wrong instead.”

Tonight they’d finalize plans. When the time came to run, they’d have minutes—not days, maybe not even hours—to get out. In the end, it didn’t matter if the Republic won or lost the war. The people Kal Skirata cared about most would be crushed between the warring factions either way.

“It’s not mutinous, anyway.” Corr directed his ire at Niner. “Contingency rules. If they’re not fit to retain command, we can boot them out. Even slot them.” Etain was mildly interested, but she wanted to hear Corr’s views on Haurgab. “Really?” “Cor’ika, we’ve got a hundred and fifty shabla contingency rules, everything from arresting the Chancellor if he goes gaga to reducing key allied worlds to slag if they switch sides,” Atin said. “Including shooting the whole Jedi command if they go over to the enemy. It doesn’t mean you have to go out and do it now.” “Come on, Corr,” Etain said. Contingency orders were long, tedious lists of worst-case scenarios, and she didn’t want to hear all 150 again.

Clones could think outside the confines of their military world, all right. Once they did, they weren’t dumb and happy with their lot. She thought the only reason General Kenobi talked about them like a proud akk owner was that he couldn’t admit even to himself that the Jedi Order was complicit in a thoroughly evil thing. But at least he didn’t refuse to use their names, like General Vos seemed to. Etain found it increasingly hard to find common ground with some of her fellow Jedi. She could see the Order foundering, unchanging over the centuries, hidebound by esoteric arguments about the unseen mysteries, and yet blind to its own moral decline in the real world.

Before I give up being a Jedi completely, I want to know if I can salvage any of my calling.” Callista put her hand on Etain’s shoulder. “You want to join us? You know what’ll happen if you do. We’re effectively the lunatic relative that they don’t talk about.” “Would I be accepted? What do you expect of your adherents?” “Well, your family’s welcome. You never need live a lie, for a start.” “You have a lover?” “Of course. What’s life if you shun the most powerful influence for good that any being knows?”

“This is very sad, you know.” “What is?” “That you have to be so miserable simply for being a normal human being, Force-user or not. Master Altis says the Jedi Order has become more like a corporation than a spiritual body, all rules and infrastructure and committees. To continue the analogy, he says that the Order has lost sight of its core business, which is simply doing the right thing for others.”

“Dar,” Corr said carefully, “don’t you want the kid?” “Yes, I do.” It just slipped out. “I didn’t think I’d be interested, but he’s mine. It means there’s more to me than just what’s sitting here. I can’t explain it very well. All I know is that it matters. It makes me someone different.” Regular humans grew up knowing what families were, what parents did, even if they didn’t have one. In Darman’s wholly artificial world on Kamino, during the years that mostly shaped him, Darman had worked out something vital; that there was such a thing as a father, and Kal Skirata filled that gap in his life. He’d seen Jango Fett from time to time—and his son—and known that he was grown from the man’s cells, but he never felt the connection with him that he felt with Skirata. Humans were just like any other creature in the galaxy. Their instinct was to breed and look after their young, and cloning humans and growing them in vats didn’t change that one bit.

“You still don’t understand Mando’ade at all.” Vau let out a long and weary sigh that sounded real. “Aliit ori’shya tal’din. Family is more than bloodline. And if you looked at any Mando working for you—and doing a solid job, might I add—you’d find some of their kin fighting for one of the Republic’s enemies at any given time. We’ve worked as mercenaries for millennia. When you hire a Mando, you get professional loyalty as part of the deal. Funny how you see us as private contractors fighting for the cause of freedom when it’s your credits, but as amoral scum when we get paid by someone else.

For a moment, Skirata’s natural suspicion tugged at his sleeve and said: Yeah, good idea, get all the gang in one place, and warn Vau so he can tip off Zey. Not knowing now who he could and could not trust got to Skirata in a way few things ever could. But that was their aruetyc game—divide and rule, sow distrust, set Mando against Mando by adding a little poisonous doubt to the mix. If Vau’s set me up, and this is some clever double-double game, then I’m going to take my time killing him. The trouble with war-gaming double-cross scenarios like this was that there was no logical point at which to stop. It was layer upon layer. It could drive you crazy. Skirata knew Vau all too well after being cooped up on a Force-forsaken stilt city on Kamino for years; if he was the double-crossing kind, it would be a first time for him. But…Skirata shook it off as best he could.

Mandalorians needed to learn to stick together, to look after one another and let the rest of the galaxy find its own fall guys to do the fighting and dying in their place.

If you were forbidden to love a person you could see and touch, how could you ever learn enough compassion to treat strangers right? Jedi never truly learned to love anything beyond an idea, and that was the gulf that Skirata saw between himself and Zey.